Giving Him Hell: A Saturn's Daughter Novel (Saturn's Daughters Book 3) (25 page)

“You don’t like him either, right?” I asked. “What kind of fate does he deserve?”

Milo bobbed his head and jumped down, then trotted off to my bedroom. Out of curiosity, I followed him. Milo’s presence really is that strong sometimes. I trusted him more than myself. Real lawyers didn’t do what I was contemplating.

Milo walked across the top of my second-hand dresser. I’d broken the mirror back when Max had been appearing in it. Since I didn’t like mirrors anymore, I’d left the glass as it was. I still scattered lipsticks and various cosmetics over the top. Milo swatted at a nasty red lipstick I’d picked up at a sale. The tube rolled to the floor, along with a sample bottle of blusher.

Remembering Tim’s decorated elf, I grinned and claimed the red colors. “You’re an artist, master.”

Milo graciously dipped his head, then leaped over to my bed and curled up on the pillow, leaving me to do the dirty work.

I collected some eye shadow and other ornaments and proceeded to decorate my very own elf. Rouged lips and cheeks, purple eye shadow, blackened brows . . . I rubbed his styled gray hair with the green goop I once used to streak my hair for Halloween. For the grand—and I hoped—successful finale, I gathered up the spray can of pink gas I’d confiscated from Acme a few months back, threw it in my backpack along with the gnome, and headed out.

On my way down the hill, I stocked up on donuts and cookies at the minimart. I tested the heated streets but apparently snow turned them on and a dreary day didn’t. The glow from the manholes had decreased substantially. Lines of people had started snaking down the alley again to the spa I’d seen going up earlier. I ought to figure out how they were advertising those things, but my to-do list already overflowed.

I liked to share the fun so I stopped and asked Cora and Sarah if they’d be interested in attending my meeting. Sarah wasn’t smart enough to be suspicious and chose to stay at Chesty’s. Cora, being a clever girl, said she’d be over a little later.

The Morgan building had changed substantially since I’d last visited. The Do-Gooders had set up a jolly family room in the front, complete with television, sofas, and card tables. The television was broadcasting a Russian news report and no one was watching. I could have told the DGs to save their money on electronics, but maybe the TV was someone’s castoff.

There were actually kids playing a card game at the table. We had
kids
living on the harbor? So very not good. And living in a Zone building wasn’t much better. Adults got to make choices. Kids didn’t. They could be warped forever by the decisions of their elders.

I punched Max’s button on my phone, and he answered on the second try, after a lobster plant in Maine. I hoped that was a good sign that the Zone favored me today. “Did Lance get in touch with you? I trust there’ve been no more exploding gas lines?”

“Yeah, the guys have set up a club in the guardhouse,” he said with classic Max dryness. Apparently he’d had his morning caffeine fix and was feeling better. “The neighbors aren’t happy about the parking lot of Harleys, but oddly, I feel better having them there. And Gloria seems to be gone. I owe you. And Andre,” he added grudgingly.

“Have your PR people take pictures of the Harleys. You’ll get the popular vote—Senator Dane employs local vets. Excellent promo. And yeah, I’m calling you for a favor. Your Do-Gooders didn’t go home. They’re down here turning one of Andre’s buildings into a homeless shelter. I don’t have a problem with that, but there are
kids
here. Kids, Max. That’s just not right.”

I could almost see him attempt to run his hand through Dane’s gluey hair. Max hadn’t wanted
me
near Acme. I knew he wouldn’t want kids here.

“All right, I get it. Senator Dane lends a helping hand to the homeless,” he said with a sigh of exasperation. “I’ll put my staff on it and find an opening for them in shelters somewhere safer. Will you move in with me now?”

I chortled, warm and sexy, just the way he liked it. “I’m about to blow up a CEO, dude, what do you think?”

I hung up on his spluttering. I called Ned. “Send one or two gnomes down here, will you? This place needs more holiday décor.”

I had plenty of time until my meeting, provided there was a meeting. The likelihood of any of my antagonists showing up because Ned had called them probably wasn’t high.

I carried my backpack to the kitchen . . . the building now had a kitchen. Very nice. I admired the second hand cabinets and battered appliances that someone had been trying to connect. I wasn’t certain how successful they’d been, and I prayed none of them involved gas.

I set the donuts and cookies down on a large trestle table. A kid instantly materialized to snatch one of the Christmas ones. I escaped before the parade started. I had intended to bribe my meeting with sweets but that was before I realized there were kids.

My arm aching from the first bullet wound, my head still not happy with yesterday’s scratch, I looked for empty office space. There were people everywhere. Our vagrants had showered and been given clean clothes. Some still slept on sleeping bags in the upstairs offices. Others had rolled up their nests and gone out to forage for the day. A women’s hostel had been set up on the third floor. Everyone from pregnant teens to elderly drunks gathered there.

The eager Do-Gooders were repairing bathrooms, cleaning up messes, breaking up fights. Rob Hanks sought me out to show me the library of discarded books they’d been gathering. One of the kids was curled up on an ancient beanbag chair that was popping its seams. She perused Robin Hood while munching one of my cookies. That could have been me a million years ago.

Andre found us as Rob showed me an unused storage area on the third floor, at the back of the building. The walls were lined with dilapidated shelves Rob had plans to turn into a food pantry. But for now, they’d been collecting cleaning equipment in there. It wouldn’t take too much effort to make it my meeting room.

Tim arrived, bearing two more concrete statues, and huffing and puffing at the climb. He set them down on a three-legged table, carefully balancing it, and looked around. “Santa’s warehouse,” he declared. “The cops the district promised finally showed up this morning. They said they’ve been collecting toy donations. They could store them here.”

“I like that,” I agreed. “I don’t suppose we could have Santa Claus on hand, too?” I envisioned him in Cookie Monster blue but knew that wasn’t happening.

Andre relieved me of my backpack and nearly dropped it from the weight. I jerked it back. “I’m entitled to my secrets,” I scolded.

He glanced at the gnomes Tim had carried in. Smart man, he knew who was in my backpack. But instead of arguing, he merely said, “I can find a Santa suit. Get one of the less intoxicated bums to wear it. And don’t do anything rash until I’m back.”

We only had another hour until my Come-to-Jesus meeting. Miracles could happen.

Tim and I wacked stone guns off his gnomes with hammers and carried the now-weaponless statues back downstairs. I produced a pack of markers from my backpack, set them and the gnomes in the front room, and let magic happen. Really, the Zone had nothing on me.

We returned upstairs to help the DGs clean out the storage room and brace the shelves. Hunky Lt. Schwartz and his fellow cops began arriving in their patrol cars. Schwartz only lived down here. His office was more uptown, but he could summon respect for his neighborhood. I admired the sight from the upper story windows. Cops. In the Zone. Beautiful. I watched fat Officer Leibowitz waddle hurriedly down the street to see what he was missing.

One of the guys in blue handed Leibowitz a sack full of toys to carry in, and I smiled naughtily. I seldom came down on the nice side.

I unloaded my rouged CEO gnome in the supply closet of the ladies’ room. Ignoring my various wounds, I jogged back to my apartment. I found my music, an old DVD player and some DVDs left from my time with Max, and refilled my backpack. This time, Milo trotted after me. I probably ought to keep him out of the Zone, but his company was comforting. It also meant trouble was coming. Well, yeah, I was planning on that.

Back at the shelter, I plugged the DVD player into the TV in the front family room and slid in one of my favorite cowboy flicks. The Universe was still favoring me. It actually worked. Kids needed to learn about honesty and justice instead of the bloody murder and crime they see on regular television. I drew my own warped vision of justice from those old movies.

The kids happily colored their gnomes and watched shoot-’em-ups. Maybe not normal holiday fare, but we could start our own traditions.

I downloaded some Christmas songs into my tablet computer and set it up in the storage room upstairs, providing good cheer for the cop elves filling the shelves with their goodies. A couple of he-men scowled at the tinkly music, but that was okay. I was getting into the spirit and despite disaster looming on the horizon, I was feeling better already. Action, any action, was better than giving up with a whimper.

Milo took up a space behind some stuffed animals on a high shelf and went to sleep, blending nicely with the décor.

Andre arrived just as Leibowitz huffed and puffed in with the last load of toys. It was closing in on noon. I shoved Andre’s Santa suit at our unjolly fat man. “Try this on. Let’s see how you look.”

Leibowitz started to argue but a few of his fellow officers ribbed him, and Rob Hanks—apparently enjoying the irony—led our dirty beat cop off to a dressing room.

Andre glanced around at the toy-laden shelves. Holiday music poured through my portable speakers. He angled his head and studied me in my red leather skirt and black tights. “MacNeill is not going to be swayed by sentimental crap and good legs.”

“You’re such a Grinch.” I stood on my toes and pressed red lipstick to his cheek. “If I’m going to die, I’ll go down singing.”

That said, I warbled the hallelujah chorus and headed back downstairs to check on my gnomes in the front room. The kids had colored the ugly stone with red and green and black polka dots. I liked it. “Polka dots are the new Christmas,” I said, nodding approval. “Next time you see Tim, tell him to help you make elf hats.”

They ran off in search of Tim. Once they were out of the room, I put a plastic sack over the gnomes, pulled out my can of magic element, and squirted inside the bag. The green gas stayed contained inside the bag, and the resulting pink particles settled over the colored concrete. I had no way to know if the gas would have any effect, but I needed to try. Pink particles had presumably cured Ned of frogdom when he’d licked them. Maybe they’d made him a better person as well.

Of course, the gas had caused Bergdorff to leap out a window and others to go comatose, but I didn’t think stone could inhale.

Nothing happened. Apparently the particles had to be ingested. I should have stuck to frogs.

I sighed in disappointment, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. It was almost noon, so I checked out the big front window. Two limos pulled up behind each other. Conspicuous consumption in the face of all this poverty was cruel, if not evil. It would serve them right if their tires melted.

The green gas in the bags had already dissipated. I yanked the plastic off the stone gnomes and jogged back upstairs to the storage room, working off the cookies I’d snatched. Upstairs, I smiled in delight at Leibowitz in his Santa gear. The beard was pretty ratty, and he wore it so I could see the string, but his beady eyes were so much more interesting nearly buried in snowy eyebrows. “Wait right here,” I ordered.

I rushed off to the ladies’ room, bagged my cosmetically enhanced CEO elf, and gave him a coat of chemical spray. Nothing happened here either except the can ran out of spray and the sparkly pink gave his red cheeks and green locks a cheery look. I tossed the can and bag in my backpack, lifted Graham Young and hauled him back to Santa’s playroom.

“Sit,” I told Leibowitz, pointing at a chair I’d hauled in earlier. “Let’s see how you look with a kid on your lap.”

He dropped his heavy weight on a derelict upholstered rocker. I added painted Graham to his lap and stepped back to admire the effect. “I like it.” I took out my smart toy and snapped a photo.

Rob did the same. Happy to sit still for a while, Leibowitz mugged for the camera, not even looking at the ridiculous statue in his lap.

My luck was still holding. Dr. Abdul Bakir arrived first, with his entourage from Medical Science Inc.

Twenty-five

MSI’s good doctor scanned the toy room and Santa with vague disinterest. His gaze came back to rest on me and Andre. I heard Milo growl from the shelf, but he’s protective. I had no reason to believe Bakir was evil. I couldn’t even be certain he was guilty of more than cluelessness. I couldn’t evaporate him just because I didn’t like wealthy corporate doctors who thought they were God. That would make me worse than them.

I wondered if a lobotomy would help me get over my over-developed conscience.

The guys from the EPA and OSHA arrived right on Bakir’s heels. Former senator MacNeill finally dragged himself out of his limo, still nattering on his phone, and found his way up to our crowded enclave. Paddy didn’t arrive with him, but showed up a few minutes after my noon deadline. Leibowitz had fallen asleep in the corner and was snoring, with Graham Young on his lap. No one paid Santa any attention.

Cora slipped in with another batch of cookies. I gestured at the three-legged table. She set them out, then did her best to disappear into a dark corner. I was happy to have a friend to lend support while I made an ass of myself.

“Sorry for the accommodations, gentlemen, but this time, I thought you needed to see the place you’re condemning.” I could tell they weren’t impressed. Rightfully, so, probably. “As long as you’re all down here in the Zone, I want you to take time to have a good look at the harbor where the EPA is currently dredging out the polluted ground and hauling it off to who-knows-where. I particularly want you OSHA fellows to note the ambulances sitting on Ground Zero, waiting for the bulldozer drivers to topple over from toxic fumes.”