Deader Still

9

A calm washed over me as I embraced the nighttime quiet of the SoHo streets. By the time I clambered into the wrought-iron cage of my building’s elevator, I was practically asleep. I was also full of regret, remembering how I had conducted myself at the bookstore with Jane earlier. Now all I wanted was a chance to apologize, if Jane was even going to stop by now.

When the elevator hit my floor, I slid the accordion doors open and stumbled down the hall, barely awake. My apartment door wasn’t locked, but with my brain shutting down for the day, I didn’t think much of it. I was expecting Jane, after all, and besides, if I had afforded myself any luxury in this world, it was that I lived in a pretty nice and secure building. But I’d been wrong before. I woke right the hell up when a fist shot out from behind my door and popped me in the jaw. The hook of the swing made the left side of my head smack hard against the solid oak of the door itself.

Part of my special training from the D.E.A. kicked in as one of the lessons I’d learned in the first session came to me. He who turns and runs away, lives to live another day. I wasn’t about to get ambushed in my own apartment, and since the punch had spun me to face my door and potential freedom, I gladly started off in that direction . . . until an arm snaked around my neck from behind and dragged me back into the apartment. My legs were sprawled out in front of me as I was pulled backward toward the couch in the center of the room. Whoever was attacking me was strong as hell. There was no way I was going to overpower him from this position.

I waited for him to stop dragging me. My training was more than just how to fight; it was how to fight dirty if need be. I vividly remembered the unfortunate day when our instructor had said, “When you’re not sure what you’re dealing with—be it humanoid, lycanthropic, or other—go for the breadbasket.” I did just that. I put all my weight on my right leg and threw the rest of it into the heel of my left foot, raising it high and hard into my attacker’s crotch. My attacker let out a grunt but didn’t release the hold around my neck. Just then, it dawned on me with rising horror just what type of creature could withstand a kick to the groin. I was being sleeperholded by a woman.

Jane couldn’t be that pissed, could she?

“I apologize,” I croaked out, but it was lost in the commotion.

“Apology accepted,” a woman who was most definitely not Jane said from right behind my ear. Panic set in, but before I was able to free myself, the weight of my body was used against me and I was thrown down onto my couch. Luckily I landed in an upright position, almost perfectly sitting, but before I could get up my attacker straddled me and pushed me back against the leather. I caught a flash of steel in the darkness and felt a cold blade against my neck. Just like that, the fight went out of me.

The figure leaned forward, crossing into a stream of moonlight coming in through the ceiling-high bay windows that covered one whole wall of my living room. The woman’s hair was dark red and shoulder length, cut so she sported Bettie Page bangs. Her eyes showed a hint of devilish delight in manhandling—womanhandling—me. Her lips were pressed thin as she slid the knife against my throat, but there was something familiar about her.

Recognition hit me.

“Liza Saria?” I said.

“It’s Mina now, remember? Took you long enough, Sherlock,” she said. “Miss the old crew?” She relaxed a little, then put her left hand—the one not brandishing a knife—on my forehead, stroking my hair back hard.

This was worse than I thought, actually.

“Long time, no want to see,” I said, afraid to speak too loud for fear of moving my throat against the blade. “And no, I don’t miss the old crew. That was back when I was a cocky young con artist hell bent on fucking my life up. Can’t say I really miss that, ‘Mina.’ Still have the unhealthy obsession with the victimhood of Dracula’s paramour, I see.”

“You didn’t miss me?” Mina said, pouting her lips. “Not even a little?”

I shook my head carefully under the blade. “Sorry. I’m not terribly proud of myself or the people I used to associate with back in the day. How the hell did you find me?”

“If you didn’t want to be found,” she said, loving every minute of controlling me, “maybe you shouldn’t have left the name Canderous on the mailbox downstairs.”

I looked over at my open door, and now I could see where part of the doorjamb had been torn away. She had flat-out broken her way in. I really needed to talk to the co-op board about beefing up security around here.

“So you were just wandering by and happened to see it?”

Mina laughed. “What the hell do you care, Candy?” she asked. “Isn’t it enough that I found you?”

I winced at the nickname. “Can we not call me that? I know you coined it and all . . .”

Mina laughed again. “Despite all the terrible illegal shit you’ve done—the crimes, the thefts, conning people out of their money—it’s the nickname that bothers you most?”

Illegal though it all had been, Mina and the rest of the crew never had an idea that I had any special powers that made it all possible. They had simply assumed I was a crack thief with a good eye. The paranormal didn’t figure into their world.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I said, giving up on the name and trying to be logical with her. “There’s a reason I haven’t kept in contact, you know. Some ties should remain broken.”

Mina gave me a firm pat like I was her dog. Worse, she was messing up my hair.

“Why did you leave all of us?” she said, her eyes full of crazy. “We were like family. Things were just getting interesting when you ran out on us.”

“Is that how you see it?” I asked. It was hard not to laugh in her face. “I ran out on all of you? Mina, I barely escaped getting arrested when you switched to robbing museums. And that last one, well . . . I read about the debacle you went through, barely pulling it off.”

Mina laughed. The blade pressed harder against me.

“But we did pull it off, and that’s the important thing,” she said, writhing around on top of me. There was nothing sexy about it to me, but she seemed pleased. “God, don’t you remember the rush from those days?”

“I know the museum eventually got The Scream back again . . .”

“But they won’t have it for long.” Mina’s laughter turned into a schoolgirl giggle. Despite the knife at my throat, it dawned on me what she had come here for. I was getting angry and my body was cramped from our position on the couch.

“I’m not going to help you steal The Scream again, Mina,” I shouted.

“I need your lock-picking skills,” she pleaded, letting the knife fall from my neck. “It’s just me this time; none of the old crew.”

I relaxed, but only by the tiniest margin. With crazy, there’s never much room for relaxation.

“You know you want to,” she said, and she jumped off me, walking like a cat in the dark, heading straight for my galley kitchen. She tucked the knife into her belt and started rooting through my refrigerator. “The Scream is on loan to the Museum of Modern Art. It’s closed right now, so it looks like I’ll have to check it out tomorrow night before it closes. Then you and I will hit it the following night. Three days. That’s all I’m asking for.”

My retractable bat was still hanging at my side and I wondered if I should use it. I could imagine pulling it free, hitting the button, and watching it telescope out to full size. The metaphor for restoring my masculinity was not lost on me. I stood up. Mina was a little bat-shit crazy, but I doubted she would really kill me. She had come here, after all, to enlist my help.

“I don’t do that sort of thing anymore, Mina,” I said. I flicked on the lights and looked with pride around the main area of my apartment. Handpicked leather couches, floor-to-ceiling windows, and an entire wall of ownerless books and antiques that I sold for a profit when I had the time to go through them psychometrically. I had an existence I had worked hard at salvaging. “Look around you. I’ve got a real life going on here now. I’ve moved on.”

Mina pulled a beer from the fridge, twisted off the top, and drank half of it down. She wandered around my gentleman’s club setup in the main room.

“You seem to be doing well for yourself,” she agreed. I couldn’t ignore the bitter bite in her voice as she said it. She stopped in front of my bookshelves, which also ran from floor to ceiling. They were full of dozens of items I had gathered over the years. “What is all this?”

“I work with antiques now,” I said, bending the truth a little. “I have an eye for things; that’s all. I’m a collector, either for myself or sometimes I sell to dealers or track down the previous owners and sell them back to them.”

Mina perused the shelves. She could have picked up any number of classy items. She ran her hand over an ornate stone incense censer, then moved on to an art deco clock I had been holding on to for far too long, before she picked up a plastic replica of the shark from Jaws. It was attached to a game board, the shark’s mouth full of tiny plastic garbage pieces. My powers had told me that the piece once belonged to a CEO at Chase Manhattan, and I had been meaning to make some bank off it. I had been slow to return it to its owner. What can I say? The game was fun.

“Pay well, does it?” she said. “Playing Sanford and Son?”

“I make my rent,” I said with a dismissive shrug.

“This allows you to pay rent?” she said, not believing me. She shook the shark as she spoke and the tiny plastic garbage fell out of its mouth. Its jaws snapped shut.

“Please put that down,” I requested, not wanting to sound too desperate.

“Sure, Candy,” she said, all rainbows and sunshine now. I wondered if I had been this bipolar back then as well. “No problem.”

“Thanks,” I said. Why was it that I had felt less threatened with a knife at my throat than when she was messing with my stuff? Something told me I had to get my priorities straight sometime in the near future.

Mina turned to face me, the knife once again in her hand.

“You are going to help me, though, Simon.”

This time I pulled my bat free, hit the switch on it, and watched it spring out to its full length.

“That’s where I think we have a problem,” I said. I rested it on my shoulder in a nonthreatening manner. “Look, I’m glad we had time for a lovely, touchy-feely reunion. Glad we had a chance to reminisce about the old days. But I’m so not going to help you.”

She smiled sweetly at me, shaking her head, her eyes going all Glenn Close.

“We’re doing this,” she said, the smile slowly fading. There was desperation in her eyes. Mina was in some kind of serious trouble.

“We are doing this,” she repeated in a slow, deliberate manner, “and you’re going to help me. You think Krueger or Myers can pick a fucking lock to save their lives? I need your talented little hands on it.”

I didn’t say a word. Little did she know that my hands held a talent greater than picking locks.

When I didn’t respond, Mina looked more and more pissed. “Wouldn’t it just be the worst luck if Krueger or Myers got wind of where you’re living now? Think of what they’d do to you if they got their psychotic little paws on you. You’d probably live, but I’m sure it would take you quite some time to heal, and you’d probably walk with a permanent limp.”

She stopped by the sofa and picked up a picture of Jane and me from the D.E.A. ice cream social a few months back.

“And I shudder to think what they’d do to this cute little number of yours,” she said. “Or perhaps I’ll just hurt the girl. Jane Clayton-Forrester, right? Lives on West Twentieth Street?”

I felt an intense wave of panic. “What synapse in your brain isn’t firing, Mina?” I said, tightening my grip on my bat. I couldn’t allow any of those sociopaths back into my life, and certainly not near Jane.

Was I really willing to strike down someone who wasn’t an actual monster or undead? Creatures were one thing, but raising my weapon against another person . . .

I wasn’t sure what I would do if Mina pressed the issue, but I also doubted I could talk her out of this heist, given the desperation in her voice. She was unpredictable on a good day, and I wanted her to get the hell out of my life as fast as possible.

“Don’t threaten me or Jane with those goons,” I said. “If I help you—and it’s a mighty big if, Mina—you’ve got to swear I’ll never see you or them again. I don’t know what the hell you’ve gotten yourself into, and maybe it’s better I don’t know, but I mean it. I help you this once and we’re through. And you certainly can’t tell Jane.”

Before Mina had a chance to answer, the door creaked open behind me.

“Can’t tell Jane what?” Jane chimed in.

I didn’t dare turn around. I looked at the clock on the wall. It was only a few minutes before midnight. If I was lucky, the shittiest day of my life was almost over. If I wasn’t, maybe my life would be. Either way, I was just looking forward to an end to it all.