Kicking It

SNAKESKIN BY ROB THURMAN

This story, while part of the Trickster series, is a ten-year prequel and introduces several beloved secondary characters such as Zeke and Griffin. Enjoy.

There’re all sorts of sayings about shoes. “Don’t judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes.” “I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet.” “It’s no use carrying an umbrella if your shoes are leaking.” The last you don’t hear much unless you travel, but it is as wise as the others—worth remembering. But on and on it goes. Full of good intentions, these kinds of sayings are. They’re something to guide people who have no common sense or thoughts of their own, my mama liked to point out. My mama—well, I’d long stopped fighting it—my mama was rarely wrong. Sometimes a tad misdirected, but wrong? I can’t say that she was.

When it came to shoes and sayings, I had a favorite by a brilliant man who had enough thoughts for twenty people. Mark Twain said it as he said and wrote many things, not many of which I could disagree with, not offhand. He knew the hearts and minds of humanity and the lack that lay in most. It was my new client’s shoes that made me think of this particular saying of his, a delicious one: “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”

It was particularly outrageous and apt to describe this client—oh she was a liar, a talented one of spectacular degree. Her lies were a thing of glory that put the blue, blue heavens to shame.

And her shoes were almost as fabulous.

I lived in Las Vegas for several reasons, but one of them was it let me work. It let me do. And I needed to do, because if you don’t do, then how can you know you even exist? Boredom is the name of the game. Other people call it Russian roulette. You just keep pulling that trigger, click, click, click, and feel the excitement ramp up higher each time, all the while hoping that one of those pulls doesn’t propel boredom through your brain. Boredom was worse than any bullet for people like me. Adrenaline junkies—we couldn’t stand it when the fun stopped. When the fun stopped, life stopped, and boredom was that all over.

So I settled in Vegas, if only for a while; I wasn’t one to put down any permanent roots. I bought a bar for the background noise, the legal life, and then I did my true work.

I was never bored.

I could’ve gone to any city in the world and found clients, but Vegas is a shining star. People are so hungry there . . . for everything. I didn’t sell everything. I’m a businesswoman who knows her limits, but what I did sell went faster than spiked lemonade at a family reunion. Information was mainly what I offered, but there was guidance, too. You could call me a guidance counselor for adults if you wanted, or . . . I know: a life coach.

Now, sugar, don’t laugh like that. It’s unseemly.

Not to mention unhinged and a mite bit deranged.

Shoo with yourself and let me finish.

The bar paid the taxes and I made the real money sitting at a table with a beer or if I was feeling frisky, a mango margarita. I told those who needed telling; I steered those who’d lost their compasses; I offered relief to blistering souls. I had a fine and undeniably smug time doing it, too. Mainly it takes only the right word, a tiny nudge, and a whole lot of patience. Life had taught me how to manage all that plus more, and my mama taught me to hone it to an occupational skill.

But this time I didn’t think words would be enough. I was going to have to give over a little more than that. I might even lose more money than I made on this job. But that was all right. Sometimes you had to be the bigger-picture person and give to get. Let no one say that at the end of the day I wasn’t about the giving.

“Trixa Iktomi?”

I looked up at my brand-new client and gave her a smile as wide as the Mississippi River and pleased as punch on top of that. Holding out my hand to her, I said, “That’s me. Sit down, honey. As amazing as your shoes are, they’re not made for the sidewalk out front. I’m surprised you didn’t break an ankle.”

It was true. The strip of concrete in front of my bar, Trixsta, was a health hazard of cracks, splits, and the crumbling of time. The expensive snakeskin shoes she was wearing had four-inch heels and were made for anything except actual walking. They truly were gorgeous, though, even if the snake missing its hide would likely sorely disagree on that particular fact.

I loved shoes my own self. Whether they were spike heels, ass-kicking boots, or bright red sneakers when running was necessary—and in my business it occasionally was. I had a closet full, not counting the black spike-heeled boots I was wearing today, the ones my best friend said made me look like Catwoman on a bad-hair day. Wasn’t that hateful for no reason? I didn’t have bad-hair days. I had unique-hair days.

Of course this same friend described his last date’s strawberry blond hair as “orange.” Men. You couldn’t breed taste or tact into them for love nor money.

I should’ve known better than to ask him about anything as important as shoes.

“They are indeed something, aren’t they?” She took her measure of the bar—one regular passed out in a corner booth, one silently flickering TV, wood floors that had stains older than the legal drinking age—and then took my hand before sitting down opposite me at the tiny table. She extended one long leg to contemplate the black-and-white beauty of one of the shoes I’d admired. “Revenge for the whole apple thing, I like to think.”

The serpent and the apple . . . oh, I was going to like her.

Her smile was as bright as mine and more amused. “The husband that bought them for me would think that was blasphemy. He was a devout Catholic with no sense of whimsy, but a kind man. Very, very kind.” The amusement faded. “Even after a year I miss him. I miss everything about him.”

It was all I could do not to wriggle like a child watching her first magic trick. She told the best lies—a dark slice of night sky wrapped in a dazzling blanket of moonshine glitter. She was my kind of people and I’d known it: I surely couldn’t help but like her. Mrs. Elizabeth Rose Burke-Lane, and despite her name it wasn’t Shakespeare that made her smell just as sweet.

She sat with perfectly manicured nails the color of pearls resting on the table, discreet diamonds and a ruby the size of a pigeon’s egg on her left hand. Because that’s the way it was. If you flashed a big diamond, you were common trash and might as well park your mansion in a trailer park. But with the colored stones, you could show off. Who doesn’t want to show off what they’ve earned—am I right? No matter how they’d earned it.

Rich brown hair lay long and far past her shoulders, so obediently straight that my own halo of black curls without a doubt made my head look as if it had exploded. I didn’t mind. I didn’t mind Elizabeth Rose’s explosion, either. Hers was different from mine. Mine was cosmetic—hers was internal. Genuine. It boiled inside her, searching for a way out, any way it could find. And if it couldn’t be free, then it would be as happy to pull something in. Something or someone to keep it company. No one, inside or out, wanted to be alone, did they?

It was in her large gray eyes, drinking you in as if you were the sun in her sky, her smooth, pale skin that defied the Vegas sun, the bird-in-flight eyebrows that were a Michelangelo arch of beauty. Her mouth shaded that perfect deep red that said expensive and secret instead of slutty. If I was to try that brand and shade, I would somehow manage to turn it into Bozo the Magic Clown crimson, but I still didn’t care. She was such a treat, such a perfectly hidden package of dishonesty and predatory energy wrapped in silk and shine, that nothing could ruin this day. I couldn’t wait to puzzle out what I could do for her.

People thought I hated liars. Wouldn’t I have to since I was so excellent at nosing them out? Wouldn’t it bother me to know that someone was lying to my face?

People thought . . . But the trouble is, people don’t think. Lying is an art. Poorly done, of course, that’s a shame and annoying as hell. But brilliantly done, bless, you just have to stand back and applaud the artist.

Elizabeth Rose was an artist. I’d heard the lies on the phone when she made her appointment with me, referred by a past client. Elizabeth Rose, with a husband one year in the grave, had said she needed my help. Not information, which was simple, but my help, which was something not many asked of me. I wanted to do right by her for that alone.

For asking, for being interesting, for chasing away the boredom, and for giving me a chance to watch an artist at work—for all that, I would definitely do my best to do right. If the money was good, that would just be a big, fat, juicy cherry on top.

Elizabeth I-am-certainly-not-boring Rose deserved my best.

“Elizabeth”—I didn’t do formal with any of my clients; that they could take or leave—“would you like a drink before you tell me about your situation? I can whip you up anything from a brandy to a mint julep, but unless you’re wearing a hat and watching the horses race, I wouldn’t recommend the second. Without the sound of cheering and the smell of money in the air, it just doesn’t taste the same.”

“The Derby.” There was a mist of memories clinging to her, the same as the smell of mint would. “I’ve been. It was wonderful.” The memories fled as she focused on me. “You’re from the South. I could tell, from your accent, but Derby . . . If you haven’t been, you can’t know, can you?” There it was again—that sun in my sky, only person in this world, this time, this moment pull in her gaze. Elizabeth was a pitcher and she was filled to the brim with charisma.

As only the cream-of-the-crop liars ever are.

“Honey, I’m from everywhere.” I spread my arms to indicate the vastness of that everywhere. “I never settle too long. Born to hit the ground running—that’s me.” I also knew Derby was more wonderful if you were rich and sitting in Millionaires Row and not rolling around drunk in a muddy infield. “Now, how about that drink?”

She put her hands in the lap of a dress that probably cost more than the Titanic and stopped as many hearts. It was as red as her lips and for a magpie moment I wanted it greedily for myself. I did adore red. “Thank you for the offer, but no. The sooner I see if you can help me, the better I’ll feel.”

It was finely done, how she didn’t sound at all like my grubby little bar glasses would never touch her painted lips if she could help it. You couldn’t hear it, not one bit. Elizabeth, I thought fondly, lovely and unloving Bethy Rose, we could be such good friends. Our girls’ nights would leave men crying in their drinks for months. You are such fun.

“Then, tell me, Elizabeth.” I took a coolly sweet swallow of mango from my glass, and if it was grubby, I didn’t notice. “What can I do for you, sweetie? You seem like you want something more than information or a little help. You make me sound as if I can change your life. Do something big.” I put the doubt in my voice—it never hurt when it came to the dollar price. But inside, I had no doubt.

Go big or go home—isn’t that how it goes?

Big I could do.

“Go on, Elizabeth.” I nudged her with a sympathetic curve of my lips and tilt of my head. “Tell me what you need.”

I was wrong.

Elizabeth was boring.

I hated being wrong almost as much as I hated being bored. Still, I could take her problem, one I’d heard too many times, and make the solution entertaining. Making my own challenge. And why not? Someone had to do it.

I sulked—it’s not pretty to say, but I did—drank my margarita, and read Elizabeth’s face as she carefully laid out what she wanted piece by piece, artfully jumbled, because she thought if I saw the picture of the puzzle clear and bright as the North Star, I’d think her vain.

She was.

I’d think her greedy.

She was that, too.

I’d think her selfish and malicious.

Well, that’s in the eye of the beholder.

I’d think her a sociopath.

As if she’d be the first to cross my door, shy little guppy.

I’d think her a murderer.

Don’t we all have our piddly faults?

I made out the puzzle despite her best efforts, and her best was very good. The secret was to not look into her eyes but beside them before wrinkles in her fine skin were hidden like bodies in a graveyard under a blanket of softening spring grass . . . or, in this case, by expensive makeup. See the forehead not smooth from a peaceful nature but unmoving from poisoned nerve endings. Linger on that beautiful dress that had the high neck to conceal the minute sag of skin and also behold the bra that defied gravity, physics, and Einstein himself in one hellacious hat trick.

I felt for her—I did.

I do lie—how do you think I spot the best so well?—but that isn’t one of them.

No one wants to get old. Or rather we wouldn’t mind getting old if only it didn’t show so much. In the past we prized age not for appearance but for its wisdom. In this technology-drenched future when knowledge appears like magic at the press of a few keys if you cared (no one cared), it was different. No, these days we’d put the aged in nouveau leper colonies if we could, to hide the sight and wisdom. How much wisdom can you fit in one hundred forty characters or less? Is that really an issue the modern world cares about?

“Like” yes or no on that question, please.

Sighing, more bored than before, I put down my empty glass and laid it out for her . . . if not quite in the way as she’d laid it out for so many. I did it in words while she used silk sheets. “Elizabeth, you’re making this harder than it has to be, sugar. All this?” I brushed my hand an inch above the table to indicate the threads of her tapestry of deceit that draped in invisible folds. “It’s lies. And they’re good lies, mind you. I may tuck a few away for future use,” or just to take out and covet as the shiny trinkets they were, “but in my bar you don’t have to tell me lies. You said your husband was Catholic. Think of this place as a confessional.” I winked. “Or better yet, a whorehouse. No judgments from me, none at all. You can tell me anything and you should. You’re paying for my service. If you can’t tell me what you really want, how can I give it to you?”

I actually could, but where was the entertainment in that? The only thing better than a great liar was forcing a great liar to tell the truth. We hate it like poison. We’re contrary that way.

Hate it she did, all the warmth draining out of her as quickly as if she’d turned off the lights with a flip of the switch. It’s harder to be a successful sociopath if you have to show your true face to the world. Not impossible, though, not at all—just a little harder. I had faith that Elizabeth could handle it. I had faith that Elizabeth had handled many bumps in the particularly crooked road in her life, much larger ones than simply telling me the truth.

Then again, bigger isn’t always better.

But me? I’m easy as pie to bare heart and soul to—I had said no judgments. Elizabeth, one liar measuring another, saw what she saw and took me at my word. She told me.

The truth hurts. The truth will set you free. Today the truth was a business transaction and nothing more. We shook on it. It was sort of sweet, her trusting me with her most precious hope . . . sweet, indeed, if not for the murder and all.

Don’t you look at me that way. You’ll make me giggle like a five-year-old.

Honestly? Judgments? Please. Do you think I’d have any clients at all if I made them?

Or if I did make them, didn’t keep them to myself?

Work is work. You do what you have to.

Or you do what you want to—sometimes it’s both.

“You can do it, then?” Elizabeth asked as I tapped a bronze nail against an empty glass and pondered the cost of paper umbrellas or little flamingo swizzle sticks. I switched my attention back to her and hid my irritation.

Could I do it?

That wasn’t a question. That was an insult. Of course I could do it. I simply had to figure out the most intriguing way to achieve it. “Oh, honey, you wound me with your doubts.” I forgot the glass, beamed at her, and put my fingers in my hair to give it a wild shake. It was good for getting the brain going. “It’ll cost you, though. Seventy-five thousand. No bargaining, no haggling. Payment on delivery. And it goes without saying, I hope, that I do a cash-only business.” Rich people like Elizabeth had forgotten about the quaint custom of haggling. They bought what they wanted and never cared about the price. I stopped bargaining with them a long time ago. They weren’t good enough at it to make it entertaining. Elizabeth had been rich long enough that while she hadn’t forgotten about it, she was disgusted by it. She thought herself too high and mighty, too good for the likes of that sort of thing now. Shame.

I guessed we couldn’t be friends after all.

“I’ll call you in a week.” I straightened from the less-than-ladylike slouch my mama had never been able to correct me of and stood to walk Elizabeth to the door, our herd of tall heels castanets on the floor. “It shouldn’t take longer than that.” Not to mention giving her time to gather up the money. Rich or not, or rich but not for much longer—either way it was hard to gather that sort of cash at a moment’s notice. Unless you’re keeping your money in a mattress, banks get possessive and are closefisted about handing someone seventy-five thousand dollars in cash. Write a check for a sports car if you want—intangible money—but handing over the real thing, stained with invisible blood and dirty with greed? They didn’t like that. They were suspicious. Why would you possibly need that much real-world money? For something illegal? For someone like me?

Banks. Hate ’em or hate ’em, they could smell illegal a mile away—when they weren’t the ones behind it. I gave respect where it was due.

“You’re certain about this?” Elizabeth had opened the spigot on her charisma again, and it was flowing like Niagara. Hopeful eyes, skin paled anxiety white as her diamonds, shoulders braced against a no—she was a living, breathing plea. See? All those naughty things society frowned upon, sins that crawled out of her mouth with snapping jaws and a thousand poisonous legs to pull you in, they were tucked away again as if they’d never been. She was good as gold as ever she’d been. I knew she had it in her.

“Sugar, I never break a promise.” I hugged her to see if I could get a peek at the label of that astounding dress, then patted her back and cheerfully shooed her out the door. “Don’t fret. It’s as good as done. Hand to God.”

Whichever god she wanted.

The week went by faster than I planned. I caught two boys, runaways from the system, I thought, devouring half of a Big Mac out of my back alley Dumpster. Each tried to push the other behind him for protection, and wouldn’t that break any heart? I worked on convincing them to stop eating out of alleys and get to work cleaning the bar for me. They were stubborn and it took some serious talking, but finally they were sleeping in my storage room on inflatable mattresses and trying to stop twitching every time I picked up a phone. I wasn’t going to report them. They were running, and sometimes even the most wholesome of heart and naively caring of folk couldn’t imagine they might have good reason to do so. There were times when running was the only option, when going back to a system that was supposed to protect them could conceivably end up being worse than living on the street.

Bad things happened. They happened everywhere, not just on the street. These boys had definitely seen the bad. Now I had them tucked away, safe and sound, collector of damaged goods that I was, and that was sorted for a while. Although the blond one—sixteen, or maybe younger—seemed to think I was a one-woman Mafia. He stared at me as if I were the Godmother of Las Vegas, impressed by my daily stream of clients wanting favors and information, wanting this and that, wanting the stars and the moon themselves. His friend, a younger redhead with the eyes of a feral wolf, didn’t care about my business. He ate the food I gave him and snarled when I patted his copper hair and called him Kit. He thought he was a wolf, but he was a baby fox deep down. I’d have to see about fixing him sooner or later.

So much to do.

Then came the health inspector, who wanted to shut me down for letting my pet raven help out at the bar. The bird was quick and clever when it came to pecking out a slice of lime and shoving it in the open mouth of a Corona. Lenny—short, naturally, for Lenore, as some clichés can be only good—was more likely to catch a disease from some of my more crusty regulars than the reverse. Health inspectors are stubborn, though. Some need a thorough talking-to in order to come around to a right way of thinking. This one, he was especially obstinate, his palm practically sweating for a bribe. I wasn’t averse to a good bribe now and again, but only when I was the one on the receiving end.

We talked in my cramped little office, and when was all said and done, he saw it my way. After I gave him a handful of paper napkins, he was out the door and my little bar was safe until next time. Griffin, my newly adopted blond stray, came out of the office later holding something in the palm of his hand. Wise in the ways of the street, he didn’t often look puzzled, but he did now.

“Trixa, I found this when I was cleaning your office.” Eyebrows in a confused V, he held out his hand like an offering. “I think it’s a tooth. Um . . . teeth.”

Sure enough, it was. Two bright white teeth with the best porcelain veneers money could buy and stained only a little with dried blood lay cradled between the teenager’s life line and his heart line. That did not make for a good fortune. I swept them out of his hand and deposited them in the garbage can behind the bar. “Sorry about that, sugar. I was sure I’d gotten them all.” Because two were far fewer than had originally littered the floor of my office. “Do you know that holier-than-thou ass told me his daughter needed braces and he’d let me keep the bar open if I helped him out there, as he was a good and charitable father that way?” I snorted and rested my elbows on the bar and propped my chin in a cupped hand, a hand with scraped and raw knuckles. “Course he couldn’t explain how his smile was so fake and pearly white if he couldn’t afford braces for his baby girl. Hardly seemed fair a father should take what he should be giving his child. It should make him feel guilty as hell.” My lips curved, sly and satisfied. “I do believe he won’t need to feel guilty so much now, having no teeth in his smile at all.”

Zeke, Griffin’s cohort and my little rabid fox, came up to us holding a mop. “Blood by the door,” he grunted, wholly unimpressed by the brightest red of bodily fluids. “Cleaned it up. Time for lunch?”

I had given the man napkins, but I supposed napkins could soak up only so much blood when you’re abruptly missing all your upper teeth. Now I needed a new mop and lunch for the heathens—my minions in the making. I patted them both on the head. Griffin flinched automatically and Zeke growled.

Again, so much to do.

Not that I forgot Elizabeth and how she wanted her life changed. It was a busy week, but just as work is work, a project is a project and a thing of grace and beauty. I talked to people and they talked back. As the song says, you can have friends in high places and you can have friends in low places. I have friends in all places, from good to bad and all flavors in between. I gathered my information and I threw my spare hours into fixing Elizabeth’s problem just as I promised.

There were supplies I’d have to gather, unusual but not unheard of, a different kind of artist to find to shape certain materials—and I had less than four days to get that done. It would require some traveling and I asked my friend Leo to watch the bar for me . . . and my two new acquisitions. Leo would tell you he was a Native American and you’d have no reason to doubt him, given his waist-length black hair and copper skin. But Leo didn’t like to talk about the north and Leo didn’t like to talk about ice and Leo might be inclined to stab you with the tap to a beer keg if you brought up anything related to Vikings or mythology. And when the rare storm came over the city and it thundered, Leo would go out in the rain to flip off the lightning. I’d known Leo a long time. Leo had earned his issues, so I didn’t laugh at him scowling at the sky in the rain . . . not too much, anyway. Especially since he agreed to help me out, as he always did.

He gave Griffin and Zeke a look both jaundiced and resigned when he showed up. “Are you going to clean them up and give them away to a good home on craigslist?”

I gave him a swat on his ass, which was swattable in the best ways, and a kiss on his cheek. “Behave. You were once my stray, too.”

There was an unimpressed lift of eyebrows. “If you mean that I saved your ass and your life and subsequently you began sending me a constant stream of requests for information and favors, then, yes, I was your stray. I don’t know how that evaded me so long.”

“Fine, fine, fine.” I waved it away. “We were both each other’s strays. Now, don’t encourage the boys with your less tolerant ways. They don’t need you teaching them that the best way to get a tip is to pound a customer’s head against the bar. They’re good boys.”

Griffin gave a guilty droop of his shoulders at that, while Zeke looked irate at the very thought that he was good, and Leo went with amused. “If they were that good, Trixa, you wouldn’t be so invested in them.” I’d learned a lot about lying from Leo, but he’d also taught me that the truth, at times, can be more inconvenient than any lie. Before I could get my panties in a bunch and work up a good outrage—I loved a good outrage—Leo smacked my ass this time. “Go. I’ve got it covered here. Enjoy your project.” His teeth gleamed with the last word, and brought a smile from the wolf within him. It was the same wolf whose growls Zeke imitated, but didn’t really have it in him to be. Not just yet.

But puppies do grow up.

With things in hand—I wouldn’t say stable or good or trustworthy, but in hand nonetheless—I left. I had a long way to go. Maybe I’d fly. I loved to fly . . . the world distant below, heaven just as distant above, and you had a chance to own everything between. I’d been in Vegas less than a year, but the roots were already cramping. I still had things to do, though, and at this moment . . .

Elizabeth was first on my list.

When traveling is in your genes, you tend not to carry things with you. It was why I liked all the shinies of the world. I knew eventually I’d have to leave them behind and find new ones wherever I landed next. If I didn’t, I’d get so weighed down that one day I wouldn’t be able to take a single step, much less run or fly. So I treasured my trinkets and gewgaws, as Mama called them, as much as I possibly could. It made them all the more precious for the short time I had them. Sometimes, though, you come across something so perfect and special you can’t just leave it for strangers to find and loot. Those things you squirrel away, hide them from greedy eyes. Safe-deposit boxes would be nice, but as I’d noted, the banks don’t trust you, so why should you trust them?

That’s how I ended up in an old rock cellar with the house a hundred years gone. I’d sealed this particular precious thing very carefully wrapped in a hundred layers of silk and tucked away in a stone box buried in that cellar where no one could find it or touch it or even see it.

I do hear you, you know, judging me? No, I don’t have delusions of pirates, doubloons, and gaudy treasure chests.

I’m not a peculiar strain of hoarder, either.

Why are you making that doubty, pouty face?

I am not a hoarder.

I’m not.

Truly.

Pinkie swear.

Ha! You caught me. I really, really am.

I held the wondrous thing I hadn’t seen in ages in my hands, heard the river in the distance, heard the rustle of trees so green it made Vegas look like a boneyard. I felt the bite of the chilly air and watched a single ray of sun set my iridescent hands alight like a thousand burning rainbows.

Yes . . .

If this didn’t change Elizabeth’s life, nothing would.

Finding a bootmaker wasn’t difficult exactly, although these days when ninety-nine percent of footwear is made of the devil spawn of plastic and some sort of biohazard offspring from China, they are few and far between. To find one willing to do the work in two days, and with the material I was providing, would surely make these the most expensive boots Elizabeth had ever worn. Marie Antoinette had diamond-encrusted shoes that were less expensive, but it would be worth it. I’d made a client a promise, and while I broke promises if I had to, I, as I’d told Elizabeth, never broke one related to my work. I had standards . . . just ask my health inspector.

I called home to make sure my boys, all three of them, hadn’t in fact set the bar on fire. Leo snorted, told me Zeke bit a customer but that he had it coming, get off his back already, and hung up on me. He was having a good time. I could tell. Sometimes Leo needed a distraction to keep him from returning to his bad old ways. It was why I poked and prodded him so much. Leo had been my first fixer-upper and he was still a bitch in upkeep, but he was worth it. He’d be good for Zeke and Griffin. There wasn’t anything they could do that would faze him, including burning down the bar.

After that, I killed time on a beach in an only mildly scandalous scarlet bikini and watched as a man—with far less manscaping than needed for the Speedo he was wearing—strutted up and down, flirting (he would say flirting, anyone else would say sexually harassing) with anything female and/or remotely approaching legal age. Later I laughed in the water, tasting salt, as a horny dolphin humped the guy into a near drowning. All right, perhaps CPR was involved and it was a close call, but as concerned as the lifeguard was, I didn’t see any women on the beach crying tears for the pervert. In fact I saw a few waving and taking pictures of the dolphin-love in progress. That and a few banana daiquiris, and my day was finer than frog hair . . . which is something I say only when I have a few banana daiquiris in me. One doesn’t want to be too much like their mama.

The next day I went to the zoo, where I saw a man climb into the lion enclosure shouting that like Daniel in the lion’s den, the Lord would send an angel to save him. I’d always personally been of the belief that those lions Daniel was tossed to simply weren’t hungry that night. But I might’ve been wrong, as the zoo lions looked well fed, almost plump, not hungry in the slightest, and they ate this faithful follower before a single employee could get inside.

You live and you learn.

Well, to be more accurate, I lived and I learned. Our Daniel was less fortunate.

What if I bought a stuffed lion toy as a souvenir on my way out? It reminded me that there were seize-the-day moments all around. Cages, no matter the size, didn’t change that—not for us lions, anyway. Then it was time to pick up the boots, gift the maker with honey-drizzled chatter over the masterpiece they were—and that was an understatement—a kiss on each cheek for the artiste, a very large payment, promise of future business, and finally it was time to go home. I couldn’t wait to see Elizabeth’s face, for her to see what could’ve been a boring job turned into a work of art that I knew we’d both appreciate.

Or not.

“This is it? These are supposed to be the answer to my problem? How exactly is this going to do anything, you stupid bitch?”

Elizabeth wasn’t quite as lovely or the embodiment of grace when her face was splotched red with rage, her mouth twisted with derision, and her hand slapping the table hard enough to kill a spider—the bird-eating, plate-sized South American kind.

“Bethy”—that’s what they’d called her before she’d married money, when she lived down in the trailer park where her mother worked two jobs and her father was in the wind—“if you call me a bitch again, I’ll solve your problem in an entirely different way. One that will involve prison and police, because I know all about you. Why, I had to know all there is to know to get you what you wanted, didn’t I? But while I said I made no judgments, sweetie, I never once said I tolerated disrespect.”

Her mouth snapped shut, but the anger still boiled under her skin. I could almost see it, looking for a way, any way, out. Her eyes flickered to the full champagne bottle on the table, and for a second I could see her picturing how nicely it would splatter my brains on my favorite silk shirt. I wasn’t surprised by that. That’s who Bethy was. Who she’d always been. She’d told me what she wanted—a rich man to marry who would conveniently die with or without her help, made no difference on that score to her. I said happy to deliver and named my price. Her price. Semantics.

What she hadn’t told me was her path to that want and desire. It was paved with the very same: four rich, older men who died not long after marrying Bethy Rose, the girl who’d polished up her accent, sanded away the trailer park from her skin, made herself into something a shallow person would want to own and pay to own it. Shallow or not, every one of those four men had been kind to her, as kind as they had it in them to be. They’d done their best to make her happy. Not everyone’s best is equal in all ways, but if you give your all, even if you have less to give than the more saintly, you still tried. It still counts. That made Bethy the murderer of four innocent, if not particularly bright, men.

I sold information all the time. I know how to do my research.

I’d found Bethy’s pattern and I found out the root of her problem. It was never enough. First a rich man and then a millionaire and then a multimillionaire, but, oh, times were hard and millions weren’t what they used to be when you’ve grown accustomed to maids and pool boys and drivers and country clubs and Learjets. Bethy spent it all and had to find herself a new husband. Trouble was, best effort expended or not, the men she wanted were as shallow as I’d said and Bethy wasn’t twenty-two anymore. Or thirty-two. Or forty-two. Billionaires are a special breed, and an old horny billionaire is going to want a young thing with tits done by Dr. Double D and the only lines on her skin the ones shown by her Brazilian wax. Bethy couldn’t compete with that, not anymore.

She asked me for a man who would see her as beautiful (which she was), to not be so shallow about the age yet stupid enough to be obsessed with her within a week and marry her within a month. It would be nice if he had a heart condition and died promptly on his own. One honeymoon had taken care of that for her before, but if that was too much to ask, she’d handle it. She’d handled it three other times and no one had ever caught her out.

Save for me.

“So, little Bethy Rose from the trailer park on Pike’s Hill,” I poured her a glass of the champagne, “keep your trash talk to yourself and let’s celebrate. I found you the perfect man, who matches all your qualifications save a minor one. He would love you instantly in all your ways and”—I laid the newly fashioned boots across her lap—“he has a highly documented fetish for women in boots. You are his ideal woman, Bethy, but every good con still needs a hook, and these boots are yours.”

Her anger dissipated, leaving her as pink and flushed and dewy as her middle name. “Oh.” Now she ran a hand over them and basked in the sight. After all, this was a woman who loved her thousand-dollar black-and-white snakeskin shoes and these boots—they made those shoes look like Kmart ninety-nine-cent flip-flops. The scales lay so flat you could barely see them as anything that had ever been separate from one another except for the color. Every color that existed was there. It wasn’t the bright explosion I’d dug up in another country. No, now it was a subtle watercolor wash that shimmered in a milky opal cascade. The first mermaid rising on the waves of the sea to drown a sailor would’ve been made of this. It was mystery and magic and impossibility with the mists of an Eden morning keeping it safe.

I filled my own glass and touched it to hers. A bell rang and somewhere an angel ripped off his wings in despair. “Satisfied, Elizabeth?”

She kept her hands on the boots, grasping pincers, and gave me that first smile from a week ago—that love-me-because-I-make-it-so smile. “If he’s all you say, I’m more than satisfied. I do get to keep the boots, yes?”

I smiled back, happy and bright, warm with the feeling of a job well done. “Bethy, I knew I was never getting those back from you again.”

On the drive in my sporty little red car to Hoover Dam, I told her about her new beau—she laughed when I called him that, but I thought he’d like the old-fashioned label. His name was Dennison Phillip Jameson—the rich do love their three names—he’d been born with a trust fund and not a silver but a platinum spoon in his mouth, had inherited even more when his parents died, and had owned several construction companies, mainly to keep busy. That’s why he’d be waiting for us at Hoover Dam. The construction companies had been sold off for even more unnecessary cash, but the man had never given up his love of a thing well-built. Originally from San Diego, monthly trips to Hoover Dam had never been out of the ordinary for him.

He was old enough that death wouldn’t be a problem for Elizabeth and, best, she looked just like his mother had in her prime, and the man had loved his mother a little more than was necessarily proper. With her face and his rather vanilla fetish for snakeskin boots, Elizabeth could’ve been made for him.

Things tend to work out that way when I’m on the job. It’s the universe showing its love of balance. I only help it along.

We drove over the dam and parked in the small lot. I waited until Elizabeth pulled on the knee-high boots. Her dress was a subtle harvest gold today and the gold in the scales picked up on it. “You look like the sun, Bethy Rose. The rising sun. He won’t be able to take his eyes off you.”

“You’re positive he’ll be here.” She brushed her hair back and her inner light doubled. She was, sad to say, gifted beyond words.

Pity.

“I am absolutely certain he’s here and waiting. He’ll be where he can see the water. The man loves the water.”

He’d have to, now, wouldn’t he?

We took the elevator up from the visitors’ center and steered clear of the enclosed area to walk to the open space where it was all sky and rock and the bluest water I’d ever seen. The dam itself was the white of a bleached bone, and that was appropriate. The last dab of paint to a work I’d labored over for a week.

“Where is he?” Elizabeth glanced around, but there was no one there. There had been a few people wandering about, but they were gone now. Gone very quickly. Sometimes people know somehow . . . They sense a minefield before they step in it. They turn and they go. And sometimes if I don’t want to be seen, people don’t want to see me. They, too, turn and go. Elizabeth and I were alone . . . well, excepting her one true love she was already saving up the potassium chloride for.

I leaned against the concrete that served as the barrier between me and nothing but hot, dry air. “Elizabeth, this is the desert. You haven’t lived here forever, I know, but have you been curious enough to drive out once in a while? See some things? You see Kokopelli all the time in the tacky little gift shops too good for the likes of you, I know. Kokopelli.” I shake my head and raise my face to the sun. “Glory hog and a whole lot handsy when he’s drinking. But forget him. Have you ever heard of Crow?”

“Coyote?

“Iktomi?”

I slid my gaze from the sun to her sudden frown and narrow-eyed blink. “Iktomi, that’s your last name. Is this a trick? Are you trying to rip me off?” So vicious the words now. So changeable, my Bethy Rose.

I laughed. “I would never rip you off. I’m giving you exactly what you want, a dead rich husband. But I am tricking you. You’re the first one to say that to me in so long.” I laughed again, stood and spun in a circle with arms wide. The sky spun with me, blue blue blue. It was once a deeper blue, the sun larger in the sky, and you could walk for years and not see a living person. The days do pass.

I stopped spinning, bounced on my heels, and grinned. “I have lots of names, sugar, so many I’d waste a good year telling you them all.” I put a finger to my lips. “But I’ll tell you a secret. They all mean the same thing.”

Trickster.

I liked Elizabeth because she was a good liar. She was my reflection in a mirror—hazy, as I did have six thousand years of practice on her, but she’d have made a good baby trickster . . . if not for her blindness to the balance. If you can’t see it, you can’t live it, and you can’t enforce it. Tricksters were created to bring balance and wisdom. Elizabeth had come to me a little late and too far gone for wisdom. But she also wasn’t stupid, my Elizabeth. She was a survivor, and so she thought to turn and leave. Thinking and doing, though, they don’t always go skipping hand in hand. As much as Elizabeth wanted to flee, she was caught firmly in the wheels of justice.

It was the balance for her.

“I’ve been so many myths, so many shapes, so many things, Bethy, you can’t imagine.”

This week alone I’d been an oversexed dolphin to teach a Speedo-wearing idiot a lesson he’d never forget. Great, great fun, that one.

I sat on the concrete barrier and told her a tale. “In Australia there was once a trickster called Dhakhan.” There were hundreds, thousands of tricksters, and I’d been them all. “Dhakhan was gorgeous, and I say that with all due modesty. A serpent covered with rainbow scales like a thousand sultan’s jewels. Does that sound vain? I probably was vain then; forget the modesty, swimming in the mountain lakes showing off like you show off your snakeskin shoes.” I kicked my feet back and forth lightly and remembered. “I watched over the people there, but where there are people there are bad people. Sometimes I had to punish the wicked. The murderers. Murderers like you, Elizabeth.” I patted the concrete beside me, and her mouth moved soundlessly as she walked over stiffly, fighting every step with all she had in her, before sitting down, wholly against her will, beside me.

Unfortunately for her, what she had accepted from me couldn’t be beaten. Her will was nothing next to it. It controlled her as she’d once controlled four stupid, stupid men.

“I stayed there a while—in Australia. It was like a vacation, a place so beautiful you could hardly look at it. But after ten years or so, I shed my skin and took it as a sign. Unless I wanted to mature into a new Dhakhan, it was time to go—to be something and someone else. And Coyote has always been my favorite—I won’t lie. But I hid the skin I’d shaken off. I knew I’d use it someday. There’s a great deal of me and my will left in that skin. There’s a great deal of justice in it. Now about that husband.” I leaned and looked down at the water below. Very far below.

A hand clamped tight on my wrist, but Elizabeth was still without her words, pretty or foul. Dhakhan had never been a form of trickster that tolerated idle chitchat from the guilty, and she was now wearing part of that form. “That’s okay, sugar. I’ll talk for you. Dennison Phillip Jameson. He was single, he did have a thing for women in boots, and he had all the money in the world, and you do sincerely take after his mama. He would’ve adored you. And as an extra bonus just for my favorite client of the week, he’s already dead—that’s how you wanted him—the sooner the better, right? He jumped right about here ten years ago.” A shame, no doubt, but he’d picked a nice place for it. “He was a sad man, but I think you’ll cheer him right up. They never did find his body. If things work out right, yours will wash up beside his and then it’s heavenly bliss in a tangle of bones and boots.” I smiled wider. “Sorry I couldn’t work you in a wedding cake. It would’ve been a nice touch.”

She was trying to say no; I could see it framed in her lips and the whites of her straining eyes and the fierce shaking of her head, but I didn’t hear a whisper. “Sorry, darlin’, these boots weren’t made for talking. They’re made for one thing only. Justice. Now go on. Go give your new dead husband a kiss. One from me, too, you hear?”

She stood stiffly, arms flailing. I ducked and backed away. Bethy Rose was a fighter with a helluva amount of stubborn resolve, that was for certain. Too bad for her that there were things you couldn’t fight and things you didn’t want to accept but had to. You don’t have to agree with justice—no, you do not—but that makes no difference.

One way or another, justice will do with you what must be done.

Elizabeth’s boots took her over the edge, climbing and dragging her along step by stilted step. It was done with a bit less grace than I’d hoped, but away she went all the same. She flew through the air like Icarus. She flew too high with the wings of murdered men and finally was felled low. I felt that discarded part of my self that she wore in boots of gold, scarlet, jade, sapphire, indigo go with her, back to the water where it belonged. I liked to think I heard her hit, heard the splash, but it was far and the wind was loud. That was all right. I’d never forget the picture it made, anyway. I never forget the good tricks or the good days. This was both. The sky was blue as ever and I waved at the crow that flew overhead. Maybe I knew him or her. You never know.

What?

You’re still here? Lesson not learned yet?

I told Elizabeth that I made no judgments? “Do I remember that?”

Of course I remember that. I can’t believe you’d ask. Yes, I did lie, but I also kept my promise to her, didn’t I? I delivered as I said I would. Oh, sweet Lord above. Keep up.

I lied about deciding the verdict. I always lie about that. I’m surprised Elizabeth believed me. I expected better from a liar as good as her.

I’m not so surprised you believed.

Better start believing. I not only do judge. I am a judge. Also jury and executioner.

Think about that the next time you’re tempted to buy a pair of snakeskin shoes or boots.

You never know who that snake once was.

Or is.

Remember, Mark Twain said that a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. A trickster can make it all the way around and steal truth’s shoes before the laces are tied.

And we are everywhere, finger-painting the world red with the blood of the wicked.

Wait.

You’re not wicked, are you?

Sugar, where are you going?

Well, be that way. Bye-bye, then.

For now.

See you soon.

Sooner than you think.

Smooches.