Audacious Read online

  The evil-eye of the tram cop suggested he’d be none too happy if she produced a knife and took it to his bit of Eden. On reflection, the layers of graffiti might be all that held the old wreck together.

  Abby had been careful to dress down. Still, she wasn’t nearly as shabbily dressed as the young woman whose name Abby refused to remember after she left Five Corners and swore it had seen the last of her.

  So why was she coming back?

  She’d already been greeted. Twice.

  She’d pulled one young girl’s hand out of her purse. The kid had her hand already around Abby’s wallet. The maid of many faces restrained the urge to break a wrist. The kid, maybe ten, was just trying to make it through the day.

  Abby had sent her on her way with five bucks. Eden. Not all that much.

  The cutpurse had not gotten off so easy. Abby hadn’t returned his knife by plunging it between a rib. Not quite. It had been a close thing. But blood on the streets made the neighbors talk. That was not something Abby wanted.

  No, she’d confiscated the knife and shoved the fourteen-or fifteen-year-old boy into a brick wall. Maybe he’d learn something from the lesson.

  Maybe not.

  Not everything that was the same in the old hood was that exciting. Old man Artork’s ice cream cart was still on the same corner. Closer approach showed he wasn’t still running it. Had he been late once too often with his “insurance check” and actually ended up sleeping with the fishes…as he’d often joked with the kids? Or had he actually lived to retire and turn it over to his son?

  Abby ordered a chocolate cone, her old favorite. It was still down there in the frosty cool. One lick and Abby scowled. The memory was much tastier than the having.

  She started to toss it. Then caught sight of the wide eyes of a little girl. Seven, maybe eight. Or six. Now that Abby recalled, the kid had been lurking nearby. Not so close as to be accused of trying to steal anything. Not so far as to miss any scent of those wonderful concoctions. How often had a young—no, forget that name.

  Abby handed the cone to the girl.

  The urchin eyed Abby for a long moment, to see what this icy delight would cost. Only when Abby let the silence stretch, did the girl half run, half skip away.

  Hopefully, Abby hadn’t taught the little thing a bad lesson. That you could get something for nothing. That someone could give her joy. A very bad lesson in Five Corners.

  Abby watched the kid go, trying to remember the taste of cold chocolate on a warm day. Trying to remember a happy moment here. There had been a few.

  Then she turned and walked purposefully toward a place that held very few good memories. It was always better to walk as if you knew where you were going. Needed to be there ten minutes ago. Slow down and who knew what might overtake you.

  At that pace, it didn’t take Abby long to turn the final corner, to bring the last place she’d lived on Eden into view.

  Then she had to slow. There wasn’t all that much to see.

  Half the houses on this block were broken down and abandoned. It had been headed that way back then. The brown house was now among the derelicts.

  She really shouldn’t be surprised. She’d been gone fifteen years. How long had Momma Ganna ever lived anywhere?

  That was a big mistake. Suddenly Abby was flooded by feelings. The feelings of going out in the morning, maybe to school, maybe to something that might earn an Eden dollar for her…or Momma.

  Only to come back to an empty house. Not just empty of Momma, but swept of anything that Momma called her own. Momma totally gone.

  Abby tried asking around among the neighbors to see if anyone knew where Momma had vanished to. None knew. She went looking for a grown-up that might admit to knowing Momma.

  People who knew Momma were never that easy to find. Not easy for a short person who couldn’t read or write all that well.

  The first time had been the worst.

  That time, Abby hadn’t been much older than the kid she gave the ice cream to. She’d spent a night and a day on her own before she stumbled into someone who knew someone who knew where Momma Ganna had set up shop.

  That time Abby got a beating. As if going to school one morning expecting to come home to the same place was somehow wrong. She didn’t deserve a beating, not for that.

  And it taught Abby a lesson she never forgot.

  As Abby slowly ambled by the gutted brown house, she spotted the telltale signs of squatter occupation: the smell of smoke, a bit of movement in the deep shadows.

  Her first thought was to keep walking, circle around to the trolley station, and get back where she belonged. She’d worked hard to get there. To be Abby Nightingale, the maid of many skills. If she was smart, she’d get gone from here.

  Abby glanced over her shoulder at the crumpling brown house. She could ferret out any secrets it still held about Momma. Yeah, me and a squad of Marines.

  Or maybe just me and the chief and Penny.

  No way would she take them to the hell that was Five Corners. No way would Abby risk seeing the look on that Longknife girl’s face when she saw where her maid came from.

  Okay, smart kid. You gonna just give up cause Momma ain’t here with no cake? You gonna call it quits that easy? What about Myra? You gonna forget about her?

  If this was a job for the princess, you’d think of something.

  That jab hurt.

  Abby paused. If she went right here, she’d almost be at the green house.

  “Computer, mark the brown house, two blocks back. Mark the green house, one block farther down this street.” The green house still looked in decent shape.

  The brick house would be two blocks farther along that street, and one over, she told her computer. Three data points showed on the map reflecting on the glasses Abby wore today.

  The maid walked a few more blocks, remembering two more homes of her youth. And spotted the pattern about the time she spotted the wasteland.

  Two blocks beyond, Five Corners came to an end.

  Not really. Actually the five corners that gave the place its name was out there, surrounded by the baked ground and struggling weeds of half-begun urban renewal. A few houses still stood out there, surrounded by nothing. They huddled alone, waiting for someone to put up a shopping mall and chic housing for the wealthy, or those on their way to wealth.

  But it hadn’t happened yet.

  With Five Corners’s luck, it might never happen.

  Abby frowned at the conundrum ahead. Her old homes might still be standing, out there in the baking weeds. On any other planet, all Abby would have to do was call up an orbital photo.

  Not on Eden. Not without paying a chunk of money and facing a human with a need to know that met their rules. Abby had almost been killed on Earth before she learned how easy it was elsewhere to get pictures.

  With a sigh, Abby turned her back on the hardscrabble that was the only mark left of the first two homes she remembered.

  To find a guy sauntering toward her, a leer on his face.

  He was no stranger. To the extent that he’d been leaning against a wall in the spare shade of a fallen-down roof with three other guys, Abby knew him. She’d logged and stored the memory of quite a few clumps of local dudes like them since she left the station. She knew their kind from years back.

  “Hey, bird, whatcha doing all dolled up for?”

  Abby tried to ignore him. “Pardon me,” she said, and made to step around him.

  “Whatcha doing for the next five minutes,” he said, sidestepping to block her way, and reaching for her.

  She could smell alcohol on his breath. It came through a wicked, knowing grin that was missing a couple of teeth.

  His right hand was in his pants pocket. When he pulled it out, it would hold a switchblade. Abby knew that as sure as she knew the sun would rise in the east.

  When she left the embassy compound for this little trip down memory lane, Abby knew things could get terminal. Now her heart didn’t so much as skip
a beat.

  She was trained for this. She’d experienced it many times. Both here in Five Corners and so many light-years from here.

  Abby took a step closer to the man, putting on the face. Abby’s game face had been the last thing many a man had seen in life. If the guy was smart, he’d head back for his friends. “I got no plans,” she said, voice level. Deadly level.

  “Whatdaya say I make them for you.” His grin now got lopsided. Jack had a lopsided grin, but not like this one. There was nothing of a leer when Jack smiled.

  “I’d have to think about that,” Abby said.

  Then closed the distance to him with one quick step.

  Her right came up to wipe that grin off his face. Her knee took care of that other matter he had so much on his mind.

  In half a breath, the idiot was withering on the ground.

  His three friends had ambled around the corner to enjoy the show, maybe get involved if she was easy.

  Abby raised a questioning eyebrow. You want some of this?

  If all three of them jumped her, matters might get a bit exciting. For them, not her. Abby figured she could put all three down without breaking a sweat.

  Still, fools had been known to get lucky.

  They fled back around the corner.

  Abby eyed her would-be assailant. His knife was out. She kicked it into the gutter. It rattled on a sewer grating before falling through. As for this optimistic dude, she didn’t want to see him again for a long, long time.

  She’d chosen her shoes for walking—maybe running—and for fighting. They were steel reinforced. She gave him a hard kick in the kidney.

  He screamed.

  Abby doubted she’d done permanent damage. But if she had, that was why he had two of them. Maybe he’d be more careful with the other one.

  She crossed the street and took a right, not wasting a backward glance. If she heard footsteps, she’d turn.

  She didn’t hear anything. At least not for now. Maybe later she’d find out how bad an enemy she’d made.

  16

  The street ahead looked ready to be bulldozed. But there, waiting for Abby under the awning of the one place on the block not crumbling away, was the little girl she’d given the ice cream to. The kid was still licking sweetness from her fingers.

  As Abby came alongside the kid, she fell in step with her.

  “You put Promie down good.”

  “He looked in need of it.”

  “He’s gonna remember you.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t be seen talking to me,” Abby said, not looking down. Those eyes were so huge. So dark. So full of untasted need.

  Abby wanted nothing to do with them.

  The kid kept walking beside her.

  “Whatcha doing here?” she asked.

  Abby meant to say no more to this stray. Then found herself muttering, “Looking for something. Or someone.”

  Abby had just spotted a pattern when she’d been so rudely interrupted. At the moment, all she’d wanted to do was get out of Five Corners. At that moment, she’d noticed the pattern. Every move Momma Ganna made put her farther from Five Corners.

  Maybe Abby wasn’t the only one wanting out of this place.

  Then again, Five Corners was pretty much rotting from the inside. Maybe Momma didn’t have a choice. Abby doubted she’d get a straight answer to that question from Momma.

  At that moment, the kid beside Abby stooped to pick up a passing cat. The cat allowed that she could be petted and suffered the kid to do so. It even purred.

  “You want to pet her?”

  Being mauled by a stray cat was very low on Abby’s list of things to do. She declined softly. So the girl put the cat down and it proceeded to wrap itself around Abby’s legs.

  “I think the Goddess likes you,” the girl opined. “She don’t like many people. You must be nice to lots of people. Not just me and giving me an ice cream you didn’t like. Why’d you buy it if you didn’t like it?”

  Abby was glad the cat approved of her being in her part of town. The kid, however, was turning into a talker. Not something Abby needed.

  “Once upon a time, I used to like that kind of ice cream. Guess I don’t anymore.”

  “Your glasses are nice. I see all the colors on them. You have a nice computer. You must be rich.”

  Abby hadn’t planned on anyone getting close enough to see her computer interface. This could go bad in so very many ways. “Not rich,” she said. “Now, someone who has her computer jacked right into her head. That’s rich for you. Or the ones that don’t wear glasses, but contact lenses. Those are rich.”

  “Yeah, I guess. But Bronc uses a reader. All the time he wishes he had a better one.”

  “Who’s Bronc?”

  “A kid I know. He knows everything. If you want to find someone, he’d know them.”

  “For a whole six blocks.”

  “No, a whole lot more. All the gangs let him run in their territory. He helps them with their stuff. Not nothing that would help them against each other. He took their beatings and showed he didn’t want nothing of that. But if they got music that ain’t working, he can usually fix it.” The kid seemed quite proud that she knew someone that even the gangs respected.

  And who might know Mamma Ganna.

  Or be a setup for an ambush.

  You knew you were taking stupid risks when you left the embassy compound.

  With a shrug, Abby took the next risk.

  “Why don’t you take me to Bronc and we’ll see what we can do for each other that might make us all happy. Like this here computer. You think Bronc would like it? Or one like it?”

  Not the actual computer. Too much data on it. But maybe one like it. Well, maybe a bit cheaper. Abby’s computer wasn’t anything like Kris’s Nelly. Still, it was not something you got at the local drugstore, either.

  To Abby’s surprise, the kid just eyed her. If anything, her reaction got a whole lot harder. “Bronc don’t give no one up to be hurt. You a cop?”

  “Nope, I’m not a cop.”

  “Who are you?”

  Stupid, stupid, stupid. That was one question Abby hadn’t brought an answer for.

  So she tried the best lie. “I left here fifteen years ago. I’m wondering if I can find my mother.”

  “And turn her over to the jawbreakers,” the kid added.

  “They still calling the antiterrorist squads jawbreakers?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what we always called them as long as I’ve known.”

  “All I can say is that there’s no way I’d work for them.”

  The kid eyed Abby, those deep brown eyes seeming to take all of her in. Weigh her. Decide her fate.

  And Abby did a wipe of all her assumptions about the girl. Then she studied her again. Stringy hair needed washing. The dirty face and skinned elbows were part of a stick-figure body that looked to be years away from womanhood. Or could blossom tomorrow. Hard to tell, kids from Five Corners were so underfed. Maybe Abby had been low on the age. Ten, plus or minus one, might be closer.

  But it was the eyes that gave the experienced maid pause. No way to tell what they’d seen. What they’d done. Abby started to credit them with what she’d known at ten or so.

  Then shook that thought off.

  Five Corners had been going to hell fifteen years ago. And it had gotten worse. No, this kid had seen worse than what drove Abby out of here.

  There really was no reason to trust her. Certainly not her and a smart kid with connections to all the gangs.

  It was time to walk…fast.

  “You see that corner down the way,” the girl said, pointing. “The one with two stores on it and a couple of good-looking houses. One’s even got some grass they cut.”

  Abby looked and saw it.

  “Uncle Joe and Auntie Mong don’t allow no drug sales on their corner. No nothing. And they got shotguns to back them up. That’s neutral territory. You go there. I’ll bring Bronc there, so you can talk, and maybe
Bronc will help you.”

  “How about Uncle Joe. Could he help me?”

  “Uncle Joe don’t know nothing. You can ask him if you want, but all he ever says is that he don’t know nothing.”

  “Smart man.” Abby had known Uncle Joe’s in her time. She sauntered that way.

  A second later, when she looked back, the cat was cleaning its paws, but the girl had vanished.

  Uncle Joe’s provided shade, and a lazy fan only slightly disturbing the warm air.

  An old man of dusky origins took her measure, said, “You’re not from around here,” and pointed Abby at a soda cooler when she agreed she wasn’t.

  Abby paid her rent for taking up space in the store by buying an orange soda.

  “I’m adding a deposit on the bottle. You drink it here, you can turn it in for the deposit.”

  “Sounds fair,” Abby said, paid, and turned away to examine the merchandise. It was mostly food and essential items for the home. Or the hovel. Abby noticed a good supply of Sterno stoves and candles. Oh, and one entire wall was taken up with cheap wines and fortified beers.

  It wasn’t much different from the stores Abby’d spent her quarters and dimes at. Only now, everything was a buck or more.

  Uncle Joe’s “You start any trouble and I’ll finish it” told Abby she was no longer alone in the store. The girl was back, but no one was with her.

  “You want an orange soda?” Abby asked.

  “I like the grape kind better,” the kid said, her face intent as she checked out the store.

  “It’s just me and Uncle Joe,” Abby offered.

  “She lying?”

  “Not that I can see,” Uncle Joe said, but quickly turned his attention to stocking cigarettes on the shelves behind him.

  The kid sidled up to Abby. “Bronc says your rig is making all kinds of music. Stuff he don’t know how to work.”

  Abby glanced at her wrist unit. “Is it making music like a cop or jawbreaker?”

  “No, or we’d have run. Then again, Bronc says you might be some kind of superbreaker. How’s he to know?”