When She Was Bad

“C’mon, it’s gonna be shooting ducks in a barrel.”

Pender reached into his sport coat pocket, took out the Havana Mick had given him earlier. Patting through his trouser pockets, he found his oval-shaped, double-bladed cutter, clipped the cap of the Macanudo. “Why do you think they call it dope?”

“Why do they call anything anything?”

Pender patted through his pockets again, took out an orange Bic. He rotated the cigar as he held the flame to it, puffing vigorously until the tip was a uniform cherry red. “Forgive him, Harry J. Anslinger,” he said between puffs. “He knows not what he does.”

MacAlister made the sign of the cross at the mention of the man who had almost single-handedly caused marijuana to be declared illegal in America, and while great clouds of cigar and cannabis smoke drifted over the meadow, glowing pinkish-brown against the backdrop of the setting sun, the retired FBI man treated the hippie- dippie private eye to a flawless rendition of Brewer and Shipley’s “One Toke Over the Line.”

Alone on the patio, kneeling next to the dead troll, Lyssy experienced an upwelling of despair so acute it was almost physically painful. For a few wild seconds he considered putting the gun to his head and pulling the trigger; then he heard the homely, familiar sound of the loudest toilet in northern California.

“Lilith? Lilith, where are you?”

No answer. He opened the sliding-glass door and hurried into the living room, which was dominated by a huge flat-screen television. With the power off, the house was so quiet he could hear the gurgling of water through the pipes as the noisy toilet refilled itself. He followed the sound down a corridor and through a bedroom, and found Lilith standing naked next to the toilet, looking down into the tank, from which she’d removed the heavy porcelain cover.

Seemingly unaware of his presence, she pushed the lever to flush the toilet, staring intently down into the bowl, fascinated by the swirling water, then turned her attention to the tank, to watch the red rubber ball bobbing atop the rising water level. Then, when it was high enough, she pushed the lever, and the process began again.

“Lilith, we have to get out of here.”

There was still no indication that she was aware of Lyssy’s presence, and when he grabbed her elbow and began tugging her away from the toilet, her resistance-she leaned her full weight in the opposite direction-was disturbingly impersonal, as if she were pulling against a rope tied to a cleat.

He tugged her as far as the bedroom, but as soon as he released his grip on her arm, she darted back into the bathroom. “Okay, just stay there,” he called, limping for the doorway. “Don’t go anyplace-I’ll be right back for you.”

Ka-woooshhh!

The trick to climbing the macadam driveway on a motorcycle was to maintain enough speed coming out of the turn to carry you up the slope without having to downshift. Mama Rose executed it perfectly, slewing the Sportster to a stop at the relatively level top of the driveway, next to a red GMC pickup recently released from the chop shop.

The house was completely dark. Must have had another power outage, she told herself. Rather than try to raise the electric door manually, she walked the Sportster around to the side of the garage-leaving a bike visible from the road was a definite no-no-and parked it next to Li’l T’s custom chopper.

“Power out again?” she called as she lowered the kickstand and hung her helmet from the handlebars. No answer. She continued around the side of the house, heard a toilet flushing inside, smelled something burnt and nasty, then saw Li’l T lying in a pool of blood on the cement patio.

Reality took a sudden lurch; slowly, with a nightmarish sense of powerlessness, Mama Rose raised her eyes to the hot tub and saw the thing that had been Carson floating motionless on the still surface of the water.

Now that he too knew what it was like to love someone, Lyssy, concealed behind the living room curtains, felt awful for Mama Rose. He wondered whether it would be a bad thing to just shoot her right then and there and save her a truckload of heartbreak.

But his first responsibility was to himself and Lilith. “Don’t move,” he called, stepping out onto the patio, gun in hand.

“You did this?” she said unbelievingly.

“Where do you keep the money?”

Mama Rose’s lips pulled back in an uneven snarl. “Not a chance in hell, you dickless piece of shit gimp motherfucker.”

“Look, I understand you’re upset, but we really need the money, so please, if you could just tell me where you keep it, and give me the keys to that pickup out front, we’ll get out of your hair.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, you’re even crazier than they said you were.”

“Actually, I test more or less normal,” he said, limping toward her. “Normal? You’re a nut job, you’re a fucking wacko. And as for that fucking cunt that brought you here, when I get my-”

This time he was ready for the kick of the.38; the shot whanged off the concrete at Mama Rose’s feet, sending up a puff of cement dust. “There’s no use calling names. It’s his fault.” Tilting his head toward the hot tub. “If he hadn’t tried to rape Lilith, none of this would have happened. And now I have to take care of her. And you have to tell me where the money is, because if you don’t, I have to do some stuff to you I don’t even want to think about. Because I really don’t want to hurt you. Really.”

It wasn’t that she didn’t believe him-she simply didn’t fucking care. Like an incoming tide, shock and anger had carried her as far as they could, then receded, leaving her high and dry on a desolate beach. “Eat shit and die,” she said without heat.

The usage was new to Lyssy. Eat, shit, and die, he thought-what’s that, everybody’s life story?

Inside the house, the toilet continued to flush.

6

After sunset, Pender and MacAlister strolled back down the hill to the Cadillac. Mick raised the top to protect the leather upholstery from the evening dew, then opened his laptop again to keep an eye on the Sportster.

For most people, sitting in a parked car for two hours would have been stultifying, but for the ex-cop and the private investigator it was just another day at the office. They watched the green dot not moving, talked about sports, about old girlfriends and even older cases, then watched the green dot not moving some more.

At nine forty-five, MacAlister turned to Pender. “I sink ve’ve got ein problem, Professor,” he announced in a stagy German accent.

“Give it another few minutes-and why are you talking like Dr. Strangelove?”

“Was I? Maybe I should lay off the weed for a while.”

At ten o’clock-the transponder was still broadcasting the same coordinates-they agreed that a look-see was definitely in order.

With MacAlister driving and Pender navigating by the green glow of the laptop screen, they rolled slowly along the back roads of Shasta County for close to half an hour. As they neared the designated axis, Mick pulled over to the side of the road and turned off his headlights. All was darkness-no lights, no dwellings. He double- checked the coordinates on the laptop against the Caddy’s onboard GPS system, looked over at Pender, and shook his head, baffled. State-of-the-art technology was assuring him they were within two hundred feet of the transponder, while his eyes were insisting they were alone on a dark country road.

“Mama Rose probably spotted the bug, tossed it into the weeds,” said Mick.

“Ssh!” A faint noise from the hillside looming up on their left had caught Pender’s attention. He signaled for Mick to turn off the engine, then closed his eyes and held his breath, listening for all he was worth and hearing at first only the rasp of crickets and the soughing of wind in the treetops. “Never mind, you’re probably right,” he whispered-then he heard it again, a faint groaning sound, like water rushing through pipes.

So did Mick-he reached across Pender, unlocked the glove compartment, took out a nine-millimeter Czech automatic with a flat black Stealth finish, popped in a fifteen-round clip, and jacked a round into the chamber, but