02. The Shadow Dancers (31 page)

"I resisted," she told me. "I held out longer than I thought I could, but I finally did what they said. Every bit. Not just killin' her, but cuttin', mutilating, while she was strung up screamin'. It was then I knew I'd do
anything
for the juice. I know it's wrong, but, next day, I didn't feel bad, and I didn't have no nightmares. I knew just what I was and where I stood. Killin' this white man of yours-it was no big thing after that. I lost some sleep over figurin' it, but I wouldn't lose sleep over doin' it. If they had you down there, and your Sam strung up, you'd carve him up yourself. Only thing was, you wasn't gonna be strung out with some controller standin' in back with the juice you craved. On your own, they thought you wouldn't be able to do it. At that moment, you either kill yourself or do as they order. There ain't no third way."

The phone rang. She looked at me, and I went over and looked at the phone. It was one of them new styles, with the automatic dial and built-in speakerphone. I figured it was the same one I'd bought for the old apartment. I gestured her over, then hit the speaker on/off button and nodded to her.

"Yes?" she asked into the little mike.

"Brandy," came a woman's cool, familiar voice, "this is Addison. Is everything going all right?"

She looked at me. "Fine. I'm settled in."

"Very well. This is a change of orders. It is very important. Sam Horowitz is on his way home. We aren't sure of the route or timing, but he could be there anytime within a few hours to tomorrow afternoon. You are
not
to kill him. Do you understand?"

She frowned. "But I thought-"

"There has been a change in circumstances. Brandy Horowitz is loose with a large enough supply to cause real trouble for some time. We think she made it to this world.
She
is now your target. She is certain to try to contact Sam,
perhaps make an attempt on you. Delay, hold, or restrain her if possible but do not kill her unless you have to. If you spot her, use the contact method to get hold of us immediately. This is quite urgent."

"Lemme get this straight. You don't want me to kill Sam, and you don't want me to kill Brandy, neither, if I can help it? Then other than hold her, what else am I supposed to do?"

"Become Brandy Horowitz. We have other uses for you now. You can play the part. He knows you got addicted. That will cover many lapses and your erratic behavior, and he, too, had some recovery problems. He'll buy it. You
make
him buy it." The line went dead.

I was as amazed as she was at this. Why, after all this trouble, such a change in plans? Did Siegel's death, and the intervention of some third party they didn't know 'bout in my escape, cause 'em to regroup? This didn't make no sense at all to either of us.

"How do you contact dem?" I asked her.

"The Chessworks. It's a toy and game store in central Philadelphia. You call their number and you leave a message for Miss Addison to call you with the one who answers or on the machine if it's after-hours. I used it once already, but it was a man who called back, not her."

"Well, she here now. Guess her wastin' Arnie made troubles. Don't know what dey still want
me
livin' for, though."

"So, what-now?"

Yeah-what now? Sam was safe, at least for now, and I had a way to contact Addison to make a deal. Trouble was, if I did it now she'd know immediately who gave me the number and where I had to be. Sam might be hours, even tomorrow afternoon, gettin' in, and I needed a jolt before that. Worse, it was into prime hours, and the juice only let up on mandatory sex when you had your period. "When you due yo' jolt?" I asked her.

"Anytime now. Past time. Can't you tell?"

Truth was, I
could
tell. She'd been time shifted in her routine 'cause of all that stuff at the lodge.

"Okay. Figured as much. Dat's why I didn't take it all. Thought it might be kinda useful. Left one here fo' ya." I reached under the cushion and palmed the two cubes.

"Now-we goin' upstairs and you gonna get happy fo' a while."

She didn't resist; you don't in those circumstances as I well knew. When you're due, that's the only thing important to you.

"Now, you listen to me," I said coldly. "I got all de rest o' the juice. You know, too, one o' us'd
die
befo' she tell you where her stash is. You betta' play 'long wit' me, girl, or I'll see you go t'hell."

I gave her the jolt and watched it take effect almost enviously. I wanted it bad, too, but it wouldn't be no good to me for a long while yet. Some knowledge of Sam helped next, 'cause it didn't take me long to find what he called his Junior G-Man Detective Set. It was a small box with fingerprint kit, evidence collectors, and a couple pairs of handcuffs.

I rolled her over and she smiled and groaned, then cuffed her hands in back and then cuffed her legs as well. Then I gagged her, left, and turned out the light. She didn't even notice all that.

I went down, called the cab company and asked for Calvin to pick me up, then went back upstairs and got my bag, stuck the gun in it, deep, made my face over a little and combed my hair, then put on the heels, even if they wasn't real suited for what I was wearin'. I was tempted just to have Calvin in, but I had enough sense to realize that if Sam come in durin' it I might have some trouble convincin' him I was the right one.

It was stupid and risky, but when the juice tells you to do somethin', you ain't got no choice at all, and the sight of her up there in high heaven on the bed only tripled the lust.

I was sure as hell gonna give Calvin his seven bucks worth-with one hell of a tip.

Now, I got to admit I took a hell of a risk considerin' the timing and all, but that's how this thing works. The only thing I had left was my brain, and that was workin' good as ever.

Needless to say, when I got back about four in the mornin' I was real extra careful to make sure that everything was just as I left it, includin' a few little things on the doors nobody would notice but would be out of place if they was opened. I even checked the neighborhood for snoops
and found none. Finally I went in, checked out the downstairs, then went upstairs real careful-like, and found Brandy Two also pretty much as I left her, only now she was asleep instead of on the super high-or mad, as she almost surely was from the looks of the bed. Wasn't nothin' to do but relax, so I went downstairs and watched a movie on one of them superstations, which felt real good to be able to do after all that had happened, then just gave myself that jolt and disappeared into heaven on the couch.

I remember wakin' up in the blissful comedown for a while, then just driftin' back to sleep. Wasn't no use in doin' nothin' else, nohow. Sam might come home and be confused as hell, but at least I was the first Brandy he'd see.

Which was why it was a real shock to wake up upstairs on the bed, hands cuffed behind my back. I turned and found Brandy Two still there as well, only she was only cuffed by her hands. Sittin' in a chair opposite, holdin' his .38, swiggin' coffee, and lookin' more'n a little tired, was Sam.

I was so damned happy to see him, alive, lookin' well and as I remembered him, that I sat right up.
"Sam!"

"My mother warned me about all sorts of things," he said real casually, ignorin' my outburst. "She gave me tons of advice on almost every situation in the world. However, I don't think she
ever
covered something like this."

"Welcome back," said my twin. "We been talkin' 'bout you."

"I bet," I shot back. "Bet you been tellin' him de God's honest truth, huh?"

Sam sighed. "I am a detective. I don't even
like
being a detective all that much. Usually it's boring as hell. Unfortunately, it's the only thing anybody ever taught me how to do that paid money. Now I have two women here, cuffed on my bed, which is kinky enough for any detective novel, and both of them look absolutely identical. Both also have a passing resemblance to my wife, but both look like versions of my wife as sculpted by a master sculptor with a massive bribe from her."

"He's puttin' you on, honey," Brandy Two said dryly. "He knowed 'bout the two of us before he ever showed up here."

"They do tend to notice-eventually-when the identical same person passes the same station twice in the same
direction without ever going in the
opposite
direction," Sam commented. "Don't worry, Sleeping Beauty, I already know a fair amount of the story. You see, I asked your counterpart here about our little dog Asta, and she said Asta had to be given away. Isn't that just terrible?"

I was cuffed on the bed, but I had to laugh and keep laughin' for a while. Finally I managed, "Right, Mista' Charles."

One thing Sam and my late Daddy had in common was a passion for the old classic detective novels, stories, and films, and I caught it, too. I guess Brandy Two was too damned mad at Daddy to take up that taste in her life. That'll teach her to read them sexy romances. In fact, Sam always reminded me of William Powell in
The Thin Man.
Oh, he don't look or talk like Powell-wish he did-but it's the same
attitude.

"So why am I cuffed?" I asked him.

"You are cuffed, my dear, because you are hooked on the most addictive substance yet discovered and you apparently have a fair amount of it. You ought to see what it's done to the two of you. Before I can have a-working relationship, let's call it-with either of you, I have to know where the stash is and take control of it. You're the one who knows, so that's why we've been waiting for you to wake up."

"Sam!" I cried. "It's
me!
Damn it, dey give me dis shit-slut talk an' all, but it's
me!"

"I worked vice, babe. Remember? I've seen many as strong as you be willing to kill their own husbands, mothers, and children for drugs a lot less potent than this one. You have two choices-tell me now or tell me later. If you choose later, then
I
have to make some choices, since I have to go to sleep before either of you needs a fix or I'll keel over and you two need food and recreation, if I remember the stuffs routine right. If it's now, I can relax. If it's later, I have to either start a treasure hunt, which I'm too damned spent to try, or call in somebody to take over, which means Bill Markham and you know what
that
means, or I have to hand-feed the two of you and find some more handcuffs. Now-which is it?"

"Sam-you know I can't do
dat!"

He stared hard and serious at me. "Brandy! It's
me!"
he said mockingly. "You wanted
me
to trust
you
on that basis. Not the same the other way, huh?"

He had me, and I didn't know how to get out of it.

"For God's sake, tell him!" my twin pleaded. "It's the only way
I'm
gonna get out of these damned cuffs, too."

I didn't know what to do, so I tried a two-way approach. "Sam-I been through hell. I thought you was
dead,
for God's sake! Only wanted t' git even. Screw dem good. And I
can,
Sam. Dat's de honest truth. If'n nothin' else good come out of dis, I got dat. I knows who's who and what it's all 'bout!"

"I have some of it myself," he told me. "After they finally ran some checks to see if I should be taken off life support and found out that the computer instructions for my maintenance in that tank included a certain drug that kept me sound asleep for months, and they brought me out and told me about it, it wasn't hard to figure. It's not enough, babe. Not enough at all. Why do you think they engineered the sacking of Aldrath? Put that young fellow, Dakani Grista, in temporary command? Dakani's young, ambitious, and like most young and ambitious smart boys he wants to feather his own nest. He's not in on this but he's not going to do anything to jeopardize his standing. He got rid of most of Aldrath's top people and replaced them with bureaucratic hacks. Now, if you or I walk in and tell him we know who's behind all this and most of the cast of characters, do you think he'll believe us and move on it? On his own, against one of his patrons and a higher class at that?"

"Not everybody's in dem upper classes," I pointed out.

"True, but they're all well connected to them and work for them. Dakani might put one of them through the ringer if we had solid evidence, but not on either of our deductions or say-so. Aldrath would have. That's why they had to retire him. It wasn't hard. Even knowing what we know you can make a pretty good case for his incompetence. He was too close to the problem. He had Top Man Disease. He believed his reports from his agents in the field and he fed only those reports into his computers and came up with exactly the conclusions and acted in exactly the ways they wanted him to. His only departure from orthodoxy was you, when he let
you go in alone, and when this Crockett woman reported you had been captured and hooked on the stuff, he looked more like a fool. Can't you figure out, with all his resources, why he couldn't find the origin world?"

I nodded. "Same thing. Machines tol' him dat de place was bare."

"Right. Or, it was certified as having been looked at and given a clean bill of health. That means we're right back where we started from. They can blow up Vogel's place and most of his experts, they can cover their people for a while more back where you just came from, and they can cover their own asses at headquarters and rely on Dakani's inexperience and eagerness to please to keep it that way, but the origin world's their smoking gun. They can't blow it up, they can't abandon it, and they can't cover up a whole world's evidence. Deliver that world and you expose the cover-ups and maneuverings. Find that world and even Dakani will have to move fast and hard for the same reason he won't act without it-expediency and his own neck. So, babe, you're one hell of a detective but you still ain't got a damned thing."

"And ... if yo'
does
got the stash? What den? De funny farm fo' us?"

"Uh uh. How much of the stuff
is
there in this stash of yours, anyway?"