From Black Rooms (12 page)

"You know I hate that! Use my whole name, for God's sake."

"I'm too embarrassed." Cal had met her at one of the countless art openings he attended for networking and free wine and cheese. She'd told him then that she was Tranquil ity Moon, and had since refused to admit that it was not her real name. "Your parents must have been very cruel," he'd said at the time, and she'd giggled. At the time.

"Gee...lighten up, Picasso!" She stiffened back into a statuesque posture. "I thought I was doing you a favor. It's not like I don't have better things to do on my day off than stand here for hours half naked--"

Calvin slammed his brush down on the edge of the easel and rubbed his temple. "Hold stil ! That means no talking. Is that too much to ask?"

Tranquil ity dropped the Athenian demeanor and put her hands on her hips in her usual slouch. "You know what your problem is, Mr. Grouch? You need to forget about that picture and enjoy the real thing." She sashayed off the crate, coming over to where he stood, in what she obviously intended to be a seductive manner. As she snuggled up against his shoulder and drew close to kiss his cheek, though, the partial portrait on the easel caught her eye.

"Holy crap! Please tel me my hips aren't that big... Tranquil ity stepped away, glancing from her thighs to the painting and back again. "It's this stupid sheet. I
told you it wouldn't look good on me."

Cal shoved his palette on the drafting table and held his head, groaning. It wasn't Tranquil ity's fault, but he couldn't deal with her right now. He shouldn't have asked her out in the first place, but after seeing only men for two whole years during his stay in prison, any female company seemed welcome. As soon as he made parole, he'd picked the first woman who'd shown any interest in him. The more time they spent together, however, the more Calvin realized he had nothing in common with her, a fact that only made him more

conscious of how truly alone he was in the world, how much he'd screwed up.

Cal steadied his temper with a long breath. "I'm sorry, Trank...Tranquil ity. I'm not feeling too good. Maybe we should cal it a day."

"Just like that, huh?" She indicated her R-rated outfit. "I go through al this, and now I don't even get--Cal, what's wrong? Cal!"

Calvin sank onto his haunches, arms crossed over his skul as if afraid the roof were about to col apse. He'd never had a headache like this one. Maybe he'd pinched a nerve, for an electric prickling had spread out from behind his eyes to envelop his entire face and scalp. Tranquil ity crouched to put an arm around his

shoulders. "Cal, what can I do? Should I cal nine-oneone?" The lights in the room seemed to flicker--especial y the vintage fixture mounted directly overhead. Cal rol ed his gaze up toward it, his vision blurring.
I'm done for. I'll never work in this town again.
The thought startled Cal, for although it certainly applied to him, it wasn't his. He slumped sideways as the prickling sensation infected his arms and legs, as if the blood to his limbs had been cut off. Pain constricted his throat until he gagged for breath, the fuzzy orb of the overhead light lowering over him like a desert sun.
The talkies won't have me. Even my agent says I sound
like a frog...

"Cal! What's wrong? Can you hear me?"

He could hear Tranquil ity--dul ed as if by depths of water--but he could no longer see her, could not feel her shaking him. Instead, he saw the studio apartment around him, only it wasn't his apartment anymore: a vanity with makeup and perfume bottles rested where his drafting table should have been. His perspective had changed, too. He no longer lay on the floor but instead stood on a wooden chair with his bare toes curled over the edge of the seat. The sleekness of a silk stocking caressed his throat, and the fril y hem of a woman's slip brushed his knees as he pushed the chair out from under himself.

For a drawn-out instant, he seemed to hover like a gul borne on a thermal updraft. Then his body plunged, the stocking pul ed taut, and his swinging weight yanked the bolts of the light fixture out of the ceiling. Both the stocking and the cord of the lamp to which it was tied remained intact, however, and his feet fluttered about eight inches above the floor. Sparks crackled above him and the lamp flickered. His view of the room drifted to the right, then rotated back to the left as the stricture of the noose made him bob his mouth open for air.

This isn't me! Calvin screamed in his mind. I didn't kill
myself! But the sense-memory of choking--of flailing
and scissoring his legs in a vain effort to plant his feet on the floor--had the immediacy of firsthand

experience.

"I...m-made a...m-mistake," he heard a man say. His confusion swel ed when he realized the voice was his own.

"What, Cal?" Tranquil ity again, from the far side of the ocean. "Did you say something?"

He hadn't said anything, yet his mouth repeated the
phrase: "I m-made a m-mistake."

It's her, Cal realized. The woman he'd seen--the
woman he was in the awful death-memory--was

speaking through him. And she had made a hideous

mistake. Not only had the washed-up silent-screen star chosen to hang herself, she hadn't considered that jumping from a chair would not give her enough

gravitational acceleration to break her neck. Instead, she ended up twisting at the end of the stretched stocking for better than half an hour, head and heart wel ing with immediate regrets yet unable to save herself or cry for help as her col apsed windpipe starved her body of oxygen with agonizing slowness.

"I made a mistake," she said, more firmly than before.

"A
nd I want to come back."

Cal yel ed to Tranquil ity, but only became more frantic when he understood that she could not hear him. His last remaining perceptions of the outside world

disappeared as if he'd been smothered by shovelfuls of dirt, buried alive in his own body.

Suddenly, a new variety of pain dredged him from the wel of his subconscious like a winch. Relief flooded through him as he felt his cheek throb and saw

Tranquil ity standing before him, panting and livid, her arm stil at ful swing after belting him.

"You have a lot of nerve," she hissed, "talking to me that way while I'm phoning the paramedics to save your sorry hide!"

"My God." Cal discovered that he was now standing, though he could not remember rising from the floor. He put his hand to his face, testing whether he could both touch and feel. "Tranquil ity...what did I say?" She sneered in disbelief. "You oughta know! Cal ing me a hussy and a whore and tel ing me to get out of your place--"

He hugged her. "Bless you, Trank. I'l make it up to you."

Another burst of tingling jolted his body, nearly paralyzing him. The studio's former tenant wanted to take up residence again.

Cal stumbled to the apartment's door and out into the hal . He had to leave this place--her place--before he lost himself again. He didn't know where to go,

however. Only Carleton Amis knew what was

happening to him, and Amis had refused to tel Cal where to find him, or how to contact him between their appointed meetings.

Tranquil ity fol owed Cal as far as the doorway,

crossing her arms to cover her exposed breasts and glancing toward the adjacent apartments with

embarrassment. "What is up with you, anyway? You on drugs or something?"

"You could say that." He braced himself against the handrail as he stomped downstairs. That woman in the Munch painting--the Violet who'd come to see him. She would know how to help him...if he could find her in time.

10

The Haves and the Have-nots

AS FAR AS THE INTERNET WAS CONCERNED,

CARLETON AMIS DID NOT exist. Seated in front of

her laptop at the desk in her living room, Natalie Googled and Yahooed the name without learning the identity of the man who had asked her to counterfeit the world's most notorious stolen paintings--and who had somehow convinced the NAACC to release the Violet Kil er.

Natalie had not seen Evan in the week since Serena arrived--at least, not that she knew of. She couldn't be sure, for the Corps had long ago taught Evan to disguise himself beyond recognition. But Natalie felt him

everywhere, his presence as formless yet as palpable as the drop in air pressure that presaged a storm. If she stepped outside the condo, she sensed his covetous gaze piercing her like X-rays, exposing the scar tissue and dormant tumors of dead love. If she stayed inside, he lurked like Grendel outside her windows, awaiting the chance to extinguish the life and light inside her home. Even Corps Security had never made her feel so

violated--or so vulnerable.

At Natalie's request, Serena had agreed to stay on as a bodyguard, the two of them sleeping in shifts as they watched over Wade and Cal ie. Natalie only went out once, armed with a can of pepper spray, to buy food for the week. During the day, she surfed the Web, seeking some shred of information that would il uminate the connection between Evan and Carleton Amis.

"Can't we go to the pool, at least?" her daughter wheedled. After seven days of virtual house arrest, Cal ie was close to expiring from captivity. "You could sit there with me. I'l even stay in the shal ow end."

"Not now, honey." Natalie entered another fruitless search in her Web browser, attempting to crossreference Evan's and Amis's names with the titles of the stolen paintings. No results.

Hanging on the back of Natalie's chair, Cal ie pushed herself onto her tiptoes, raising her mouth to her mother's ear. "Pleeeeeeease?"

"I said no. It's too dangerous. Why don't you go play Monopoly with Grandpa Wade?"

"We've played Monopoly, like, a hundred times already. Even Grandpa's getting sick of it."

"Then why don't you play cards?"

"We're bored with that, too. We've played every game to death, practical y. Can we ever go out again?"

"When we're sure the bad man out there won't hurt us, then we can go out. Not before."

Cal ie let go of the chair with a growl. "Who is this jerk, anyway?"

Natalie's lips twitched into a frown. "He's a bad man. That's al you need to know."

Shame more than parental discretion had kept Natalie from explaining that Evan Markham had not only been the Violet Kil er but also her boyfriend. How could she admit to her daughter that an infatuation she'd had in her teens now threatened al their lives?

Serena saved Natalie from further debate with her daughter by entering the condo's front door. Cal ie bounded to meet her, grateful for any distraction.

"You're back! Can we spar now?"

"Might as wel . Got nothing better to do." Serena let the girl punch at her raised arm, but looked toward Natalie.

"Hope you had better luck than I did."

Natalie stood and massaged the cramp in the smal of her back. "Your Corps connections didn't have anything on Amis?"

"They didn't know or wouldn't say, which amounts to the same thing. You?"

"Nothing. I knew it was too much to hope that Carleton Amis was his real name, but I didn't have anything else to go on."

"And Evan?"

Natalie made an ixnay-on-the-Evanay face, but it was too late.

"Evan?" Cal ie said. "Is that the bad man's name?" Natalie sighed in annoyance, and Serena shrugged an apology. "Sorry. Forgot."

"If you know who he is, why don't you just have the police arrest him?" Cal ie looked from her godmother to her mother, awaiting an explanation. "That's what Dad would do."

"We don't know where he is, honey," Natalie said, adding for Serena, "but, as far as I can tel , he isn't kil ing anyone. Yet."

Her friend nodded. "So far, so good. But we can't stay cooped up in this place forever."

"You can say that again," Cal ie interjected.

"What you wanna do, Nat?" Serena asked. "We got no leads."

Natalie pursed her lips to keep from answering too quickly. She had an idea, but it was rash, drastic. If she gave the Corps any excuse to crack down on her...

"One person knows who Amis is." Impatience got the best of her. She grabbed one of the photos strewn around her computer and strode toward the front door.

"Let's ask him."

She was already headed down the front walk before Serena caught on, trying to catch her. "Whoa, girlfriend! You don't want to go there."

But Natalie did go there, right up to the passenger side of the black Mitsubishi parked at the curb, Serena a step behind her. Sanjay Prashad saw them coming and rol ed down the electric window.

"Ms. Lindstrom!" An ivory grin split his nutshel face.

"You have not favored me with your notice in months. Are you feeling quite wel ?"

"I'l feel better if you tel me who this is." She thrust the picture of Carleton Amis toward him.

He made a show of examining the photo before shaking his head. "I have never seen this man before."

"That's funny. You practical y prostrated yourself in front of him when he came to see me back in August."

"Unlike you, Ms. Lindstrom, I strive to be pleasant to everyone." He bowed his head with an ingratiating smile to prove his point.

"He's with the N-double-A-C-C, isn't he? That's how you know him. That's how he got the Violet Kil er out of Corps headquarters--"

Serena discreetly kicked her shin, and Natalie realized that she'd said too much. The Corps wasn't supposed to know that Simon McCord's informants had learned of Evan's release.

Sanjay Prashad appeared to suppress a snicker, as if he'd spotted a bit of spinach stuck in her teeth. "The Corps has the Violet Kil er safely under its control. However, if you perceive some threat to you and your family, we would be happy to take you into protective custody."

Natalie knew from experience what protective custody meant in Corps-speak: indentured servitude.

"Forget it," she muttered. "I should've known talking to you was a waste of time."

"On the contrary, Ms. Lindstrom--you only waste time when you evade your duty to...

The Corps Security agent's diatribe dissipated like cigarette smoke, and for the first time, his smile lost its smugness. Natalie wished she could have taken credit for his dismay, but he peered past her right shoulder. She turned in that direction and saw a rust-freckled VW