Torch Song: A Kickass Heroine, A Post-Apocalyptic World: Book One Of The Blackjack Trilogy (21 page)

“I like the way you run things, the way you treat your people. And I like that you’re raising an army. That means you want to spread your influence.”

“Armies are for conquest,” Judith shot back. “Not influence. Speak plainly. Stop sounding like a diplomat. Do you or do you not want power?”

Karlow grinned. “Yes, I do.”

“Why?”

“Because I think I would handle it well and I would like it.”

Jo nodded. Good. Hannah wanted power. They could give it to her, or make her think they had. It didn’t matter, at this point anyway, whether they could trust her or not. She would do, as a candidate. They’d put her in office and keep her convinced they were building her road to power. She would serve them as long as she thought it was in her interest. If she veered off their road, they could deal with her. And if someone else assassinated her, it would be no great loss. Satisfying. A good morning’s work.

She glanced at Judith, who returned the look and nodded.

“My sister and I need to discuss it, Hannah,” Judith said. “Stick around. Come back in an hour.”

The gaunt woman stood, dismissed. She looked pleased with herself “One hour,” she said.

Jo watched her go out the door. When it shut behind her, she said, “Do you trust her?”

“Hell no. But she’s not as smart as she thinks she is. We’re throwing her a title and a few perks and she thinks we’re giving her control.” She grinned. “Samm told me she wants to learn to fly the plane. Asked for lessons the minute she saw it. He’s letting the merc who delivered it teach her.” Jo didn’t much like the idea of Hannah Karlow flying a Gullwing over their heads. “If she’s grateful enough, she’ll be useful. What do you think, Drew?”

“I don’t like her.” He looked worried.

Jo laughed. “I think that’s smart.” Drew was a good judge of people. “Did you notice— she didn’t even ask why we wanted her to be our candidate.”

Judith smiled and shook her head. “Oh, she’s probably afraid that if she asks too many questions we’ll decide we don’t need a mayor at all.”

Jo laughed again, reached over and patted Judith’s shoulder. “Well, that’s done. Do you want me back here in an hour?”

“No, I’ll give her the good news.”

“Then I’ll go roust Samm, tell him we’ve decided.” Samm had begged off this meeting. He already knew what he thought about Hannah Karlow. He thought she was tough and he thought she could be bought.

“Good.” Judith looked from Jo to Drew. “See me back here at noon, then. Both of you. And tell Samm, and Lizzie, too, if she’s interested. We need to start putting together our mayoral campaign.”

* * *

Drew stuck a book in his pocket, a biography of Golda Meir, and headed for the lake.

Lizzie had gone hiking with friends that morning, but had made Drew promise to tell her all about the Karlow interview. She was interested, just not enough to give up a good hike. He needed to get out for a while too.

This Hannah Karlow… good soldier, strange woman. He wondered if there was any way the wrong mayor could mess things up. But then, what was a wrong mayor?

Lately he’d been thinking a lot about his family’s plans. Sometimes he had his doubts about his mother’s drive for power, his aunt’s drive to consolidate little countries into bigger ones. He wasn’t sure it was a good idea to start out on that road, even if he trusted them to do the right thing.

Big countries made irresistible targets for big terrorists. Big markets made big toxies. These were problems they had no first-hand experience with, and history showed what they could do.

Oh, they had straggler causies and crazies wandering the roads but even the godders who had started so much of the Poison couldn’t scrape together the followers or the targets to take a bite out of what was left, and just as often were targets themselves. Just yell “terrorist” and they were dead or heading for the border.

Someone had tried to blow up a glassy-metal molding factory in California a few years ago. They made parts for cars and buses and the few planes that were put together at a Redwood plant— if the parts made it that far north without being stolen. But the people who lived nearby, who kept a watch on the factory ready to protest the slightest hint of toxic sloppiness, eyes sharp for terror, too, took the would-be bomber into a field and shot at him until he blew himself up, blasting a crater in a patch of onions. No one ever found out what point he was trying to make.

Drew sat on a bench off to the side, the picnic tables at his back, the wide blue lake to his left, remembering the last time he’d been there. The stupid fight with the Scorsi boys. He opened his book, read a paragraph, set it down beside him.

His mother and Jo, and Samm, too, were so sure that consolidation was right, and the time was now. But Drew didn’t trust political ideas to take real people into account. He’d always thought that political systems tended to rely on people being either stupider and meaner than they were, or smarter and better than they were.

He would stand with family, and he would see. He would watch as things changed, if they did, and make up his own mind. For now, he recognized that he didn’t know. He thought it was a complex question that he hadn’t quite figured out the answer to yet.

What he did know, right now, was that he didn’t like Hannah Karlow. He opened his book again.

* * *

Newt was late to our meeting, but at least this time he wasn’t dragging a giant sandwich along with him. He swaggered into the clearing looking impatient, an important man called for a small purpose.

“This wasn’t convenient, Rica. What exactly is it you want to talk to me about? I have business to take care of.” His big head rolled back on his skinny neck and he eyed me from under his puffy lids.

“Yeah. So do I. I told you I needed to know who else you’ve got at Blackjack besides Bernard. It would have been especially helpful to know about Hannah Karlow.”

“Why? You’ve got your own job to do. She has hers.” So she’d told me the truth, about that anyway. He sat down on the rock beside me and broke a pebble from its surface.

“What about Waldo?”

He looked at me as if I’d suddenly started spinning a plate of chicken on my head. “What about him?”

“Does he give you information?”

Newt laughed. A rusty sound. “He doesn’t have any. That’s a really stupid question. Waldo is nothing. Haven’t you figured that out yet? Is that what you got me out here for?”

“I have to know who’s safe and who isn’t. I have to know what else is going on. You sent me to spy on the army. I didn’t know Hannah was doing the same thing.” Silly sack of drool.

He snickered. “She’s really got Samm in her pocket. He’s going to let her learn to fly their airplane.” He glanced up at me, sidelong. “She found out they really do have one.”

Why did Samm trust that bitch? Was it true? I needed to find out if there really was a plane. “Where do they keep it? The plane?”

He looked exasperated, unsure. “At the airport.”

“Where’s that?”

He picked up a stick and drew a map in the dirt. I studied it for a minute, asked a couple of questions, and felt I could probably find the field. He said it was ten minutes south of Stateline, south of the lake.

“Okay.” I tried to sound reasonable, calm. “If you’ve got the army covered, I can focus on something else.”

“You need to focus on everything.” He was scraping at the boulder with the pebble. Scrape, scrape, scrape… ”You’re the only one the chief sent. I wanted someone here who was official. That’s you. I’ve got people who are loyal to me here and there but…” He shrugged. “Well, they’re just there because they’re there.” He screwed up his forehead, having a hard time explaining his lack of organization to me. Scrape… scrape.

I slapped the pebble out of his hand. It shot across the clearing. He stared at me, his blubbery lips hanging open.

“You can’t…!”

“I did. Now I want a list of everyone you’ve got at Blackjack and what their jobs are.”

He squinted at me. “Not a chance! Why should I trust you?”

“Because you’re paying me. And I’m a merc.”

“Not good enough. I’ve got a lot of plans, a lot of things going on. And I’m the only one who knows about all of them.” He stood up. “And that’s the way it’s going to stay. You know about Bernard, so you can use him if you need to. And now you know about Hannah. Make the Colemans love you. Become a Coleman. That’s your job.” He swaggered back out of the clearing again and I sat there stewing.

So my job was being lovable.

I drove back to the casino and pulled into the parking lot in time for lunch. The restaurant was about half full. Tim was working the shift with Drew and one of the regular day people.

“Hi, Rica! You look annoyed. Everything okay?”

My irritation with Newt must be showing. I shifted gears and gave him a peck on the cheek. “Just thinking about tonight’s show.”

I sat at a table near the restaurant door. Just as I was ordering a club sandwich and an orange juice— expensive but worth it— I noticed Jo and Samm walk by together. Drew noticed them too, glanced at the clock and told Timmy he had to take a break for awhile. He took off his apron, stashed it behind the host station, earning a glare from Waldo, and ran off after them. They walked up the stairs to Judith’s office.

Another big Coleman meeting. Again without Waldo. I wondered what this one was about.

“Drew was in a hurry,” I said casually to Tim, when he brought my small glass of juice.

“Meeting. Family meeting. Big doings today, I hear.”

“Oh? What kind of big doings?”

Timmy arched an eyebrow. “Seems that one of our regulars is going to run for mayor of Tahoe, and the Coleman family, well, let me just say it’s their candidate of choice. And they’re going to start working on a campaign. That’s what Drew told me, anyway.”

“The candidate— anyone I know?” He hadn’t said “employee.” He’d said “regular,” meaning a customer.

“Yes indeed. You were asking us about her just yesterday.”

Juice went down the wrong way. I coughed. It burned its way up through my nose. “Not Hannah Karlow?”

“Why not?”

Was it possible? That Blackjack was running a Scorsi spy as their candidate for mayor?

Newt must have known about this when I’d seen him earlier, but as usual, he was letting me find out for myself.

Maybe I was underestimating him. Or overestimating the Colemans. It was reassuring that, smart as the Colemans were, they weren’t mind readers and they could be fooled by a good spy.

It’s not like she’s our candidate or anything

This was news I could give the chief. Hannah Karlow, supposedly working for Newt Scorsi, was the Colemans’ candidate for mayor in a one-candidate race.

On my way to the stairs, I noticed Samm wasn’t working but Drew was hanging around Zack’s poker table, sitting back from the action on a slot machine stool. I moved up beside him. The game was moving fast; Zack was working hard.

“Learning to deal?” I hadn’t intended to startle Drew, but he jumped when I spoke and stared at me for a moment before answering.

“Yeah. Mom wants me to learn all the jobs.”

“There’s a lot to learn.” Was it my imagination, or had he shifted slightly away from me, just an inch or two? And was that a blush on his downy young cheek?

I stood there with him, silent. Worrying about his discomfort. What, if anything, did it have to do with me?

“So you’re going to stay with casino work?”

He looked surprised that I would even ask such a thing. “Yeah. Of course.”

“No interest in anything outside the casino?”

“Like what?”

“Well, I hear someone’s running for mayor here in town. Any interest in anything like that? When you get a little older?”

“Politics?” His gaze was more direct now, as if he were trying to see inside my head. Why? Because he thought I was seeing inside his? “Don’t know. Maybe.”

“You’re smart enough.”

His blush spread and in that instant I knew he had a crush on me. Now that was a dilemma. I liked the kid. A crush might make it easier to get information from him. I’d feel like a rat, but feeling like a rat was part of my job sometimes, and I’d have to live with it, wouldn’t I? I could hang onto that crush just enough, and damp it down just enough, to use it without tearing his young heart out. Couldn’t I? Probably not.

“What do you think of the new candidate, this Hannah Karlow woman? Have you heard she’s running?”

“Yeah, I knew that. How’d you find out so fast?”

I grinned, innocent. “News gets around.”

He laughed. “Timmy.”

I shrugged. “So what do you think of her?”

“She’s pretty well known around town. Any fixer would be, but she’s a good one. She can get a broken slot up and running faster than, well, fast. Came in real handy after that raid the other day. And the elevator’s running now.” She must have finished the job while I was out.

The hand ended, one of the players raked in a good-sized pot, and Zack started dealing again.

Drew watched the table, but kept praising Hannah. “She fixes everything from toilets to cars from what I’ve heard. She does work for all the casinos.”

Yes, I thought wryly. She certainly does. Nothing like a fixer to get inside everyone’s works. Not mine, though.

Despite Drew’s positive words, his body language— a doubtful tilt of the head, a tension in the shoulders— told me he wasn’t sure about Hannah.

“Do you think she’ll get elected?”

He shrugged. “She’s known. And I haven’t heard anyone else is running.” Drew turned back to watch the poker play again. Less comfortable talking about politics than about fixing.

I watched with him for a few minutes, not wanting to push the conversation too hard. Then I got back to it.

“Is that usually the way it is, just one candidate?”

“If someone else wants to run, he can, but…” He hesitated. I waited for the rest of his sentence. It didn’t come.

“I heard that your family is supporting Karlow. They’ve got a lot of influence here in town, don’t they?”

“Sure.”

“And I hear the Scorsis are your competitors. Why wouldn’t they support a candidate, too? Another one?”