city blues 01 - dome city blues (27 page)

Dinner was relaxed.  The tension that had stretched between us at breakfast was gone, perhaps washed down my shower drain.

Afterward, we curled up in the den on my pit sofa and listened to Rusty Parker’s
No Sense in Hangin’ Around.
  In my opinion, Rusty was one of only a handful of gifted blues artists born in the twenty-first century.

His smoky acoustic guitar wove back and forth across the bass rumble of his voice with an ease that was almost serpentine.  As far as I was concerned, he was one of the few remaining signs that there was still hope for the human race.

Sonja snuggled up under my arm and lay her head on my chest like it was the most natural thing in the world.  She closed her eyes.  “What made you decide to be a sculptor?”

I thought for a long time before answering.  “That’s not an easy question,” I said.  “Until Maggie died, I never even thought about it.  I certainly never considered myself artistic.  But Maggie’s death left this void in my chest, and the only things that I could find to fill it with were anger and booze.”

Sonja’s hand found mine and gave it a gentle squeeze.

“You can only pretend to be dead for so long,” I said.  “Then you’ve got to either open your eyes and stand up, or roll over and finish dying.”

I shrugged.  “Sculpting offered me a lot of things that I needed.  It was hard work.  It kept my hands busy, and my mind.  It gave me a sense of direction.  A reason for climbing out of bed in the morning.  Looking back, it was probably therapy more than anything.  And then, one day I sold one of my pieces, and that opened up another entire dimension I hadn’t even considered.  It’s not about money, it’s about making a difference—no matter how small—in someone else’s life.”

“How many pieces have you sold?”

“Eighteen,” I said.  “No, wait.  Nineteen altogether.”

“I’m trying to imagine how powerful that must feel,” Sonja said.  “Every day, people you don’t even know look at your art, and it touches them.  Maybe it makes them happy.  Maybe it makes them sad, or lonely, or angry, but it touches them.”

I nodded.

“I’m surprised that you came to it so late,” Sonja said.  “I’ve always thought that artists are born instead of made.  That their talent sets them apart, even as children.”

“Not me,” I said.  “When I was a kid, I couldn’t even use finger paints.”

Sonja stifled a giggle.  “I’m trying to imagine David Stalin as a little boy.  Did your friends call you Davey?”

“Joe.”

“Joe?  Your middle name is Joseph?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Josephus?”

“Nope.”

“Am I getting warm?”

“Ice cold.  Try Alexander.”

“Alexander?  David Alexander Stalin.  How do you get Joe out of that?”

I cocked my head just enough to relieve a crick in my neck.  “John and I used to hang with this kid named Kevin Rojenco.  His grandfather was always telling us horror stories about Joseph Stalin, this Soviet dictator who lived during the early twentieth century.”

“Soviet?  You mean Russian?  I thought they were a monarchy, with a King or a Czar or something.”

“They are,” I said.  “But before that, they tried out just about every kind of government you can imagine.  In the end, I guess they went back to what worked the best.  Anyway, Kevin thought it would be funny to call me Joe.  It just sort of caught on.”

“Sarge, and Joe.  That’s two nicknames.  Any others that I should know about?”

I shook my head.  “Just the two.”

“Hmmm...” Sonja said.  “Alexander...  Alex.  Can I call you that”

“No.”

“Okay.  Alex.”

“What’s
your
middle name?”

“Oh no,” she said.  “I’m not telling.”

“Hey,” I said.  “Fair is fair.  I showed you mine, now you show me yours.”

“I’ll be more than happy to show you mine any time you want, but I am
NOT
telling you my middle name.”

“Fine,” I said.  “Be that way.  You forget, Lady, I’m a professional snoop.  Not only am I going to poke around in your personal affairs until I find out your middle name, but I’m going to bill you for it.”

“You’ll never find out,” Sonja whispered.  “It’s the most carefully guarded secret of our time.”

“I’ll find out,” I said.  “I’ll find out
all
of your dirty little secrets.”

“You’re not going to like some of them,” she said.

“Which ones?”

“Well, for one thing, I’m really eighty-five years old.”

“Oh, that.  I already knew all about that.  You carry it pretty well, but your age is starting to show.”

“Oh yeah?  Well how about this?  I was born a man.  I’m really a transsexual,” she said in a teasing voice.

I made a show of yawning; she wasn’t the only one who could tease.  “I knew about that too.  You’ve got a huge Adam’s apple.  That’s a dead give-away, every time.”

“Huge?  Is that right?”  She dug her fingers into my waist in search of my ticklish spots.  It didn’t take her long to find them.

I retaliated, quickly finding a place right under her ribs that drove her crazy.

It was shaping up into a tickle-fight of epic proportions when the phone rang.

I called for a truce.

She lay back on the sofa in a state of mock exhaustion.  “Okay.  You’re safe for now, but I’m not done with you yet, Mister.”

My breath was still coming hard when I answered the phone.  I took it on visual.

“David?”

It took me a couple of seconds to recognize the caller.  Lisa Caldwell had been beaten.  Badly.

Her right eye was swollen completely shut and the left was nearly as bad.  From the swelling and trickle of blood, I guessed that her nose was broken.  Her lips were puffy and the lower one was split near the left corner of her mouth.

“David,” she raised a plastic bag full of ice to the side of her face, “If you’re not too busy, I could use a little company.”

“Jesus, Lisa.  Where are you?”

She touched her bruised cheek and winced.  “I’m at home.  Colosseum Apartments, unit thirty-four seventeen.”

“Have you called the police?”

“No, David.  No police.”

“Lisa, you can’t just...”

“No!  No police and no hospitals. 
Please
.”

“You lie down,” I said.  “I’m on my way.”

Lisa nodded feebly and terminated the connection.

I grabbed the Blackhart and my jacket out of the hall closet.

Sonja walked up behind me as I was strapping on the shoulder holster.  “Can I come along?  I know some first aid.”

“There’s a first aid kit under the sink in the hall bathroom.”

She went after it.  Over her shoulder she asked, “Have you got a flashlight?  A small one, if possible.”

“House, where’s the small flashlight?”

“In the center kitchen drawer.”

I went to the kitchen and grabbed it, flicked it on to test the batteries.

I met Sonja at the door.  “Do we need anything else?”

She shook her head.

“Let’s go.”

Colosseum Apartments turned out to be one of those faceless apartment stacks in Park La Brea, just about in the center of Dome 6.  Dreary slabs of featureless gray concrete, devoid of life or character.

Sonja rang the bell.

I stood with my back to the apartment door and scanned the area.  I didn’t know who had roughed up Lisa, or even where it had happened, but if they were around somewhere, I wanted to know about it.

Lisa opened the door herself.  It had three different types of alarms.

I wondered why she hadn’t let the apartment AI answer the door.

The swelling in her face was worse.  She leaned heavily against the wall without speaking.

“I hope you don’t mind,” I said.  “I brought a friend.”

“No, not at all.  Come in.”  Her voice was weak, muffled by her bruised lips.  Even so, her tone made it apparent that she
did
mind.

I couldn’t help that.  Ordinarily, I’d cut off my own arm before I’d spring an unexpected guest on someone.  But Sonja claimed to have some medical training, and I figured that was a shade more important than social protocol.

Lisa stumbled as she backed away from the door to let us in.  I grabbed her shoulders to keep her from falling and half-led/half-carried her to the couch.  Not an easy task; she was a big woman.

She lay down very carefully, breathing in short cautious sips, testing for pain.  There was no sign of the reactionary cringe that usually signals cracked ribs.

“Who did this to you?”

Sonja squeezed the top of my shoulder.  “That can wait.”

She slid between me and the couch.  “Lisa, my name is Sonja.  We met once at my brother Mike’s apartment.  Do you remember?”

Lisa’s eyes were closed.  She nodded weakly.

“Good.  Now, let’s have a look at you.”

Sonja’s voice was confident, her movements gentle but purposeful.  “Can you open your eyes for me?  Okay, that’s good.  Pick a spot on the ceiling and stare at it.  I’m going to shine a little light in your eyes, okay?”

I’d had doctors do that same test on me a hundred times and I’ve never understood it.  “What are you checking for?” I asked.

“Several things.  Uneven pupil dilation might mean a concussion.  I’m also checking for hyphema.”

Lisa blinked.  “Hi-what?”

“Hyphema.  Blood trapped behind the cornea, the clear part of the eye that covers the iris.  If blood collects there, it could mean a detached cornea.”

She snapped off the light and squeezed Lisa’s shoulder.  “Don’t worry, I don’t see any serious signs.  Now, follow my finger with your eyes.  Good.  Keep watching it.”

Lisa tracked Sonja’s finger.  “How do you know so much about this stuff?”

“I was sort of a doctor, once.”

“Sort of a doctor?” I asked.  “How is it possible to be
sort of
a doctor?”

Sonja glared at me for a second.  “I don’t want to go into this right now.”

She turned back to Lisa.  “I’m going to have to touch your face,” she said.  “I need to check for fractures, especially around the cheekbones.  It’s going to hurt a little.”

Lisa sucked in a deep breath and held it.  “I’m ready.”

Sonja’s medical training was obviously a lot more extensive than my rusty first aid skills.

I didn’t want to stand over her shoulder, so I passed the time giving Lisa’s apartment the once-over.  What the exterior lacked in character, the interior more than made up for.  About half of the available wall space was covered by fake walnut shelves.  The shelves were packed with book chips and little ceramic figurines.

I looked around the room, skimming book chip titles.  Maybe a third of them were work-related: information systems theory, programming tutorials, that sort of thing.  The rest were erotic romance novels with titles like
Love’s Forbidden Journey
and
Stronger Pounds Thy Heart
.

The figurines turned out to be salt and pepper shakers in the shapes of animals, a lot of them extinct.  Two horses, two dogs, two elephants, two monkeys, two tigers, two turtles, two kangaroos, two of just about everything.  The pepper shaker giraffe had a cellophane tape bandage around his neck.

A corner of the front room was dominated by a work desk, complete with two computers and a massive stack of printer hardcopy.

Like the rest of the room, the desk was tidy.  What little clutter there was looked too carefully arranged to be accidental.  Something told me that it was pseudo-clutter, designed to relieve the impression of compulsive neatness.

“David.”

I turned around.

Sonja held out a clear plastic bag full of water.  “The ice is melted.  Find the refrigerator and get some more, please.”

I took the bag and went in search of the kitchen.  The apartment wasn’t big enough to hide it from me for long.

I opened the seal at the top of the plastic bag and poured the cold water down the sink.

My foot bumped against something on the floor, a blue plastic bowl.  There were two of them, both tucked halfway under the little eave where the bottom of the kitchen cabinets overhung the floor.  One of the bowls was empty, the other half full of water.

On the counter top by the sink was a strange looking plastic rack like the one my grandmother used to stack her dishes in to dry.

The refrigerator had one of those novelty voice boxes.  When I opened the door to the freezer, the box oinked like a pig and asked if I was eating again.

The ice maker was hidden behind four cardboard tubs of gourmet ice cream and a stack of dieter’s frozen dinners.

Why did Lisa bother with dieting at all?  If she got her DNA tweaked a little, she could eat anything she wanted and be skinny as a rail.  Was she allergic to viral DNA manipulation, like John?  Or was it something else?  A religious conviction, maybe?

Maggie had been that way about organ transplants.  She’d been born in New Canaan, a Luddite colony down around Oceanside.  One of those reclaim-the-Earth-smash-the-machines religious cults that lived like pioneers from the 1800’s, and tried to breed pollution resistant crops.

Her father was a lay-preacher, a real hellfire-and-brimstone type who firmly believed that he was destined to sit at the right hand of God.