Gumshoe Gorilla (34 page)

Doug stood fuming, red in the face. He knew I was right.

Charles looked at me.

"Mom, we're just saying that most parents don't try to live their lives through their children. You've got to..."

I cut him off with a laugh.

"Charles, that is absolute horse shit. 'Most parents'... Do you honestly think that 'most parents' ever achieve any of their life's dreams? Do you think they ever get to write the great American novel, or cure some great disease, or stop a war? Hell no! For most of them... OK, for most of us, the only thing that we give to this world, the only thing that we leave behind, is our children. We put more of our blood, our sweat, and our souls into raising you than into anything else we do in our entire lives. And you are fucking insane if you think that there is a parent out there who doesn't bask in the glow of their child's accomplishments, who doesn't take a little of the credit for giving such a gift to the world."

"Yeah, but mom, you've gotta admit that you..."

"Yes. OK. I admit it. I go a little further than 'most parents'. But who are you to complain about it? I scrimped and saved and sacrificed so that you would have everything. Would you like me to show you the scar from when I sold that kidney to buy your father's DNA? I made sure that you would have the best start anyone could: looks, and talent, and brains. And then later, an education, and connections, and opportunities to meet the right people. And I'm supposed to be sorry for that? Well I'm not gonna do it! I'm damn proud of raising you boys. And if I die tomorrow, at least I'll be able to look God in the eye, point to you boys and say 'There. There is the one thing I gave back to the world. And damn it, I think I deserve a little credit for it!"

Charles took a step back. Doug look stunned.

Wow. That had been a good speech. I'd have to use it in my memoirs. If only I'd been recording it. Now how did it start? "I know I've given you more than..."

Doug glared at me. Opened his mouth, but didn't say anything. Finally turned and walked out of the room. It was OK. I knew that he'd call in a day or two and apologize.

I looked back at Charles. He was sitting on the end of the bed, exchanging hand gestures with Skye. I watched the two of them signing back and forth for a while. It was kind of cute.

Hm. Maybe Charles was a bit craftier than I'd given him credit for. The whole signing thing, it was charming. And it would look great on TV. They just needed to do it somewhere that the reporters could catch it on video. Maybe a cafe. Or the theater. Of course, we'd have to do a little work on Skye first. Shave a little off the nose, add a little to the breasts. She could use my surgeon. Oh, and a decent haircut, of course. Who knows? After I finished my fairy godmother routine, she might just clean up into a princess.

And then... a wedding? Of course, what could be more perfect? Charles Rockland marries some poor little deaf girl. The newsites would eat it up!

I rang for the nurse. I needed to get dressed and out of this place. My publicist and I had a lot of work to do.

I walked back to the car, and found that the kitten was awake. At least, he seemed to be awake. It's hard to tell with something that young. His eyes were still closed, but his paws were batting the air, and his mouth was open. I got out the eye dropper, and he sucked down a few more spoonfuls of milk, then curled up in the towel. Which he'd peed on. Well, I could wash it when I got home.

I turned the car around and started the drive back. It would take me two and a half hours to reach the outskirts of Atlanta, so I decided to put the time to good use and tackle some of our other cases. You know, the ones we were actually being paid for.

First up, there was Ms. Hastings' investigation about the new son-in-law and his mysterious ex-wife who was in prison down in Mobile. It took three phone calls, a bit of sucking up to an overworked clerk, and a little fancy footwork around the prison rules, but I finally managed to get her on the phone. Nice lady. Real polite. Genuinely wanted to help. Only, she couldn't understand this whole Collin-getting-re-married thing, seeing as how he was still hitched to her.

Hm. That might put a kink in his honeymoon plans. Once I explained the situation, she was happy to provide me with a sample of her signature. Funny thing: it didn't match the one on the divorce papers that Cartwright had filed in Santa Monica last year.

Gotcha.

I thanked Brittany and asked if there was anything I could send her by way of a thank you. She said that prison food sucked, so anything edible would be good. After I hung up, I told Sherwin to put in an order for one of those gift baskets with dried fruit and stuff. I didn't think our client would complain about the expense. Then I added a quick summary of our conversation to the case file, and flagged it for Jen's attention. She could add the right mumbo-jumbo touch to the final report --tarot cards or astrology or whatever-- and send it along to the client.

After that, it was back to our other open case, Skye and her clone boyfriend. I called up a friend on the force, and managed to sweet talk her into running the license plate number of the car that Jen had tailed last night, the one that had picked up Charles behind the Ritz Carlton. It turned out that the mysterious black concordance was owned by "United Inter-Imaging Systems", a company that I'd never heard of. Not surprising, since a search of the web indicated that they don't do any advertising, sell any product, have any employees, or own a physical office anywhere. Hm. Someone was going out of their way to maintain their privacy. I tried the number that Rockland had dialed to summon the car, but got Bugs Bunny on voicemail again. A check of the number with the reverse directory turned up only the fact that it was unlisted. No big surprise there.

I hit the edge of Atlanta in the middle of rush hour, Luckily, I was going into the city and all the traffic was heading out to the suburbs. Half an hour later I pulled into the lot behind our office. I checked the kitten. It hadn't died yet, so I fed it a few more droppers of milk, and then wrapped it up in a fresh towel to carry it in. Who knows? Maybe the little thing would actually pull through. He was already looking a little better than he had this morning. I grabbed the cooler with the rest of the milk in it, and headed up to the office.

Our door was still set to read
Fortress Security.
I tucked the cooler under my arm and pressed my thumb against the lock plate, but there was no click. I tried again. Still nothing. I licked my thumb and wiped it off on my shirt, figuring that I must have gotten some dirt on it. But the lock still didn't click. Finally, I gave a tug on the knob, and the door swung open without resistance.

At this point, I noticed two things. The first was the bolt that normally holds the door shut. It had been sawed neatly in two. The second was the woman standing in our office. She was tall, around six feet, in black pants and a black shirt. And she was wearing a clown mask. Jen's clown mask, to be exact. She must have grabbed it off the desk when she heard me coming in. It was the surgical gloves, though, which convinced me that this was not a social call.

I smiled, whipped out my special issue desert eagle .44 magnum with the laser sight and extended magazine, and said,

"Well, we can do this the easy way, or the hard way."

Or at least, that's what I would have done if I was like the PIs in the movies. Me, I don't even carry a gun. Haven't since I left the force. They have this annoying habit of making holes in people. So the woman and I just stood there, looking at each for a few seconds. I was holding a half-dead cat in one hand, and a cooler full of milk in the other. Neither seemed like much of a weapon. Apparently, she'd reached the same conclusion.

She came at me fast. I made a quick decision between the cooler and the cat, and tossed the cooler at her. I thought it might distract her, but no luck. She batted it out of the way without even slowing down, then tagged me with some kind of kick that I'd only seen before in Japanese video games. It caught me on the side of the face with a sound like a whip cracking. Luckily, the move turned out to be long on style but short on real impact. It stung like hell and left me with a ringing in my ear, but didn't take me out of the fight.

I tried to return the favor with an uppercut to her chin, but my right hand was full of kitten, and my left isn't as fast. She ducked down and knocked my feet out from under me with some sort of spinning leg sweep. I landed on my back with a thud.

Now, at this point, a smart guy would have realized that he was no match for Bozo the Ninja clown. A smart guy would have stayed down and let her get away.

Unfortunately, I'm just not that bright.

The only advantage I had was position. OK, being flat on your back isn't usually the tactical high ground in a fight, but at least I was blocking the doorway. As she leapt over me to make her escape, I managed to grab one of her feet. She tripped, and went face down into the hallway linoleum with a very satisfying "smack".

I held onto that foot. She tried to squirm away, but couldn't get any purchase on the slick floor. Slowly, I pulled her towards me. She kicked with her free leg, but couldn't see what she was doing and only managed to bruise my shoulder. If I could just get close enough to rip that mask off her...

Suddenly, the other shoe dropped. Or to be more precise, it came off in my hand.

Free of my grip, she flipped over to face me and aimed a kick that caught me right between the eyes. My head jerked back and the world exploded into red.

I blinked, trying to keep my eyes on her. But by the time my vision cleared, she was up on her feet and running down the hall. Only...

Only now she had a tail. And pointy ears. And a black leather cat suit.

She reached the corner and glanced back at me. She was still wearing the clown mask, but her whiskers were poking through it now. She meowed once, cracked her whip, and was gone.

It took me a second to remember where I had seen this all before.

Oh. So that's what was going on.

I shook my head. Nothing came loose, which I figured was a good sign. I looked around. The rest of the world seemed normal. No talking animals. No cartoon characters coming out of the walls. I hadn't slipped over the edge completely. Just one garden variety hallucination. Happens when you get hit on the head too much. Nothing to panic about.

I stood up and did a quick inventory of damaged body parts. Nothing broken or severed, which I knew my HMO would be glad to hear. In the doorway, I found the kitten lying where I had dropped it when I landed on my back. It was awake, and didn't seem to be any the worse for wear. Guess life had already taught it to expect a few hard knocks.

The woman's shoe was still lying in the hall. I picked it up and looked it over. It was black, like everything else she wore. I suppose I could have pulled a Prince Charming and asked all the eligible young women in Atlanta to line up and try the thing on, but that seemed kinda time consuming. And besides, I already knew who she was.

The reason I knew was... well, that's kind of a long story that involves crazy Cherokee and totems and this time that she and I broke into the High Museum of Art together. I'd rather not try to explain it.

My phone rang.