Lowball: A Wild Cards Novel (46 page)

People were staring. Wally gave a guilty shrug, then headed at a fast walk toward the Jerusha Carter Childhood Development Institute. He glanced at his watch again. The fast walk became a jog. The pounding of his iron feet left a trail of cracks in the sidewalk.

Things would have been so much easier if he could take the subway. But sometimes it got crowded, and when that happened people got shoved up against him, and when that happened the seams and rivets of his iron skin could hurt folks. Didn’t matter how careful he was.

As he passed the Van Renssaeler Memorial Clinic, a flash of yellow caught Wally’s attention. He paused at the entrance to the Institute, his hand resting on the door. A boxy three-wheeled cart turned the corner a few blocks up. It was painted blue and white like a police car and had a yellow strobe on top. The cart puttered along the row of parked cars. It eased to a stop alongside a Volkswagen. The driver strutted out, brandishing a ticket pad. A dishwater blond ponytail poked from the brim of her hat.

Wally sighed. “Aw, rats. Not her again.”

Ghost hadn’t yet finished her counseling session when he arrived. She sat cross-legged on the floor in one of the glassed-in side rooms along the courtyard, talking to one of the Institute’s child psychologists. The doc saw Wally but kept her attention on Ghost. Wally’s foster daughter didn’t see him. He tiptoed away.

Ghost had resisted the counseling for quite a while; it had been a relief for all involved when she started engaging with the teachers and staff at the Institute. For the longest time she trusted only one adult, and that adult was Wally. He’d rescued her from the life of a child soldier in the People’s Paradise of Africa, where she had been an experiment: infected, traumatized, brainwashed, trained to kill. But she was also a little girl who liked Legos, Dr. Seuss, and peanut-butter-and-mango sandwiches.

More and more, she was a little girl. But traces of the soldier remained. And probably always would.

A few of her classmates played in the courtyard. They shouted and waved at Wally. He knew most of them; he and Ghost had been coming here since before the Institute opened. There was little Cesar, whom he’d known as long as Ghost, and who faced similar counseling issues; Moto, the boy who exhaled searing gouts of flame when he got excited, or frightened, or a case of the hiccups; Allen, whose mother and father were both in jail; Jo, who always wore the top half of a cow costume and refused to say anything except “Moo” and “Dickwad.” Some of the children had come from Africa, like Moto and Cesar, though not with Wally. Others had come to the Institute in the intervening years.

The world was full of troubled kids. But you couldn’t save them all. Wally had learned that the hard way. No matter how much he wanted to, he couldn’t forget the smell of the mass grave in Nyunzu, where his pen pal had been murdered. Failing Lucien was the worst thing he had ever done. The shame made Wally so sad and angry that sometimes he wanted to punch the whole world.

He swallowed the stone in his throat and waved to the kids. “Howdy,” he said.

An immense baobab tree shaded the sandbox. Wally laid a hand on its bark. “Hi, you,” he whispered. The surrounding building shielded the tree from wind, but sometimes it seemed as though the leaves rustled in response to his greeting. The baobab smelled of rain, and jungle, and a lost friend. It made Wally smile, but it also made him feel lonely. Sometimes it felt like his ribs were still shattered, pushing spurs of bone to pierce his heart. But he tried not to let it show.

Wally knelt in the sandbox. “So what kind of trouble are you guys getting into today?”

“Moo,” said Jo. Her cotton cow ears flopped up and down. “Dickwad. Moo.”

“She says she’s glad you’re back,” said Cesar. “I’m moving to Brooklyn!” he added. “I’m going to have a room and my own bed and everything. And they even said I could have a birthday party! You’ll come, right?”

“Heck yeah, pal. We wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

Moto sniffled. His tears wafted across the courtyard like smoke from an extinguished candle. Wally put an arm around him. The heat from his breath seeped into Wally’s skin, conducting through the metal across his back and sides, to soothe an old surgery scar/weld. It felt good.

The poor kid didn’t get many hugs. Wally also knew, from what Ghost told him, that Moto had been bounced from his third foster home. Another accidental bedroom fire. His foster parents lacked the patience to sleep in shifts.

“Hey,” he said. “You know what Ghost asked me the other day? She asked if we could throw a party for your birthday. Would you like that?”

The sniffles trailed off. “Really?”

“Well sure, why not?”

Moto hugged him again. Wally made a mental note to buy another fire extinguisher.

When Wally sifted his fingers through the sand they came back covered with random phrases: “The joy a.” “A rainbow it axe.” “Shadow the the running barn to under.” A few days earlier another foster parent had brought a set of refrigerator poetry magnets for the kids’ message board. At least half of these were already scattered in the sand.

Wally didn’t understand poetry. He didn’t read much.

Allen saw the magnets stuck to his iron fingers and tossed the letter “H” at his chest. It stuck with a muted
click
. Wally could feel the tug of the magnet through his coveralls, like a faint buzzing in the rivets of his sternum.

“Gosh,” he said. “That tickles.”

Moto saw what Allen had done and flung a handful of magnets and sand at Wally’s shoulder. He blinked the sand out of his eyes to see the letters “R,” “G,” and the word “cattle” stuck to his forearm. Moto covered his mouth when he giggled; little tongues of flame fluttered through his fingers. Then Jo got into the act. Wally lay sprawled in the sand while the kids climbed over him. Laughter and the stink of melted plastic filled the courtyard.

Wally had to pluck the magnets from his scalp a couple of times. They made his head feel funny, like he had a mild fever, or as if his brain were stuffed with cotton. The game went for a few more minutes until Ghost’s session ended. Her therapist followed her into the courtyard.

“Moo,” said Jo.

“Hi, Ghost,” said Cesar.

“Huh,” Ghost said, and shrugged.

The therapist beckoned to Wally. He rolled gently to his feet, careful not to pinch little fingers or toes under his bulk. He hugged Ghost just as gently, but more firmly.

“How was your day? I broke another parking meter.”

She shrugged, and then became insubstantial to pull away from his hug. She floated to the sandbox, toes dangling an inch above the ground, before settling to earth alongside Allen. It had been a while since she’d been so withdrawn. Wally wondered if he’d find her standing over his bed in the middle of the night with a knife in her hands, like the haunted little girl he’d met in the jungle.

“Okey-dokey. You guys just hang out for a sec,” said Wally. He followed the doctor into a cloister alongside the courtyard. “What’s going on, Doc?”

The psychiatrist wore her hair pulled back, and the scarf around her neck matched her earrings. She looked fancy, like somebody on
TV
. Her name tag read “Dr. Miranda.” She shook her head.

“Yerodin threatened a classmate with a pair of scissors today.” Yerodin was Ghost’s real name. All the adults at the Institute used it, but she hated it when Wally called her that.

“Awww, cripes,” said Wally. He ran a hand over his face and added “new bedspread” to the mental shopping list, just under “fire extinguisher.” “How come?”

“She’s been acting up all week. Since we told the children that Mr. Richardson was ill.”

Wally remembered Richardson. Ghost talked about him a lot. He taught math, and sometimes he gave the kids rides on his carapace. He could fit three or four of them on the flat of his back, between pairs of detachable legs. He kind of reminded Wally of Dr. Finn, except more like a bug than a horse. He also told really corny jokes, which Ghost loved.

“Well that’s a bummer. What’s he sick with?”

Dr. Miranda lowered her voice. “That’s what we told the children, but he hasn’t called in sick. N-nobody has seen him since last Friday.”

Wally said, “She’s been doing real good at home, you know. Real good.”

“Well, she wasn’t today. She still reverts to using sharp objects when she feels angry or frustrated.”

“Okay. I’ll have a talk with her.” Wally frowned. “Will this affect the adoption?”

She started to answer, but then her face crumpled into a scowl a second before Jo started to bawl.

“Dick
WAAAD
!”

Wally turned just in time to see Ghost, scissors in hand, stuffing a trophy in her pocket: a cotton cow ear from Jo’s costume. The sobbing girl didn’t pull away when Ghost pulled the second ear taut and opened the scissors.

Wally vaulted the cloister railing. He crossed the courtyard in one hard stride. But rather than pulling Ghost away, or lifting Jo out of reach, he gave the blades a gentle flick of his finger. They dissolved into a fine orange mist. Ghost floated away.

“Cripes, kid,” he called after her.

Wally spent a few minutes consoling Jo. “Don’t you worry. We’ll fix your ears right up. You’ll hear good as new, okay?” Wally couldn’t sew. But maybe he and Ghost could learn together. That sounded like a good idea.

“Moo,” said Jo between sniffles. “Moo … moo…”

Wally found Ghost with Dr. Miranda. Silently, they packed up her teddy-bear backpack, plastic bag of dry cereal, and Dr. Seuss book. The doctor gave Wally a Look as he led Ghost down the corridor. His feet left deep imprints in the carpet, but not as low as Jo probably felt.

He said, “That was a pretty crummy thing you did.”

“I don’t care,” said Ghost. “She’s dumb. I hate her.”

“No you don’t. She’s your friend. Remember the time I forgot to pack your juice and she shared hers with you?”

“No.”

“Really? I know a guy, an ace like us, and he can tell if somebody is lying or not. But when he does it to you, it feels like having a hundred spiders crawling all over your body.” Ghost shrugged. She’d spent a lot of time in the jungle. Creepy-crawlies didn’t bother her. “But they don’t bite like normal spiders. No. You know why? Because … they …
tickle
!”

Wally reached for her, careful to miss as she squealed and danced away. She took his hand as they stepped outside. Good. Maybe she’d open up a little bit.

Ghost stopped to stare at the flashing lights when they reached the street. The meter maid’s cart flanked Wally’s dented Impala. She pointed at Wally’s car, then at the parking meter, while two more police officers listened.

One of the cops was a petite woman. Her tag read “Officer Moloka.” Her partner was a huge hairy guy who towered over Wally. With his wolf snout and long black claws, he looked like a drawing in one of Ghost’s books.

“Uh-oh,” said Wally.

The hairy guy, Officer Bester, nodded to him. “Hi, Rustbelt.” Ghost giggled at his deep voice.

Most of the 5th Precinct knew Wally by sight.
NYPD
sometimes provided security for Committee events in the city. Wally didn’t recognize the officers, but he waved anyway. “Howdy.”

The meter maid wheeled on him, red-faced and sweating. “You! Why can’t you park like a normal person?”

“I’m real sorry about that meter. Did you get my note?”

“Your note? This is—” She pointed at the broken meter so strenuously that she had to grab her hat with her other hand. “—destruction of city property!”

“Yeah. Those things aren’t cheap, Rusty,” said Officer Moloka.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t you know it’s illegal…” The meter maid trailed off. “What is that on your face?”

Wally’s fingertips scraped along his jaw and forehead. He found a blue plastic “E” stuck to his left ear, and the word “barrel” over his right eyebrow.

“You really want us to take him in, Darcy?” asked the furry cop.

The parking lady seemed ready to choke. Ghost hid behind Wally’s legs. “He—the—it’s—city property, and he’s a repeat offender! This is how it starts, the death of the city. First it’s jaywalking and littering, then it’s people ramming parking meters just for fun, and then it’s a short slide to lawless anarchy. This,” she said, again gesticulating at the destroyed meter, “is the bellwether of the decline of a civil society!”

The policewoman sighed and crossed her arms. Her partner leaned over to look at Wally’s license plates. “Diplomatic plates. If we issue a citation they’ll just appeal and have it rescinded.”

“He does this on purpose. He’s hiding behind his job!”

“Oh. You mean them fancy plates? I didn’t even want those,” said Wally. “But Lohengrin insisted.”

He was trying to agree, but that only seemed to make the meter maid—Darcy—more angry. Or, at least, the color of her face turned a darker red.

She said, “Do you see what I mean? Practically boasting about his ability to flout the law. And he does! Broken windshield, broken taillight, parking beyond the allotted length of time at a broken meter, destruction of city property.”

“Write him up if you want,” said Officer Moloka, “but we can’t walk him down to the precinct. First, I don’t want to be the one who has to explain to the chief why the
UN
is breathing on the mayor who’s breathing on him. And second, he’s got his kid with him.” She winked at Ghost.

The meter maid flipped open her pad and clicked her pen. Officer Bester said, “Your funeral, Darcy.”

“I’m doing my job.” She started to fill out the ticket, paused, and waved her pen at the cops. “And I’m going to find that van, too.”

“Whoa, whoa. No.” Officer Moloka shook her head and waved her hands as if trying to fend off somebody with bad breath. “Those guys are dangerous. They won’t balk at hurting a meter maid—”

“Parking enforcement officer!”

“—and they won’t be intimidated by a parking ticket.”

“Yeah,” said Officer Bester. “If you see them, call the cops.”

“I
am
a cop.”

The other police officers waved good-bye to Ghost and returned to patrolling their beat. The hairy one turned around and made a face at Ghost. She giggled.