Sidekick Returns (3 page)

‘Seriously?' I shouted back. ‘Seriously!' He gave me the finger as the van sped away.

I slumped over to a brick wall and collapsed against it, giving myself a second to rest before the cops arrived.

That had not gone well.

In fact, you could say it had gone badly.

I shut my eyes and rocked my head back and forth. Well, at least it was over now. The evening could only get better. I had a date. Well, not a date, technically, but still, an information-sharing dinner with a wonderful, handsome reporter. It was time to lick my wounds. Maybe let him l—

Suddenly my cell phone rang.

I squeezed my eyes shut even tighter.

What were the odds this was good news? Given the few people who had this number, I imagined not great. I pulled the phone from my belt and cracked one eye open to see the number.

Not great at all.

I spun around the corner to the street while I pulled the phone up to my ear.

‘Hey, Mr Pushkin,' I said, trying to put a smile in my voice. ‘What's going on?'

Chapter 3

This was a bad part of town. Even for a person like me, who was looking for bad parts of town. Rundown brick buildings crowded me on either side, and while the streets were nearly empty, I knew people, most likely scary people, lurked all around. TV machine guns blasted from apartment windows, hidden couples screamed at one another, and, I swear, I heard at least one cat screech. Luckily, nobody had harassed me … at least not yet. I was still feeling a little shaken. I didn't have time to change to see Pushkin, not if I was going to make my date on time, but I had found a windbreaker lying on the sidewalk, which did something to cover my secret identity. As an added benefit, its loud eighties colours probably made a few would-be attackers weigh their options heavily. Nobody wanted to tangle with a woman dressed in eighties fashion.

None of this, however, helped me shake the feeling I was being followed. That was happening a lot lately. Call me paranoid, but I was starting to believe my father was having me tailed. I didn't know why exactly—beyond his generally being evil—but I had a few theories. As I said, a couple of months ago, I had jumped off the lap of luxury to make it on my own. Believe me, I wouldn't have done it without good reason. I had an identical twin sister, Jenny, back home. Leaving her was the hardest thing I had ever done. At the time, I reasoned that I needed to get on my feet before I could tell her why I left and bring her with me. She had special needs—the wheelchair was the biggest issue—so it seemed the wise thing to do. I had never kept any secrets from my sister before, and my leaving without telling her the reason why drove a big ol' wedge in our relationship. If I had told her, however, that our father had killed our mother—or allowed her to kill herself with a biological weapon he had designed—well, I really doubted she would have wanted to continue to live with him, and, as I said, she had a lot of special needs that I couldn't afford to accommodate back then—actually, still couldn't. All solid logic if you ask me. But she took it badly, and I still hadn't had the chance to tell her the truth. In the meantime, she had been allowing my billionaire father with his cutting-edge technology at St. James Industries to experiment on her, seemingly
curing
her. I'd tell her the truth now, if she'd give me the chance, but we hadn't had any contact since she flew my father away—in a helicopter, no less—from the penitentiary where he had planned to unleash a computerised zombie army of inmates on the city as a sales demonstration to the world's most notorious terrorists. So now I wasn't sure if my father was trying to kill me as revenge, kidnap me for safekeeping, or drive me insane by having me followed. And Jenny was flying helicopters. Freaking helicopters! Suddenly I tripped over what looked to be half a honey-glazed ham fused onto the sidewalk. Story of my new life.

It wasn't all bad though. Once I got through this meeting with my psychopathic mobster landlord, Mischa Pushkin, I could go home and get ready for my information-sharing dinner with reporter, and all around nice guy, Pierce Stricklin. We had so many things to discuss, and if I played my cards right, I hoped one of them would be the colour of his bedsheets. We certainly wouldn't be discussing mine. I didn't have any. I had a thin quilt on my cot by the toilet. In fairness to the architect, my apartment was walk-in closet size. Everything was by the toilet. I stood before the address Mr Pushkin had given me over the phone, taking it in.

Two by fours crisscrossed the storefront windows, light beaming through from the cracks. Heavy laughter and music swelled from inside. Great. I grabbed the rusty handle and pulled the door open.

Instantly, I was lost in a thick cloud of smoke. I coughed and waved a hand in front of my face. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to get a hold of the sting so that I could open them enough to see what was going on. When I finally did get my vision back, it only took half a second before I shut my eyes again. It hadn't been a good sight. Maybe the next time I opened my eyes all of the mobsters sitting around tables drinking and playing cards would be gone, and there would be a … pony, munching on clover, perhaps. I slowly opened my eyes again.

Nope, no pony.

I smiled weakly at the forty or so men giving me the death glare.

‘Um, hi?'

Nobody answered.

‘Maybe I'm in the wrong place,' I said, turning and pointing back to the door. ‘I'm just going to go.'

Yeah, Mr Pushkin might be upset, but he couldn't kill me if he couldn't find me. And if I stayed here, there wouldn't be much left for him to torture anyway. I pulled the door open quickly and—

‘Little Bremy!'

My shoulders dropped in defeat. So close. I let the door swing shut and turned back to face the room of terror.

There stood Mr Pushkin, all six thousand feet of him, in the middle of the tables, arms outstretched in welcome.

‘Hi, Mr Pushkin.'

‘I been doing the waiting and waiting!' He waved a hand for me to come to a table at the back. ‘Come. Come.'

My eyes darted around the tables for the best route. These men did not look like the types who would be happy to scooch in. I pulled my windbreaker tight around my body and began to weave my way through the maze of chair legs.

I had almost made it, but with my rear tucked in tight to pivot around one seated gentleman, I lost my balance and pitched forward, landing with my hands smack on a table. My nose stopped about two inches from a man's face, very large and meaty. As my eyes widened, his smile spread, revealing some awfully yellow teeth. Thick breath ripe with the smell of beer wafted over my cheeks.

I guess a look came over my face because the man said, ‘What?'

‘Oh, it's nothing,' I answered quickly.

‘What?' he demanded, with at least two more degrees of scary.

‘I don't know. It's stupid,' I stammered. ‘I guess part of me was expecting you to be drinking vodka.'

He pushed his face closer into mine, locking my still widening eyes with his own. ‘And I was expecting bigger boobies,' he said, raising a hand and making what looked to be a
honk honk
squeezing motion. ‘Or maybe hoping. Hoping is the word.'

Laughter erupted around me. ‘Gentlemen! Gentlemen!' Mr Pushkin's voice called out from behind me. ‘Leave little Bremy alone. She's good girl. Bad tenant. But good girl.'

I straightened, unable to take my eyes from the man's yellow teeth until I had reached a safe distance. I then quickly shuffled over to Mr Pushkin and huddled in the chair he had pulled out for me. He folded his monstrous body into another chair before looking up, huge smile on his face.

‘Little Bremy.'

‘Mr Pushkin.'

‘Please, call me Mischa.'

Nope. That wasn't going to happen.

‘What happened to your nose?'

My nose? I brought one hand up to my face. Oh yeah, I guess I had scraped it back when I kissed the pavement in the alley. ‘Oh … nothing … a pigeon fell on me.'

He nodded. ‘It happens. The pigeons these days … so lazy. They never want to fly.'

I squinted my eyes. ‘Um … right.'

A moment of silence passed between us.

I broke first.

‘Mr Pushkin, if this is about the rent, I thought Mr Raj had made some sort of arrangement so that the majority of my pay would go directly to you first.' Mr Raj, my psychopathic boss and owner of The Pink Beaver. In one of my more dangerous life decisions—which was saying something—I had agreed to basically what amounted to indentured servitude over at the strip club in order to pay my rent. Both men were terrifying, but I guess Mr Pushkin had that little extra something that made me want to pay him first. It wasn't the sixth finger he had on his right hand that was now tapping the table. Or the fluorescent green marble he had rolling around in one of his eye sockets. I was cool with differences. I think it was the crazy. Yup, definitely the crazy. And not the kind you'd find in a textbook. ‘If you haven't received the m—'

He stopped me with a wave of his hand. ‘No, little Bremy, that is not why I called you here.'

My shoulders relaxed half a second before they shot up even higher. If it wasn't the rent, why the hell was I here?

‘You see, I like you, little Bremy.'

‘No, no you don't.' The words were out before I could stop them.

He pointed a bratwurst-sized finger at me. ‘See! Right there. You are funny girl.'

‘No. No, I'm not.'

‘And … what is that word?'

‘Reckless?'

‘No,' he said, shaking his head.

‘Irresponsible?'

‘No. No.'

‘Unable to appreciate the obvious dangers of terrifying situations before going into them?'

‘No, no, not that either,' he said, bringing his finger to his chin. Suddenly he poked the same finger in the air. ‘Humble!'

I sighed.

‘And helpful. So very helpful.' He stopped speaking and spent a good moment just smiling and nodding at me. ‘That is why I asked you here. I need favour.'

Suddenly the entire room swayed like I was on a ship, in a storm, about to go under. ‘You see, little Bremy—'

Just then, a small man in a leather jacket scuttled up to Pushkin's side. He held a finger up for me to wait as the little man whispered in his ear. ‘Excellent!' Pushkin boomed. ‘Bring him here!'

My eyes followed the little man as he scuttled away behind a door.

‘Two favours. Little Bremy.' I watched as Mr Pushkin waved to a new man, emerging from the same doorway the small one had disappeared through. He was physically unremarkable in every way, but that was hard to see right off the bat, given all the piercings. Ears, eyebrows, lips, nose … not a single feature escaped the jab of metal.

‘Bremy, meet Andrei.'

The pincushion looked at me with dead eyes briefly, before sitting down.

‘Andrei, he is true artist,' Mr Pushkin said leaning back and adjusting his belt. ‘He makes all my eyes.'

With that, Andrei placed a box that vaguely resembled a ring case onto the table. I took a steadying breath.

Mr Pushkin tilted his head back and used the fingers on his right hand to spread his eyelid open. ‘Bremy, show me your hands.'

‘Um—'

He slapped the table hard. ‘Show me your hands, or I kill you.'

A strangled yelp escaped my lips.

Mr Pushkin laughed and looked at Andrei, eye socket still pried open with his fingers. ‘She's so cute, this Bremy. Always falling for the I kill you bit.' Andrei nodded solemnly. ‘I would never kill you here, Bremy. Too much blood. Carpets, you know.'

‘Of course.'

‘Now, please, show me your hands.'

I slowly unclenched my fists and held out my hands as though I were about to have my fortune read.

‘Good,' Mr Pushkin said. ‘Hold this.' He plopped his fluorescent green eyeball onto my left palm. I knew he was going to do that! Now, I am not the type to get all weird about body stuff. In fact, growing up, people's squeamishness about my sister's disabilities really bothered me, but there was a time and place for this sort of thing … and the eyeball was really warm … and wet.

Mr Pushkin snapped open the little box, plucked out the new eyeball, and seemingly tossed it back into his head. He squeezed both eyes tightly shut for a moment, before opening them with a snap.

My jaw hit the floor.

The eye was made of bright red glass, and instead of a pupil, a silver skull glared out at the world.

‘What do you think?'

I gulped. ‘Horrifying.'

‘Good! This is good!' he boomed, smiling brightly. ‘Andrei, you go back and see Sergei. He will pay you what we discussed.' He then pointed his finger at him just as he was getting to his feet. ‘What we discussed, Andrei. You ask for one penny more. I kill you.'

He nodded.

‘Really kill you. Not like joke before. Kill you outside. Proper way.'

Andrei nodded again. As he walked away, Mr Pushkin whispered, ‘Do you think he believed me? I was serious this time.'

I nodded quickly.

‘Ah, I never know.' He slammed both hands down on the table, making his old eyeball jump in my hand. ‘Now Bremy, the favour.'

‘Two favours,' I corrected, before mentally slapping myself on the back of the head.

‘One is already done. I needed woman's opinion on the eye,' he said. ‘Now favour two.'

I so badly wanted to say,
Why should I do you a favour?
But I knew he would have an answer to that question, and it probably involved me losing a body part. I really needed to find a new apartment. ‘Actually, do not think of errand as favour to me,' he said, placing his fingertips on his chest. ‘Think of it as favour to you.' Oh, I did not like the sound of that at all.

‘You see, little Bremy, I have been thinking about you. I have special interest. I know job at Pink Beaver is not going well.'