He said, “When you find whoever did it, let me have a crack at them. I’ll inflict injuries my avatar hasn’t even been programmed for.”
“Touché.”
Calico had an apartment off Powell, in a run-down complex up around 120th. Sitting in my Willys Jeep outside, I kept an eye on the complex, watching her enter the building in the company of a roughly cute twentyish guy of the black T-shirt set, his shorts ending down around his shins, a chain loop dangling from one pocket. The stocking cap over his dark curlicues was a pointless gesture in this heat and made him look like an idiot. But Calico obviously had no problem with it as the two snuggled arm in arm.
As evening fell, I chowed fast food, trying to decipher the tailgate of a pickup parked in front of me, adorned with a Jesus fish that had swallowed a Star of David. Burger grease dripped onto my jeans, making me bounce and curse a blue streak. That stuff is hell to wash out, ruining a perfectly good pair of True Religions. I’d often thought about wearing thrift-store duds on recon, but my vanity precluded such sound rationale. By the time I looked up from trying to dab out the grease spot, Calico and Stocking Cap were climbing into an old VW with mismatched paint, she driving.
As the VW chattered down the block, I shoved the Willys in gear and took off after.
They drove a couple miles, sticking to the Southeast side, pulling over at a little one-story job with a weed-choked lawn. The open garage door spilled light onto the cracked drive. Rolling past, I managed to side-eye a drum set in the corner of the garage, near a wall of hanging tools.
I parked halfway up the block. Sat for a few minutes and waited.
Then I heard the sound.
It slammed into my ears without warning, a pounding, crying, screeching sonic boom. Like the noise a drunk driver might cause mowing down a marching band at ninety miles per hour, complete with bloodcurdling wail of the entire horn section crumpled in the street, legs snapped in compound fractures.
I got out of the Jeep and walked toward the house, face scrunched, legs not willing to take me into the abyss.
Stopping at the end of the drive, I kept one hand over an ear, not much help. Calico twanged bass licks while Stocking Cap pounded the skins like a serial killer whose modus operandi involved bashing heads with ball-peen hammers. The singer doubled as lead guitarist; he should’ve picked one or the other, his reach far outdistancing his grasp. Sweat glued his long hair to his cheeks as he wailed indecipherable lyrics.
The sound waves tickled my face. Shouting, I couldn’t even hear my own voice over the roar. The band didn’t stop playing until the song was finished, many moons for yours truly.
Calico swung her gaze my way. “What did you say?”
“I said, do your neighbors ever complain about the noise?”
The singer answered in a voice much higher than the gravel his vocal cords produced while ‘singing.’ “As long as we stop by midnight, they’re cool.”
“Tolerant people.”
“Or they like good music,” Stocking Cap sneered.
“That’s your spin.” I tore a flyer off the guitar case leaning against the garage wall. The bright blue paper shouted: Friday Nite at the Rue Morgue! 8 PM! The War Kittens! The graphics showed four silhouettes, cat people wielding weapons.
“The War Kittens? That’s you guys?”
The singer nodded, surly.
Me: “Sounds like something out of a Zelazny novel.”
The singer: “Who?”
Me: “Never mind. How come there’s four of you on the flyer but only three of you here?”
The singer again: “Had to cut one loose, baby. Call it a clash of personalities.”
“Call me ‘baby’ again and I’ll show you a real clash of personalities.”
He shrugged.
Calico tipped her head toward the hairy singer. “That’s Manx.”
“Why, because he lost his tail?”
“’Cause my last name’s Manxman—” As if wanting to add an insult directed at me, he smartly cut himself short.
Calico pointed at Stocking Cap. “That’s Rex. A Rex is a type of cat, too. They have curly fur.”
“And high body temps,” said Rex, twirling his sticks, “Because I’m so hot.” He pounded a quick solo, not without its licks but still whiffing of amateur.
“A rim shot would have sufficed,” I offered.
“And I’m Calico,” she said.
“Because you’re mixed race,” I surprised her. “Donny told me.”
“You know Donny?”
“Met him this morning. Helping him out with the Gamera situation.”
Rex rolled his eyes. “Not that freakin’ turtle again!”
“It’s a tortoise,” I said.
“Whatever. I just don’t see what the big deal is.”
“You think it’s okay for someone to abuse an animal?”
“It’s not like it’s a kid or something.”
“Cool it, Rex,” Calico seemed irritated by his attitude.
“Cops already asked us about this,” sneered Manx. “You’re not a cop, are you?”
“Just a friend of Donny’s. Like you, Calico.”
She lowered her eyes. “I haven’t talked to him since last year—”
“That’s all over,” Rex cut her off.
To Calico I said, “If you want to tell me the history — in private — leave me a message at Rossa’s Coffee Shack. You guys too, if you can think of anything that’ll help me with the Gamera thing.”
Rex scowled. Manx tightened guitar strings.
I nodded and turned to go. “By the way, what are the War Kittens at war with?”
Manx lifted his proud chin. “Conventional rock ’n’ roll.”
“You certainly are.”
Providence Portland up on N.E. Glisan dominated a neighborhood of middle-class homes and shops; the new Center of Hope cancer clinic towered next to it. Between light clouds, sun broke through to warm the manicured grounds.
I’ve been to hospitals with metal detectors, but Center of Hope doesn’t have one. Not yet, anyway. As if patients don’t have enough to worry about being sliced and diced in the name of healing, we have to add the possibility some nutball might sneak a firearm in with deadly intent. Problem is, if said nutball’s intent is potent, he’ll get the gun in, believe it. In terms of true safety, a metal detector is about as effective as trying to stop a spiked mace ball with a slice of cheddar.
At one point during my elevator ride, the doors opened and I heard a patient moaning somewhere like a gutshot bear. I got off on the seventh floor, where family members delivering flowers traversed the halls, dodging nurses in colorful scrubs.
In the infusion clinic, a wall of windows looked out on pinetops reaching to touch passing clouds, hungry for water. Eight or ten black leather recliners lined the walls. In each sat a patient hooked to an IV: a thin, sixtyish man with his feet up, asleep; a Filipino woman with a scarf around her balding head laughing with a friend; a middle-aged woman with a pasty face and garish red wig puzzling over a crossword, chewing pencil eraser.
In a corner chair near the window, Donny’s head lolled back, mouth open, napping. I flagged a nurse checking IV bags but before she could respond, a young woman sidled up next to me, her hair cut in a short bob with faint stripes of green still visible from an earlier visit to the salon. Her eyes were the color of sea foam and her hospital scrubs had Scooby-Doo on them with a nametag: TABIE CASSIL.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“You a nurse?”
She chuckled. “No, just a volunteer. I’ve only been here a few weeks.”
“I thought you seemed a little young. I’m here to see Donny, if that’s okay. I’m a friend of his mom’s.”
“Karen? I know her. It should be cool, but he’s probably tired. Varla? Donny okay?”