Or if I did make them, didn’t keep them to myself?
Work is work. You do what you have to.
Or you do what you want to—sometimes it’s both.
“You can do it, then?” Elizabeth asked as I tapped a bronze nail against an empty glass and pondered the cost of paper umbrellas or little flamingo swizzle sticks. I switched my attention back to her and hid my irritation.
Could I do it?
That wasn’t a question. That was an insult. Of course I could do it. I simply had to figure out the most intriguing way to achieve it. “Oh, honey, you wound me with your doubts.” I forgot the glass, beamed at her, and put my fingers in my hair to give it a wild shake. It was good for getting the brain going. “It’ll cost you, though. Seventy-five thousand. No bargaining, no haggling. Payment on delivery. And it goes without saying, I hope, that I do a cash-only business.” Rich people like Elizabeth had forgotten about the quaint custom of haggling. They bought what they wanted and never cared about the price. I stopped bargaining with them a long time ago. They weren’t good enough at it to make it entertaining. Elizabeth had been rich long enough that while she hadn’t forgotten about it, she was disgusted by it. She thought herself too high and mighty, too good for the likes of that sort of thing now. Shame.
I guessed we couldn’t be friends after all.
“I’ll call you in a week.” I straightened from the less-than-ladylike slouch my mama had never been able to correct me of and stood to walk Elizabeth to the door, our herd of tall heels castanets on the floor. “It shouldn’t take longer than that.” Not to mention giving her time to gather up the money. Rich or not, or rich but not for much longer—either way it was hard to gather that sort of cash at a moment’s notice. Unless you’re keeping your money in a mattress, banks get possessive and are closefisted about handing someone seventy-five thousand dollars in cash. Write a check for a sports car if you want—intangible money—but handing over the real thing, stained with invisible blood and dirty with greed? They didn’t like that. They were suspicious. Why would you possibly need that much real-world money? For something illegal? For someone like me?
Banks. Hate ’em or hate ’em, they could smell illegal a mile away—when they weren’t the ones behind it. I gave respect where it was due.
“You’re certain about this?” Elizabeth had opened the spigot on her charisma again, and it was flowing like Niagara. Hopeful eyes, skin paled anxiety white as her diamonds, shoulders braced against a no—she was a living, breathing plea. See? All those naughty things society frowned upon, sins that crawled out of her mouth with snapping jaws and a thousand poisonous legs to pull you in, they were tucked away again as if they’d never been. She was good as gold as ever she’d been. I knew she had it in her.
“Sugar, I never break a promise.” I hugged her to see if I could get a peek at the label of that astounding dress, then patted her back and cheerfully shooed her out the door. “Don’t fret. It’s as good as done. Hand to God.”
Whichever god she wanted.
The week went by faster than I planned. I caught two boys, runaways from the system, I thought, devouring half of a Big Mac out of my back alley Dumpster. Each tried to push the other behind him for protection, and wouldn’t that break any heart? I worked on convincing them to stop eating out of alleys and get to work cleaning the bar for me. They were stubborn and it took some serious talking, but finally they were sleeping in my storage room on inflatable mattresses and trying to stop twitching every time I picked up a phone. I wasn’t going to report them. They were running, and sometimes even the most wholesome of heart and naively caring of folk couldn’t imagine they might have good reason to do so. There were times when running was the only option, when going back to a system that was supposed to protect them could conceivably end up being worse than living on the street.
Bad things happened. They happened everywhere, not just on the street. These boys had definitely seen the bad. Now I had them tucked away, safe and sound, collector of damaged goods that I was, and that was sorted for a while. Although the blond one—sixteen, or maybe younger—seemed to think I was a one-woman Mafia. He stared at me as if I were the Godmother of Las Vegas, impressed by my daily stream of clients wanting favors and information, wanting this and that, wanting the stars and the moon themselves. His friend, a younger redhead with the eyes of a feral wolf, didn’t care about my business. He ate the food I gave him and snarled when I patted his copper hair and called him Kit. He thought he was a wolf, but he was a baby fox deep down. I’d have to see about fixing him sooner or later.
So much to do.
Then came the health inspector, who wanted to shut me down for letting my pet raven help out at the bar. The bird was quick and clever when it came to pecking out a slice of lime and shoving it in the open mouth of a Corona. Lenny—short, naturally, for Lenore, as some clichés can be only good—was more likely to catch a disease from some of my more crusty regulars than the reverse. Health inspectors are stubborn, though. Some need a thorough talking-to in order to come around to a right way of thinking. This one, he was especially obstinate, his palm practically sweating for a bribe. I wasn’t averse to a good bribe now and again, but only when I was the one on the receiving end.
We talked in my cramped little office, and when was all said and done, he saw it my way. After I gave him a handful of paper napkins, he was out the door and my little bar was safe until next time. Griffin, my newly adopted blond stray, came out of the office later holding something in the palm of his hand. Wise in the ways of the street, he didn’t often look puzzled, but he did now.
“Trixa, I found this when I was cleaning your office.” Eyebrows in a confused V, he held out his hand like an offering. “I think it’s a tooth. Um . . . teeth.”
Sure enough, it was. Two bright white teeth with the best porcelain veneers money could buy and stained only a little with dried blood lay cradled between the teenager’s life line and his heart line. That did not make for a good fortune. I swept them out of his hand and deposited them in the garbage can behind the bar. “Sorry about that, sugar. I was sure I’d gotten them all.” Because two were far fewer than had originally littered the floor of my office. “Do you know that holier-than-thou ass told me his daughter needed braces and he’d let me keep the bar open if I helped him out there, as he was a good and charitable father that way?” I snorted and rested my elbows on the bar and propped my chin in a cupped hand, a hand with scraped and raw knuckles. “Course he couldn’t explain how his smile was so fake and pearly white if he couldn’t afford braces for his baby girl. Hardly seemed fair a father should take what he should be giving his child. It should make him feel guilty as hell.” My lips curved, sly and satisfied. “I do believe he won’t need to feel guilty so much now, having no teeth in his smile at all.”
Zeke, Griffin’s cohort and my little rabid fox, came up to us holding a mop. “Blood by the door,” he grunted, wholly unimpressed by the brightest red of bodily fluids. “Cleaned it up. Time for lunch?”
I had given the man napkins, but I supposed napkins could soak up only so much blood when you’re abruptly missing all your upper teeth. Now I needed a new mop and lunch for the heathens—my minions in the making. I patted them both on the head. Griffin flinched automatically and Zeke growled.
Again, so much to do.
Not that I forgot Elizabeth and how she wanted her life changed. It was a busy week, but just as work is work, a project is a project and a thing of grace and beauty. I talked to people and they talked back. As the song says, you can have friends in high places and you can have friends in low places. I have friends in all places, from good to bad and all flavors in between. I gathered my information and I threw my spare hours into fixing Elizabeth’s problem just as I promised.