Snafu

Author’s note: Fans are always asking me about Jane’s early life and training, about how she went from the children’s home to rogue-vamp hunter. Well, here’s a small insight into how.

I unstrapped my helmet and sat, straddling the beat-up Yamaha and taking in the storefront. It didn’t look like much. The dirty display windows were covered on the outside by steel bars, and on the inside by cheap, bent, bowed metal blinds. In the creases of the blinds I could make out wood studs and wallboard on the other side, as if the business wanted to make sure no one could see in. ENDERS SECURITY AND PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS, INC. was stenciled on the door. My place of internship and on-the-job training for the next six months. I was eighteen and on my own, after spending the past six years in Bethel Nondenominational Christian Children’s Home. I couldn’t decide whether I was excited at the thought of finally being here or dismayed at the dingy storefront.

Using a steel chain and keyed lock, I attached the Yamaha to the pitted and scored aluminum bike post that was situated near the storm drain. It wasn’t my dream bike, but it would do until I could afford the one I really wanted. And there was no point in making it easy for my only transportation to be bike-jacked. This neighborhood looked anything but safe and secure. Lucky me. Knowing nothing about Asheville, I’d picked Enders out of a list of possible PI and security businesses to take my paid internship for my private investigator’s license. From the broken-down look of things, I’d picked wrong. Closed businesses, run-down buildings, little traffic, and what traffic there was consisted of pimpmobiles and rusted, dented, kidnapper-style paneled vans.

Eyes on the guys watching me from the street corner, I patted my saddlebags, checking the latches. The teal compartments were secure, held in place with leather straps and small locks. Everything I owned was in the compartments: my toothbrush, shampoo, and a few changes of clothes—jeans and T-shirts. Boots I hadn’t been able to pass up in the “gently used clothing” consignment store.

The August heat had laid a slick of sweat down my back, and I unzipped my vintage leather riding jacket, freeing my hip-length braid. I touched the gold necklace that I still wore like a talisman and headed for the door.

The guys on the corner started toward me, both with street swaggers meant to intimidate. Hands loose at their sides. One had a bulge at his navel. Gun, I was guessing. The other slid a hand into his pocket and back out. A short length of rope. Metal on his other fingers. Brass knuckles. Really? I thought. Really? Two armed teenaged boys, younger than me, tattooed, Gun Boy with blondish dreadlocks and Brass Knucks Boy with an Afro, like from the seventies.

I reached the door and twisted the knob. Locked. Some small part of me wasn’t surprised. A slightly bigger part was delighted. Funnnnn, it whispered. I ignored it, as always.

Using the storefront windows, I checked behind me. No one watching. No one approaching from behind. Just me and two gangbangers on the street, in view of the security camera of my new place of business. Which was locked. Yeah, really. Was this a test of some kind? An unlucky accident of timing? I retucked my braid, shrugged my shoulders to relax, and came to a stop, my back to the door. The guys separated, coming between me and my bike, a pincer move that cut off my retreat.

Fun, the crazy part of me murmured again. The crazy part of me that I had just discovered turned into an animal. Like my own personal werelion, except not. The crazy part that had been penned in for years in the children’s home, and wanted out now, to play with the humans, play being in the eyes of the beholder, like a cat playing—with a couple of stupid rats. Yeah. The crazy part of me, the part that the Christian children’s home had worked so hard to knock out of me. It rose and glared at them through my eyes, and I chuffed with laughter, showing my teeth. Wanting them to try something. I couldn’t help it.

Knucks Boy hesitated at my grin, just a slight hitch in his get-along, as Brenda, one of my housemothers, would have said. A tell, as my sensei would have said.

I set my bike-booted feet on the cracked sidewalk, the worn treads giving me good traction, much better than the fancy previously owned boots in the saddlebags. Stupid thoughts for a skinny teenage girl facing two armed men. I should run, bang on the security office door, and scream a little. But I didn’t want to. I wanted this. I pulled in air through my nose and out through my mouth, relaxing further. Fun, the crazy voice panted. Fun . . . fun . . . fun.

“Hey, baby,” Brass Knucks said, coming to a stop about five feet away. “Nice bike. How ’bout we go for a ride on that nice lil’ bike?”

“No,” I said, sounding bored.

“How ’bout we go for a ride on this?” Gun Boy asked, grabbing his crotch.

“Now, why would I want some scuzzy, flea-infested dude with BO and probably STDs?” I asked.

Gun Boy pulled his gun from his pants with a move that was all elbow and lifted shoulder. Nothing economical about it, nothing graceful. As the gun came free, I stepped up, blading my body, and kicked out. A single fluid kick that shoved his gun back into his gut, but with enough force to hurt. Hurt bad. His air whuffed out with a pained grunt, and his body bent in two. My leg bent and I clocked him with a knee to the face and a quick, follow-up one-two to his nose. Messy.

I backed away as he fell, kicking the gun under the closest van. I gave Knucks Boy a little four-fingered “come and get it” wave and he rushed in with a roundhouse. I ducked and tripped him. Head-butted him with the loose helmet. He landed on the other guy and I followed him down to drop a knee in his back. He made a little squeal as I landed. I caught the loose helmet, and I bopped him in the back of head with it. Kinda hard.

I stole the rope and the brass knuckles from his nerveless fingers and tossed them down the storm drain near the bike. Behind me the lock clicked and the door opened. A laconic voice asked, “You want me to call the police? You know. So you can make a police report?”

I stepped away from my would-be-attackers and considered. “How long do you think they’d be in jail?” I asked. “How much time would they do?”

“Hours and they’ll be back out on the streets,” the voice said. “Then they’ll tie you up in court for weeks, and plea-bargain down to zip.”

“You got it all on camera?” I asked.

“Yep.”

“I want a copy.” I shoved the guys over, out of their pile, and patted them down, removing their ID. I checked the pictures to the IDs and handed them to the man behind me. I said, “Anton Jevers and Wayne Roles Junior.” I met the eyes of the one who was still mostly conscious. “There’s this new thing called YouTube. You can upload video onto it for the whole world to see. I ever see your faces on this street again, I’ll upload the video and everyone who knows you will be able to see you get beat up by a skinny girl in a bike helmet.”

I went for the gun and picked it up with two fingers. I handed it too to the guy at the door, taking him in with quick glance. Younger than he sounded. Blondish. Jeans and T. Shoulder holster with a nine-millimeter. Scruffy beard. He smelled of coffee and Irish Spring soap.

“What do you want me to do with this?” the guy asked.

“Whatever PIs do with guns they accidently find on their doorsteps, dropped by inefficient muggers, unsuccessful rapists, and dumb-nuts.”

He laughed. It was a nice laugh. “Anton, Wayne, you get on outta here or I’ll call the po-lice on you. And I bet you both got a little something-something on you that the local law would like to confiscate. You,” he said to me, “come on in. I got Cokes on ice and sandwiches in the microwave. I’d have been here sooner, but I was heating lunch and didn’t realize you were in trouble until after the ding.”

It sounded satisfactory to me, and I followed him inside. Closed and locked the door behind me. “My intern, I assume,” he said as he popped the tops on Coke cans and shoved a foot-long club sandwich with bacon toward me over the desk. I nodded and took it and bit in, the taste so good and the bacon so hot that I almost groaned. I ate two more bites, taking the edge off my hunger, watching him, studying the office. He was prettier than I’d expected from the half glance I’d taken outside. The office was less dingy on the inside than it looked on the outside too. Three small desks, three desk chairs, folding chairs in the corner. One of those blue plastic watercoolers. Coffeemaker. Small brown refrigerator with a microwave on top. Unisex bathroom. Lockers. Gun safe bolted onto the floor in the corner. Closet. Iron-bound back door. Not bad. It smelled of mice and bacon and gunpowder, a combo that smelled unexpectedly great.

“Power of observation is important in this business,” he said.

I grunted and kept eating. It had been hours since my last meal, and I’d been eating light since I spent my last twenty on the boots. Stupid move, that. Girly move. But they were killer boots. I grinned at the memory.

“My powers of observation told me that you should have run instead of taking on the neighborhood bullies,” he said.

“Thought you said you were busy at the microwave,” I said around a mouthful of bacon and lettuce leaves.

He shrugged. “Whatever. What did your powers of observation tell you?”

“That you set me up. Most likely,” I hedged.

His brow wrinkled up in long horizontal lines that weren’t visible until he looked puzzled. Or maybe mad? I wasn’t sure. I still wasn’t real good at reading people’s emotions, but he smelled angry. Which was a really weirded-out thought. “Do I look stupid?” he asked. “Or like the kind of guy who would let a little girl get hurt? I was coming in through the back with sandwiches, and sticking them in to heat, when I saw it going down on the camera.”

“Fine,” I said. “From outside, I could see the light on through the cracks in the Sheetrock over the windows. The entry door is steel, set in a reinforced steel door casing. Over the door is a camera, the kind that moves. What looks like a water pipe runs up the outside wall in the corner and into the building through a tiny hole bored in the brick. Maybe for a retrofitted sprinkler system.

“Not that I’ve had much training yet, but the place looks like it was set up to survive attack by small-arms fire, Molotov cocktail fire, and maybe even attack by a rolling dump truck. The people inside might get smoked or crushed, but the files might survive, and the attack would be caught on camera to identify the perpetrators.”

I stopped and ate some more. The bacon was really good. The other meat was beef and turkey. Even the lettuce tasted good. I was starving. I licked mayo off my thumb, slurped some Coke, and went on.

“The neighborhood is on the way down, except for the building on the corner, which is undergoing a remodeling, probably because of the way-cool windows on the second and third story.” I set down the sandwich and held my hands out to the sides at angles. “Like this, with the whaddya call it, the cornerstone? Capstone? Like this.” I reshaped my hands.

“Art Deco. Yeah. The upgrade is the beginning of the end of crime on this street. I’ll miss Anton and Wayne.”

I spluttered with laughter and held out my hand. “Jane Yellowrock. But I guess you know that, what with your mad powers of observation.”

“Charles Davidson, but call me Nomad,” he said. “Your boss and teacher for the next few months. You got a place to stay until your next paycheck?”

“Nope.”

“Money for a hotel? A furnished room?”

“Nope.”

Nomad sighed. “There’s an inflatable mattress in the closet. Towels. Sheets. Don’t let the cops figure it out—I’m not licensed for renters—but you keep your head down and you can bunk here until you make enough money to get a place. Soon as you get a stash, I know a few people who rent places. You can have cheap and dangerous in a few weeks, or more expensive and safer in a few months. We’ll do a drive-by and you can evaluate how much you want privacy. But that’s for later. Now we got a case.” Nomad stood and wiped his face, gathered up all the papers, and tossed them into a trash can. “Keep the trash emptied. Dumpster out back. Place has roaches. Mice. But you don’t look like the kind of woman who runs from either.”

I shook my head. “What kind of case?”

“Cheating husband.”

“You like domestic cases?”

“Hate ’em. But they make up about seventy percent of a PI’s business. Bring your bike inside and we’ll keep it locked up. Safer. Anton and Wayne are aggressive and stupid and they might think about revenge. You pass your CC yet?”

I nodded. I had passed the concealed carry permit the week before I passed my classroom training for my PI license. “No gun. No money. Do I get the internship?”

“Despite the little snafu on the street, yeah. And you won’t need a gun on this trip.” He pointed to the restroom. “Pee while you can. Female anatomy isn’t particularly well suited to long-term stakeouts.”

I nodded.

“Other than answering questions, you’re not very talkative, are you?” he observed, cocking his head.

“Nope.” I went into the restroom and closed the door. And smiled at myself in the polished metal mirror over the sink, my amber eyes glowing gold with excitement. “I’m in,” I whispered. “I did it. I got the job.”

It was in a little run-down storefront security and PI business. The pay sucked. And I loved it. I loved it all.