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Authors: Meg Gardiner
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woman looked dubious.
"Please," Jo said.
Grudgingly, the nurse signed.
"Thanks." Jo put the plastic bag in her satchel. It was an ad-hoc solution, but it would have to do. "Page me if Meyer regains consciousness."
The nurse's look said that nobody expected that to happen soon.
Skunk honked the horn. Traffic on California was spastic. Loud, shiny, jerking along, slowing and pumping like blood through a clogged artery—idiots, crowding him. The sun felt like a deliberate poke in his eyes.
The Cadillac cruised east. Skunk drove with the window down, one elbow propped on the sill, right hand hanging on the top of the wheel. He felt more than saw heads turn as he motored along.
This was the way the prosecutor had run. Along California Street, blasting across the flats, blowing that big-ass BMW engine wide open over the hills, until she turned and drove into the bridge railing and died. He clenched his jaw. She was dead, absolutely stone-stiff, ain't-coming-back-from-it dead. And that was good. That was a kitty treat. But he couldn't shake his nerves, this worry that felt like an itch under his skin, and that fucking sun was really annoying him, glaring off the hood of the car and the dashboard and the cherry-red leather of the big bench seat. Sports talk buzzed at him. He sank lower behind the wheel and turned up the radio. When he stopped at a red light, people in the crosswalk stared the car up and down.
The Caddy was a 1959 Eldorado, pimped out, and people gawked at it like it was a naked stripper idling in the middle of the street. It was cream-colored, with gleaming flanks that ran long and smooth all the way back to a pair of sharp fins. Real space-age, stab-your-eye-out chrome fins, which were punctuated with a pair of jet-nozzle taillights, in titty-red. This was the ultimate car, the biggest, baddest bitch on the road, power and sex on wheels, the Pamela Anderson of vehicles.
He loved it. When he sat behind the wheel, he became the car, because everybody in the city looked, and not one of them ever saw him.
Cross-traffic spattered past. The radio was moaning about the 49ers and their blowout loss to Chicago. Bad coaching, injured linemen, and the quarterback had thrown three interceptions.
"Pussy," Skunk said.
He'd lost money on the game. The team stank, couldn't even beat a ten-point spread. The only guy putting it out there was the 'Niners' wide receiver, and Skunk didn't like the talk jocks praising this pretty college boy white kid who grew up in luxury and got a business degree, even if he had hauled down four touchdown passes in the past two weeks.
"Rich pussy." He leaned toward the radio. "Scott Southern is a p-U-S-S-Y."
Skunk was himself a white guy who hadn't grown up in luxury, hadn't gone to college, wouldn't be opening a string of sports-themed restaurants on the back of his luck and fame when he retired from the game in a few years. Skunk had been cheated. Cheated out of height and looks, cheated out of charm and the velvet tongue that lubricated a path through the world for people like Scott Southern.
Skunk believed in resentment.
Resentment was a mighty engine, a force that drove him to make things right. When the world cheats you, then getting back at the people who got the portion you deserve—that's just evening out the scales. Some folks called it sour grapes. But he loved sour things, and feasting on resentment was the sourest of all, and very, very satisfying.
The prosecutor's death was unsatisfying. Because of the passenger.
She was still alive. Three dead, the news was reporting this morning. That meant Harding plus the two crushed people in the front seat of the airport shuttle van. He'd seen them haul Harding's passenger from the wreck and put her in the ambulance. He'd been sure she was a goner, and then that dark-haired woman came running like a banshee and jumped on the wreck and hollered for the paramedics. They got Angelika Meyer out of the BMW and drove off like a house on
"Please," Jo said.
Grudgingly, the nurse signed.
"Thanks." Jo put the plastic bag in her satchel. It was an ad-hoc solution, but it would have to do. "Page me if Meyer regains consciousness."
The nurse's look said that nobody expected that to happen soon.
Skunk honked the horn. Traffic on California was spastic. Loud, shiny, jerking along, slowing and pumping like blood through a clogged artery—idiots, crowding him. The sun felt like a deliberate poke in his eyes.
The Cadillac cruised east. Skunk drove with the window down, one elbow propped on the sill, right hand hanging on the top of the wheel. He felt more than saw heads turn as he motored along.
This was the way the prosecutor had run. Along California Street, blasting across the flats, blowing that big-ass BMW engine wide open over the hills, until she turned and drove into the bridge railing and died. He clenched his jaw. She was dead, absolutely stone-stiff, ain't-coming-back-from-it dead. And that was good. That was a kitty treat. But he couldn't shake his nerves, this worry that felt like an itch under his skin, and that fucking sun was really annoying him, glaring off the hood of the car and the dashboard and the cherry-red leather of the big bench seat. Sports talk buzzed at him. He sank lower behind the wheel and turned up the radio. When he stopped at a red light, people in the crosswalk stared the car up and down.
The Caddy was a 1959 Eldorado, pimped out, and people gawked at it like it was a naked stripper idling in the middle of the street. It was cream-colored, with gleaming flanks that ran long and smooth all the way back to a pair of sharp fins. Real space-age, stab-your-eye-out chrome fins, which were punctuated with a pair of jet-nozzle taillights, in titty-red. This was the ultimate car, the biggest, baddest bitch on the road, power and sex on wheels, the Pamela Anderson of vehicles.
He loved it. When he sat behind the wheel, he became the car, because everybody in the city looked, and not one of them ever saw him.
Cross-traffic spattered past. The radio was moaning about the 49ers and their blowout loss to Chicago. Bad coaching, injured linemen, and the quarterback had thrown three interceptions.
"Pussy," Skunk said.
He'd lost money on the game. The team stank, couldn't even beat a ten-point spread. The only guy putting it out there was the 'Niners' wide receiver, and Skunk didn't like the talk jocks praising this pretty college boy white kid who grew up in luxury and got a business degree, even if he had hauled down four touchdown passes in the past two weeks.
"Rich pussy." He leaned toward the radio. "Scott Southern is a p-U-S-S-Y."
Skunk was himself a white guy who hadn't grown up in luxury, hadn't gone to college, wouldn't be opening a string of sports-themed restaurants on the back of his luck and fame when he retired from the game in a few years. Skunk had been cheated. Cheated out of height and looks, cheated out of charm and the velvet tongue that lubricated a path through the world for people like Scott Southern.
Skunk believed in resentment.
Resentment was a mighty engine, a force that drove him to make things right. When the world cheats you, then getting back at the people who got the portion you deserve—that's just evening out the scales. Some folks called it sour grapes. But he loved sour things, and feasting on resentment was the sourest of all, and very, very satisfying.
The prosecutor's death was unsatisfying. Because of the passenger.
She was still alive. Three dead, the news was reporting this morning. That meant Harding plus the two crushed people in the front seat of the airport shuttle van. He'd seen them haul Harding's passenger from the wreck and put her in the ambulance. He'd been sure she was a goner, and then that dark-haired woman came running like a banshee and jumped on the wreck and hollered for the paramedics. They got Angelika Meyer out of the BMW and drove off like a house on
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