Clowns, p.9
Clowns, page 9
part #20 of First Contact Series
“And you think the clowns will give you this?” Breezy asks, incredulous.
“I think we have to start somewhere,” Susan replies. “We can’t continue on as we have.”
Breezy isn’t impressed. “And I think you’re naive. There are no fairy tale endings. Freedom comes with a price tag. The freedom we have here cost us something. It needs to be defended.”
“And that’s the difference between us,” Susan says. “You think people are helpless. You see kindness as weakness. You think you need to protect us. You don’t. You can’t control everything. And when you do….”
“When I do, what?” Breezy asks, indignant.
Susan looks her in the eye and says, “People die.”
Cops
Olivia sits on the side of the main road beside her aging Volvo. She sobs into her shaking hands. She’s still holding the tire iron but can’t bring herself to change the tire. For now, it’s enough just to simply breathe. Headlights sweep across her as a car pulls in behind her. She squints, looking into the bright lights, accepting her fate. Car doors slam. One, then another. She drops the tire iron.
A flashlight is shone in her eyes even though she’s already bathed in the headlights of the vehicle. Through the haze, she sees a man in uniform standing before her with his hand on a holster set firmly on his hip.
“Hey? Are you okay?”
Olivia nods, aware another officer is flanking her, standing slightly out of sight to one side.
“What happened?”
“Flat tire,” Olivia says, gesturing to the side of the Volvo even though it’s obvious. The second officer is a woman. She shines her light in the rear of the Volvo and then the front, looking at the seats and in the footwells. As the driver’s window is open, she leans in, taking a good look.
“And that’s all?” the first officer says. He’s easily six foot four, with a bazillion pounds of iron-pumping muscle that barely fits into a blue uniform.
Olivia nods.
“Let’s get you to your feet,” he says, although he doesn’t offer her his hand. Instead, he steps back, watching as she grabs the bumper of the Volvo and gets up. “Have you got your driver’s license on you?”
“It’s in my purse,” she says, gesturing to the front of the car.
“Have you been drinking?”
“No.”
“Doing any drugs?”
“No.”
Olivia keeps her hands in front of her, resting them in plain sight on the lid of the trunk. The cop seems relaxed, but Olivia’s aware he could change in an instant with the wrong move from her.
“I’m going to search you for concealed weapons,” the officer says. Concealed? The only thing she’s concealing is the silicone in her breasts, but she’s pretty sure the officer already knows that.
“Keep your hands where they are. Legs apart.”
Although she’s wearing a t-shirt and tight jeans, the officer treats her as though she were wearing a baggy trench coat. He runs his hands over her shoulders and along her biceps, squeezing tightly. He sweeps his gloved fingers under her armpits, and—there it is—his hands reach around her chest, squeezing her breasts. His fingers follow the contour of her bra.
Bastard.
He continues on, moving down to her hips. Olivia locks eyes with the female officer, who shrugs. Before working his way down her thighs, he reaches between her legs and grabs her crotch from behind.
Asshole.
For the sake of appearances, he continues down to each ankle before stepping back and saying, “Turn around.”
The officer has a chest-mounted camera, but there’s no way to know whether it’s recording. Regardless, it wouldn’t have caught him groping her.
“Have you called anyone to come and help you?” he asks as though he hasn’t just sexually assaulted her.
“No,” Olivia replies, playing the game.
“Where are you coming from? Where are you going to?”
“I just finished work. I’m heading home.”
No sooner has she said that than Olivia regrets her choice of words. If she weren’t so freaked out by what just happened, she would have spun a believable lie. Being vague with cops is never smart, but the male officer knows he’s caught her reeling from being groped and accepts that.
The female officer asks, “And the donuts on the backseat.”
“They’re old,” Olivia says.
“Open the box for me.”
“Sure.”
Olivia moves slowly, keeping her hands in sight. She opens the back door, asking, “Do you want one?”
“Bribing an officer with a donut,” the male cop says, laughing, “You realize that’s a felony?”
Oh, that’s not the only thing that’s a felony.
Olivia forces a smile. As she leans in the back of the vehicle, she’s aware the female officer is flashing her light over her ass. It seems they’re both happy to play around.
Creeps.
Olivia leaves the lid open, but she can’t help herself. A tear rolls down her cheek. Three donuts sit bumper to bumper, dripping with glaze and sprinkles, in a box designed for nine. That seems to satisfy the cops. At this point, Olivia realizes they’ve probably accepted her as a damsel in distress they can shakedown for a bit of fun on an otherwise dull patrol. There’s no insistence on seeing her license. They’ve probably already run her plates. As the car is registered in her sister’s name, they probably assume she’s Janet.
“Why the tears?” the female officer asks as if she doesn’t know. Olivia hates playing games. Nothing is going right. Tomorrow, when the body of the prostitute is discovered less than a mile from here, this particular stop-and-search is going to seem all too relevant. She only hopes it’s considered coincidental. Given that she really does have a flat tire, it’s plausible.
“It’s—been a long day.”
Sometimes the best lies are the ones grounded in truth. The officer nods.
“Well,” the male officer says. “You better get that fixed and get on your way.”
The female officer slaps him on the shoulder, saying, “You fix it.”
“Me?”
“Come on, Mr. knight-in-shining-armor. You’re the one that wanted to pull over.”
“It’s fine,” Olivia says, waving them away, but after squeezing her breasts and her crotch, it seems the male officer wants to show her he’s a good guy.
“All right,” he says, slipping the jack under the rear of the Volvo.
To Olivia’s utter dismay, the female officer stands back, talking casually with her while Officer Roaming Hands changes the tire. Olivia doesn’t say much beyond um, and yeah, as the female officer talks about the weather and the surf out at Ocean City.
Once the tire is changed, the officers excuse themselves, wishing her a good night. The disconnect is profound. Somewhat in shock, Olivia says, “Thanks.”
They drive off as though nothing happened, leaving her to put the jack, the tire iron and the blown tire in the trunk. Red and blue lights flash over the trees on the side of the road as the police car loops back in the other direction, but only for a second. They’re letting her know they’ve seen her pulling back out on the road. At a guess, this is their idea of being friendly.
Olivia drives toward her home in Fairfax, just outside DC, but her hands are still shaking. Cops notwithstanding, someone wants her dead. No, that’s not quite it. Someone already thinks she’s dead. By morning, that illusion will be shattered. She’s got to get home and warn Janet. It’s time for the two of them to take a long vacation. They could head north to cooler weather. There are dozens of small towns in upstate New York just shy of the Canadian border where the cops are sleepy, and a girl can disappear for a couple of months.
On turning into her street, she sees a paramedic pushing a gurney with a sheet pulled over a body. He wheels it to the back of an ambulance and slams the doors shut. Olivia slows but doesn’t stop. Tears stream down her cheeks as she drives past. Cops trample the thin strip of grass in front of her home. A small crowd has gathered on the pavement, but in the darkness, she goes unnoticed.
Feeling numb, she drives on. Eventually, she pulls into a McDonald’s parking lot and wanders inside in a daze.
“Can I help you?” a teenage girl asks, pointing at a self-help ordering screen where Olivia can help herself. She orders coffee. As she goes to sit in a booth, she pulls her phone from her back pocket. A business card falls to the ground. It’s blank. She turns it over, expecting to see contact details for the juggler at the mall. There’s no phone number, no email address, no Twitter handle or Instagram profile, no physical address or post box, just a single word.
—Clowns—
Clowns
Olivia doesn’t know what to do.
Although it’s the middle of the night, the lights in McDonald’s are as bright as the noonday sun. Plastic tables. Plastic cutlery. Hard plastic seats. Nothing’s real. Everything around her has been fabricated. It’s been molded to suit the business, not the people. Olivia shakes her head. The damn clowns are wearing off on her. Next, she’ll be painting her face and joining a protest rally on the National Mall. Unlike most fringe groups, the clowns don’t have a single agenda. They want it all: voting rights, women’s rights, climate change, gun control, judicial reform, health care, equality for minorities, immigration reform, national education standards. The list is exhausting.
Olivia stirs creamer in her coffee.
She’s numb. What does it matter? What does anything matter anymore? Her sister is dead. And for what? For twenty grand she never got. For twenty grand that always sounded too good to be true. Her lips tremble but she doesn’t cry. She’s beyond that now. If there are five stages of grief, then all of them are shock. Nothing is real. Not the polish on her nails. Not the rings on her fingers. Not the stupid-ass dumb business card in her hand.
—Clowns—
There’s no phone number, no address, no email—nothing.
Olivia doesn’t know who she can turn to. She wonders about the others involved in the blackmail shoot.
Ordinarily, Snow White contacts her via a dead drop. Once a week, on either Friday, Saturday or Sunday, Olivia walks around Lake Thoreau for exercise. She never goes on the same day or at the same time from one week to the next. Once she’s walked around the water’s edge, she sits on a seat looking out over the lake before returning to her car. Sometimes she takes stale bread to feed the ducks even though she’s heard it’s not good for them. If there’s a fresh Don’t Litter sticker on the side of the garbage can, she reaches under the seat and pulls off an envelope taped beneath the wooden slats. Then she places a Climate Emergency sticker over at least one corner of the Don’t Litter sticker to let Snow know she got the message. At some point over the next couple of days, Snow will peel both of them off, and the communique is complete.
Work is sporadic. Sometimes Olivia will get three gigs in three weeks; then she’ll go three months without anything. She doesn’t mind. She enjoys walking around the lake. In between, she picks up work stocking shelves at the local grocery store. It’s not as high-paying as fucking a stranger, but there’s less risk of everything: being beaten, being robbed, being shortchanged, being infected with some god-awful disease. She’s got a few regulars that pay well, but even they can disappear for a couple of months. At around the four-month mark, if she hasn’t heard from Snow, she’ll take some impromptu porno work, but she doesn’t like to rely on it. There are too many creeps in the industry. Olivia’s been bashed too many times.
If there’s a letter waiting for her beneath the seat, Olivia won’t open it until she’s back home. Normally, it contains little more than an address and a contract amount along with a date and time range for the shoot, like between 1 and 3 pm. Sometimes there are special instructions: get a Brazilian, color your hair pink, wear a lace bra or don’t wear a bra at all that day. Once there was a Christmas card and a gift voucher. That was nice.
The problem now is, Olivia’s got no way of getting hold of Snow. She considers driving to the lake in the middle of the night and trying the reverse strategy. She could put one of her Climate Emergency stickers on the bin and stick a note beneath the seat telling Snow what happened. Nah, it wouldn’t work. Snow wouldn’t know to check. Besides, even if she saw the sticker as she walked past, she might think of it as a coincidence. Snow probably wouldn’t check beneath the seat until she’s got another job lined up.
Fuck.
Olivia picks at her fake nails.
Someone’s trying to erase this particular deep fake before it even comes to light. Was Snow in on the hit? Is Snow even alive? Olivia’s a bit player. She doesn’t know anyone inside the operation—by design. That way, she can’t go blabbing to the cops. And it goes two ways. The arrangement is supposed to protect both of them. It means no actual identities are known. Olivia met Snow through a dark web porno ad offering a little extra cash on the side. They’ve both been careful to keep their distance from each other, although Olivia hates the whole pick-a-name-from-a-fairytale thing. Snow gets to keep her name from one gig to another, but she insists on Olivia jumping from Alice to Belle to Minnie to whoever. The issue is, she only responds to Olive, Ollies or Olivia.
Olivia flicks the clown's business card over in her hand. There’s still nothing on the back, but it doesn’t matter. That’s not the point. She’s lost in thought. If these assholes went after her, they would have gone hard on Snow and the others. The only clue Olivia has is that they didn’t hit them at the house. They waited until afterward. That tells her there’s something important about that place.
Olivia tries to recall as much detail as she can about the home. As she was in the back of a van and came in from the garage shared with the property next door, she never saw the front of the house. Even so, she’s confident she could figure it out from Google Maps based on the wall she climbed at the back of the garden and the path along the river.
The house was beautiful, but it lacked something. It didn’t feel like a home. There were no pictures of any family. Oh, the paintings were stunning. The marble floors looked immaculate. The kitchen was spacious, while the gardens were beautifully maintained. For all that, it felt like a display house rather than a home.
Air conditioning spills out of the vent above Olivia, chilling her even though it’s warm outside. She cups her hands around her coffee. Vapor drifts from the cup.
Olivia feels lost. This morning, she was in control of her life. She was confident—strident. Now, her world has been shattered. Her sister is dead—murdered by what’s known in the trade as a cleaning crew. It was probably the same team that thought she was in Arlington cemetery. Like her, they wouldn’t know who they’re working for. Everyone’s a patsy in this game. It seems whoever was the target of the deep fake got wind of the job and decided to close it down before it could be complete.
Olivia looks up from her coffee. The streetlight is out on the corner, but lights on the other side of the road illuminate a solitary figure in silhouette. He’s facing the restaurant, holding a helium balloon on a string.
“That’s some freaky Pennywise shit,” she mumbles, sipping her coffee. “Ain’t no way—”
She looks down at the card on the table.
—Clowns—
“No. It can’t be,” she says, looking up.
The man is gone.
Olivia gets up, putting the card in her purse. She hoists the strap of her purse over her shoulder and walks out into the night, taking a wad of napkins with her. She stuffs them into the side pouch of her purse. The staff don’t care. They’re teens working crazy hours to make enough to buy the latest dumbass smartphone or to pay for a ski trip to Colorado. No one looks up as she leaves.
Olivia grips her keys in her palm, positioning the brass tips outward between her fingers, forming a knuckleduster. She’s never had to strike someone with her wolverine claws, and they’re a helluva lot shorter than the adamantium version in the movies, but she’s confident they’ll send a message if needed. If anything, that they barely protrude beyond her knuckles is a plus. They’ll go unnoticed in the dark. Even a glancing blow is going to get an attacker to think twice.
Once blood is drawn, the game is over. Oh, men might get pissy and violent, but even a musclebound creep will think twice with blood dripping from the side of his face. In her experience, men who hit women are cowards. Draw a little blood in reply, and they’ll curse and swear and sulk away, throwing around hollow threats and lame insults.
As a prostitute, Olivia has had to defend herself. In her experience, broken glass is the best weapon. Glass is everywhere, so it’s always accessible. Smashing a window serves two purposes: it gets attention, and it gives her a fighting chance. Grab a broken shard of glass along with even something as seemingly useless as a dishcloth, and the two combine to form a knife that’s as effective as a switchblade. It’s homemade but it’ll cut like a razor. A glancing blow is enough to rip someone open. A six-inch gash makes most men melt even if the cut’s not that deep.
Olivia keeps her right hand out of sight in the shadows. She doesn’t like the dark. She’s not afraid of the dark as such. Experience has taught her it’s a great place to hide, but it’s also taught her it provides an easy platform for muggers.
Olivia’s already evaluating where she can get some glass if her key trick doesn’t work. In a nightclub, it’s bottles and drinking glasses that come readily to hand. The broken stem of a wine glass is better than a pickax. Out here on the street, it’s store windows. Part of an old wooden crate lies in the gutter ahead. It’s been broken up as vehicles have driven over it. Hurling a bit of that through the abandoned storefront will wake the dead. If the keys don’t work, the napkins will allow her to grab some glass. They’ll protect her hands for a couple of strikes at least.
She crosses the parking lot, being wary of attack as she steps behind parked cars.
