35.
“Hey,” Cassidy said, looking from her computer monitor as I came into the grandma’s living room. “I was just reviewing tape, and I think—”
I held up a hand to shut her up, and pinpointed the door most likely to be the front door. There was a quilt on the back of the couch, and I grabbed it, wrapping myself up as I went. It looked dark beyond the cracks of the curtains, no natural light shining in, which meant it was almost certainly well below freezing out there, and my clothing was pretty frigging useless against the weather by now.
“Where are you going?” Eilish asked, emerging from a bathroom as I stalked past toward the door.
“Sienna’s going to get a drink,” Harry answered from behind me. I did not look back as I opened the front door, which was helpfully unlocked.
The subzero air hit me full in the face as I stepped out onto a quiet street. Squarish, boxy houses stood all up one side of the street and down the other, but we were situated on a corner; the street came to an intersection to my right, and it looked like a main road. US Highway 61, if I was not mistaken, which snaked through St. Paul heading north.
I picked my direction and headed out onto the main drag of 61. The area was a little run down, but not terrible, and as I reached the corner I could see a half dozen bars just from where I stood.
There was one with a neon sign that said “Pete’s,” and although the T was burned out, I got the idea. I thought, briefly, of being a defiant ass and just ignoring Harry’s guidance, but I wanted a drink a lot more than I wanted to get into a tangle with the cops, so I made myself a makeshift cowl with the purloined quilt and headed toward Pete’s—Pee’s, without the T, actually—crossing 61 at a jog, my blanket trailing behind me like a cape.
Stepping into Pete’s was like dragging myself into a junkyard. There was no pretense about this place; the bare concrete were floors unrepentantly cracked, and the old plaster on the walls suggested to me that St. Paul’s building inspection team was either falling down on their jobs or their code was at third-world standards. A motley collection of old signs and beer memorabilia was the primary decoration, but none of it looked like it had come from this century.
I bellied up to the bar, encouraged by the many, many bottles on the shelves behind the bartender, and tried to ignore the collection of older, biker-looking dudes at one end of the bar, a couple of leather-clad gals with them giving me the eye, like I was going to steal their men or something. Draped in a freaking quilt and wearing clothes that looked like they’d been barbecued. Ladies, if I could steal your man dressed looking like this, you have bigger problems.
The bartender was a gruff old guy with a squint. “What’ll you have?”
“Got any scotch?” I asked. He nodded. “Whatever’s good, then.” As he walked away to fetch me a drink, I fumbled for my wallet and found it gone. That was going to be a problem at some point.
A jukebox played a classic rock tune, maybe Roy Orbison, though it was hard for me to tell. I put my elbow on the bar and then my face on my hand. There were no TVs in here, which was good, because I needed the outside world to intrude on my serious drinking like I needed to get into a brawl with all those old biker guys. Sure, I’d kick their asses, but what the hell good would that do? The Terminator and the Predator would still be out there. All I’d have done would be adversely de-stimulate the St. Paul bar economy and inject a few Medicare dollars into the local hospital. And Pee’s (I sniffed; the name almost fit) seemed like it could use all the help it could get staying open.
The bartender dropped off a drink for me and asked, “Get you anything else?”
“A refill, once I go through this,” I said, and he nodded, then meandered off, probably planning to return once I’d done some damage to my scotch. I hoisted it, preparing to drink; it wasn’t going to take long.
“You’re her,” a cracked voice said, and I almost slopped scotch down the front of me. I turned my head to look, and found myself staring at one of the biker gals. She was all done up in boots and with a leather jacket all her own, faded straw hair and looks that had probably really been something once, before now. Now she was a biker grandma who was trying real hard to just look like an aging, cool, biker mom. No amount of hair dye could hide the wrinkles and hard lines, though, and her sandpapery voice suggested cigarettes had been a constant fixture in her life.
“I’m a her,” I said, holding my scotch just inches from my lips. The heavy smell of alcohol rose into my nostrils, begging me to complete the circle, to dump it back down my throat, to let the healing begin. Or at least the numbing effect.
She sat down next to me, unasked, and I started to favor her with a vicious look that would send her skittering away. She didn’t skitter, though, instead looking around, left and right, surreptitiously, like she was about to confess something that she’d rather no one hear. “I know I don’t look it, but I’m a grandmother.”
I stared at her, trying to contain my shock. “You don’t say.”
“I had a baby at seventeen,” she said, keeping her eyes forward. “A little girl. Her daddy and I used to sit down by the river in Minneapolis … so I called her Mississippi … Missi for short.”
“Original,” I said, scotch still perched in front of my lips, wondering what the hell this had to do with me.
“She got married to a man who works for Lifetime Fitness out in Chanhassen,” she went on, treating me to the worst dinner theater I’d ever seen—because the dinner theater out in Chanhassen (actually a real thing) was quite good. Also, my scotch was my dinner, so that didn’t add any points to the current experience. “And they had a little baby of their own. Called her Clara.”
“That’s nice,” I said, my scotch still in a holding pattern. I was going to down it soon if she didn’t get to the damned point. I don’t know why I was holding back; taking it down might have made me more apt to listen. Except … I was listening, without fail and only the occasional sarcastic interruption. Maybe I was curious about where this old biker chick was taking this story.
“One night when Clara was real young,” she said, “her momma kinda hit her limit. Cooped up all day with the baby, she needed to get out. So she decided to take her out shopping. And Chanhassen has a few places, but she wanted to go, to really get out for a while—so she took her to Eden Prairie Center.”
I started to feel a little tingle across the back of my neck, working its way down my spine.
“And you’d think, you know … peaceful night of shopping. Nothing bad ever happens when you’re shopping … except something did.” She was still staring straight ahead, at the bar, but she was starting to get choked up. “Some man … some … superpowered man … he came charging through the store wearing this … this black armor.” She sniffed a little. “He was running from someone, see?”
Now I really started to tingle. Mainly because I remembered this. Remembered the man in black armor. His name was David Henderschott.
“He tosses a clothing rack across the damned store,” she said, and now she turned to look at me. “And Missi is right there, inches away—but she’d stepped back from the stroller where Clara was sitting to look at something—and that rack is just whizzing at Clara, and Missi told me—’Momma, all I could think was our little girl was going to die.’” She shuddered. “Makes me sick every time I think about it—how close she came.”
I just sat there. My hand shook a little, and a cold drip of scotch hit me on the leg.
She pulled out a phone and tripped the touch screen so it lit up. A picture of a ten year old girl was right there, long pigtails and … a Grateful Dead t-shirt?
“You saved my little granddaughter,” she said, sniffing a little. “You threw yourself in front of that clothing rack and yanked her out of the way so fast her momma barely even saw it. She told me—told me later after—after the world found out who you were, she said—’That’s her. That’s the girl that saved our baby.’”
Scotch was spilling all over the place now, and I sat my drink down in front of me, hand shaking. I remembered that night, now that she’d reminded me. It wasn’t a memory I’d lost; it was one I’d buried, an afterthought, jumping in to save that little girl—Clara. Some offhand action by me, pure instinct.
And here was the consequence. A little girl who’d grown up because I’d acted.
“I know,” Biker Grandma went on, “you find yourself in some trouble lately. And I don’t believe a bit of what they’ve said about you. Because I know who you are. You showed us when you saved my Clara, when you risked your life when you didn’t have to, when there was nobody who knew who you were. That told me everything I need to know about you.”
She reached over and brushed my hand. “The cops and the government and the press can say whatever they want. Call you a criminal. But I know who you really are—”
“Who am I?” I asked, a little afraid to find out.
“You’re a damned hero,” she said. “And you don’t let anyone tell you any differently.” She stood up, turned to the bartender and said, “Her drink’s on me. As many as she wants.” And with one look back, and a smile, she started back to her friends.
“Thank you,” I said, and stared at the spilled scotch in front of me. “But … I hope you’re not offended if I …” I smelled the scotch on my hand where it had dripped, strong and pungent, and …
… I didn’t want it anymore. Not a single sip. “… If I don’t, because …” I stood, composing myself. “… I’ve got somewhere I’ve got to be. An … ass … I’ve got to kick.”
“You go get ‘em, girl,” she said, with that same, encouraging smile.
“I will,” I said, as I turned to leave. “I just gotta figure out how.”