Robert Ferrigno - Prayers for the assassin

Sarah waited until Peter was out of earshot. “We’re not going to Seattle. We’re going back to L.A.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The Old One lied to us, just like you said. The fourth nuke wasn’t lost off the China coast. It’s on the mainland.” Sarah had that hard, wide-eyed stare, her brain working overtime. “I just…don’t know where exactly.”

Rakkim sat beside her. “Are you okay?”

“Like Redbeard always said, keep your eyes open. Pay attention. Life’s a puzzle. You get new pieces, the picture changes. Don’t be afraid to take a fresh look. That’s what happened, Rikki.” Sarah gazed past him. “Fancy’s scar…it wasn’t from a tracheotomy. It was too round. Too perfect. I wondered at the time if she had done it deliberately. Scarification is popular with certain subcultures-”

“Tracheotomies are popular with junkies who overdose.”

“That’s the old puzzle. I got a new piece at the mall and it changed everything.”

Rakkim glanced around. Peter and the others were on the far side of the balloon gondola.

Sarah took his arm. “The Chinese woman in Desolation Row wore a medallion the exact same shape as Fancy’s scar, resting at the same place at the hollow of her throat. She said it was a good-luck amulet from the village where she was born. The spot on the throat is the precise intersection of five different energy meridians in Chinese medicine.” Sarah squeezed him tighter. “Fancy’s scar is a radiation scar. Her father must have bought her the medallion on his last trip, and it picked up traces of the radioactive material he was transporting. He probably didn’t realize he had radiation poisoning until-”

“You spent five minutes with this Chinese woman-”

“Five seconds would have been enough. I knew there was something about Fancy’s scar that bothered me. I just didn’t have enough data.”

“You still don’t have enough data.”

Sarah showed him the cell screen. A round, gray scar with two small pink spots. She zoomed out and Rakkim saw a man’s abdomen with several identical scars running down from his sternum to below his navel.

“Buttons?” said Rakkim.

Sarah nodded. “Silver buttons from a military dress uniform. Probably from Chernobyl or some other hot spot, then were sold and reused by this man’s tailor.” She zoomed in closer. Closer. The scar filled the screen. The edges had tiny bubbles with faint striations toward the center. “I saw the same stippling on Fancy’s scar.”

Rakkim stared at the screen. “It was dark at Disneyland-”

“There was moonlight, and I was right beside her. I know what I saw. I just didn’t know what it meant at the time. Now, I do. The Old One’s son may have drowned in the South China Sea, but Fancy’s father made it to land. So did the fourth bomb.”

“Why…would he buy her a souvenir on the most important mission of his life?”

“Because that’s what fathers do when they go away,” Sarah said quietly. “They buy a memento for their daughter, so she knows he was thinking of her when he was away. That’s why Fancy would have kept the medallion, even after she realized it was ruining her skin. I know I would have. If that was the last thing my father had given me, I would have kept it no matter what.”

Rakkim remembered the snapshot of Sarah and her father that he had found in her music box, Sarah as an infant resting in her father’s arms. He remembered the expression on her face when he’d handed it back to her. So happy she couldn’t stop crying. She said it was all she had left of him. Rakkim didn’t have anything. Any keepsakes, any photos of his mother and father, had been lost along with everything else before he met Redbeard. Except for the key. A key to the house he’d grown up in. A few days after Redbeard had brought him home, Rakkim had flushed the key down the toilet. He couldn’t remember now if it was because he thought he had a new home…or if he was afraid that Redbeard would use the key and all it represented against him.

“The Chinese woman said every village has their own distinct medallion,” Sarah said. “When we find the medallion, we’ll know where he was on that last trip. We’ll know where he planted the fourth bomb.”

“Fancy’s girlfriend…Jeri Lynn. She’ll know where the medallion is.”

Sarah smiled. “You believe me.”

“You haven’t been wrong about anything important since I met you.”

“We still have to find Jeri Lynn.”

“That’ll be the easy part.” Rakkim hesitated. “If the medallion was so important to Fancy, Jeri Lynn might have buried it with her. She’s been dead over a week. You better be ready to dig her up, because that’s what it could come down to.”

Sarah’s eyes blazed now in the setting sun. A cold fire. “I’ll do whatever is necessary. Just like you.”

Rakkim and Sarah walked up the apartment steps just as two women came out the front door. They embraced. “You take care of yourself, Jeri Lynn,” said the pregnant blonde.

“If I don’t, who will?” said the short brunette. She waited until the blonde eased down the steps. “You here for Fancy’s wake?”

“Yes, we are,” Sarah said quickly.

“Come on in,” said Jeri Lynn. “There’s mostly just cheese balls and orange soda supreme, and the sherbet is melting.” She tried to smile. “I guess you didn’t come for the food-” Her mouth formed a big O. “That isn’t…? Cameron? Cameron!” She barreled past them, scooped the kid up, and swung him around as if he were a stuffed animal. She waved to Sarah, tears in her eyes. “Come inside, honey, you made my day.”

Sarah and Rakkim followed them into the living room. A couple of other women sat on the couch-a chubby teenager with a baby on her shoulder, and a henna redhead, with a face like a plow horse, looking through a photo album and clucking.

“Girls, this is…Sorry, I didn’t catch your name,” said Jeri Lynn.

“I’m Sarah and this is my friend Rakkim.”

“Little mama’s Ella, and that’s Charlotte,” said Jeri Lynn.

Pleased-to-meet-you all around. The baby let out a deep, rumbling fart and everyone smiled. His mother patted him on the back. “Feel better now?” She stood up, popped a cheese ball into her mouth from the paper plate on the coffee table. “We got to go home and start working on dinner.” She kissed Jeri Lynn. “I am just so sorry.”

The henna redhead closed the album. “I should get going too.” She gave Jeri Lynn’s arm a squeeze. “She was a sweet, sweet girl and we’ll all miss her.”

Jeri Lynn walked them to the door.

The previous night Rakkim and Sarah had driven into Los Angeles and headed straight for Disneyland. It took them a few hours to find someone who could tell them about Fancy’s girlfriend, and even then, they only got a general idea of where the two of them lived. Someplace on the outskirts of New Fallujah, almost to Orange. None of the other rent-wives had ever been invited to visit. It seemed to annoy them. Rakkim wanted to canvass the supermarkets and drugstores with Fancy’s picture, but Sarah had a better idea. She said they should wait until tomorrow, get some rest, and then go back to Long Beach and pick up Cameron. The kid who said he would be waiting for Fancy every day at St. Xavier’s Church. Noon. Sarah said that way they could drive around New Fallujah until Cameron recognized the apartment. Showing up with Cameron would open the gates.

Jeri Lynn came back, waved them toward the couch, a short woman with frizzy hair, smooth skin, and exhausted eyes. “Sit down. I see people standing up in the house and I think they’re bill collectors.” She had a brave smile. “You aren’t bill collectors, are you?”