Дэвид Балдаччи - Mercy

Cain ran a hand over dark fuzz cut so close to the scalp that it almost looked shaved. She had done that last year. She should have done it long before then. Long hair had made her angry. For as far back as she could remember, which wasn’t all the way back. She knew there were holes, gaps, blanks. Once she had hoped to fill them all in. Now, she appreciated the gaps. She had no more interest in discovering anything about her past because what would be the point? Only today and tomorrow and the day after that counted. And right now, she was a winner of a thousand bucks. So this was one of her best days in a long time.

Cain had finally got her rotator unseized, iced where she’d taken the hardest shots, rubbed ointment on her cuts, and put on her underwear and bra, faded jeans, and a tattered sweatshirt. Flip-flops went on her feet though it was cold outside. With the prize money she would buy some new casual shoes, but thirteen double wide wasn’t routinely available, at least in something that didn’t look like footwear for clowns. She slipped the sleek fifteen-shot Glock 19 with the black matte finish she always carried to these fights out of a padlocked cabinet and into her belt clip. She stuffed her other things into a small duffel, slung it over her shoulder, and went in search of her winnings.

She found it in the form of a small, thin man in a cheap, wrinkled suit with flint chips for eyes and a mustache that kept twitching like something was living inside it. He was standing in the hallway right off where the fight had taken place. An unlit cigarette dangled from his lips like an afterthought. The crowd was gone. It might just be her and him, and Cain wanted this over as soon as possible. A man, a woman, and money to be given, all in solitary isolation, was always complicated.

She held out her hand. “Let’s have it, Sam. I got an early morning.”

He lifted a worn envelope from his inside coat pocket and held it up tauntingly. “You suckered her pretty good, El. But she’s smart. She’ll figure it out. Unlike you, she’s going places.”

Cain didn’t take the bait for the simple fact that she didn’t care. “Right now the only place she’s going is the hospital for a concussion check and to have her jaw wired. If she’s really smart she’ll take a coding class and leave you and this shit behind.”

She dropped her duffel, grabbed the envelope, and opened it.

“It’s all there,” said Sam. “You think I’d cheat you?”

“Yeah, I do, because yeah, you have.”

“That was before.”

“Before what?” She caught him looking at her Glock. Cain said, “Hallelujah for open carry and no background checks. All a girl needs not to get screwed by jerks like you.”

“Right,” he sneered. “You have trouble passing a background check, El?”

She finished counting the cash and put it in her duffel. “I’d pass it as easy as you would, Sam .”

“You made a few folks a ton of money tonight. Most bet against you.”

“Yeah, well stupid them.”

“You’re past your prime. Maybe if you’d taken it seriously ten years ago. You got a lucky kick in tonight. She would’ve decisioned you easy, and she almost knocked you out. She was ahead in the first two rounds, and in the third, when your bum shoulder locked up, she was kicking the shit out of you. She’s just better, admit it.”

“How would you know anything about it, Sam? You’ve never been in the ring, have you? See, that takes a bunch of things you’ll never have.” She glanced at his crotch. “Starting with balls bigger than peanuts.”

He didn’t seem to be listening to Cain. He gave her the once-over. “You know, if you fixed yourself up, got all that damn shit on your skin taken care of, wore some decent clothes now and then, didn’t shave your scalp like some dopey skinhead, and for a few hours acted like a girl instead of an attack dog, you could be attractive to a guy. You do that, maybe you and me could have some fun. I can be fun, with the right gal.” He stroked her arm.

The next moment he was thrown against the wall, with the muzzle of Cain’s drawn Glock pressed against his cheek.

“You ever try to lay another hand on me...” She racked the gun’s slide to chamber a round and pressed the muzzle so far into his skin, it rode up against his cheekbone.

“You’re batshit crazy, bitch,” cried out a terrified Sam.

“And don’t ever forget that.” Cain stepped back, holstered the Glock, grabbed her duffel, and walked off.

She signed a few autographs for some stragglers in the parking lot who were probably too shit-faced to even know who she was. After that Cain climbed into her dented 1990s-era two-door Honda Civic hatchback, with enough miles on it to have circumnavigated the world nearly ten times. Off and on over the years this car had also served as her home as she crisscrossed the country.

Great old car , thought Cain as she started the engine. What would I do without you? She patted the dash like it was an old friend. And when you didn’t have many friends, sometimes a car would do just fine.

The drive didn’t take long because Cain lived in a nearby area that had not been gentrified. She supposed there were too many undesirables around.

Including me.

Cain parked out front and entered through the only door to her place after unlocking the rusted padlock. She relocked it on the other side because folks around here didn’t abide by the same laws most human beings did. She knew at some point the owners would kick her and the other residents out and turn this place into something that would make them real money. For now, it was just a series of makeshift pods separated by thin walls having been put up during its transition from commercial use to residential. In that way the place had been inexpensively reborn from the hulks of semi-attached dilapidated buildings, where the current residents were one step up from being homeless. But it was a damn important step, she knew. You could always take a home for granted, until you didn’t have one.

She had a roof, a bed, a toilet, a microwave, enough heat to get by, and windows and a floor fan in lieu of AC. She had a cell phone that she had “found” by stealing it, and WiFi that she had lifted from a nearby network after learning its password. There were rats all over, but they left her alone for the most part. The dump cost her four hundred a month in rent plus utilities, and that was a blessing to her because she couldn’t afford a penny more than that.

Her legal name for a long time now was Eloise Cain. Eloise had come from a book she had read as a child. She didn’t go by Rebecca Atkins anymore. Not since that night in Georgia. And she had had another name before that, but couldn’t remember what it was. How did I get so lucky to have all these names? she sometimes thought when she’d had too many beers or too much weed, or both. Most people only have the one.

And Cain? That just came from reading the Good Book. Desiree Atkins had said the scriptures were all she needed to know in the way of learning. That she had to repent her whole life for all the awful things she’d done and all the awful things she’d wanted to do. Well, she had certainly wanted to do awful things to Desiree, all right. But whatever she was willing to do paled in comparison to what the woman actually had done to Cain.

After escaping, Cain had basically lived at some of the best public libraries in the country for years. And it wasn’t necessarily about reading and learning, at least not at first. She had found, as a rule, that the more books you read, the longer they let you stay. And when it was freezing cold or mercilessly hot out, that was important. And if you read a lot of books, and even helped out, she had found that kindly librarians had often become informal teachers, helping her to read better and to write — and on top of that, they fed her, too. Because without something in the belly the mind didn’t work too good. Those years had constituted her formal instruction, for better or worse.