Page 15

CHAPTER 15

BABY SAW NOTHING REASSURING at 101 Waterway Street in Culver City. It had taken her almost two hours to get here, since she’d had to go from Glendale back home to Manhattan Beach before coming up here.

She sat frozen in the Uber, looking at the weathered Federation-style house with its peeling shutters and overgrown yard, the only house on the block not surrounded by cyclone fencing. There were no other cars on this street. A thin, raggedy cat lay in the gutter, sleeping or dead.

When the driver nudged her, Baby got out and walked to the house with her hand on the pistol in her purse. It was Rhonda’s gun, which she’d secretly removed from the safe in her sister’s bedroom, not for the first time. Her face burning with defiance, Baby knocked on the door and told herself that sometimes good things came in crummy packages.

An ancient white man answered. Her mouth dropped open when she saw the gray-haired white dude holding the door frame, peering at her with the same incredulity.

“Arthur?” she said.

“Steve?” the guy asked.

“Whoa, okay, wait up.” Baby took her hand off her gun to hold her head. “You’re not who you said you were. At all. This is not cool. You said you were twenty-eight. You said — ”

“ You said you were twenty-five.” The old guy looked her up and down. “ And a man!”

“Well, that’s just the oldest rule in the book: Don’t let strangers on the internet know you’re a young woman. How dumb do you think I am?” Baby dropped a hip, challenged him with her eyes. He didn’t flinch.

“I wanted a man’s help,” the old guy said. “Not a little girl’s. How old are you really? Twelve?”

“Sixteen.”

“Well, call your mama to come pick you up. Right now.”

“Too bad! You got me. So let’s do this.” Baby flicked her hands at him, shooing him out of her way. He didn’t budge. She stepped around him. The house was old, huge, the foyer dusty and bare. She turned and saw Arthur was holding a sawed-off shotgun down by his thigh. “What the hell? Are you this friendly to everyone who comes to your door?”

“You’re one to talk. I saw you from across the way.” Arthur jerked a shriveled, crooked thumb toward the street. “Either you got some hundred-dollar lipstick in there or you’re packing heat too.”

“Packing heat?” Baby had to laugh. “I like that. That’s gangster.” Her assessment of the old guy and his house was shifting, softening, as the seconds ticked by.

Arthur shut the door, marched past her into a spacious but cluttered kitchen, and dumped his shotgun on the counter. The floorboards creaked and popped for the entire journey.

“You said you wanted a man’s help.” Baby put her hands up. “I get it. I can see this isn’t the nicest neighborhood. Looks like the apocalypse just hit outside. But let me try to sell you on my capabilities. I’m handy, okay? I can fix things. I can garden. I can cook. I can keep an eye on things around here.”

Arthur wrinkled his nose, sucked air through his dentures. Baby’s phone pinged in her handbag. She reached in and silenced it, annoyed. Rhonda chasing her again.

“Give me twenty-four hours,” Baby said to Arthur. “How ’bout it? If you think I’m cramping your style after a one-day probationary period, you can tell me to beat it. But this place looks like it could use a woman’s touch.”

Something flickered in the old man’s eyes. He didn’t answer.

“Great.” Baby grinned. She dumped her bag on the floor, went to the kitchen sink, and picked up a glass. “Let me get some water and we’ll get started right now.”

She put her hand on the faucet and felt an electric charge hit her body in an explosive wave.