Too Wylde by Marcus Wynne

was not
hurt."
    "That's good."
    She shook her head. "This is like what my
father say last days in Viet Nam were like."
    "It's the last days of something, Thieu."
    My cell phone rang. A local number, one I
didn't recognize.
    "Hello?"
    Slight asthmatic wheeze of someone with
difficulty breathing. A voice I didn't want to recognize.
    "Jimmy John, Jimmy John, where do you
belong?"
    "Who is this?"
    "You know, brother. You know. Busy? Thought
we might take a walk in the park, like the old timey time
days."
    "Hank?"
    "The Artist Previously Known As. Maybe."
    "Where?"
    "Remember how you used to tell me the story
about Lake Harriet and the Lakota holy lands? That little hill
there, the one where you ran off that rapist a long time ago."
    Those words filled me with a dread so deep
and cold I couldn't speak. Only Hank would know that.
    "Yes. I remember."
    "Start there and walk down to the Lake, turn
counter-clockwise and walk against the flow. I'll find you along
there."
    "Why you running SDR on me, Hank?"
    "Even paranoids have real enemies, bro. You
and me got that class on the same day at the same time. Courtesy of
Uncle Sugar. Say, a quarter past two? We can have a nice walk in
public, won't attract a lot of attention that way, you figure?
Looking forward to catching up, Jimmy John. Maybe we can figure out
where we both belong."
    "I...."
    "Don't say a word, Jimmy Jay. Nothing to be
said right now. See you quarter past. And don't get your friends
involved. You still got friends, right?"
    "Hank..."
    "The Artist Previously Known As. Later,
gator."
    Click. Nothing.
    I shut the phone.
    "Jimmy?" Thieu said. "Who that? You okay? You
look sick, you sick?"
     
    Lizzy Caprica
    Lizzy sat crossed legged in an elegant lotus
position on the worn leather couch in the dancer's lounge in the
backroom warrens of The Trojan Horse. The other dancers were all
gathered around, draped over chairs, perched on chair arms, or on
the floor leaning against one another's knees watching the big
screen TV Lance T had installed in the lounge for them.
    "This is awful," one of the girls said. "How
many killed?"
    "They don't know yet," one of the others
said. "Couple of hundred for sure."
    "Anyone we know?" Lizzy said.
    "No," Gina, one of the senior dancers with
Lizzy, said. "Not that we've heard. Everyone's okay."
    "I think Marie's boyfriend is a St. Paul
firefighter," Lizzy said. "Has anyone heard from him?"
    "He's okay. They were in bed when it
happened; he got called in."
    "Thank Goddess," Lizzy said. "I think we
should all pray and offer thanks."
    Several girls muttered under their breath and
moved away; most of them, and all the senior girls, gathered closer
to Lizzy.
    "Say it, girl," said a tall black girl
muscled like a gymnast. "Say those words you say."
    They all held hands, and Lizzy opened the
prayer with the words she intoned daily: "Father, Mother, Creator
God, Holy Spirit, Great Spirit, Goddess...hear our prayers...."
     
    Lance T
    Lance watched the girls pray on his wall
mounted camera monitor. He had one monitor set on the girls and
another monitor on the news.
    It was a hard day in Lake City. This was
going to cut into the good, and he needed the good to keep coming.
It cost a lot to keep things up, keep people happy, the doors open,
the green flowing.
    He had opportunities to branch out, but he
steered clear of those entanglements. There were more than enough
entanglements for a business owner in the Twin Cities, especially
one in the business he's in, and there were more than enough people
sniffing around him already. Naked women and booze brought in the
bad with the good, and men drunk on liquor and/or sex tended to
talk. Secrets had a high price to the right people.
    Something Lance T knew too well.
    Costs a lot to keep a secret.
    He tapped on a key on his desktop computer,
pulled up the real-time accrual in the cash registers. He could
keep a second by second accounting of what came in through the
electronic registers (and change it himself, if