Mercy (Atlee Pine #4)(15)

“I don’t know. Look, forget it. Shit, I mean, what the hell is your problem?”

Cain said, “I got no problem. Just here doing my job. And now I’m going to do another job.”

His expression changed from angry to curious. “Yeah? Where is that?”

“Why?”

“I make chump change here. I clean offices at night. But that pays shit, too, and it ain’t regular work. Look.” He glanced around nervously and then lit up a cigarette. His hands were shaky. “Look, I . . . I got me a kid. And my old lady ain’t doing too good. Rehab, y’know? Meth, it’s a bitch.”

She looked him over and decided his old lady wasn’t the only one fighting a meth addiction. Cain saw all the signs because she’d been there, too. “Detailing trucks and cleaning offices? Not much future. Same goes for meth. You don’t kick that, nothing else matters because it gets in your head and you can’t do anything else but worry about the next pop and how to get it.”

“Shit, I know that! So what else do you do?” he asked.

She looked him over. “I do group Lyft rides three times a week in the afternoon. My car’s not pretty, but it takes people who don’t have a lot of dollars where they need to go. Not great money, but it’s something. Then I go home and sleep. Then four nights a week I work security making rounds at a gated community a few miles outside of downtown. Ten to six in the morning. I’m on duty tonight, in fact. They used to have their own private police force, but then they outsourced it to save money. See, even the rich pinch pennies sometimes. It pays eight-fifty an hour, no real bennies, but there’s no heavy lifting. And you get a little car to drive around in. I’ve been doing it for six months and the only thing that happened was I had to roust some pothead kids out of a rich dude’s pool.”

“Security job! I can’t pass no background check and if I have to pee into—”

She interrupted. “They don’t do any of that. No pee cups. No tests, at least they never have with me. They’re supposed to, I guess, but the place that hired me? I went in for an interview at four in the afternoon and was on duty at ten that night. The only thing they asked me was what size uniform I took and whether I wanted a gun. They just want bodies riding around in a uniform looking like they know what they’re doing. Optics, they call it.”

“No training, really?”

“If they had to get people to pee or pass a background check they might as well close up shop. No Ivy Leaguers are applying for this stuff.”

He took a puff on the cigarette and slowly blew the smoke out while he stared at the ground. “I guess that’s right.”

“And anyway, all the homes have these fancy security systems and surveillance cameras out the ass. We’re just gravy on top of the mashed potatoes.”

“And did you want a gun?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“For eight-fifty an hour, I got a gun, they got a gun, they’re more likely to shoot me.”

“I think I’d go for a gun.”

She looked him over. “You know how to use one?”

“Sure. How do I apply for a job?”

She pulled out a piece of paper and pen from her glove box, spun him around, and used his back as a desk as she wrote a phone number down. She handed it to him. “Here. Tell ’em El Cain sent you. It might help. I know the extra cash comes in handy. After they take out taxes and crap it’s around two-twenty a week.”

“Shit, that’s more than I make here. They pay me under the table so it’s less than minimum, but they feed me lunch and there’s usually some leftover donuts for breakfast.”

“There you go. You can buy your own donuts.”

He looked at the paper and said, “Thanks, I mean it, really.”

“No problem. Hope it works out.”

He looked at her bruised face, apparently focusing on it for the first time. “Damn, what happened there?”

“Got in a fight.”

“Who with?”

“Some other chick. She ended up in the hospital to get her jaw wired and to hopefully think about something else to do with her life. I ended up going home and having a beer.”

He chuckled as though he thought she was kidding. “But do you like guys?”

“I like some guys some of the time. I don’t like most guys most of the time.”

He grinned and stuffed the paper into his shirt pocket. “You’re not like what they said.”

“I’m not like what anybody says, because nobody really knows me. And that’s how I want it.”





CHAPTER





12


YOU, A RENTAL COP? Now that’s a good one.”

In the rearview mirror Cain was staring at herself in a plain gray uniform with chevrons on the sleeve signifying absolutely nothing. It was just more optics. She was perched in her tiny two-door Smart Car, with the name STEELE SECURITY SERVICES airbrushed on the side panels in nifty colors. There was an orange bubble light on top of the car that she would turn on from time to time and then she’d speed around just to break up the boredom. She had the seat all the way back but with her long legs she still felt cramped.

She had been on duty for about two hours; it was a bit after midnight. She had made several rounds over her area of responsibility and found zero cause for concern. Certainly, the rich were sensibly afraid that someone would try to take what they had, but the truth was most thieves went for easier targets, like the poor and working class and sometimes reaching up to grab on to those in the middle of the economic pecking order.