Round Robin (17 page)

Taking in the sights, Manfred craned his neck to look up at the one hundred stories of the John Hancock Center.

“Wunderbar,”
he opined.

The guy probably didn’t know from architecture, but Robin could see how someone who pumped iron for a living would like a building that was all black steel, giant X-shaped braces and soared halfway to the moon.

“Yeah, it great,” Robin said. “There’s an observation deck on the 95th floor, too. Best of all, it’s right next door to where we’re going to shop.”

That was her best shot at heading off the shopping safari, but it was doomed to fail. The kid yammered something in German and they were off. Up one side of the street to the river and back down the other. If there was a thing that the kid asked for and didn’t get, Robin didn’t see it. And not just clothes: toys, games, stuffed animals and electronics. By the time they got up to the 95th floor of the Hancock, even Manfred had trouble carrying everything, and Robin had sore feet.

Robin sat down at a table and sipped a ginger ale, the only thing she’d allowed Manfred to buy for her. She looked at the big man with his tiny daughter. He was looking out a window with her and pointing at the lake. Robin tracked the gesture but all she saw was water, not even a boat or ship in sight.

Manfred joined her at the table and ordered a beer when the waiter came over.

“Bianca asked which direction she should look to see Germany. I told her, but explained she wouldn’t be able to see it. She is trying anyway; she said we are high enough. She wants to see her mother.”

Manfred shrugged.

Robin did, too. She was under the distinct impression that the kid’s affection for her old man had grown with each passing purchase.

“I have another problem,” Manfred said.

“Don’t we all?” Robin responded, rubbing one of her aching feet.

“Tomorrow I must work.”

“Me, too.”

“But I must have someone to care for Bianca. I cannot leave her alone.”

“What about school? Didn’t the CIA wire that for you, too?”

“There are always things that you don’t think about. To be honest, I dared not get my hopes so high as to think about school. And I think Bianca needs to adjust to me, to America.”

“Then what you need is a daycare center.”

When she saw his puzzled look Robin explained what she meant.

“I would prefer personal care for Bianca,” he said.

“You mean a nanny?”

“Ja.
Someone good and kind and experienced.” Manfred turned to glance at his daughter for a moment. “Someone firm.”

Robin was about to crack that he didn’t want too much, did he, when an idea hit her. An idea that made her smile.

“I’ve got just who you want,” she said.

“Nancy,” Robin said into the phone. “You’ve got to try some of Manfred’s cherry tarts ... Better than the strudel ... You’ll be right over? ... Good.”

Robin put her phone down. The shoppers had returned home.

“Who is Nancy?” Manfred asked.

“My sister.”

“She has children of her own?”

“Two grown boys.”

Manfred looked at Bianca who sat playing among her new possessions like a kid at Christmas.

“She is firm, your sister?”

“Oh, yeah. She works at it every day. You’ll like her.”

Manfred did like Nancy. She seemed to take to him, too. And she had a hard time not swooning after her first bite of cherry tart. Which damn near made Manfred blush with pleasure. It was almost too much for Robin to take.

The only thing that cheered her was the kid’s reaction. She sat like some little miser amidst her pile of gold, worried that someone might filch a small coin from her. That someone being Nancy. Robin was eager to see how her ever-competent sister would handle this one.

Robin explained the kind of help Manfred needed.

“Hey, I go to work everyday, too, you know,” Nancy said.

“Yeah, but you’re the boss at your place,” Robin said.

“Office manager,” Nancy replied.

“Okay, you don’t own the place, but who runs it?”

Nancy looked at Robin, then Manfred, then Bianca.

The kid was staring intently back at the adults.

“I do.”

“And there isn’t something you could work out?”

“I will pay, of course,” Manfred said.

Nancy didn’t need the money. With Charlie’s business income, she worked because she enjoyed it. She liked to bring order to things. If she could have put up with all the handshaking and backslapping, she would have run for mayor.

“I will bake for you, too,” Manfred added, when he saw that the money angle wasn’t playing.

That was tempting ... but Nancy didn’t know what she’d do with the kid around the office all morning. There was no way that she’d give up her job to become a nursemaid.

“Let me talk to the kid.”

The three adults advanced upon the child who protectively gathered up as many of her purchases in her arms as she could. Bianca looked at Nancy and said something in German.

Manfred frowned, big time.

“What’d she say?” Nancy asked.

Manfred looked for a way to phrase his response; Robin filled the gap.

“The kid said I was fat and hideous,” Robin told Nancy.

“So what did she say about me?” Nancy repeated.

Manfred shrugged in resignation and told her.

“She said you looked like a prostitute ... one of the women in the brothel where she lived.”

Nancy gave Bianca a look that would have made Dracula whimper.

Bianca quickly directed a flurry of words to her father. Not exactly a cry for help, but a hurried explanation. Manfred provided simultaneous translation as the child continued.

“This woman — the one Bianca says you resemble — she says that she is the highest priced prostitute in the house ... the prettiest one.”

Manfred stopped, clearly embarrassed, shocked by his daughter.

Bianca repeated herself.

“What? What was that last part?” Nancy asked.

Through his deepest frown yet and clenched teeth, Manfred said, “The most skilled in the bedroom.”

Bianca looked at Nancy, hopeful that she’d appeased her.

Robin had a hard time keeping a straight face.

Manfred sighed, let his face drop and said, “I am sorry my daughter has insulted you. Please forgive her. Her circumstances have not been the best. I will look for someone else to watch over her.”

Nancy shook her head, a tight smile on her face that a drill instructor would have envied.

“No, no,” she said. “This little girl and I are going to get along just fine.”

Manfred was surprised.

Robin wasn’t, not really.

“You are sure?” Manfred asked.

“Oh, yeah. First, we’ll have to teach her English, and —”

“I speak English,” Bianca said. She looked at her father and Robin, whose mouth hung open. “When I want to.”

Her accent wasn’t half as thick as Manfred’s.

“Good,” Nancy said. “Then tomorrow you can come to work with me and start learning real estate.”

Chapter 17

The next morning, Robin was awakened by someone banging on her door. Not just knocking, banging. Loud, hard, and fast. It scared her silly. She looked at the clock and saw it was five a.m. The banging continued unabated. Robin ran to the door in her pajamas, wondering what the emergency could be. It had to be an emergency. What other explanation could there be? Was her house on fire? Had her father had another heart attack? Had—

She flung the door open heedless of who might be on the other side.

It was Manfred.

“What?” she gasped. “What’s wrong? Is it you? The kid? What?”

“It is five a.m.,” he said blandly. “Time for your workout. Please dress and meet me in the garage in five minutes.”

Robin hit him. That might have been unacceptable behavior at Mimi’s, but when some cretin scared her witless out of a sound sleep in her own home, it was entirely appropriate. Entirely futile as well. She hadn’t been able to reach his head and her fist glanced off his enormous chest like a powder puff off granite.

Manfred wasn’t the least bit perturbed. He merely nodded as if she had only confirmed his suspicions. “We will work on your upper body strength this morning.”

Then he turned on his heel and repeated that she should present herself in five minutes.

Robin looked at his retreating bulk and screamed.

The scream woke Bianca. It didn’t alarm her, though. Where she’d lived screams were a common enough occurrence. In fact, not a night went by without them. After all, a cry of feigned delight was a harlot’s stock-in-trade. All of her girlfriends at the brothel had told her that. They said she should never worry about their screams; they were only what the customers had paid for and expected. In no time at all, Bianca had become adept at recognizing these sounds. In fact, when she was alone, she even practiced her own screams so that they would be right when her turn came to entertain the customers.

Of course, there was that one time when the screams got entirely too real. A customer had gone too far with Greta and hurt her, and then it was the customer’s turn to scream when the Bear came into the room and twisted his head almost all the way around. Those screams were horrible.

But the scream that had woken her, that was more like the ones that Mama and Horst, a.k.a the Bear, exchanged when they were arguing. Bianca looked out through her bedroom doorway. The sofa-bed where the giant slept — she still didn’t believe he was her father, even if he had bought her all those presents — was folded away and all the cushions had been replaced.

Where was he?

Arguing with
der hexe.
The hag.

Bianca got up to investigate.

Robin got dressed. The morning was pitch black and from the way the windows were frosted she knew it was cold outside. She wore leggings and a long-sleeved t-shirt under her sweat-clothes. She laced up her sneakers over heavy white socks. Oh, she was going to work out, all right. And at just the right moment she was bound and determined that, oops, a weight would be just too heavy for her to hold and she’d manage to drop it squarely on fathead’s toes.

She stormed down the back stairs and out to the garage, ready to do battle.

Bianca tiptoed through the apartment. The giant wasn’t there. She poked her head out the front door, but there were no sounds in the hallway. She listened for footsteps from above in the Magical Garden — she very much wanted to get back in there, but not at the expense of kissing the hag’s hem — but no sound came from above. With no other choice left, she opened the rear door of the apartment.

The giant had shown her this was where the building’s laundry and other utilities were located. He had shown her that there was nothing to be afraid of back here, but Bianca was sure that a huge red rat lived in this place. It was the giant’s pet. And if she ever made the giant truly angry, Bianca knew he would give her to the rat and the rat would eat her.

This was very similar to the warning her mother had given her about what would happen to Bianca if she ever caught her sneaking into the brothel’s money room. But there had been a time or two when Bianca had slipped in and taken a few marks, and no one had noticed, and the rat hadn’t gotten her.

So now she took her chances with the giant’s rat. She looked all around and when she was sure that the rat was either sleeping or out eating other children, she scurried over to the rear window of the basement. She repositioned a cardboard box so she could climb up on it and look out. She saw another building that the giant had told her was the house’s garage.

And now, across the distance of the small backyard, she could hear more screams ... and moans. Her keen, educated ear told her that strenuous physical exertions lay behind the sounds ... and the sounds were genuine, not pretend.

The giant was
shtupping the hag
— and she was enjoying it!

Bianca was revolted. She looked around once more to make sure the rat hadn’t snuck up on her and then she scurried back into her apartment, slamming the door to the rat’s lair behind her. She ran back into her room, jumped in bed and pulled the covers over her head.

A terrible fear ran through her.

What if the giant really was her father?

What if her mother refused to take her back, even if the giant permitted it?

Would the hag then become her new mother?

Bianca would not have it. She’d feed herself to the rat first. Or she could turn the giant against the hag, make him see that he would be much better off with the hooker who looked like Geli. She at least would be a presentable choice.

And the hooker was coming to pick up Bianca for the day.

So she could start working on her right away.

Robin took the bus to work.

Manfred had offered to drive her; he had to drop off the cherry tarts at Mimi’s anyway. But Robin declined. Firmly. The idea of riding with Manfred and the kid, who’d get dropped off at Nancy’s, was too ... too ... too much like they were a family. The whole thing gave Robin the feeling that some malign force had set her at the top of a ski jump with a strong wind at her back. If she didn’t fight it with all her might it’d be,
eeek,
down the slippery slope where she’d finish not with a graceful jump, but pitching head over heels.

No, scratch that. She wasn’t doing anything head over heels.

In fact, she was still angry that she hadn’t been able to drop the weights on Manfred’s toes. She’d tried, twice. But he’d skipped neatly out of the way both times. The man’s reaction time and agility were not to be believed. At that point, Robin had abandoned the idea. A third time would have been too obvious, and undoubtedly as unsuccessful as the others.

And by that time he had her so involved in the workout she’d had to concentrate solely on what she was doing. She’d had to put so much effort into each movement that she’d had to grunt and shout just to complete it ... and it had felt so good to succeed she hadn’t even minded how loudly or rudely she’d been bellowing.

Now, she was sore again — but not as sore as the first time. This pain felt kind of good, strangely enough. It made her aware of herself in ways that she’d long since forgotten, since she’d been a kid racing around a playground anyway. She could feel actual muscles tightening and toughening under her suet. It was invigorating.

Made her feel really ready to go back to work and kick some tail.

Manfred had come and gone, leaving his tarts behind him, so she didn’t have to deal with him when she arrived at Mimi’s. Didn’t have to worry about him putting her off her game.

Good thing, too, because all her regulars were glad to see her back. Gave her a warm Screaming Mimi’s welcome. They lined up to take their shots.

“Well, look who’s back. Our charm school drop-out.”

“High praise from a med school lab rat,” Robin replied.

“Where’d you go, Robin? A mushroom farm to work on your pallor?”

“Sure, saw you there feeding the crops, fertilizer-for-brains.”

“It wasn’t the same without you; it was like a day without a headache.”

“Now you know how your wife feels when you’re gone for the night.”

“Love your hair, dear. Amazing what you can do with Johnson’s Glo-Coat.”

“Thanks, sweetie, it’d probably bleach out that little mustache of yours, too.”

After the breakfast rush ended, Mimi came over and gave Robin a quick peck on the cheek.

“It’s so good to have you back where you belong, Robin. Just like old times.”

Robin waited for the zinger, but there wasn’t one.

Mimi, and everyone else, really was glad to see her. Robin had been a little worried that people might tread gently around her after what she’d done to Ant-knee. But inside Mimi’s, at least, all was right with the world.

That pumped her up even more than her workout had.

“You got your ass kicked,” said Iggy Gross, boy shock-jock.

“Well ... ”

“You did. You got it kicked.”

“Okay. I did.”

“I heard there’s a tape. Vid-e-o.”

“There’s no tape.”

“I’d pay you big bucks for that tape.”

“There is no tape!”

“But there was, wasn’t there?”

Tone Morello said nothing. He was enduring his twenty-third interview since he’d been fired from his job. He’d been to every TV station in town. He’d been to all the radio stations. He’d even been to the newspapers, including the neighborhood papers and one supermarket advertiser, to which he’d pitched his idea for a sports column. The electronic media had told him no thanks, to which the pencil press had added maliciously that everybody knew he didn’t write his own material. Basically, Tone had fallen off a cliff, had gone from being a six-figure-a-year celebrity to an unemployable nobody. And had done it in breathtakingly quick time.

All because of Robin.

Not so much that she’d kicked his keister in that damned debate of theirs. Tone didn’t know anybody in Chicago journalism who’d go up against Robin one-on-one of their own accord. And he had made sure that the tape his cameraman had shot of the nightmare had long since been reduced to slag. There was another tape, of course, the one that little broad had shot for Robin, but it hadn’t surfaced or one of his old buddies would have added to his humiliation by making it public. But that story Robin had laid on him, making him seem like Jack-the-freaking-Ripper instead of just a guy who got around, brother, had that done a job on him.

The cause for Tone’s dismissal had been moral turpitude, a reason that made him gag to this day. There were no morals in TV or journalism, and if everybody in the business who slept around got the axe for it, people would be getting their news from a town crier.

But him, he had become the poster boy for reckless, predatory sex — the bull’s-eye for the new puritanism. All because of Robin. They’d bought that tub of lard’s story lock, stock and barrel. So what if it was true? The thing that surprised Tone, though, when he stopped to examine that painful memory, was how personal Robin had made everything. There was more to it than just slugging it out with him. There was ... what? Something ... no, someone. That was it. Robin was getting even for someone else who had hurt her.

Insight wasn’t an everyday occurrence for Tone, and he was greatly pleased with this one. Now, he had something that maybe he could use to get even one day. He might have explored the idea of revenge further but he was distracted by someone yelling at him.

“Hey, you listening to me?” Iggy Gross shouted.

“Yeah, sure,” Tone said.

“What’d I just say?”

“I don’t know.”

Tone decided he’d better try to pay attention. Iggy Gross had actually called him and asked him to come in and talk. And the idiot — whose act consisted of pimple-faced, obnoxious, teenage, toilet humor — had a coast-to-coast radio audience of millions. He’d also said he might have a job for Tone.

“Okay,” Gross said, “we’ll forget about the tape for the time being. Now, here’s my angle: You’re a broken man. An evil, vicious, ball-busting man-hater has emasculated you and trashed your life? That’s right, right?”