[stmercy2020]

Wanted to get this up yesterday, but I was kind of insanely busy.  As always, this is a work in progress and I appreciate any and all comments people feel inclined to make.  As an aside, I'm also working on another Sylph story which, hopefully, I'll be putting up before I go to bed tonight.

Chapter Six

Cliff Goodrum, former shift manager at Moe’s Warehouse in Detroit, Motorheads gang member, convicted of two major felonies and a host of misdemeanors and facing up to life in prison, seethed with rage.  Their initial choice would have been perfect- the boy had been alone with his car, for God’s sake.  He had barely struggled at all, and they’d figured he’s be perfect as an induction for Joey.  Cliff’s brother Joey was also facing a long prison sentence, although somewhat reduced because he was a first offender and hadn’t had a weapon of any sort.
“Goodrum,” yelled the warden, a huge, bellicose man in his middle thirties, “Visitor!”
Cliff looked up from his cot to see a middle-eastern man of indeterminate years.  Looks like a lawyer, Cliff thought.  His hair was neatly trimmed, as were his beard and moustache.  He wore wire-framed half-spectacles and what looked to be an extremely expensive pinstripe suit.  His shoes and briefcase, both leather, had been polished until they very nearly glowed.  From the moment he saw him, Cliff distrusted him.
“Yeah?” he growled.
“Mr. Goodrum,” the tidy man began, his English utterly devoid of any accent, “My name is Sattar Armanjani, although you may wish to think of me as your personal Kobayashi.  A man who has become interested in your case for his own reasons has asked me to make you an offer which you would be wise to accept.  Will you hear it?”
“Do I got a choice?”
Sattar smiled fleetingly.  “Of course!  If you choose not to hear my employer’s offer, I will leave this prison and never return and you will rot here for the rest of your living years.  But I do not believe you will do this.  You are still young and could have a very promising future ahead of you.”
“Right.”  Cliff spat.  “Go ahead, then.  I’m listening.”
“My employer will arrange to have your sentence commuted.  You will be able to walk out of this prison as nearly a free man.  My employer will do this for you because he believes you can be salvaged and put to good purpose.”
“You mean, ‘put to his purposes,’ don’t you?”
“Quite right.  Upon leaving the penal system you will have several duties.  The first will be to acquire a new look.  I will give you the name of a very reliable cosmetic surgeon.  You will avail yourself of his talents.  Once your new face is established, we will give you the rest of your instructions-which you will carry out, unless you desire to return here with no hope of ever receiving parole.
“So, Mr. Goodrum.  Do we have an accord?”

Jodi had grown rather fond of the Boudreaux sisters during the several months that they were embroiled in the trials of the various Motorheads gang members, and so she was quite pleased when, a week after the trials concluded, Dicey called her and asked her about stopping by her dojo to start classes.  As an assistant instructor, Jodi helped in training Dicey’s class and then Dicey usually stayed after to observe Jodi’s more advanced class.  After classes they frequently hung out, sometimes stopping by the Chicken Shack or the China Buffet located off Dix Highway.  Tonight Dicey had been working on a sutemi, a throw which involved dropping to the ground and using the resulting shift in balance to flip your opponent.  It was, Jodi thought, a technique that Dicey, with her surprisingly dense build, was particularly well-suited for, yet, for some reason, Dicey had been struggling with it.
“It’s not that I can’t roll ‘em over,” Dicey explained, “It’s just-” she paused, thinking.
“You don’t want to hurt your uke?” Jodi asked.  That seemed logical- Dicey was so ridiculously strong that she had to constantly monitor how hard she was striking or throwing.  She had been warned about using excessive force on more than one occasion, and had always seemed genuinely contrite afterwards.
“Well, that, but that’s not all.”  Jodi waited, letting Dicey collect her thoughts.
“I think what I really don’t like about it is the feeling I have that my balance is all out of whack.”
Jodi considered that.  One of the maxims of jujutsu and, by extension, judo was that fighting was balance.  The opponent who kept their balance and controlled their balance the most effectively would win in virtually any conflict.
“You used to dance, right?”
“A long time ago,” Dicey laughed.  “I was in high school and I was considered too tall even then.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.  I did some modern, but no one wanted to work with me for ballet, because I made all my partners look like midgets.”
“Okay.  But were you any good?”
“I was, actually,” Dicey admitted with obvious pride.  “I was a lot stronger than other girls my age, so I could hold some of those really obnoxious positions longer than them.”
“Right,” Jodi smiled.  “But what I was getting at is that dance isn’t all about-or even mostly about-being strong.  It’s about knowing where your center is, right?”
“You talk like my old ballet instructor…”
“Right.  Well, the sutemi is like that, too.  Your center is moving, but the trick to controlling the throw is adapting to that shift.”
“Sounds like a metaphor for life.”
“Ah, now you have it grasshopper,” Jodi said in an extremely fake Chinese accent.  Dicey laughed and flicked some of her fried rice at her, provoking a short-lived but extremely relaxing food fight.

Drifter was daydreaming, going over a couple riffs in his head that he wanted to try, when he noticed her.  It wasn’t the first time he had seen her, he realized- she came in usually shortly after Dicey left the gym and usually stayed only briefly.  Thinking on it a little more, he wasn’t entirely sure, but he didn’t think he’d ever seen her anywhere near the gym except when Dicey had just recently been there.  She was unremarkable enough, Drifter supposed, although she didn’t quite fit the stereotype of the gym rat that he usually saw going in and out of the reception area in the NCRB.  Her skin was dark, but had the sort of pastiness Drifter associated with people who spent almost all of their time indoors, and although she wasn’t fat by any means, she didn’t appear to be particularly fit, either.  If forced to guess, Drifter would have said that she probably didn’t get anything like enough regular exercise, but relied more on a mostly healthy diet and an unusually good metabolism.
As if she noticed his scrutiny, the woman looked around quickly, hunched her shoulders, and hurried to her car.  Drifter shrugged his shoulders and turned to the sign-in clipboard.  Not atypically, she had neither signed in nor out.  Drifter grimaced.
“Hey, big boy- you busy tonight?” came a throaty voice from over his shoulder.
“Well, I was gonna hang out with my girlfriend, but she’s got some concert tonight,” he bantered back without looking.
“Why don’t you hang out with me, then?”
“I don’t know.  What would my girlfriend say?”
“Hey- if she can’t hang on to a sexy hunk like you, that’s her loss, right?”
Feeling vaguely uncomfortable with this banter, Drifter turned and grabbed Nicole around the waist.  “Don’t think that’ll ever be an issue.”
They kissed, then Nicole stepped back and looked at him critically.
“You okay, hon?  You seem distracted.”
“Not really,” Drifter shrugged.  “I just noticed this chick that keeps following Dicey around.  It struck me funny, is all.”
“Ooh!” Nicole’s eyes lit up.  “Dicey’s got a groupie?”
“More like a stalker.  I don’t know.  D’you suppose you could keep an eye on her a bit?  I’ll tell you what to look for.”
Taken aback by his serious tone, Nicole immediately dropped her playful banter.  “Sure, hon.  Just let me know how I can help.”

Berry had ditched his rental car in Chicago about a month ago.  It was amazing to him both how big and how packed this country was.  It wasn’t as if Australia was small by any stretch of the imagination, but all of the urban centers of the island were located around the coast, with little in the way of civilization as you traveled inland.  Not so the Americas.  Certainly the coast was enormous- Berry had spent several days traveling along the coast and exploring the various seaside towns and villages- but the place was still heavily populated as you drove inland, as well.  Berry never traveled far in any given day, preferring to stop anytime he saw anything that looked even remotely interesting.  His money had quickly dwindled to nearly nothing, and he had had to sell some of his personal belongings in order to keep himself fed on a couple of occasions, but more often than not he was able to find people who needed some sort of odd job done and who would help him to keep afloat in exchange for his labors.
Now, stepping off a Greyhound bus on the east side of Ann Arbor, near the busy little town of Ypsilanti, Berry found himself facing a phone pole with a concert bill on it.  Advertised was a band named Cheshire who would be playing tonight at a venue called the Backstage Theater.  Berry considered that for a few minutes.  He had visited the County Chester when he was studying at the University of Sydney, and had subsequently picked up an illustrated copy of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, both of which his grandmother had approved of most highly.  His favorite character had, of course, been the enigmatic cat that kept showing up to drop mysterious hints to the hapless heroine.
Checking the bus schedules, Berry saw that one of the city’s metrobuses stopped near the theater and that the price for such a ride was quite reasonable.  Deciding that this might be the diversion he was needing, Berry went in search of a bus stop.

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