Meeting the Gang

Tommy follows Mal and Nicki through the ratty-looking front door of the building. The hallway is narrow and dirty, the paint yellowed and peeling, and she realizes it's almost a carbon copy of the place Nicki was living when she first met him. The same roaches, the same cobwebs in the corners, and the same questionable and unpleasant stains on the floors. They go up three floors, passing a narrow-waisted woman who seems to be sleeping, or passed out, on the second-floor landing. Nick stops at the window, looking down into the alleyway. Tommy and Mal stand on either side of him, the trio watching as the Wonder Bread truck pulls up in the alleyway, the back door sliding open, a thick black lady with cornrows and a beaming and bouncy demeanor hopping out and waving at them. There's the sound of crunching glass as she and a professorial dweeb in a thick coat start carrying out large secured boxes.

"I'll go let them in the back," Mal sighs, and walks back downstairs. Nicki heads down the hall to the front corner apartment, passing by a door with a huge black anarchy symbol spray-painted on it, along with the words FUCC OFFF in shaky red letters. The place across the hall from them has a pair of eviction notices stapled to the door; by the time Nicki pulls out the key to the place, Tommy isn't expecting much from the inside.

She's pleasantly surprised to see someone has done a very good job of cleaning and painting the place. There's almost no furniture, just a pair of fold-up cots and a folding table with a deck of cards and a hot plate. A small freezer sits near the table, with bottled water and a coffee maker sitting on top of it. She opens a door and sees a miniscule half-bath with a shower nozzle and a drain in the floor; the bathroom is decorated in early-American flophouse, the mother of all roaches scuttling away into the baseboards when it hears the door open.

"Bedroom is back there, babe," Nick tells her, taking her arm, and motioning past the tiny kitchen to the only other door in the place.

"This place is- interesting," Tommy says, her gaze involuntarily following a mouse as it runs along the kitchen counter.

"As crash houses go, it's not ideal," Nicki agrees. "But Val and I selected this place for the view, not the luxury. And it was cheap enough I was able to cover the lease and rent for three years."

"Do you do that every time you go somewhere?"

Nick shrugs. "Sometimes it pays off."

Tommy brushes some dust off a folding chair and flips it open, setting it down by the table and settling into it. "Why did Mal warn me the people who are coming in are wrong?"

Nick is opening his mouth to answer when the front door pops open and a whirlwind of crazy enters. The first one through the door is the black girl, and right behind her is the professor-type. Both are still carrying huge plastic carry-cases; Mal has been assigned two more to carry by himself. Tommy sees his face, a strange mix of frustration, amusement, and despair.

The black girl charges in, dropping her case of electronic surveillance gear in the middle of the living room by the side windows, and heads for the fridge, talking as she goes. “Hiya, Nick, we’re gonna set up our gear, you wanna have the whole place checked, right, we didn’t see anybody up front or around back, but Buster and Chandler are gonna check out the whole block, just to make sure, you know how it is.” At that point, she has to stop for breath, as she steps back out with a cold Coke. Right as she pops it open, she freezes, staring at Tommy as if an alien has suddenly beamed in from somewhere.

"Fither, this is my lover, Tommy," Nicki says by way of introduction. "Tommy, this is my old friend Fither. Pardon her shy and retiring nature."

The professor lopes in, his glasses catching the light. He bobs his head once in Nick's direction as a greeting, and starts opening cases. Nick tries not to laugh at Tommy's expression; she's staring at the guy the same way Fither is staring at her. "Tommy, this bundle of high-energy chatter is Whisper, possibly the greatest electronics expert in the world."

"Not possibly," Fither barks. "He is the very best electronics guy in the world, I've never seen anybody better, even the Head Fed says so, right, Special Agent Evans?"

"Told you a million times, Fither, I'm retired." Mal places his cases alongside the others, brushing dirt off his pants leg.

"Sure," Fither answers as Whisper looks up at Mal and scowls in disbelief. Fither's tone makes it clear she thinks Mal is lying.

"I’ve heard Whisper speak once," Mal tells Tommy, moving back to unfold another chair and sit. "He stubbed his toe. He said, 'Wow.'”

"Whisper’s parents were very liberal with their **** consumption in the Sixties," Nick jokes, then shuts up when Fither throws him a glare. "He’s a wizard with electronics, though. I have him sweep the places I live once a year, but I also get him out here when we need to watch someone else. He’s never let me down."

As Whisper puts together his cameras, Fither bounces back to life, dropping herself onto the floor next to Whisper and the cases. Immediately, she yelps, and shuffles off the barrel of a shotgun Mal has staged by the window. She grimaces, picking up the gun with the tips of two fingers as if it was a plague-ridden rat.

“Yuck, Special Agent Evans, you shouldn’t leave this sitting around, someone could get hurt, honey do you need any help setting up?” When Whisper goes on working without any response, she snickers. “He gets so quiet when he’s working, don’t you, baby?” She carefully places the shotgun on the table, and ignores Mal's wounded look.

Tommy restrains herself from asking her when Whisper wasn’t quiet, figuring she might not appreciate the answers. Instead, she picks up her back-pack and her guitar case, looks toward the bedroom door. "Nicki," she starts, then pauses, considering wording.

Nick picks it up right away. "We're sleeping in the back, and Mal and another guy will be on the cots."

"Oh, really, that's so cool, like a sleepover except with the possibility of sex and less supervision, that'll be fun, we should try that sometime, huh, baby?" She pauses long enough for Whisper to nod, then bounces in place. "So who are you getting, anybody we know?"

"Soup." Tommy hears the room go totally silent at Nick's answer, and she turns back from the bedroom door to see both Fither and Whisper look at her man with total surprise.

"I thought he was outlawed after the Prague job?" The fact Fither stops at one sentence is significant.

Nick shrugs. "Needed the best I could get. Nobody can clear a room like him."

Mal laughs. "Only problem is the man will clear the next two rooms before you can get him stopped."

"And he'll have blown up the whole building, even though it was an orphanage," Fither complains. Tommy's worried, because it doesn't sound like Fither is joking.

"Wow," Whisper says.

***

Nick concentrates on unpacking and cleaning all the weapons Mal has stored in the safehouse as Fither alternately sucks on her Coke and chatters on about their day. About the time he considers puncturing his own eardrums for a moment of silence, he hears a knock at the door. One-one-two-two. November 22nd, the day JFK is shot in Dallas. Conspiracy freaks beware, Nick thinks. I know your secrets. Fither jumps up to open the door, and an elegant looking fat man in a natty three-piece suit and carrying an oak cane strolls in with something that might possibly be mistaken for a dog. It trots over and begins sniffing around the pile of guns, looking for dog treats. When a delicious jerky stick doesn't leap out to be eaten, the tri-colored monster wurfles, a strange noise right behind his wattles. The gentleman raises an eyebrow in Tommy's direction, and Nick takes the hint that another round of introductions are due.

"Tommy, this is Chandler, the social secretary for the Wonder Bread Gang."

Tommy giggles, pulling her guitar out of its case. "Is that their official name?"

"We've not put it on business cards, my dear," Chandler says, sweeping forward and bending at his expansive waist to take Tommy's hand. With a gentle smile, he brushes his lips against Tommy's knuckles. "Enchanted, Miss Tommy. You are, if I may be so forward, with Nickolas?"

Tommy is blushing again. "Yes, Sir."

"Please, just Chandler will be quite fine, Miss." He looks down at the dog, who has now begun sniffing at Tommy's feet. With another collasal huffing noise and a strangled sort of bark, the beast slumps down and curls up at her feet. Chandler unclips the leash, then frowns as the dog begins chewing on the leg of Tommy's folding chair. "I do apologize, Miss Tommy. Buster is a British bulldog, which are normally a resolute, intelligent breed who look much like an older Winston Churchill."

"Buster only got two of those three traits," Mal laughs. They all watch the dog eyeing the table’s front leg, apparently convinced that some form of delicious edible is buried deep in the metal tube structure.

“Good afternoon, old man,” says Chandler to Nick. “Spot of lunch?”

“Help yourself, Chandler,” Nick responds. “Make some tea, will you?”

Chandler whistles cheerily as he makes his way into the kitchen, clanking and clunking his way through the cabinets. Buster identifies his mistake, and is now grinding his teeth on the handle of Tommy's guitar case, which makes satisfying cracking noises as splinters fall in the puddle of drool on the floor. Tommy gently pushes him away, then bends forward and plays a few quick notes, limbering up her fingers.

"What do you normally play?" Mal asks.

"Whatever feels right at the moment," Tommy says, her blush deepening. "It's been a long time since I played in front of anybody."

"We'll be nice," Mal assures her, taking the last folding chair. Tommy runs a few chords here and there, adjusts her tuning, then leans back and closes her eyes, launching into a heavy blues riff. In seconds, she's banging her way through a song, and the room is paused as everyone watches her transform from a shy and giggly girl to an accomplished rock and blues guitarist. Her voice isn't really deep or gravelly enough to match the normal expectations, but her playing and her vocal improvisations are good enough to elevate the performance.

She finishes the first tune, pausing long enough to take a sip of water. "What was that?" Fither asks, awestruck.

"Aberdeen Blues, by Bukka White," Tommy murmurs, eyes still closed. "It sounds better on a bigger axe, with a bottleneck to do the slides."

"That seems pretty damn good already," Nick comments.

Tommy blows him a kiss. "How about Save Tonight, by Eagle-Eye Cherry?" She plays it through, then begins improvising, playing a little Stones, a soft rendition of a Tool song, a couple of spirituals, a riff on Metallica's Low Man's Lyric, rollicks thru a Fleetwood Mac cover, then finishes up with a slow ballad by Allison Kraus. When she's finished, she looks up and opens her eyes, everyone is staring at her. She realizes she's been playing long enough her throat hurts.

"Now I get the attraction," Mal says quietly.

“Miss Tommy, here’s your tea,” Chandler says, gently shaking Tommy's arm. Sitting up to sip the hot tea, the warmth, the slight honey flavor, helps ease the scratch in her throat.

"How long was I playing?"

“About an hour, no big deal, we’re all done now, so you can rest easy,” Fither sings out as she holds up a fistful of battery-sized devices. “Strictly drop and go, Nick, sorry about the burn marks from the soldering job, looks like my grade school science project, it was a robot, you know.”

Chandler pulls up a chair in front of the bank of cameras and boom mikes Whisper and Fither have assembled at the windows, straightening his tie as he looks through viewfinders, checking camera angles. “The components are mostly standard, available in any Radio Shack.” He seems satisfied with the pictures, crosses his legs, carefully smoothing the seams in his pants legs.

“Ultra-cheapo, crappy stuff really,” Fither offers. "Makes them hard to track if anyone picks one up." She snaps off a pair of rubber surgical gloves and then drops the last bug into a small bag.

“Actually, Fither, dear, Radio Shack does offer some decent components at fair prices.” Chandler sips at his tea; Whisper commences packing up his gear, adjusting his thick glasses on his nose whenever they threaten to complete their slide off his face.

“The Shack is just a front company for TRW-Rand Corporation, getting cheap Taiwanese electronics for use in faking the space program, you know,” Fither says, frowning at the bag. Without pausing her tirade, she begins stacking and organizing the empty cases. “It’s all part of the Big Brother movement to take away personal freedom by planting really small micro-listeners in every piece of home electronics you buy, it’s tied in to the whole international government.”

Tommy can't help but laugh when she sees Mal roll his eyes in exaggerated frustration.