Chapter 1 I’m an assassin, not a nanny
So, you’re wondering, no doubt, what the Cobra, a city boy through and through, is doing on a ranch, riding a horse, and looking like a cowboy.
I confess I was wondering it myself.
Needless to say, it was Tarquin’s idea.
Of course it was Tarquin’s idea.
Apparently I was so good with difficult teens that I was to be given a handsome fee for taking on half a dozen teens considered ‘disturbed,’ or ‘difficult.’ This can range from spoilt princes and princesses, to kids fighting back against being abused in one way, or another.
“If I find it’s their parents’ fault, I’ll be doing something about it,” I warned Tarquin.
He smiled, thinly.
“I rather thought you might. And then, I don’t have to.”
“You’re a bastard, Tarquin.”
“Not on paper.”
These were the sort of kids who could be bought off from going into the system for their misdeeds, and out of the sort of boot camps normal people’s kids can be sentenced to attend. And I only agreed if Willow and Auntie also had fees commensurate with mine, and the two other teachers I seconded, which were Dave and Julie, my old friends from ‘Extreme’ when Tarquin had me making a damn fool of myself on Trideo in that stupid games show just to get close to a sanction.
Dave and Julie had met and fallen in love there, and were cleared by the government so they were perfect choices. And of course, Ruth, Marie, and Hana, our foster kids, would help. And we were offering a holiday to one Olive Finkelkamp, adopted daughter of, as you might say, one of my previous clients. Olive was a decorous, ladylike child and I warned Miss Finkelkamp that I was going to encourage her to run about, get dirty, and have fun.
“Oh, well, I think she probably needs that, or I wouldn’t have asked you,” said Miss Finkelkamp. “I want to send her to Fee Finnegan’s school, and she needs to know about modern children. She’s mostly come to terms with being orphaned and she has to learn to be a child again.”
“You’re very enlightened, Miss Finkelkamp,” I said.
“Oh, call me Dianna,” she said. “I asked Olive to do so; she didn’t want to call me ‘Auntie’ because she spent some time with her aunt, who was cruel to her. I... I think she might have killed her aunt; and she needs someone who understands, to help her come to terms with it. But her poor little body was emaciated and had welts all over when I took her in. I... I asked her if she knew why I wanted to adopt her, and she said, poor child, ‘As a free servant,’ and I put her right, and told her that my own baby had died, and... and I finally felt able to find a little girl who needed someone, as I would have hoped someone would look after my child if I had been the one who died. And then she cried, and said that maybe there were good people. But she’s never told me how her aunt died, and the autopsy was that she was drunk, and drowned on vomit.”
Olive was apparently cleverer than most.
Well, she had enough in her background to count as a disturbed kid; she was the same age as Ruth, and could start school with someone else who knew about abuse.
And Ruth, bless her, volunteered to talk about it.
And I was expecting five other kids, four boys and a girl.
The kids were supposedly on ‘theme’ holidays, and this theme was the Wild West.
I’d have been happier running a theme of street ganger in an environment where I was more comfortable; but apparently this was considered too dangerous for the precious lovies who were to be palmed off on me.
As I don’t believe in breaking people to fit a mould, their parents might not like the restructured teens they got back any more than those they packed off as uncontrollable; but that wasn’t my problem. I was paid to find the reasons for their vices, and turn them into reasonable human beings. And if my idea of reasonable human beings did not necessarily coincide with those who lived or worked on Capitol Hill, well, they shouldn’t have asked me.
I told Tarquin this.
He smiled, gently.
“Let the punishment fit the crime, the punishment fit the crime,” he sang softly.
“Who died and made you the Mikado?” I said, rudely. He’s a Gilbert and Sullivan buff.
We were to live on the ranch where the kids in my charge at school had been taken by kidnappers earlier in the year. Ruth and Marie were the ones who might be affected here, but they looked at each other, and shrugged.
“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead,” said Marie, and Ruth nodded.
In other words, I’d wiped out the villains, and the kids came through pretty much unscathed. There were no bloodstains to worry about; the feds had cleaned up nicely.
“We could live with Olive in the bunkhouse,” said Ruth. “Auntie Fee and Willow have taught us all to cook, and Miss Finkelkamp won’t have neglected Olive.”
“There’s a fifth girl, and it’s a four bed bunkhouse,” I said.
“Sofa bed,” said Ruth. “It’ll be softer than a bunk and any kid coming in not used to extreme camping is going to be soft.”
We’d only done one extreme camp – if it could count as such – since we acquired the girls, as a bonding exercise. There’s nothing that extreme about camping out on the prairie around Easter, even with a small baby and three cats, especially three uplifted cats, but it was enough hard work to make us gel as a family, and to have the girls share all their secrets, problems, hopes, and aspirations. Which was the general idea. And yes, we eavesdropped on their tent to make sure that there was nothing we were needed for.
I consequently asked for the girl first, in case I got some hard-boiled bitch who would upset the equilibrium of our three and the girl they quickly started calling ‘Cousin Olive.’
A car drew up, and disgorged Tarquin and a figure I recognised.
I looked into the resentful brown eyes of Hermione Obama.
“Obama? What are you doing here in an honest to badness sin bin?” I demanded.
The tears she had been holding back flowed over.
“I... I was prosecuted for assault!” she said. “I... I wanted to liberate the women with the New Islamic Caliphate, and rescue them from being covered up, so I told them they were in America now and could claim asylum and be free, and I pulled off the ugly sacks they were wearing.”
I groaned.
“Oh, you little ninny,” I said.
“But I wanted to help! I wasn’t assaulting them!” said Hermione.
“Look, kid, in their menfolk’s eyes, you made them immodest. In their countries, you’d be executed; as they might be for having been immodest. They’ll be beaten at least,” I explained. “My friend, Jim, rescued one of their pleasure slaves, and he has the death sentence in twelve countries. You can never visit anywhere they hold sway; you had to be treated as a criminal here, to pacify them.”
“But they’re the criminals, keeping women in such a state!” cried Obama.
“Kid, you may think that, and I may think that, but politicians have to keep smiling and keep their heads down,” I explained. “You blew your chance of ever being president, I’m afraid, but I know you mean well. You just don’t think things through.” I sighed. “Diplomacy is the art of smiling at and shaking the hands of someone you really want to pull the head off and shit down his neck.”
She gave a scandalised giggle.
“Why can’t their women be rescued here?” she asked.
“Because maybe they want to be able to go back to the family they love more than they worry about being oppressed,” I said. “I agree. It’s monstrous to deny half the population their rights as human beings but this is their custom, and they have enough wealth and power that we have to let them exercise their customs in their own lands, and a diplomatic embassy carries a swathe of its own lands with them as a sort of moving extra-territoriality zone. Now, you wouldn’t like to be stopped setting off fireworks on the fourth of July, would you?”
“Well, no, why should I be?” said Obama.
“Because fireworks cause a lot of harm to birds who are kept awake and can die of sheer exhaustion if the celebrations go on long into the night,” I said.
“I didn’t know that,” said Obama.
“And there are maybe things we don’t know and appreciate about women who wear the wassitcalled,” I said. “But certainly that they are in danger if they don’t.”
“I didn’t mean to make trouble!” she wailed.
“No, kiddy, you never do,” I said. “But listen to me; you may not know, but Marie’s father refused to pay the kidnappers, and said they could kill her, as she was no use to him; so I’m fostering her.”
“How awful!” Obama’s eyes were round. “I’ll do....”
“No, honey, you won’t,” I said. “You’ll leave Marie alone. I’ve just got her standing on her own feet, and I won’t have you playing the well-meaning bully. That you got into so much trouble shows that you didn’t learn from my homilies about unintentional bullying. If I let you join with the other girls, I’ll expect an apology to Marie, and an understanding that you ask Ruth about any help you want to offer.”
“I... I’ll try,” she said. “If you send me back, they’ll put me in an approved school, and... and I’m scared!”
“Oh, I wouldn’t send you back,” I said. “But you’d have to share a room with my auntie, who’s a headmistress, rather than having the time of your life in a bunkhouse, allowed to cook some of your own meals, and well away from adults.”
She looked apprehensive.
“Who else is there?”
“Ruth is head of the house. Marie and Hana are my foster-daughters; Olive is the daughter of a family friend. Essentially, you and the other girls are having a holiday with me, learning a bit about ranching, with the addition that you and I will have some long talks to help you come to terms with the difference between having good intentions, and hurling the paving slabs at the way to hell with an arbalest.”
She managed a watery smile at that.
Bless the child, she also weathered the horrified looks Ruth and Marie gave her, and apologised for not knowing when help tipped into bullying.
“We can all help you with that,” said Ruth, firmly.
I’d picked five ponies for the bunkhouse crew, and we had all been learning to ride together.
I had an ill-natured black creature who tolerated me, but we got on fine. He only bit me once.
I bit him back.
It wasn’t the start of a beautiful friendship between man and steed, but it was the start of a working relationship. He let me know if I wasn’t riding to his standards; and I let him know if he was slacking or playing games puffing out his belly to make the girth too loose. We understood each other.
There were four bedrooms in the large ranch-house. Willow and I, and baby Tarquin had one; Auntie had another; Dave and Julie had the third, and I fitted out the fourth with bunks for the boys.
Oh, and I also filled another bunkhouse.
Sodger, Bromley, and Zorro were failed vat-job man/dog hybrids; Sodjer was mostly man with dog-like features and an inability to stand upright; Bromley and Zorro were dogs more than they were human, but they could communicate. Bromley had hands, not paws, and could sign; and Zorro was a hybrid with a humanish head on a dog’s body and he could talk. We had all worked together before. If I had any real trouble, they could track down any of my missing young criminals.
I also invited Gary, a talented if slightly scuzzy Gurfer, or guerilla surfer. Willow was better, but she had her hands full with our sprog, even if he was no more than a sproglet as yet. Gary was delighted at the idea of a holiday in the country, which, essentially, it was, for all of them. Yes, they were earning their keep and a reasonable retainer in keeping their eyes, ears, and noses open, but it wasn’t going to be arduous unless any of my delinquents delinqued, as you might say.
And if I wasn’t looking forward to having four young hoodlums near my wife and child, at least I know that my wife is a remarkably capable young woman.
And the car drew up, disgorging its passengers with their regulation one suitcase each, with boys whose names and records Tarquin had thoughtfully let me have.
Jeff Briggs, son of a self-made man in electronics, who had been expelled from three schools for laziness, truculence, and attacking a teacher; he was the big, blond brute, almost seventeen and looking as if he would not be out of place as a guard in Auschwitz in the mid 20th century.
Hammond Fitzgerald the fourth, born on easy street, wealthy, son of a congresscritter, drug addict, got involved with a gang who stole and mugged to feed their habit. I knew he had been frisked for drugs, and I would go over his kit personally with my expensive nose. A good looking kid, who ought to have been pulling birds with his quarterback looks and wavy brown hair, not shooting up.
Washington Dix was a black kid who had beaten a white kid half to death for some racist remark, something I didn’t necessarily disapprove of, except that the white kid was the son of a congress critter, and Dix senior, whilst wealthy, was not part of the old boy network.
Fourth and last, Jamie McNeall, who had sexually assaulted several girls.
In my book, there’s no cure for a sexual predator unless they are mentally retarded and have not learned the rules that this is unacceptable. I hoped for his sake that Jamie was more in need of a quiet room in a mental institute than that he was just a predator.
Ruth knew what to do about any boy who hit on any of the girls, and she, Marie, and Hana carried knives as a matter of course, and Ruth carried a gun. I had made sure she knew what she was doing.
I went to meet them.
They would have to carry their suitcases up to the house, a good three hundred yards from where a city car could get to, and if the one with the huge case whose wheels would not work on the rough track could not manage it, that was his problem.
That was Jeff Briggs.
He was about to get his first lesson.
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