A Place for Ferns and Mushrooms

occasional shadows across the race ravaged buildings, keeping it bearable.

I unfastened a snap on my shirt, but I was uncomfortable more because of

whiteness than the warm clothing that had served so well where the

surveillance started, in a cold fog near a construction site in Richmond.

White didn't bother the cross dresser, though.  Sporting a five o'clock

shadow, and just in from the fringes, he passed virtually unnoticed.

Passing under the 980 overpass, I drew the measured stare of six teenaged boys

drinking from a communal paper bag, and gripped the butt of the little 38

Chiefs Special under my shirt for assurance.

The hostility here was suffocating. My quarry walked more like a linebacker

than a woman, and stopped to leer at some adolescent girls driven to sell

their bodies to passing motorists.

The distance between us shrank when he stopped, so I lingered to gaze in an

old store front, hoping to look preoccupied, but it offered only pieces of

broken plaster on a bare slab floor, along with a few loose nails and

screws.

A line of ants were commuting from a near empty wine bottle in the alley

through a crack in the window to a hole in the floor, a hole that once drained

a toilet, while dusty remnants of the windows reflected streams of traffic on

the 980, doing the same thing.

* * * * *

In an instant, the doorway filled with an enormous object. At first I thought

maybe they were moving a freezer.

'That must be the madam,' Fuzzy said.  He and Russ were sharing the rifle

scope now.

'You gotta' see this,' Gabby moved to one side so I could use the

telescope.

A most enormous woman was emerging through the door of the mobile, wriggling

to get out, like a larva.  She was dressed in a shade of yellow that matched

her hair and competed for space with large bare patches of pink skin as she

moved.

A short waisted top hung from the ends of her huge breasts like drapes.  Her

matching skirt, which started just under her breasts, stopped about the middle

of her thighs, exposing garters that could only pull her nylons to her

knees.

Two girls held her shapeless arms, and slowly passed her to the others on the

ground.  She'd step down with her right foot, then bring both feet together on

the same step, before proceeding to the next one.  There were four steps, and

upon reaching the ground, she stopped to catch her breath, spreading her legs

for balance.

When the gasping slowed, she started for the main building in a manner of

locomotion that was both faltering and constant at the same time.

Four girls stayed around her, keeping their hands on her, guiding her towards

the building, like bees moving their queen.

The madam carried a pair of yellow spike heeled shoes in her

* * * * *

He had moxey, though, Struggling to his feet, he ran around the end of the bar

and started for Gabby.  I reached out with the wire cutters and nipped a piece

of a love-handle as he went by.

He swatted at the nippers, like you'd swat a biting horse fly, turning a

little in the process, so by the time he got to Gabby, he was running a little

sideways.

The old wrestler was so completely spent by that time, that Gabby just stepped

aside and stuck a foot out.

The airborne bar tender, now finding himself sailing towards the restrooms,

tried to turn in mid-flight, realizing he'd hopelessly missed his target, and

with the look of a man who'd just remembered something important, lost his

momentum and hit the floor with a loud splat.

He just laid there after that, on his back, in a puddle of blood from greasy's

nose, and jiggled.

Ali Baba stood by the door, waiting for his chance.  The bored guard by the

west door, looking a little bothered now, put down his magazine and stood

up.

I held my gun on Ali Baba while Gabby concentrated on the others.  'Move over

by the cashier,' I told Ali.

He didn't move.

I shot a hole in the floor between his legs.

He moved.

The buxom belly dancer and the other girls ran out through the hallway door,

screaming.

I put Annie down and told her to walk outside.  She obeyed,