Sugar -- A Tale of the Runoffs(4)

"We're here." Anne Q has led us to an outsized round chamber, domed and shadowed. She approaches a massive watertight hatch, a thing shaped like an egg tumbled onto its side. It is featured with rivets, flanges, ridges, spy holes, a small wheel, and a compound hinge perhaps designed by Erno Rubik. Someone has chained a corroded valve body to hang just outside the swing of the hatch. Anne uses it for a knocker -- tap, tap-tap-tap, tap, and I make a mental note. The wheelcrank in the center begins to spin
         "You found this place?"
         "Minerva did, well ... She showed it to me."
         "'She say anything about a skeleton with a strong arch to the nose and broken fingers?"
         An oval door perhaps six feet on its long upright axis sags ajar from the mother hatch. Paired barrels in .410-gauge edge through the gap. I delete a mental note.
         Anne says, "That'll be good, Cherby. Pass the word for Minerva, okay?"
         I go to one knee and Anne turns to help me lower the girl to the deck. Her breathing is shallow, her muscles limp. Anne pulls the bandanna from her brow and tucks it between pale hair and concrete.
         Slender and lithe, Minerva slips through the hatch opening and across the chamber floor. Her face knits and she lays the back of her fine-boned hand on the chalky brow. Her ancient golden eyes rise to mine. "This girl needs the County ER. Why is she here?"
         "Somebody ran us off the street."
         "That happens often, you've said." The chamber is filling up around us. By ones and threes, women and girls of all ages trickle through the person hatch and form a loose circle on Minerva.
         "One is an accident. Two SUVs and a six-pack, all camo'd out, is a plan."
         "'Camo'd out'? Never mind. M-m-m, were they mad at her? Or you?"
         "Yeah, I should blush. I'll let you know what they say."
         "That's Sugar." The words come from a black girl, short and curved. One of her cheekbones seems flatter than the other. "One of Lincoln's girls, stupid li'l --"
         "Respect, Lanta." Minerva's voice is firm.
         Anne Q backs her. "Give to get, remember?"
         "But she ain't in wit' us."
         "Even if it mattered," Minerva affirms, "she is among us now. Anne, please take her inside."
         "No, on me, I brought her this far."
         "Step off, Meric." Anne's voice is a spike. "And I better never find you inside. Word to the wise."
         "What? I had a shower."
         "Purdah is solely a women's place." Minerva, too, is adamant. "You must respect this principle."
         "Okay." I stand and step back. "So there are no good guys anymore, huh? Well, I've got your mail here." I shrug my bag off of my shoulder. Their post, in its scrounged shopping bag, I drop next to the unconscious girl. "Call it even, unless I owe you."
         I swallow my resentments for fuel and I go to find men, and a fair fight.

Well, yeah. They're camouflaged. I had swept from Charleston and Bruce to the Boulevard and Fremont to find no sign of the Camo Crew. But what if they want to audition for a car ad? Like the, uh ... Brat Pack? Prat Back, Scat Pack? I was thinking vaguely of something out of an old magazine.
         And if I were looking to bushwack me trying to get a sick girl to the ... right. I rode for the dry gulch.