Mildred Pierced by Stuart M. Kaminsky

He answered after one ring.
    “Pevsner,” he said.
    “Peters,” I answered.
    “Doctor called,” he said. “Doesn’t look like Ruth will make it through the weekend.”
    “I’m sorry, Phil.”
    “Yeah. I’m taking off for the hospital now. Ruth’s sister Becky is taking care of the boys and Lucy.”
    “What do you want me to do, Phil?”
    “The right thing,” he said. “Yeah, and I’ve been suspended without pay for a week. The commissioner reviewed my file, had the chief in full uniform in his office, and strongly suggested that I seriously consider retirement.”
    “What are going to do?” I asked.
    “Give it serious consideration.” He hung up.
    It was close to five o’clock. I’d had a busy day, but it wasn’t over. I told Violet she should go home and went out the door.
    Juanita was just getting out of the elevator, blue dress with a white sash billowing, long dangling earrings jingling, makeup doing little to cover her seventy years, but a lot for the cosmetics industry.
    There was no way to escape.
    “Toby,” she said. “You’ve got one hell of an aura today. I’m telling you.”
    “It’s been one of those days.” I moved toward the stairs.
    “It’s been flowing out of your office,” she said. “More like puking, if you know.”
    Juanita had left Brooklyn five years earlier, but Brooklyn had never left her. She dressed like a gypsy and had the accent of a Chock Full o’ Nuts waitress. Most of her clients were Mexicans, young and old. There were a few Anglos in there, too, but not many. A sprinkling of Greek, Italian and Creoles rounded out her clientele, people who believed in her powers but probably didn’t understand her any more than I did.
    Juanita had found her gift long before she became Juanita, when she was still a middle-aged Jewish housewife who had just lost her third husband.
    “I tried to ignore it,” she once told me with a shrug, “but when you’ve got the gift, what can you do?”
    “You’re going to warn me again, aren’t you?” I asked, trapped.
    “I’m gonna tell you what I saw or sort of saw, you know what I mean?”
    I didn’t, but I just stood there waiting.
    “You’re looking for someone who carries a … I don’t know, something dangerous. You’re looking for someone who hurt someone. No, killed someone. I see lots of dark green and purple. Death. You talked to that person you’re looking for today.”
    “I don’t suppose you could give me a name.”
    She put her hands on her hips. The fingers were covered with large rings. She shook her head.
    “You know it doesn’t work like that, for chrissake.”
    “Sorry,” I said.
    “Be careful,” she said. “Someone is going to spit at you.”
    “How can I be careful about someone spitting at me?”
    “I don’t know. I figure if someone is going to try to spit on me I want to know it,” she said.
    “Anything else?”
    “I see you in a big room, like a ballroom, something. You’ve got a gun in your hand, a funny-looking gun with a long barrel. Someone gets shot, killed.”
    “Me?”
    She shrugged and said, “Who knows? I tell you what I see, not what it means. I’m a seer, not a philosopher.”
    “Is that it?”
    Juanita stood silently for a couple of beats, sighed deeply and said, “Someone’s aura is dimming. Someone you’re worrying about. Someone who’s dying I think. A woman.”
    “And what do I do about it?”
    “ Veis ich? ” she said with another shrug. “How do I know?”
    “Is that it?” I asked.
    “I think so.” She moved in front of me and put her hand on my shoulder. “No, there’s a big change coming in your life, very soon, a new direction, a move.”
    “I don’t want a new direction,” I said.
    “You don’t want. Like you’ve got a choice here. You know Joan Blondell filed for divorce from Dick Powell today. She read a little poem she wrote to the reporters.”
    Juanita fished into her pocket and came out with a newspaper clipping. “Listen to