Try Darkness (31 page)
Blumberg tapped and moused his way across the screen. In a few moments, after a colorful screen or two, we were back at the main screen. It showed several waves of sound.
“Looks a little like GarageBand,” Sister Mary said.
“I can make Buchanan here sound like Plácido Domingo,” Blumberg said, “but that’s not the point. If this guy is changing his voice on the cheap with an artificial larynx, we may be able to get something. If he’s using a digital voice changer, we won’t be able to get much. So let’s give it a shot.”
We waited as he tapped a couple of keys. Then a voice came through the speakers, much clearer:
That’s why I had you drive out to the pay phone. I saw what you can do when you put your mind to something.
“Did you hear that other sound?” he said.
“What sound?” I said.
“Listen.” He replayed the clip.
“Yeah,” I said. “A little squeak right there in the middle.”
“I’m going to isolate it,” he said. “Let’s see what it sounds like.”
He played the section with the squeak. Stopped and enhanced it, played it again.
“Sounds like a door opening,” Sister Mary said.
I looked at Blumberg. His look told me he didn’t agree. I didn’t either.
“Can you isolate the voice now?” I asked.
“Yeah baby.” He worked the keyboard. As he did I looked at Sister Mary. She gave me a reassuring smile. Like a coach’s pep talk without the audio.
A year ago I was a partner at a major law firm getting ready for marriage. The phrase
settle down,
which my grandfather might have used, kept running through my mind. And I liked it.
Now I didn’t know what to like. Or if I should like anything again. What I had to do was find the girl.
“Ready,” B-2 said. The voice came through again, this time with a more normalized tone.
That’s why I had you drive out to the pay phone. I saw what you can do when you put your mind to something.
Something clicked in my head.
“You got anything that can help me see at night?” I asked.
B-2 said, “You want night vision?”
“Do you?” I said.
“Ask me something hard.”
DRIVING BACK TO
St. Monica’s, Sister Mary said, “I don’t like the look in your eye.”
“Who asked you to look?”
“I see darkness there.”
“You got a pretty keen sense of sight.”
“I know something about light and darkness.”
“And I know all about gray.”
“Maybe, but no one can stay in the middle. We all drift toward one side or the other. The idea is to go toward the light.”
I said nothing. Kept my eyes on the freeway. Kept thinking about what I was about to do. Planning in my head for something that could land me in the slam for a long time.
“Do you know Genesis?” Sister Mary said. “The creation?”
“I wasn’t there.”
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. But the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And God said, ‘Let there be light, and there was light.’ The light was good. God divided the light from the darkness. And that is a picture of what God does for those who seek him.”
“Does what now?”
“Get rid of the darkness.”
I was on the verge of a comeback, but the words got stuck on my tongue. We ran into some traffic and it hit me then that having a discussion about something that mattered more than the flow of cars in L.A. was not a bad thing.
We finally came down the other side of the Sepulveda Pass. Clouds covered the tops of the mountains on the other side of the Valley. The sun reflected off them, making everything bright and silver.
Sister Mary mentioned the homesick-for-heaven thing again and I said I wasn’t homesick for anything.
That seemed to make her upset. She didn’t say anything else after that.
I dropped Sister Mary off and drove away, waiting for night.
WHEN IT CAME
, I was waiting somewhere else.
The odds were not good any way you looked at it. The Voice had every advantage and I knew that.
I was on a bluff looking down at the mobile home park near the ocean. Watching for the lights.
It was a shot in the dark with a pea shooter, but I was going to blow. The sound I heard on the voice track sounded like a seagull. And the voice, normalized, sounded like a certain has-been rocker.
The wind whipped, like it always did here at the beach. I was in weeds, with night scopes, courtesy of J. B. Blumberg.
The ocean waves whispered.
An hour or so went by. I imagined all sorts of things crawling through the weeds, looking for some fresh leg to bite. This was a habitation of snakes. They were here first. They had property rights.
But I didn’t care. If I got bit, I was going to bite right back. I was in that kind of frame.
I could see the lights of Santa Monica all the way down the coast, where the curve of the land headed right, toward the Palos Verdes Peninsula. In the distant sky, like a string of neon pearls, were the planes coming into and going out of LAX.
Life was happening and I wasn’t close to any of it—and didn’t care.
Not much happened down below. If life was happening in the park, it was mostly on the inside.
The mobile home I was looking at had no lights on. No car in front. How long I’d have to wait didn’t matter to me.
I kept thinking I could hear Kylie crying. It was only my mind, of course. The question I started to have was whether I could get it to stop. Maybe I was losing it, going a little over the edge here. Not telling the cops, not telling anybody.
Brosia was not going to be pleased. I was a little sorry about that. I was getting to like Brosia. He knew what he was doing. He was a cop who liked what he did. That’s how I remembered my dad.
I wondered what he’d think of what I was doing. Wondered what he’d say. I’d tell him I was out there on a wire, I know it, and I can’t go back. I have to try to make it to the other side.
Then the car pulled up. I followed the headlights from the front of the park entrance, past the kiosk, and in front of Fly’s single-wide.
And I had a vision. I saw everything that was going to happen, I knew where everybody in the world was, who was watching and who wasn’t. I knew that he would get out of his car and go into his trailer and all would be right with his world.
Knew that I would shuffle down from the weeds without being seen by anyone. That I would knock gently on his door, and Fly would answer, and his eyes would go wide. And he’d try to close the door and I would know for certain he did it. That certainty wouldn’t stand up in a court of law, but there wasn’t a courthouse within shouting distance. That’s all that mattered.
It happened exactly that way.
When he tried to close the door I plowed right into it. Fly landed on his bass.
I jumped on his chest. He wasn’t that big. I put my hand on his throat.
“Don’t bother to talk,” I said. “Don’t try to move or to make a noise, because if you do I will surely make you sorry.”
I waited until I saw the fearful understanding in his eyes. It was instantaneous, and the rage and fire inside me made my body hot.
“I know you did it,” I said. “I know you have her. I know it was your voice on the phone. You don’t need to know how I know, but I do. You’re going to tell me exactly where she is. Am I getting through to you? Oh, before you answer, I’m packing a neat little stun gun, and I won’t stop, even if you scream ‘Don’t tase me, bro.’”
I slowly let the pressure off his throat.
“Where is she?” I asked again.
Fly said, “She’s close by. Back in the hills.”
“How many watching her?”
“Just one.”
“How much is he getting?”
“Fifty thousand.”
“You, too?”
“Yeah.”
“And the five million? Who’s getting that?”
“Look, man, I’ll go away. I’ll go to Mexico. You won’t get any trouble from me. I’ll give you the girl if you let me get out of this place.”
“Who hired you?”
“Come on—”
I put my hand back on his throat and made his eyes bug out. His face turned a bright shade of pink before I let it off again. He coughed a couple of times.
“You’re a lawyer!” he said. “You can’t do this.”
“We can go all night.”
“Wait, wait.” He coughed again. “I don’t know who, man. I’ll give you the girl and I get out.”
“That’s your deal?”
“That seems fair.”
“Fly, who’s on top of you right now?”
“You, man.”
“You’re not in a good bargaining position. Now, you get me the girl. How’s it supposed to go? You call when the transfer’s been made?”
“Yeah. I’m supposed to call and he brings the girl to me. I bring her to you alone.”
I thought about all this.
“Can I get up?” Fly said.
“No,” I said. “You have a piece?”
“No, man.”
Hand back on throat. Big fly eyes. “I’m going to knock you right out and search the place,” I said. “And I find out you’re lying to me . . .”
I let the pressure off.
“Okay . . . the bedroom,” he said.
I controlled him with an old-fashioned arm bend behind his back. He had a shotgun under his bed. Double-barreled, sawed-off, break action. Mean. I hadn’t fired a shotgun since my dad took me shooting as a kid. I forced Fly to the floor, facedown. I cracked the gun. It had two cartridges. I took them out, shook them the way Steve McQueen does in
The Magnificent Seven,
put them back in and closed the gun.
“Fat lot of good living with nuns did you,” Fly said.
“Here’s what I want you to do,” I said. “You’re going to make the call that the transfer’s done, and take delivery of the girl. You’re going to have her brought right here and dropped off. I am going to listen to every word you say and watch every move you make, and if anything goes wrong I’m going to blow you and your friend away.”
“What about our deal?”
“Time to make the call. Do not let your voice shake. Do not say anything that would put the girl in any danger.”
“Nobody wants to kill her, dude.”
“And don’t call me
Dude
. Not while I’m holding this gun.”
HE MADE THE
call. His voice did not shake. It was an amazing show of vocal control. Like in his glory days.
And so we waited.
I had Fly sitting in a beanbag chair in front of me. I held the gun on him. Just so it would be a reminder.
“Now it’s time for you to give up the boss,” I said. “Who was it?”
“And I walk out of here?”
“It’s your one chance, let’s put it that way.”
“Man, you got no idea what I been through. What they call music now? The whole rap thing? The whole airhead-blonde-with-the-nasal-drip-voice thing? The music died, man, like ‘American Pie’ said. Trash bands, grunge. It’s all nothing. So don’t sit there and judge me. A man’s got to do what he’s got to do.”
“That’s some philosophy of life you got there.”
“And what about you? Sitting here with a gun. How did you get so low?”
“I’m tired of people close to me getting hurt.”
“Happens all the time, man.”
“Talk to me, Fly. Time’s wasting. Who hired you?”
“I don’t know the dude’s name.”
“Fly . . .”
“I’m being straight with you. There was a middle guy. I never saw number one.”
“You ever see this middle guy?”
“Once. But it was dark.”
“Where?”
“Malibu Canyon. Little side road up in the hills. It was like
Deliverance,
man. I thought there was banjos playin’. I hate banjos.”
“What did the guy look like?”
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t get a look at his face?”
“He didn’t want me to.”
I shook my head and waved the sawed-off his way.
“I’m tellin’ you the truth, man!” Fly said.
“When the car comes up,” I said, “you stand at the door. You don’t open the screen door. You tell them to leave the girl at the steps and get in the car and drive away. If you don’t, you will be the first to go and then I’ll take care of the other guy.”
“What about the girl? She might get it, too. You ever think about that?”
“That’s all I’m thinking about.”
I heard a car driving up, coming to a stop on the gravel outside.
“This is your moment, Fly. A chance to redeem yourself. Don’t blow it.”
He got up and flipped his braids behind him.
FOOTSTEPS APPROACHED, THEN
came up the wooden stairs. A knock.
Fly opened the door, keeping the screen closed. I stood off to the side, by the closed, shaded window, ready with the gun.
“Here we are,” a voice said.
“Where is she?” Fly said.
“In the car. She’s okay. Crying a little. She wants to go home, I told her that’s where we were takin’ her. I want to get out of here. You got a beer?”
“No. Let’s get—”
The guy outside pushed his way in. “Come on, man, you always got beer.”
He was twice the size of Fly. A denim-jacketed behemoth with a misshapen head. It looked like one side had been kicked in. Or he was in a serious accident without a helmet.
There was nowhere for me to go. Nowhere to hide in the little home. The behemoth was all the way in when he saw me.
“Who . . . ?” He focused on the shotgun I was holding.
“On your face,” I said.
He didn’t move. Not a twitch.
“Better,” Fly said. “Dude’s crazy.”
“Don’t call me ‘Dude,’” I said. “I really can’t stand that.”
A long moment passed as the big guy stared me down. His lizard eyes were cold, almost lifeless.
Then he said, “This guy’s not gonna shoot anybody.”
“Down,” I said. “Now.”
The behemoth said, “Look at him, Fly. This guy’s not hard-core.”
“Try me,” I said.
He didn’t move.
“Now!” I put the gun butt to my shoulder. I could feel the wet on my right wrist and palm. I finally knew what they meant by “itchy trigger finger.” I was this close to letting them have it anyway, for what they’d done, for who they were. Whatever held me back was thin. But it worked.