The Animals After Midnight

by Jeff Johnson

  “I’m broke.” I raised my lime soda to him. He looked started.

  “You owe me thirteen dollars! Tacos don’t grow up on trees!” He tried to snatch the bag back. I grabbed it and stepped away.

  “You still owe me. Besides, this is for the guys. Chase will pay you later.”

  Flaco narrowed his eyes. I was about to lecture him about the dog Bella and having to buy the shovel myself when my phone chimed. I took it out and flipped it open. A short text from Dessel.

  “Lopez gone. Bring tacos.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “I’ll pay you tomorrow,” I said. “I have to deliver these after all. Fuckin’ hundred-dollar cab ride, too.”

  “You gave away your car too?”

  I hailed the first cab and hopped in with the tacos and a single soda. I gave the driver the address and took out my phone.

  “You sure about that?” he asked after he punched it into his deck. “That’s way out there in total nowhere, man.”

  “I’m sure.”

  He shrugged and away we went. I tried Delia again and it went straight to voicemail. Then I called Santos. He answered on the first ring.

  “You get her?” I asked.

  “No, dog. We talked and she told me to meet her at this woman Biji’s house. We’re chillin’ and watching Netflix. No Delia.” He lowered his voice. “But Biji is rad, dude. I mean, she’s like, I mean—”

  “Shit.”

  “I know, man. You call her, ah, the dude, the ah—” He couldn’t talk in front of Biji. Good. He hadn’t spilled anything.

  “Broke his phone. So no calls there? No nothing?”

  “We’re waiting, man. S’all I got.”

  “Call me as soon as she shows up.”

  Then I stared out the window. Delia had gone from her appointment to the shop, talked to Santos, then gone radio silent. A nervous tingle radiated from my stomach. She knew. Hank had whipped up some bullshit story. He might have told her he wanted to elope. There was an outside chance she was in the trunk of Riley’s car. I rubbed my face.

  “You goin’ to work or something?”

  “What?” I looked at the driver’s eyes in the mirror. He pointed at the phone mounted on his dash.

  “Steel mill. Couple factories out there. Just wondering.”

  “Ah. No, I’m dropping off dinner for a friend.” The second the word “friend” left my mouth an electric jolt went through me. The driver nodded.

  “Gonna take us maybe another twenty-five to get all the way out there. Mind if I DJ some tunes for us?”

  “Go ahead.”

  He went with Nick Cave. I took my phone out and stared at it. Time to kill. I knew what I should do, but I didn’t want to do it. But soon I’d have Dessel and Pressman breathing my air, so I took my little phone book out and dialed.

  “Hey baby,” I said.

  “Baby, is it?” Suzanne made her disappointed cluck. “What’s shakin’? This your one call from county? Or did your old phone get lost in a bar?”

  “Nope. I’m in a cab. Thought I’d call. I was wondering if you were in the bath.”

  “Where you going?”

  “Have to drop off tacos. Then, I dunno. Shit went down with Hank and Delia that might not be good.”

  “Bummer.” She wasn’t even faking it. She really didn’t care.

  “It happens. Greedy guy that I am, I wanted to make sure we weren’t breaking up too. Sort of all I can think about and I really have tons of other shit to think about.”

  “Is that supposed to be charming in some way?”

  “Let me try again. I know I’ve been a handful. Ton of shit going on and me and you always reach this point where I don’t feel like I can communicate without judgment. But I still want this to work. I still totally love you. You’re my super tall woman. Sorry I hung up on you. I didn’t want you to come, but I changed my mind. We can leave as soon as you get here. I’ll meet you at the airport. You won’t even have to go through security. Just, like, one plane to the next.”

  The driver glanced in the rearview, back to the road. Suzanne didn’t say anything, so I tried again.

  “Remember the first time we went to the movies? Like on a corny date that had nothing to with anything?”

  “I don’t remember what we saw,” she said. “We snuck in beers in my purse.”

  “We didn’t really watch the movie. It was January. Cold as fuck. You were wearing a green scarf and your nose was red.”

  “You groped me.”

  “You groped me, lady. Let’s get it straight.”

  She sighed. “Why can’t we get that back?”

  “We can.”

  We drove. The driver was uneasy. He didn’t want to turn the music up and drown me out, because then I wouldn’t be able to talk. So he was forced to listen to my version of pillow talk.

  “We can’t argue anymore, Suze. Neither of us ever wins. We have to shoot for a balance, a middle ground. And there’s enough room in that middle ground for both of us.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “But don’t take that as a concession. I’m simply stating my understanding of the obvious.”

  “I have to get out of this place,” I said. I stared out the window. We’d left the pretty New Portland behind and gone into the environs of yesterday’s industry. “I have to.”

  “We can go away together, right? You said it yourself.”

  “I hope so.” I tried to hear her background but the music was too loud. It occurred to me that it would be great for us to go away somewhere together. On the off chance that Riley knew where she was and had a plan to mess with her head. “Remember that first weekend? We went out to the coast? Got a little grill and put it out on the balcony?”

  “We didn’t put pants on for three days.”

  “Let’s go there again. Say yes. The wedding fiasco has reached the boiling point. I have to take a break from all this and we need the time. Just me and you. The wind and rain and no people. We can figure out what to do and then do it right.”

  Silence. Then, “Okay. When?”

  “Meet you at the airport tomorrow night? We roll straight from there in a rental? My car is in the shop.”

  “You got a date, Darby Holland. You better bring me flowers.”

  “Oh, I will. I will.” I made a kissing sound and hung up. Then I looked at the driver’s eyes in the rearview. “Can I help you?”

  “N-no,” he stammered.

  It was the best play, I realized. Vanish completely for a few days while the rabid Agent Lopez and Dessel and Pressman did their thing. Subtract Suzanne and guard her myself. It they didn’t have a bead on Riley Wharton by the time I was supposed to come back, then I wouldn’t come back at all. I’d come clean to Suzanne and turn over a new leaf. As soon as my accounts were free, we’d move to somewhere she could make a living in and I could do whatever. Hide more. I’d always been hiding.

  Shit had a way of working out. Now all I had to do was make it happen. Riley was obsessed with the whole notion of “the one who got away.” It had driven him for years, for as long as I’d been driven to hang out in Old Town. Times change. I was finally going to change with them.

  Riley was going to hate this plan. They all were. Except for me.

  The driver let me off under a lone street lamp by the Prius.

  I tipped him extra for the long ride to nowhere. When he was gone, I waited by the car. They were off taking a leak or doing their peeping Tom routine, but if they’d found anything the entire empty street would be full of cop cars. After a few minutes I was wet enough to seek shelter, so I drifted over to the nearest building and stood in the entryway. It was an electroplating place. Another few minutes went by and I got a sudden sinking feeling that they’d joined up with Lopez and headed off to a Denny’s. I took my phone out and dialed Dessel. Nothing. Then I tried Delia again. Nothing there, either.

  The taco bag was wet. I put it down in front of the electroplating place and headed out into the rain in search
of Lopez’s car. It was one block down, a bland black two-door Taurus, and the only way I knew it was hers was because of the four coffee cups and the ashtray. I looked around. From where the car was parked, the driver would have a good view of the empty parking lot of a lone metal building that looked like a hangar. I walked over to it. Old, weathered aluminum, easily three stories tall, and dirty. The entry was in an alcove full of dead leaves and old newspaper.

  The plexiglass window in the dented metal door was scratched and filthy, but I put my face up to it and shaded my eyes to get the streetlight glare off. Black inside. Then, just as I was about to pull away, there was a faint flash of blue. I tested the door.

  It was unlocked.

  I slowly opened it and slipped into the darkness inside, closed it silently behind me. Ahead, I could hear voices, too soft to make out. I crept forward. As my eyes adjusted I could make out some of the crap around me. A forklift with a tarp over it. Barrels. The voices were coming from a doorway about fifty feet away. I moved toward the sound, my arms out, silent as a ghost. Halfway there I stopped and dropped into a crouch.

  The voice coming from the room ahead was mine.

  I took my phone out and flipped it open. In the dim glow from the screen I could see maybe five feet around me. I kept it pointed away from the sound of my voice as I searched for a weapon. Nothing. Nothing. Then an open toolkit filled with rusty junk. I took out an old screwdriver.

  “Darby, don’t ask me to lie to a friend of mine.” Jane the bartender’s voice.

  “—like your friend Darby, owner of the Lucky Supreme Tattoo Parlor in Old Town, co-owner of Racy, and big investor in Alcott Frond, is being stalked by the guy in this photo. Even hundred for you for asking. Even hundred for him for asking his pals. Even five for whoever gets me a room number in the next hour, plus free dinner at Alcott for you, Barry, and the lucky concierge.” Me, talking my way into finding the hotel room.

  “Barry likes blow.” Jane again.

  I peered around the corner.

  Dessel and Pressman were sitting in chairs, looking at the screen, their arms tied behind them. In the flickering light I could see that they’d both been beaten. Dessel was bleeding heavily on the left side of his face and his eye was swollen shut. There was a pool of blood under Pressman’s chair and he was listing to one side. Lopez was facedown in front of them, contorted at an unnatural angle. She was dead, half her head blown away.

  “And a gram of blow for Barry. I can have some delivered in the next ten minutes by bike messenger.” Me again. Making a drug deal.

  “Just in time,” Riley boomed from somewhere out of sight. “Sit, Darby, sit! They were just watching the opening credits!”

  Shaking, Dessel turned his head in my direction. He mouthed the words “kill him” and then his head sagged to the side.

  “What the fuck, psycho!” I roared. I took a step toward Dessel and something loud ratcheted, like a shotgun attached to a contact mic.

  “Stop.”

  I stopped.

  “Look at the screen.”

  “No.” I dropped the screwdriver. “Not unless we look at it together, Riley. You have a gun. I don’t. We watch whatever sick thing you made together. And then you kill me. Or you kill me now and I never see your Oscar-winning final film.”

  Riley Wharton stepped out of the shadows, a shotgun in his hands. He smiled. I squinted and studied his face. There was a long, old scar trailing from his hairline to his right ear. I smiled.

  “My scar is way cooler than yours,” I said. I stepped closer to him, my hands raised. “Still can’t pull off cool, eh, boy?”

  “Keep it coming,” Riley prompted. “Let it all out.”

  I gestured at the feds. “You think these people were my friends? You jackass. I hate these fuckin’ dudes. They hate me. Your best play was to watch them work my case to the end and then do a prison flick with shankings and whatnot, but you’re not even that creative.”

  “I’m not going to kill them because they’re your friends, Darby.” Riley grinned. “I’m not going to kill them at all. You are. You already did. I have your fingerprints, and they’re all over all kinds of interesting things.”

  “Ah.” I nodded. “Framed. Interesting. It’s been tried before.”

  “And then there’s the movie.” He kept the shotgun on me one-handed, finger on the trigger, and took a remote from his pocket. Then he tossed his head at the screen. “Watch. Watch or I shoot Dessel in the hip. I already showed them the first few minutes and they loved it. I don’t think they’ll mind if we rewind.”

  The screen was a tattered plain of off-white plastic, streaked with soot at the edges. It was big, though. I looked at it. It flashed, and then the movie played.

  MIDNIGHT RIDER PRODUCTIONS PRESENTS

  DARBY HOLLAND

  CRIMINAL WITH A CRAYON

  The opening shot was Suzanne. She was on the front porch of my house. I guess I wasn’t there. It’s night. Raining. She makes a call on her phone. A cab comes and she gets in.

  Suzanne standing over me, looking down. I’m in the alcove in front of Ming’s Shoe and Boot Repair. Passed out. Another sleeping bum. She nudges my foot. I don’t wake up. Cut to Suzanne at the airport at sunrise. I can tell she’s been crying all night. She looks so tired. I can also tell that it happened at the very beginning of fall. In the last month.

  She’d come to see me and I never even knew.

  Cut to me and Hank outside the tuxedo place. He’s laughing and I’m glaring at him. The camera slides to Agent Lopez, who is taking pictures of us a half a block away.

  Cut to me sitting across from Pressman and Dessel in the café where I told them the fishing story. My face is moving at faster than triple speed as I talk. Then I get up and leave and the footage drops back into real time. Dessel and Pressman stare at the door, then look at each other.

  “My God, he’s crazy,” Dessel says. Pressman shrugs.

  “I say we kill him. Game over. Darby’s gone where you don’t come back from.”

  They look out the window again.

  Smash cut to me in the bar downtown, talking to Paco the bike messenger/drug dealer. Both of us are smiling. Then cut to me going to the elevator. Me in the hallway, going into Oleander’s room. Then me lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling.

  Cut to Paco in the same hallway with his girlfriend. They knock on the door and it opens. They go in.

  Cut to them with duct tape on their mouths. She’s already dead. Someone wearing a coat just like mine is drilling into Paco’s head with a Makita. The entire hotel room is enshrouded in plastic.

  I closed my eyes.

  “Open your eyes!” Riley thundered. “We’re just about to get to the best part!”

  I turned to him. I shook my head. The movie kept going, but we were watching each other now. Riley turned the shotgun on Dessel and pressed it to the back of his head. Dessel roused. He knew what was happening. I could see it in his one good eye when he turned.

  “Darby,” he said quietly. “I always admired you. The whole time.” He managed a bloody smile. “You always get your guy.” He tried to shrug. Riley pulled the trigger and most of Dessel’s head went away. Then he turned the shotgun on me and ratcheted in another round.

  “I’ll leave this film,” he said. “If you survive the gutshot I’m about to dole out, it’s life in prison with a colostomy bag. And I’ll pay, too. To keep you alive in there. Because I’ll pay every tormented pervert to make you suffer a thousand hells before you find a way to hang yourself. And I’ll film it all. And when I’m done and you’re dead and gone, years from now? Why, I think I’ll show my masterpiece to Suzanne.” He tossed his head at the screen. “This is just the trailer. Real movie won’t be done for years.”

  The first shot rang out and my hands went to my stomach. I looked up. Riley’s face twisted, and an expression of wonder filled his eyes. He tried to turn as Delia stepped out of the shadows. She pulled the trigger a second time and the bullet caught Riley
high in the chest. In that last second, he turned back and pulled the trigger on the shotgun, but I was already gone. Delia’s third round blew the back of his head off and he fell right on top of me. I’d grabbed the screwdriver and rolled in, but I never got to stab him.

  I pushed his body off of me and rose. Delia lowered her gun and we stared at each other.

  “I-I-I—” she stuttered.

  “Holy shit,” I breathed.

  “I was at the shop.” Her face was so white she glowed in the dark. The movie was still playing. “I was sure Dessel was hiding something. They left in a hurry and I followed them. Got this gun out of my station before I left. Then they came in here. I heard voices. I snuck in through the back window.” She looked down at Riley’s body. “He was setting us up, Darby. Both of us. I’m just collateral damage, but, but, I had to hear the whole thing. I had to go to jail to ensure that the Lucky died. He had to kill your luck, too.”

  “I, ah, I don’t know—” I stopped. Delia dropped the gun.

  “I feel so sick,” she whispered.

  Pressman moaned. Delia jerked at the sound like someone had touched her heart with a live wire. I rushed to him just as he raised his head.

  “Bob!” I cradled his bloody face with my bloody hands. The movie was still playing, and something scarlet and gory was playing. The light of it on his face was terrible. “Bob!”

  “Call 911,” he whispered. “I know what happened but I’m bleeding out.”

  “Delia! 911!”

  She jerked into action. Pressman whispered something. I leaned in to catch it.

  “F-frame is in,” he breathed. “G-g-get the video and r-r-run. Run, Darby. Take Delia and run f-for your lives.” He gasped then and I pulled away. His eyes widened. “I’m so sorry.” And then his head dropped. I felt his pulse. Weak and irregular.

  “We gotta go!”

  “What!?” Delia lowered the phone.

  “We gotta run! Now! Or we go down! Get the tape!”