Black Violet

by Alex Hyland

  ‘Harry, it’s me,’ I said. ‘Look, something…something’s happened, OK, I don’t know what, something to do with Jon. Stay away from my place. Get out of town. Please, just go!’

  I ended the call and opened the window. As I got ready to throw the phone, it rang. I answered it.

  ‘Harry?’ I said.

  There was pause at the other end of the line.

  ‘Do you have the necklace, Michael?’ came a man’s voice. Gentle-sounding. Foreign accent – I couldn’t place it.

  I went cold. ‘Who is this?’ I said.

  He laughed softly. ‘You have it, don’t you,’ he said. ‘For Miranda?’

  ‘Did you do that? Did you kill Freddy?’

  ‘We just want the necklace, Michael. Leave it for us somewhere. Just walk away. We’ll leave you alone.’

  ‘You did that to Jon, didn’t you?’ I said. ‘I’m going to fucking kill you.’

  ‘Yes, that’s very touching, but you need to be smart now. I’m going to give you one chance to get out of this alive.’

  ‘I’m going to fucking kill you!’

  He laughed. ‘You know it’s actually very nice to speak to you, Michael.’

  ‘Fuck you!’ I said.

  I threw the phone out of the window, the blood coursing through my veins like broken glass. Whoever that fucker was, I wanted him dead.

  I heard police sirens approaching the junction ahead of me. I swung a hard left and sped toward Russian Hill. I needed to dump the Malibu and fast – every cop in the city was going to be looking for it. I pulled the car to a stop on a deserted street near a park. I jumped out, then scurried down Bay Street looking for another car.

  I watched the traffic and tried to figure out where I was going to hide once I was out of the city. Hotels were out – they could track my credit card, and I had next to no cash. I could lift it, but that would take too long. I thought about my parents’ old farmhouse. It was all the way up in Sonoma – I just didn’t know how safe it was going to be. Jon and I could never face selling it, but the house was no secret – plenty of people knew about it. And if those fuckers had my phone number, God knows what else they knew. It was a risk, but I had ten grand stashed there, and I wasn’t going to survive without cash.

  A silver VW Golf pulled up beside an apartment building just ahead of me. A woman in her thirties got out. I hated stealing from women, but I had no time to be noble – I could hear more police sirens in the distance. I watched as she dropped the car key in her handbag. Magnetic clasp. She was carrying a bottle of wine – visiting friends – she wouldn’t know the car was gone for hours.

  I eyed her carefully for a second – she was wearing gold earrings. I straightened myself up, then headed toward her.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said as calmly as I could.

  She stared warily at me. I stood away from her – no threat.

  I smiled. ‘This is going to sound like an odd question, but would you mind telling me where you got your earrings?’

  ‘My earrings?’ she replied.

  ‘I couldn’t help noticing them. My girlfriend has the same ones, and I’ve lost one of them. She doesn’t know yet and you’d be saving my neck if you told me where you got them.’

  She relaxed a little and smiled. I felt my heart sink – I hated doing this to her, but I needed the car. I stepped toward her.

  ‘Would you mind…could I just check they’re the same ones?’ I said.

  She swept her hair away from her left ear and turned her head to one side – she couldn’t see my hands now. As I leaned in to take a look at the earrings, I pried open the clasp of her handbag and slid my hand inside. Handbags were tricky – easy to get into, but there’s phones, compacts, all kinds of plastic casings that can rattle against each other. I secured three casings tightly between my fingers, then snaked my thumb around the satin depths of the bag. I felt the key, hooked it by the ring, then released the casings.

  I could hear the police sirens getting closer. ‘Yeah, they’re the ones,’ I said to her.

  ‘Macy’s,’ she replied.

  As she turned back to me, I ran my key-loaded fingers through my hair and let the key slip down the rear collar of my jacket.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Really. You’ve saved my neck.’

  ‘I’m glad I could help.’

  She smiled again and headed into the apartment building. I waited until the main door closed behind her, then grabbed the key and slid inside the Golf. Sirens approaching – I ducked low in the seat. Three police units then tore down the street in front of me and pulled to a stop by the park. Six cops jumped out and started covering the area around the street where I’d dumped the Malibu.

  I watched as they headed into the shadows, and prayed that they’d find a witness – security camera footage – anything that told them that I had nothing to do with the shootings. Not that it would help me now. They’d still be looking for me, and those fuckers from the club would be right on their tail. I didn’t know what I was going to do – I just needed to get to the house. The moment the cops were out of sight, I started up the Golf, pulled out onto Bay Street and headed north.

  3.

  It was one in the morning when I pulled the car to a stop on a deserted farm road just outside Sonoma. There was no moon – no light this far out in the hills. Just a haze of scrub that covered the fields like a black fog. I scanned the car’s interior one final time, making sure there were no satnavs or phones that might give away my location. I doubted the car had a tracker, but I wasn’t going to take the risk. I stared out of the windshield. The farmhouse couldn’t be more than two or three miles – I’d walk the rest of the way. I rolled the car into the bushes, then headed across the dark fields.

  Blurred images from the nightclub filled my head. The hooded figure racing through the archway toward me. The French guy aiming his gun. I tried to capture any details – a glimpse of a profile or hair color – but the pictures were a haze. Not that those fuckers mattered to me now. It was the guy who’d called me in the car. He was the one I wanted.

  I heard thunder ahead, the hills around me taking sudden form as lightning flickered across the horizon. I reached the southern slope of Cava’s Hill and made my way toward its thick wooded peak. The hill rose two hundred feet above the scrub, and would give me a bird’s eye view of the farmhouse that sat just beyond it.

  I reached the top of the hill and waited within the trees. I could see the house below me – its pointed tin roof cutting a black triangle above the oaks that circled it. It looked just as I’d remembered.

  My parents bought the house the year before they died. They were going to renovate it and move the family out to a better life in the country, but they never finished it. In the years since, it had become Jon’s and my retreat away from the city. At least it had until that June night last year when Jon found out about me. I hadn’t returned since.

  I eyed the house carefully. It looked dark. Quiet. If those bastards from the club knew about this place, they’d have been here already – turned the place over, looking for the necklace. But there were no cars parked nearby, no lights, no movement anywhere. The house looked untouched.

  I crept down the hill, jumped the brook that ran past the yard, and sneaked up to the windows. I peered inside. No signs of intrusion. The old carved-wood furniture sat where it always had. The cabinets unopened. Jon’s books resting neatly on the shelves.

  The spare door key was underneath the white stone rabbit in the yard. I unlocked the rear door and slinked inside. I kept the lights off – didn’t know who might be watching. I darted though the shadows, checking the ground floor rooms. The kitchen. Living room. Study. I made sure the windows and doors were all locked, then headed upstairs and checked the bedrooms. The house was empty – a dusty shell. It didn’t look like anyone had been here for months.

  I entered my old bedroom by the stairs. It felt cold. Stark. A bare mattress on the black iron bed frame. I pulled the drawer out from the bedside
table and felt around underneath it. Taped to the underside was the plastic bag full of cash. I’d hidden it there a couple of years ago in case I ever got into trouble – I never thought I’d actually need it. I grabbed the bag, tossed it onto the bed, then opened the oak wardrobe in the corner. Inside were a couple of old sweatshirts, sneakers and a pair of jeans. I needed to get ready to move quickly if I had to. I climbed into some fresh clothes, then headed into the bathroom and studied myself in the mirror. With these bastards trying to find me, I needed to look as different as I could. Medium length brown hair. I rummaged around in the bathroom drawer and found an electric clipper. I leaned my head over the sink and shaved my hair – a ragged, sixty-second buzz cut. I brushed the loose strands away from my neck, then put on my aviators and studied myself again. It wasn’t pretty, but it would do.

  Rain started to drum against the tin roof. The storm was approaching. I headed back into my room and took a careful look out of the window. The hills looked empty and still – just the trees trembling in the wind. I was safe for the moment at least.

  I took a deep breath, the adrenaline in me dropping a gear. I sat on the bed and plucked the necklace from my jacket pocket. The pendant glistened in my palm as lightning flashed across the hills. I eyed it curiously – the inscription, ‘For Miranda’.

  I tried to imagine why it might be worth killing for. I hung it from my fingers and watched it twist in the dark, its faces flickering. But, for all the secrets it may have held, my thoughts drifted away from it.

  Being back at the house. Back in these old rooms.

  All I could think about was Jon.

  I closed my eyes and listened to the tin roof creaking in the wind. The brook bubbling outside. The familiar chorus of the house just kept pulling at me. Kept taking me back to that weekend of last year.

  The last time that I’d seen him.

  The June sun was burning high above the house as Jon and I heaved white chalk rocks into the front yard. Jon laid one of the rocks by the kitchen wall, then slapped the dust from his delicate hands. It made me smile. The rest of him was built like a trooper, but he had the fingers of an artist. It was like his arms had wanted to join Special Forces, but his hands wouldn’t give up the piano lessons.

  He stared up the road, then rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, Jesus,’ he said.

  I turned and saw it – the sunlight glinting off the roof of an orange pick-up crawling up the road. Randal Hap’s pick-up. I glanced back at Jon’s lifeless old BMW blocking the road just outside the house. It had died that morning, and we were clearing away the rocks that lined the yard before pushing it onto the grass. Its rear wheels had locked up, and there was no way we were going to push it all the way into the driveway. Randal lived half a mile up the road, and with the brook on one side, and the rocks on the other, he wasn’t getting around the car.

  He pulled to a stop and poked his withered, ninety-year-old face out of the pick-up window.

  ‘You can’t park your cars in the road!’ he said.

  Jon nodded. ‘We’re aware of that, Randal, thank you. Unfortunately, it’s not parked, it’s broken.’

  ‘Just get the goddamn thing out of my way!’

  ‘We’re trying, but it might take another few minutes, OK? Unless you want to take the barrel road.’

  ‘I ain’t heading back.’

  ‘OK, so we’re waiting, five or ten minutes.’

  ‘Which is it? Five or ten?’

  ‘Well if we’re going to stand here discussing it...’

  ‘Just get!’ said Randal, and he spat in the dirt.

  I stared at him and laughed. Old people. Evolution had to come up with death just to stop the constant whining.

  Randal eyed us as we hauled another couple of rocks.

  He then nodded at Jon. ‘I saw you on TV this morning.’

  Jon grinned back at him. ‘Yeah, what did you think?’

  Jon had hammered Vice-President Howard over his involvement in the Bara investment fund. They’d broadcast the interview that morning.

  ‘You got no respect,’ said Randal. ‘Man’s in the White House, for Chrissake. What, you think you’re smarter than him?’

  Jon smiled. ‘Don’t confuse being smart with being right, Randal. They’re not the same thing.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Yep. The greatest innovators in human history...all surrounded by smart people who did nothing but tell them that they were wrong. Statistically speaking, if you’re smart, chances are you’re an idiot.’

  ‘Yeah, what does that make you then?’ said Randal.

  Jon nodded to himself. ‘You know, that’s a good question.’ He glanced at me. ‘What do you think?’

  I picked up another rock. ‘I think the sooner we get Randal home, the better.’

  I hauled the rock toward the house. But Jon kept his eyes on me. He just stood there.

  ‘Come on, let’s get this done,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘Yeah.’

  We managed to push the car off the road, and Randal was thankfully inflicting some other part of the world. As Jon called a tow truck, I grabbed a beer from the kitchen and gazed out of the window at Suki and Danielle. They were walking together on Cava’s Hill, taking photographs in the sunshine.

  Danielle had been seeing Jon for about six months. I liked her a lot. A producer at NBC, she was this effortlessly elegant creature. She could sneeze and it looked like ballet. Then again, when you’re as rich as she was, grace comes easy. Her dad was some high-flying financier – not that she ever made a big deal about it.

  As for Suki? I’d been with her for a few weeks, and to be honest, she wasn’t for me. Early twenties. Actress. Pretty, but a little upwardly mobile for my taste. I hadn’t really wanted to bring her to the house that weekend, but she wanted to meet Danielle, what with NBC and everything.

  Jon strolled into the kitchen. ‘The guy says it sounds like a busted axle.’

  I nodded. ‘It was on its last legs when you bought it anyhow.’

  He grabbed a beer from the fridge, then gazed out at the girls on the hill. He smiled.

  ‘They seem to be getting along,’ he said.

  I shrugged apathetically. He threw me a look, then shook his head to himself.

  ‘You’re ending it?’ he said.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll wait until we get back to the city.’

  ‘Why, what’s wrong this time?’

  ‘Ah, just time to move on.’

  ‘All you ever do is move on. Don’t you want something meaningful?’

  ‘That’s how you find it. Looking for love’s like looking for oil, you’ve got to drill a few holes before you hit a gusher.’

  He laughed. He took another sip of beer, then sighed wearily as he stared at his sorry-looking BMW perched on the edge of the lawn.

  ‘So I might be in the market for a new car,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll sort you out. Find you something a little more suitable.’

  He raised his eyebrows at me.

  ‘You’re not the BMW type,’ I said. ‘You’re more...I don’t know...Italian. Quick, colorful.’

  ‘That’s me, is it?’

  ‘Lime green Lamborghini.’

  ‘A BMW will be fine, thanks.’

  I smiled.

  He nodded to himself, then leaned back against the kitchen counter.

  ‘So work’s good then, huh?’ he said.

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘OK. OK, good.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just asking.’

  I laughed. Jon never ‘just’ asked anything.

  ‘Still think I’m being followed, huh?’ I said.

  He took a deep breath. ‘I’m seeing the same faces around you, Michael, I swear.’

  ‘Same faces. You’ve been covering Washington for too long, you know that.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe.’

  But the truth was I’d noticed those same faces too. At the ball park. At the airport. Distant eyes that were gone the moment I tr
ied to get a look at them. I was worried that the police were tailing me. I’d kept a low profile over the past few months just in case. Either way, it wasn’t something that I could discuss with Jon.

  He eyed me carefully. ‘If there were any problems, you’d tell me, right?’

  I held his look. ‘Everything’s fine.’

  We all had dinner at the house that night. We talked about the interview with the Vice-President – Jon’s first at his new job. He’d quit the Washington Post that April and moved to the World Review in San Francisco. It felt like he’d returned home.

  ‘This is where you belong,’ I said. ‘I mean Capitol Hill’s fine, but let’s face it, you weren’t making any friends up there.’

  Jon laughed to himself.

  Suki stared curiously at him. ‘Does it ever bother you?’ she said. ‘That you’ve pissed-off so many people. Powerful people.’

  ‘Capitol Hill?’ he replied. ‘Ah, they’re a bunch of lackeys, the lot of them. It’s the money men I want. The guys who stay in the shadows, they’re the ones you’ve got to watch out for.’

  Danielle’s graceful demeanor tightened a little.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘You knew Washington. You should have stayed. The only time you’ve ever been in trouble was when you were following the money.’

  Jon sighed. ‘Come on, that was different.’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘You think Capitol Hill isn’t about money?’

  She went quiet.

  Suki glanced at him. ‘Something happened to you?’

  He shrugged like it was nothing. ‘I followed a money trail down to Mexico a few years ago,’ he said. ‘I was getting coffee one morning, and these two guys dragged me out the back of the shop. They held a gun in my face and told me the story stops here.’

  ‘You’re kidding,’ said Suki.

  I laughed. ‘That’s not the best part.’