The Mercy of the Night

by David Corbett

  Let’s hope so, Skellenger thought, thinking through how he’d phone it in to Mayweather. One assailant possibly identified, Mo Pete Carson, parolee, check gang log for legal name, affiliated with the Brickyard Cutthroat Killas, a.k.a. Cutties, prior arrest for assault and battery and possession of MDMA—Skittles, as the tablets were known, Triple Stack Superman a particularly popular brand, known for the signature S and shield on each pale blue hit.

  Meanwhile Verrazzo’s pounding went on. He lay there curled up, fetal fight position, shielding his head and crotch, smart man. The ordeal looked more painful than deadly, at least until a loner in a hoodie drifted in from the lower left edge of the screen.

  A hulking lean to his walk, shoulders clenched, a deliberate pace, not quick. Like a stray nosing forward.

  Hennessey—a soft, down-drifting sigh: “Fuck me. Who the hell’s that?”

  No sooner did he get the words out than the guy knelt down in the street beside Verrazzo and did something hard to see, sudden quick movements, head area. Shake him? Hit him?

  Then the guy stood up, looking wobbly. That quick, everything changed.

  Mo Pete Carson, Cutthroat Killa, fled like a girl. Everybody else took off right after.

  “I’m never having kids,” Hennessey murmured.

  Wise man, Skellenger thought. This opened the whole damn mess wide open again. The four buffoons who’d started it hadn’t finished it—apparently, maybe. Either way, if somebody didn’t ID this DON—Dude Outta Nowhere—he became a stand-in for the thousands and thousands of unnamed souls who had every good reason to want Mike Verrazzo dead. Line them up from here to the moon. Even if these first four got nailed, dragged into court, put before a jury, they could always point to the empty chair. Look at the video, their lawyers would say: Who’s this?

  The suspects had just become limitless. In a town where resources were damn near nil.

  Then the weird thing happened.

  The DON was lurching back the way he’d come when a girl shot out of the car. Skellenger hadn’t even noticed a second somebody in there—hard to tell, picture quality what it was. And not just any girl.

  “That’s Jacqi Garza,” Hennessey said.

  Skellenger shrugged. A flicker of dread rat-lined up his backbone. “Kinda hard to tell.”

  “No. I mean, I’m pretty damn sure. I’ve booked her twice. Jesus, what am I telling you for? You worked that case.”

  A smoke, Skellenger thought, just one. Scotch rocks. Someplace dark and quiet. What he wouldn’t give. “Ten years ago, yeah.”

  “Jesus. I knew Verrazzo was a pussy hound, but this is new.”

  “Seriously, Sean?” Skellenger palmed a signal, Keep it down, glancing back at the storekeeper—Rahim Salaam wasn’t bothering to feign oblivion anymore, he sat there riveted. “And let’s not jump to conclusions, okay?”

  She was going off on the guy, screaming like only she could—Girl with the Dragon Wazoo, her handle in the squad room—and as the young man turned her direction you could, for just an instant, almost make out his face.

  Skellenger hit the pause button, peered in close. The guy’d tethered the hood of his sweatshirt too tight. Blow it up, maybe they’d get something.

  Talk about wishful thinking.

  No mistaking her, though, not now. Use the zoom, get the tech squad to enhance it, there’d be no doubt. Only a matter of time before the press caught wind of it, and betcha-gosh-golly-wow, wouldn’t that be a story.

  Outside, through the glass, he could see the ever-growing crowd, suits and overcoats, uniforms and umbrellas—police chief, fire chief, the mayor, council members, Alice Hazelton from the DA’s office—plus a bunch of looky-loos drifting out of nearby shops. And damn near every fireman in the city. If it’d been a cop who’d bitten it, they would have had snipers on the roof.

  The first of the TV crews was setting up too—a windblown blond in a raincoat gripping a microphone, the red Crown Vic in the background, Corporal Rusty Medaglia hunched inside with his powder and brush and cellophane tape, lifting prints.

  Little doubt whose latents we’ll get, Skellenger thought. The girl’s sight line was clear, close enough to nail the stranger’s face straight on, his hood not an issue from that angle. Rio Mirada’s most famous witness. Again. Details at eleven.

  Lucky us. Lucky me.

  Hennessey softly clucked his tongue. “Bet my tin on it. That’s goddamn Jacqi Garza.”

  15

  Atop a narrow stair, stenciled lettering arched across vintage frosted glass:

  MATAFEO & ASSOCIATES

  GRADY MATAFEO, MANAGING OWNER

  Tierney entered quietly. Racheline—humming to herself, back to the door and pitcher in hand—busied herself watering Grady’s vast array of South Seas flora: wax-leafed crotons, feathery aralias, possum tail ferns.

  “Did you get a chance to run that plate I asked for?”

  She flinched and spun around. He expected a smile, would have begged for a wink. Instead she scooted behind her desk and sat, tucking her hands beneath her skirt.

  “I believe you need to take that up with Mr. Matafeo.”

  No one called Grady “Mr. Matafeo” except strangers, fellow Pacific Islanders hoping for a favor, or people he frightened.

  Tierney sighed. The girl was refreshingly wholesome—bright blue smile, deep red soul—plus that New Zealand accent that charmed every living thing. “Sorry if I caused you any trouble.”

  Tierney took his time, ambling down the wainscoted hall, admiring the wall art: to one side, a collection of Tongan tapa mats, intricately patterned, tastefully framed; on the opposite wall a series of hand-carved Maori koruru, ritual masks of eerie godlike menace. At the last office he stopped, knuckling the doorframe. “Room for one more?”

  Every surface in the room sat covered in dusty stuff, to where it looked like an eccentric landfill. Grady rocked in his swivel chair behind his desk—pockmarked face, stately paunch, ponytail a bright black sheen—reading a deposition transcript the size of a suburban phone book. He’d worn one of his cowboy shirts today, deep blue with pearl buttons and white piping, plus his sharkskin roach killers.

  The Samoan Six-Gun. Yippy-o-ki-a-lua.

  Grady marked his place, then tossed the deposition onto his desk. “Why the sudden interest in Pete Navarette?”

  Tierney removed a stack of case files in Smead folders from a plump leather chair, dusted the cushion and sat. “I don’t know who that is.”

  “You had Racheline run his plate, yeah?”

  “Ah.” Tierney recalled the Lincoln parked in the rain. “You mean the curious gent I encountered this morning at Nina Garza’s house.”

  Grady squinted meaningfully. “Run that by me again?”

  “I told you I’m trying to help Lonnie Bachmann locate Jacqi Garza.”

  “Yeah, and that’s on your letterhead, not mine.”

  Grady had convinced Tierney to obtain his own investigator’s license, so he could contract out to anyone he pleased, given his hot-and-cold interest in work. The process proved disarmingly simple—having passed the bar exam a lifetime ago, he’d satisfied all experience requirements, and no one seemed to care about his bar card being in purgatory. As for the PI test itself, it proved to be the most nerve-rackingly boneheaded thing he’d ever sat through, a gift to the ungifted—ex-cops, mall militia, borderline simians—so they wouldn’t humiliate themselves and flunk.

  “It’s not an investigation,” he said. “It’s a favor.”

  “You ran a plate. On my account.”

  “Bill me. I’ll reimburse you. I’m not seeing the problem.”

  “If I’m gonna get linked to what you’re doing, I’d like to know a little about it beforehand. Getting back to which—”

  “I went to the mother’s house this morning,” Tierney said. “Jacqi’s mother. It would appear she has a
special friend. Not just that, he acts like he speaks for the family. I thought it might be wise to know his name. That’s it.”

  Grady sat back and laced his fingers across his midriff, rocking gently. “Navarette’s boning Nina Garza?”

  “A gentleman never tells. But so I surmised. There something I should know?”

  Grady was a kind of local savant and folk historian, at least in matters of crime. A gentrified roughneck from the Bay Vista projects who refused to discuss his life between the ages of twelve and twenty, Grady for years had been one of just a handful of North Bay investigators devoted to criminal defense work. Not only did he not shy away from gang cases, he embraced them, clear across the racial spectrum—Nazi Low Riders, Baymont Wet Crew, Southtown Krazy Raza, 415 Kumi, even FAIM, the Family-Affiliated Irish Mafia. Up here in the sleepy North Bay, all a prosecutor had to do was whisper that one word, “gang,” and he could clock his conviction. Grady, to his credit, saw the evil in that. It was one of several reasons Tierney enjoyed his company.

  “How much do you know,” Grady said, “about Jacqi Garza’s dad?”

  Tierney recounted what he’d gleaned from his reading. “I understand he’s in prison. There a link with Navarette?”

  Grady shrugged. “Pete’s an old-school dude, veterano, runs that restaurant north of town—Todo’s? Supposedly scrubs a lot of norteño swag, but the hammer’s never come down. Silent partner in a couple card rooms, too, same rumors there. They tried snitches, undercover, wiretaps. He’s a very clever cat. Throws money at the Police Activities League, chips in big whenever a cop takes a bullet.”

  “No offense, but you lost me. The link to Joe Garza . . .”

  “There was talk Navarette bankrolled the DeMartini thing.”

  “The jewelry store robbery.”

  “Then he circled the lawyers, made sure nobody rolled up on him, which took some doing, given how lousy it went. Paid everybody’s legal fees, put a little bit aside for the families—mom, pop, wifey, the kids, even an abuela or two. Sent a message. I’ll take care of things. Or, you know, we’ll go the other way.”

  Tierney remembered the man at the door, buttoning his cuffs, so unfazed, so matter-of-fact. The kind of man who doesn’t make threats. “There was something about him, about him and the mother together, couldn’t put my finger on it. I just got the sense he’s a big reason Jacqi never comes home anymore.”

  Grady chuckled. “The guy maybe responsible for your dad being in the joint’s now playing hide the cassava with your mom—yeah, that might make the evening meal a bit tense.” He lifted a briarwood pipe from its stand on his desk, tapped out the spent tobacco in an ashtray. “Mind if I ask a question?”

  Tierney resisted a sigh. “Depends on the question, I suppose.”

  “Why are you so obsessed with Jacqi Garza?”

  From the floor below, faint but clear, Tierney heard a familiar descending progression of chords from a well-tuned piano. Ms. Lovely in Leotards, the ash-blond bohemian divorcée who rented the studio space from Grady, gave lessons in the mornings, but this didn’t sound like a student. The playing was lyrical and confident, with deft precision in the pedal release, a haunting gentle pulse in the left hand: Chopin, the E minor prelude. One of Roni’s favorites.

  He said, “I wouldn’t say obsessed.”

  “People with obsessions never do. Should see your face when you talk about her.”

  Tierney wondered what Cass would make of that, then suddenly Racheline was there, drumming her nails against the doorframe, directing a penitent gaze toward Grady. “Excuse me, but you wanted me to remind you.” She waved a message slip. “Telephone conference in ten minutes.” She tiptoed forward like a balletic fawn, set the message down amid the desk clutter, then fled.

  Tierney wondered if the message was a hoax. Old trick: you have a call.

  “I’m just concerned about her,” he said. “Jacqi Garza, I mean.”

  Grady squinted at the message slip. “You getting paid?”

  “I told you. It’s a favor.”

  That prompted a knowing smile. “Look. Maybe you think there’s a different Jacqi Garza buried inside the Tasmanian she-devil everybody hates.”

  “I tutored her, remember? She was never that way with me.” Until yesterday, he thought.

  “You got lucky, trust me. Things I’ve heard—”

  “Grady—”

  “Permit me my lofty quote of the day. ‘The doer is a fiction attached to the deed.’” He inspected the bowl of his pipe. “Jacqi Garza is what she does, and for most of the past eight years or so what she’s done is pick fights, party hard, turn twists, and bite every goddamn hand that comes within a country mile. It’s sad, given what happened to her. But it’s not really your problem, yeah?”

  How to explain it, Tierney thought. Maybe obsession wasn’t off point, but he sensed something else as well, and it wasn’t just the dirge from the studio below that made him feel that way.

  About a year ago, he’d had a kind of revelation while thumbing through a magazine—an article on Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmaus. It discussed the medieval lore of the Unrecognized Christ, the stranger who appears out of nowhere and offers unexpected comfort or hope, only to reveal his divine identity at the end: the young man in the white robe who greets Mary Magdalene at Christ’s tomb. The traveler who joins two humble workmen from Emmaus on the long road home. And as soon as he’d read that, he thought: Roni was my Unrecognized Christ.

  She’d appeared out of nowhere one day in Napa, down the bar at the Verasa Hotel, fussing with her cowl neck and reading Anna Akhmatova, and he’d known, somehow, that he couldn’t turn away. He had to meet her. Had to invite her into his threadbare life. And everything changed.

  The message was simple and terrifying: anyone you met could end the world and announce another. Anyone you met could reveal herself to be the very person who could save you. Maybe it was presumptuous to think he was the person to tell the girl her life didn’t need to be the way it was—okay, sure, it was presumptuous—but it was also true that if anyone could use a change of direction, it was Jacqi Garza. If only he could gain her trust, prove he deserved it. Then again, for all he knew she’d be the one rescuing him.

  None of which was the kind of thing you told a man like Grady.

  Tierney stood up, shook out the crease in his slacks. “I will take what you said under advisement, Mr. Matafeo.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor.” Grady reached for the phone, punched in a number, then pressed the receiver against his trendy cowpoke shirt. “You want work, by the way, I’ve got plenty, and not just stringer stuff. I like the thought of you gainfully occupied.”

  “Fine, sure.” Tierney turned to go. “I’ll stop back later, we’ll talk it through.”

  “In the meantime, I’d keep my distance from the likes of Pete Navarette, yeah? That’s a problem you want no part of, trust me.”

  16

  “These are the best I have.”

  Nina Garza slid four snapshots across the tabletop—a booth in a small back room at Todo’s, closed off for privacy. Navarette’s men—Ben Escalada, the small one, and Hector Mancinas, el bruto—collected the pictures like some puzzling form of money, spread them out, studied them.

  In the background, beyond the thin walls, the restaurant staff shifted over from breakfast to lunch—from the dining room, the click of flatware hitting starched cloth and the flap of fresh napkins; from the kitchen, the hammering chop of cleavers on cutting boards, the gong-like clamor of the steam table trays getting pulled for their change-of-shift washing.

  “Which one’s most new,” the small one asked.

  She pointed—the one from the girl’s quinceañera, held at a country club in St. Helena. A hundred guests, four-star caterer, mariachis bussed in from San Jose. Such a disaster. The girl disappeared with three of her hideous friends, came back loaded on pills,
drank herself sick, they had to send everyone home. Humiliating. And then trying to clean her up, that beautiful dress, all that satin brocade. The things the girl said.

  Said? You mean screamed. Hissed. Like an animal.

  The small one glanced up. “Like, how recent is this one?”

  “Two years ago, almost three. She was fifteen.”

  “Not so recent.” He turned the picture a little, as though a different angle might make it newer. “It’s hard to make out her face.”

  “I told you, they’re the best I have.” She snapped shut her purse. “My daughter doesn’t like her picture taken.”

  Not by you. Not anymore.

  “It’s okay. I mean, Hector and me, we’ve met her, you know? Here at the restaurant. These are for the other guys.”

  Escalada collected the photographs, shuffled them, tapped them against the tabletop, then tucked them away. Always trying so hard, she thought, this one. Typical. Small men, so afraid they won’t be taken seriously. Whereas the big one, he was afraid he was always a step behind. Because he was.

  “Mr. Navarette, he’s told us to make it happen, no matter how many men we need. We’ll find her.”

  She pictured a pack of unleashed dogs circling a feral cat. “All right. Thank you.”

  “I promise you, we won’t—how to put this . . .” Escalada tapped his fingers against the tabletop, cheap rings clattering against the laminate. “She’ll be okay.”

  Nina took a sip from the tumbler of ice water resting at her elbow. “My daughter will not be ‘okay,’” she said, “until you have brought her to me. I know what you’re saying, and I appreciate it. But don’t fool yourself. She will do nothing to help you and a great deal to make your job impossible. I sense you are capable. I’m grateful. But let’s be clear. Nothing you do to her—nothing—could possibly be worse than what will happen if she’s allowed to go on the way she has.”

  The small one’s face knotted up for a second, like he’d just been given permission for the impermissible—and he understood he’d never really be forgiven, if it came to that, no matter how well he performed.