The Mercy of the Night

by David Corbett

  “Well slap my ass and call me Spanky, look who’s here.”

  Up front near the window the two jornaleros shrank into their meals, trying to become even more invisible as the small one, Escalada, glanced around. Finally his eyes landed on Tierney, not happily. “Where is she?”

  “Who do you mean?”

  “Don’t play. Where is she?”

  Tierney speared a piece of cold yucca with his fork. “I have no idea. I came here hoping to find her, like you two, but that didn’t pan out. Nice place, though.” He glanced around appraisingly. “Figured what the hell, might as well grab a bite.”

  Escalada narrowed his gaze, like he was struggling with the small print, then turned to the mammoth, Mancinas, nodding him toward the back.

  The big man started lumbering that direction and Tierney slid quickly out of the booth, shot to his feet, and snagged an arm, the muscle hard as a lamppost beneath the suit-coat sleeve.

  “Don’t bother these people. I told you, the girl’s not here.”

  Mancinas tried to shake off the hand but Tierney held tight. He figured the buster for two and a quarter, a fifty-pound giveaway, but you could tell from the shuffling footfall he wasn’t quick. Built like a freezer, just less agile.

  The guy’s opposite arm came around high, a meat-hook roundhouse aiming for the skull, but Tierney had a month to block the punch, then he grabbed both lapels and jerked hard, delivering a headbutt that drew blood fast from the big man’s nose.

  Mancinas dipped at the waist in pain and Tierney ducked under him, centered his leverage, hooked an arm beneath one thick leg, lodged a shoulder into the big fella’s midriff and lifted him up, off his feet, then dropped him onto the floor like a big sack of thunder. Not quite the perfect snatch single takedown, Tierney thought, but sufficient to the day thereof. I will kill thee a hundred and fifty ways. If this had been a match or an honest-to-god street fight, he’d have gone to the floor to finish it, but the smaller one, Escalada, reached inside his jacket, drawing Tierney’s focus, just as the bartender hammered the top of the bar with a maple timber baseball bat he’d pulled from a corner.

  “Out!” He raised the bat to his shoulder like an ax. “Todos. The girl no here.”

  The two jornaleros were the ones who moved, dropping their forks and scrambling out as another voice—the woman’s, Ilena’s—shouted from the kitchen doorway. “The girl, she go.” She gestured behind her with a nod. “That way, the back.” Slowly wiping her hands on her apron. “Now go. You leave us in peace.”

  Mancinas struggled to his feet, eyeing Tierney with school-yard hate, one bloody hand cupping his nose, while Escalada slipped past quickly and nudged Ilena aside, went back to check the restrooms—doors screeching open, slamming shut—then through the kitchen to the rear.

  No one else moved, Tierney momentarily stunned that the girl had fled, feeling vaguely comical. I can protect myself.

  Escalada hurried back, pushing past Ilena and heading toward the front, not wasting a glance on Tierney, just nodding for Mancinas to follow him out. But the big man lingered, tottering a little on his feet as he mad-dogged Tierney one last time—puckering his lips, a wink, a surprising choirboy tenor. “Catch you on the flip side, gabacho.”

  It talks, Tierney thought, as the two men headed out, then he pulled out his wallet, hands trembling from adrenaline. “How much do I owe you?” He pointed toward the front table, where the two workmen had sat. “I’ll pay for them as well.” Neither Ilena nor the bartender spoke. He counted out five twenties, set them on the bar, then raised his hand and said, “We’ll leave it there. My apologies for the trouble.”

  41

  Jacqi stuck to backstreets and headed for Bettye’s, wind ripping off the river down the jagged weedy concrete as she slinked shadow to shadow, hood pulled tight, listening for sudden cars.

  Night already, barely five o’clock. No rain yet, but she could smell it coming.

  If she’d been paying more attention, not lost in thought, she wouldn’t have blundered right in.

  But there she stood, nailed in place as she finally glanced up, halfway in, halfway out, hand on the doorknob, barging in on Mo Pete Carson, plopped in one of the styling chairs like he’d come to get his braids washed out and retwisted.

  Bettye. She’d watched the news, made some calls, put two and two together.

  Time feeling stuck, like a snapshot.

  Two other Cutties behind Mo Pete, thugging it up, arms crossed, one thin as a rail, the other chunky but solid, not fat like Mo Pete, hat kicked right, brim cocked.

  Mo Pete with one hand deep inside a knapsack—my knapsack, she thought—the floor littered with socks, tights, blouses, undies.

  The clincher: Bettye, off to the side, thumbing through a money roll.

  My money: $193.

  Next snapshot—click—everybody glancing up, turning her way. Theater of eyes, dumbstruck stares. The moment like a punch, a rocking silent pulse of air.

  She ran.

  Get off the street, she thought, hearing the two hoodrats bang out the door behind her—not needing to look, not wasting the time, pushing herself to full speed, arms and legs pumping like skinny pistons, darting down the nearest side alley and feeling the little fist of food in her belly clenching, working its way up through a sour backspill.

  Pools of misty lamplight. Caves of shadow.

  She ducked into the first space between garages, almost hitting the trash can, giving herself away.

  Holding her breath. Trying not to upchuck.

  The two Cutties barreled around the corner, passed her spot, figuring it out too late. She darted back the way she’d come.

  Seeing the hand reach out, corner of her eye, she swatted it off, batting at it, spinning out of its grip, aiming for the street and flying.

  What was it some kid said from the edge of a fight she’d been in, middle school, kicking the shit-and-chickens out of Junalta Cuthbert? Damn, check it out, yo, that Garza bitch, she’s wiry but she’s strong.

  Strong enough to fly.

  She dodged a downhill bus, the thing pitching to a stop to miss her, all headlights and screeching hiss and lunging silhouettes inside. She hopped a fence, heading for the next alley over. This one darker, much so, safer.

  Into the maze: window lights. Barking dogs. Jabbering TVs.

  Pathways and landmarks fired in her memory—she was tunneling like a rat, reminding herself: this is your domain, not theirs, your one advantage. Go.

  Quick glance over the shoulder—there they were, both of them, Thinman in front, all knees and elbows, Chunky lagging, gripping his hat, but both on the come.

  She headed for the trapdoor she’d thought about, planned for, thinking she might need it someday: back of the old Odd Fellows Hall, the ladder to a fire escape. Grab it, climb fast, pull it up behind. Safe. Scramble to the roof and catch your breath, think things through. Plans B through Z.

  She turned the corner, alley funneling toward the spot, and she sprinted, lungs burning. Then the sudden curious heart-stopping sense: No. Wrong.

  The ladder was gone.

  Somebody beat her to it, they’d pulled the thing up. It beckoned out of reach, a practical joke.

  Thank you, God. Why do you hate me?

  The pounding flap of sneakers behind. A quick glance back.

  Taking off, burst of speed and her throat aching now, chest aching too, mouth dry as stone from sucking in air, like inhaling bleach, legs tightening. A thumping quiver in her right thigh. No no no, please no.

  Whimpering grunts behind as Thinman closed ground, edging nearer, pushing himself, hurtling toward her, a human blade.

  The alley broke open at the street and she was angling left when the hand reached out again, pawing at her first, then catching hold, the hood, some hair, snapping her back.

  Unthinking, a spin, a kick, nails to
the eyes, scraping at the damp dark skin. But he didn’t let go, he threw a tight punch of his own, clocking her head as he spun with her and she only vaguely sensed the thing, the mass of metal, not braking in time.

  Off-balance, they toppled into its path, the car missing her by an inch, maybe less. The dull snap and breathy thud of his body slamming against the headlight and fender, the wet shriek of rubber gripping pavement, then he jackknifed under the thing like a broken doll dragged by an unseen hand.

  The tire crushed his leg, and he screamed like a boy.

  Kept screaming.

  Time broke again, like a shattered window.

  Rhythmic swoosh of the windshield wipers. The driver, small, gray-haired, slumped, hands gripping the wheel like the top rung of a ladder.

  Jacqi thinking: If you hate me, God, why do you spare me? Or is that just part of the hate?

  The other one, Chunky, burst from the alley, thudding to a clumsy stop. Chest heaving. Staring at the ground first, pop-eyed, the screams, his friend, then up at Jacqi, gaze empty, back to the ground—bending his knee, stopping himself, clutching his head.

  She ran.

  PART V

  42

  They’d come and gone throughout the middle of the afternoon, her little ones. Thursday, pediatric cancer clinic. The last of them left at four, some happily responding to treatment, some sunnily brave despite their ghostliness, some quiet, worn down, and scared. The parents were just as various, mothers mostly, everything from stoic to shrill. All, on some level, numb.

  Even now, more than an hour later, Cass had yet to tug off the motley jester’s hat she wore for them—perched atop her tumbling red hair, each floppy velvet point (green, black, yellow, red) tipped with a tiny silver bell. I just may, she thought, wear the damn thing home. Make Phelan fuck me in it.

  Usually the clinic bustled this time of day, five to six, patients transitioning from work to home, with a detour for treatment in the jagged crack between worlds. Today, though, only two patients sat in the infusion chairs.

  There’d been more than a few cancellations. The whole town seemed in shock, asking or fearing to ask: What next?

  The first patient was Mariko Detwiler, forty-two, Stage III metastatic breast cancer, Adriamycin and Taxotere. Birdlike, square-faced, an artist—specialized pottery, fine ceramics—she paged through trashy magazines, tethered to her drip.

  The second: Ron Buker, Stage II hepatocellular carcinoma. He was getting systemic chemotherapy too—same drug even, Adriamycin—because he didn’t qualify for hepatic artery infusion. Bad luck on that front. Systemic chemo was a long shot for liver cancer, but what else was there—leeches?

  His hair had turned patchy but he’d yet to make the bold move to shaving his head, preferring to comb strategically what was left, his pale head furrowed with wispy dark strands. Once hard-muscled and oxlike, now he was wasting, fifty pounds lost in the past six months. He admitted fatigue and mouth sores. Bruises mottled his fleshy arms.

  His son, Teddy, twentysomething, a tradesman like his dad, had come along as always. Today, though, he seemed mesmerized by the TV in the upper corner.

  The Verrazzo thing. Every ten seconds, it seemed, an update.

  They’d already made some arrests, the news bits picking up pace. Teddy seemed particularly mesmerized by the video of the kids kicking Verrazzo to death.

  A blogger for Rio Mirada Spotlight, an online zine that reported whatever the local paper wouldn’t touch, had been wandering the halls like so many other newsmongers, and apparently he’d latched on to the Bukers somewhere between the lobby and here, chatting them up, following them in.

  The guy’s name was Doug Zordich—out of some awkward courtesy, he’d handed Cass a business card—and he sat with the father now, recording their conversation on his phone, an interview for some kind of podcast related to the murder.

  As Cass cycled through, checking the older man’s infusion rate and reservoir level, she caught a little of the back and forth.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you guys, the IBEW, you were left with scraps.”

  He wore his graying hair long and combed straight back, like a cartoon maestro. Herringbone sweater draped on a stick-thin frame.

  “CBA got tossed, yeah.” Ron took in a ragged breath. “Health care got cut from fifteen hundred a month to zip. Overnight. Obamacare chips in now, but there’s always talk about repeal, or cutting it back to squat. Death by a thousand cuts. I’m buying generics against my doctor’s advice because I can’t afford the seventy-five-dollar copay.”

  “Your pension doesn’t cover your costs?”

  “Who said pension? I’m stuck on disability.”

  “You’re not retired?”

  “Got five years before that kicks in. If it’s still there. Or I am.”

  Cass, sensing it was time, leaned down, hands on knees. “Mind if I butt in here for a sec?” Bright smile for the patient. “Hey, big stuff. Tell me. Feeling okay?”

  Their eyes met, and his rancor melted. A smile of almost boyish welcome. “Hey.” He shrugged. “I’m okay.” He nodded at her headgear. “Love the hat.”

  “Thursdays. I’m Cass the Clown. How’s the nausea?”

  The eyes went inward, dragging his voice along. “Gotta be rough, those kids.”

  “It’s all rough. What about the nausea?”

  “Same.” Another shrug, eyes still elsewhere. “Pretty much.”

  “Pretty much as in a little better, little worse?”

  “Can’t really tell, to be honest. Try not to think about it. Let’s just say same.”

  “Okay.” She stood full height amid the tinny racket of jester bells. A warning glance at Zordich. “Let’s keep things calm.” She smoothed an invisible sheet.

  Trooping back to the nurse’s station, Cass glanced once toward Mariko and her glam mags, once toward Teddy still hypnotized by the TV, cocked an ear.

  Ron turned back to Zordich. “I know how you guys think. Like we were robbing the store. Well get this. You work thirty years, scrimp and get by, banking on that money, your pension. Then you get to where you need it. And it’s a joke, a lie.”

  “Not a big believer in pension reform, I take it.”

  “Reform for who?”

  “Well, you’ve got to admit there were abuses. Workers spiking their wages right before retirement, air time, even felons getting payouts.”

  “I’m tapped out. Down to the fumes on my savings. My boy, Teddy, over there, he’s kicking in. Good kid. But there’s no work for him up here, neither.”

  “Economy’s pretty rotten all over.”

  “You’re not hearing me. Our promises we kept. But theirs?”

  Teddy, having caught his name, finally pried himself away from the TV, drifted a little closer toward the conversation. Sizing up Zordich, his dad: “Everything copacetic?”

  Zordich sat back, pushed his glasses up his nose, eyes still focused on the father. “What about the politics that got us here?”

  “That was Verrazzo,” Teddy said. “Look where it got him.”

  “You think his killing’s some kind of payback?”

  Teddy bridled. “Little-known fact, pal: what goes around comes around.”

  “I’m hearing some people think your guy, head of the IBEW, Donny Bauserman—they think he’s feeling pretty good right about now, given how Verrazzo—”

  “What the fuck you know about it?” Like that, the kid looked ready to have at it. “Ass-hats like you—carpetbaggers, yuppie fucks—you think you know everything, but guess what? You don’t know jack, not about working people, not about us, not about what—”

  “Teddy.” His dad breaking in. “Don’t let this character—”

  “Bauserman wasn’t anywhere near Verrazzo,” Teddy said. “He had a meeting this morning, Code Enforcement, he—”

  Zordich:
“And you know this why?”

  Caught up short, the young man blinked. Then a wince, like he’d been bit by a tricky thought.

  Cass slid from behind the nurse’s station, took up position between the two, a referee. “What did I say?” Her eyes moved face to face, and only then did she realize she was still wearing the ridiculous hat. She considered yanking it off, but then thought: Why? There was something to be said for a six-foot redhead wearing jester bells who could shut these fools up. “You keep it down,” she said. “Or you leave.”

  Teddy shot Zordich one last look, then turned away, edged back to the TV. Zordich nodded guiltily, glancing at the floor. Ron sank back into the infusion chair.

  “Better,” Cass said. She glanced over at Mariko, who seemed even more Zen-like with her magazines, then dragged herself back behind the nurse’s station.

  Dropping into her swivel chair, she finally tugged off the hat.

  43

  In time Zordich left and the clinic fell quiet except for the TV murmur. Mariko snagged a pen and notebook from her purse and began sketching savagely. Ron Buker napped while his son once again stared up at the news, transfixed by the coverage.

  Cass caught herself every now and then glancing up at the screen as well. They were flashing images of Jacqi Garza now, not the jittery thin teenager she’d seen in the cafeteria earlier but pictures from a decade ago.

  Wrong picture, Cass thought. Wrong girl. But what did they care? Same with Phelan. All of them chained together in the same basement. Forever.

  In the grand scheme of things, she supposed—the economic shipwreck lying dead ahead, for example, except for the hedge fund mafia and their ilk, who’d made off with the lifeboats—something as vain and wispy as love seemed an almost reckless waste of time. And yet she’d thought of little else since that day Phelan showed up again, right here in the ward.

  She’d been an ugly duckling, the lanky overfreckled redhead tomboy. Guys liked her okay, she was swell. Good listener. Told great jokes. Pure death with a basketball.