by Mark Dawson
Maybe it would be possible, after all.
He gazed out of the window. He could see the glow from other houses further down the road. The nearest was another big building with lights blurring through the murk. As he watched, a sleek black town car turned into the driveway and parked three cars over from him. The doors opened and two men stepped out. It was too dark and foggy to make out anything other than their silhouettes, but he watched as they made their way to the door and went into the house.
The dull thump and drone of bass was suddenly audible from the house. The party was getting started. Milton turned up the stereo a little to muffle it. He changed to The Smiths. Morrissey’s melancholia seemed appropriate in the cloying fog. Time passed. He had listened to the whole of ‘Meat is Murder’ and was halfway through ‘The Queen is Dead’ when he heard a scream through the crack in the window.
His eyes flashed open.
He turned down the stereo.
Had he imagined it?
The bass throbbed.
Somewhere, footsteps crunched through the gravel.
A snatch of angry conversation.
He heard it again: clearer this time, a scream of pure terror.
Milton got out of the car and crossed the forecourt to the front door. He concentrated a little more carefully on his surroundings. The exterior was taken up by those walls of glass, the full-length windows shining with the light from inside. Some of the windows were open and noise was spilling out: the steady bass over the sound of drunken voices, conversation, laughter.
The scream came again.
A man was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.
“You hear that?” Milton said.
“Didn’t hear nothing.”
“There was a scream.”
“I didn’t hear anything, buddy. Who are you?”
“A driver.”
“So back to your car, please.”
The scream sounded for a fourth time.
It was hard to be sure but Milton thought it was Madison.
“Let me in.”
“You ain’t going in, buddy. Back to the car now.”
Milton sized him up quickly. He was big and he regarded Milton with a look that combined distaste and surliness. “Who are you?”
“I’m the man who tells you to go and fuck off. Like already, okay?” The man pulled back his jacket to reveal a shoulder holster. He had a big handgun.
Milton punched hard into the man’s gut, aiming all his power for a point several inches behind him. The man’s eyes bulged as the pain fired up into his brain and he folded down, his arms dropping to protect his groin. Milton looped an arm around his neck and yanked him off the porch, dragging him backwards so that his toes scraped tracks through the gravel, and then drove his knee into the man’s face. He heard the bones crack. He turned him over, pinning him down with a knee into his gut, reached inside his jacket and took out the gun. It was a Smith & Wesson, the SW1911 Pro Series. 9mm, ten rounds plus one in the chamber. A very good, very expensive handgun. Fifteen hundred bucks new. Whoever this guy was, if he bought his own ironwork he must have been getting some decent pay.
Milton flipped the S&W so that he was holding it barrel first and brought the butt down across the crown of the man’s head. He spasmed, and then was still.
The scream again.
Milton shoved the gun into the waistband of his jeans and pushed the door all the way open. A central corridor ran the length of the building with doors and windows set all along it. Skylights were overhead. The walls were painted white and the floor was Italian marble. The corridor ended at a set of French doors. Vases of orchids were spaced at regular intervals across the marble.
He hurried through into the bright space beyond. It was a living room. He took it all in: oak parquetry floor inlaid with ebony and a gilded fireplace that belonged in a palazzo as the focal point of the wall; rich mahogany bookshelves and fine fabric lining one wall; the rest set with windows that would have provided awesome views on a clear day. The ceiling was oak and downlighters in the beams lit the room. The furnishings were equally opulent with three circular sofas that would each have been big enough to accommodate ten or eleven people. The big windows were ajar and gleaming white against the darkness outside. A night breeze blew through the room, sucking the long curtains in and out of the windows, blowing them up toward the ceiling and then rippling them out over a rust-coloured rug.
Milton took in everything, remembering as much as he could.
Details:
The DJ in a baseball cap mixing from two laptops set up next to the bar.
The lapdancing pole with two girls writhing around it, both of them dressed as nuns.
The girl dancing on the well-stocked bar wearing a mask of President Obama.
The music was loud and the atmosphere was frantic. Many of the guests were drunk and no attempt had been made to hide the large silver salvers of cocaine that had been placed around the room. Milton watched a man leading a half-naked woman up the wide wooden staircase to the first floor. Another man stuffed a banknote into the garter belt of the girl who was dancing for him.
The scream.
Milton tracked it.
He made his way farther inside. The windows at the rear of the room looked out onto wide outdoor porches and manicured grounds. He could just see through the fog to the large illuminated pool, the spa, the fire flickering in an outdoor fireplace. He passed into a library. Silk fabric walls blended with painted wainscoting. There was a private powder room and a large wood-burning fireplace. A handful of guests were there, all male.
Madison was cowering against the wall. Slowly rocking backwards and forwards.
There was a man next to her. He put his hand on her shoulder and spoke to her but she pulled away. She looked vulnerable and frightened.
Milton quickly crossed the room.
“Are you alright?”
She looked right through him.
“Madison––are you alright?”
She couldn’t focus on him.
“It’s John Smith.”
Her eyes were glassy.
“I drove you here, remember? I said I’d wait for you.”
The man who had been speaking to her faded back and walked quickly away. Milton watched him, caught between his concern for her and the desire to question him.
“They want to kill me,” she said.
“What?”
“They want me dead.”
Another man appeared in the door and came across to them both. Another guard.
Milton turned his head to look at him. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
“Look at her. What’s happened?”
He snorted out a derisive laugh. “She’s tripping out, man. Look at her! They said she went into the bathroom and when she came out she was like that. But you don’t need to worry. We’ll look after her. We’re going to drive her back to the city.”
“She says someone wants to kill her.”
“You want me to repeat it? Look at the state of her. She’s off her head.”
Milton didn’t buy that for a moment. Something was wrong, he was sure of it, and there was no way he was going to leave her here.
“Who are you?” the man asked him.
“I drove her out here. You don’t need to worry about another car. I’ll take her back.”
“No you won’t. We’re taking care of it and you’re getting out of here. Right now.”
“Not without her.”
Milton stood slowly and turned so that they were face-to-face. The man was about the same height as him but perhaps a little heavier. He had low, clenched brows and a thick, flattened nose. He had nothing in common with the well-dressed, affluent guests next door. Hired muscle in case any of the guests got out of hand. Probably armed, too, like his pal with the broken nose and the headache outside. Milton took another deep breath. He stared forward with his face burning and his hands clenching and unclenching.
“What?” the man said, squaring up to him.
“I’d be careful,” Milton advised, “before I lose my temper.”
“That supposed to be a threat, pal? What you gonna do?”
Milton’s attention was distracted for just a moment and he didn’t notice Madison sprint for the door. He shouldered the man out of the way and gave chase but she was quick and agile and already halfway across the library and then into the living room beyond. Milton bumped into a drunken guest, knocking him so that he toppled over the back of the sofa and onto the floor, barely managing to keep his own balance. “Madison!” He stumbled after her, scrambling through the room and into the foyer and then the cool of the night beyond.
He could barely make her out as she headed up the driveway.
He called out to her. “Madison! Wait!”
She crossed the driveway and kept going, disappearing into the bushes at the side of the gardens.
She vanished into the fog.
The man outside was on his knees, still dazed, struggling to get to his feet.
Milton started in pursuit but came to a helpless stop. He clenched his teeth in frustration. He couldn’t start crashing across the neighbours’ properties. They would call the police and then he would be arrested and they would take his details. He had probably stayed too long as it was. Perhaps they had already been called. Bringing attention to himself was something that a man in his position really couldn’t afford.
He rolled the car up the road. He turned right, further into Pine Shores, and, as the headlights raked through the murky gloom, he saw Madison again, at the front door of the next house, knocking furiously. He watched as the door opened and an old man with scraps of white hair and an expression that flicked from annoyance to concern came out and spoke with her. She shrieked at him, repeating one word––“help”––before she pushed her way into the house. Milton stepped out of the car and then paused, impotent, as the sounds of an argument were audible from inside. Madison stumbled outside again, tripping down the porch steps, scrambling to her feet as Milton took a step towards her, the old man coming outside after her, a phone in his hand, calling out in a weak and uncertain voice that he had called 911 and she needed to get off his property. He saw Milton, glared at him, and repeated that he had called the cops. Milton paused again. Madison sprinted to the old man’s fence and clambered over it, ploughing through a flower bed and a stand of shrubs, knocking on the front door of the next big house, not waiting to have her knock answered and continuing on down the road.
Milton heard the growl of several motorcycle engines. Four sets of lights blasted around the corner, powerful headlamps that sliced through the fog. He turned and looked into the glare of the high beams. The shape of the bikes suggested big Harleys. The riders slotted the hogs in along the side of the road. The engines were killed, one by one, but the headlights were left burning.
A car rolled up alongside them. It was difficult to make it out for sure but it looked like an old Cadillac.
He got back into the Explorer and drove slowly up the road after Madison. It was poorly lit, with dense bushes on the left. He couldn’t see where she had gone. He dialled the number she had used to book him earlier. There was no answer.
Another set of headlights flicked on behind him, flashing across the rear-view mirror. The town car from before had pulled out of the driveway to the party house. Milton redialled the number as he watched its red taillights disappear into the fog, swerving away behind the shoulder of dark trees at the side of the road.
He turned around and went through the gate in case she had doubled back and tried to make her way back up towards West Shore Road. The vegetation was dark and thick to either side, no light, no sign of anyone or anything. No sign of her anywhere. He parked. After five minutes, he heard the engines of the four motorbikes and watched as they looped around in a tight turn and roared away, heading back out towards the road, passing him one after the other and then accelerating sharply. The Cadillac followed. Five minutes after that he heard the siren of a cop car. He slid down in the seat, his head beneath the line of the window. The cruiser turned through the gate and rolled towards the house. He waited for the cruiser to come to a stop and then, with his lights off, he drove away. He had already taken more risks than was prudent. The cops would be able to help her more than he could and he didn’t want to be noticed out here.
That didn’t mean that he didn’t feel bad.
He flicked the lights on and accelerated gently away.
4
MILTON STIRRED AT twelve the next day. His first waking thought was of the girl. He had called her cell several times on the way back to the city but he had been dumped straight to voicemail. After that he had driven home in silence. He didn’t know her at all and yet he was terribly worried. He made his bed, pulling the sheets tight and folding them so that it was as neat as he could make it, a hang-up from a decade spent in the army. When he was done he stared out of the window of his room into the seemingly never-ending shroud of fog in the street beyond. He feared that something dreadful had happened.
His apartment had a shared bathroom and he waited until it was unoccupied and then showered in the lukewarm water. He ran his right hand down the left-hand side of his body, feeling for the broken ribs that he had suffered after Santa Muerte had stomped him in the dust and dirt outside Juárez. There had been no time to visit a doctor to fix them but they had healed well enough. It was just another fracture that hadn’t been dealt with properly and he had lost count of the number of times that that had happened. He took his razor and shaved, looking at his reflection in the steamy mirror. He had short dark hair with a little grey. There was a scar on his face, running horizontally from his ear lobe, across his cheek, and terminating just below his right nostril. He was even-featured although there was something ‘hard’ about his looks. He looked almost swarthy in certain lights and, now that he had shaved away the untidy beard that he had sported while he travelled north through South America, his clean, square, sharply defined jaw line was exposed.
His day work was physically demanding and hefting the weighty boxes from the depot into the back of the truck had been good for his physique. His old muscle tone was back and he felt better than he had for months. The tan he had acquired while he was in South America had faded in the grey autumnal gloom and the tattoo of angel’s wings on his back and neck stood out more clearly now that his skin was paler. He dried himself and dressed in jeans and a work shirt, locked the door and left the building.
TOP NOTCH BURGER was a one room restaurant at the corner of Hyde and O’Farrell. Milton had found it during his exploration of the city after he had taken his room at the El Capitan. It was a small place, squeezed between a hair salon and a shoe shop, with frosted windows identified only by the single word BURGER. Inside, the furniture was mismatched and often broken, the misspelt menu was chalked up on a blackboard and hygiene looked as if it was an afterthought. The chef was a large African-American called Julius and, as Milton had discovered, he was a bona fide genius when it came to burgers. He came in every day for his lunch, sometimes taking the paper bag with his burger and fries and eating it in his car on the way to Mr. Freeze and, on other occasions, if he had the time, he would eat it in the restaurant. There was rarely anyone else in the place at the same time and Milton liked that; he listened to the gospel music that Julius played through the cheap Sony stereo on a shelf above his griddle, sometimes read his book, sometimes just watched the way the man expertly prepared the food.
“Afternoon, John,” Julius said as he shut the door behind him.
“How’s it going?”
“Going good,” he said. “What can I get for you? The usual?”
“Please.”
Milton almost always had the same thing: bacon and cheddar on an aged beef pattie in a sourdough bun, bone marrow, cucumber pickles, caramelized onions, horseradish aioli, a bag of double-cooked fries and a bottle of ginger beer.
H
e was getting ready to leave when his phone rang.
He stopped, staring as the phone vibrated on the table.
No-one ever called him at this time of day.
“Hello?”
“My name’s Trip Macklemore.”
“Do I know you?”
“Who are you?”
Milton paused, his natural caution imposing itself. “My name’s John,” he said carefully. “John Smith. What can I do for you?”
“You’re a taxi driver?”
“That’s right.”
“Did you drive Madison Clarke last night?”
“I drove a Madison. She didn’t tell me her second name. How do you know that?”
“She texted me your number. Her usual driver wasn’t there, right?”
“So she said. How do you know her?”
“I’m her boyfriend.”
Milton swapped the phone to his other ear. “She hasn’t come home?”
“No. That’s why I’m calling.”
“And that’s unusual for her?”
“Very. Did anything happen last night?”
Milton paused uncomfortably. “How much do you know––”
“About what she does?” he interrupted impatiently. “I know everything so you don’t need to worry about hurting my feelings. Look––I’ve been worried sick about her. Could we meet?”
Milton drummed his fingers against the table.
“Mr. Smith?”
“Yes, I’m here.”
“Can we meet? Please. I’d like to talk to you.”
“Of course.”
“This afternoon?”
“I’m working.”
“After that? When you’re through?”
“Sure.”
“Do you know Mulligan’s? Green and Webster.”
“I can find it.”
“What time?”
Milton said he would see him at six. He ended the call, gave Julius ten bucks and stepped into the foggy street outside.
THE BUSINESS had its depot in Bayview. It was located in an area of warehouses, a series of concrete boxes with electricity and telephone wires strung overhead and cars and trucks parked haphazardly outside. Milton parked the Explorer in the first space he could find and walked the short distance to Wallace Avenue. Mr. Freeze’s building was on a corner, a two-storey box with two lines of windows and a double-height roller door through which the trucks rolled to be loaded with the ice they would deliver all around the Bay area. Milton went in through the side door, went to the locker room and changed into the blue overalls with the corporate logo––a block of motion-blurred ice––embroidered on the left lapel. He changed his Timberlands for a pair of steel-capped work boots and went to collect his truck from the line that was arranged in front of the warehouse.