Agents of Darkness

by Campbell Armstrong

  Dr Boscoe or Roscoe, jaw and chin concealed by a great silver cache of a beard, had told him alcoholism was a disease like any other, save for this distinction: it was progressive. No known cure, Charlie. You can never drink like other men. You can never be a social drinker. You’ll never get better. The physician had tipped his bald head back to study the ceiling, as if having just condemned Charlie Galloway to death he couldn’t look at him. Think of it as one door closing, another opening. Think of it as a chance to learn how to live a better life.

  I’m trying, I’m trying. Galloway wiped sweat from his face. No known cure. This troubled him. This really scrambled his huevos. Was he quite incapable of strolling inside some cool tavern and imbibing a solitary cold one and, thus refreshed, stepping out again? Was he a mutant weakling who couldn’t stop at a single drink, doomed forever to become a slavering wreck baying like a bloody werewolf at moons of his own making?

  Millions of alcoholics lead fully productive lives, Charlie. When you hear a strident voice in your head telling you that YOU can’t possibly be an alcoholic, don’t pay any attention. Above all, don’t pick up that first drink.

  Alcoholic, my arse!

  Okay. All right. Aye. He admitted it. There was a Problem. Drink wrestled him to the canvas from time to time and throttled him until he was senseless. But the A word? That was a toe-tag on a body in the morgue, a convenient ID. Dear Jesus, how quacks loved their little labels! The insides of their heads were like very old apothecary cabinets, tiny worm-eaten drawers, each duly designated in copperplate.

  He opened the door of the Toyota and gasped as he leaned out. The atmosphere in the parking-lot had the heft of a velvet curtain. For a while he’d kept the engine idling to enjoy the benefit of air-conditioning, but the temperature gauge had risen quickly to the red danger zone, so he’d shut the system down. After he’d followed Freddie Joaquin to a diner on Venice Boulevard, where Ella’s erstwhile suitor had fallen into the company of a tall man, he’d trailed the Oldsmobile back here, compelled by his own rampant curiosity about Joaquin’s conspicuous lack of grief.

  Or was it more? Did he suspect Freddie of some kind of complicity in Ella’s death? On what grounds, Charlie Galloway? Because Freddie, behind Ella’s back, was slipping his willie to a beefy stripper named Brenda at Joolies? Because the wee fellow didn’t know how to cry convincingly?

  Oh, good solid stuff, Galloway. Just the kind of damning evidence needed to fry Freddie. Quick! Get a judge! Reserve the Chair!

  The bottom line was that he had nothing on Freddie Joaquin except for callousness and indifference, and while these might be undesirable qualities they were not capital offences. He didn’t like Freddie, nor could he in a hundred years imagine why the little barber had courted Ella Nazarena – which could well have been a short in the fusebox of his own imagination. But something told him otherwise, a voice he hadn’t listened to in so long a time that it whispered now in a tongue he could barely understand, a shambles of a language without syntax and a vocabulary suggestive rather than explicit. He knew this voice, he’d heard it a thousand times before, it was a familiar mumble issuing from some ghostly larynx, and it was telling him something about Freddie. Something. That word was a bell in a faraway steeple, the clap of iron on iron creating resonant echoes that the more they repeated the less they signified anything. A drink would clear my mind, Charlie Galloway thought. A drink would put an end to all this shite about steeples and bells and a voice in your skull.

  How long had he been here anyway? His watch had stopped. Was it twenty minutes ago or a hundred when Freddie had gone inside the Palms with his companion? And who was the tall blue-eyed man accompanying Joaquin anyhow? Galloway tugged his T-shirt from his pants and raised the hem of the garment to his face, pressing it upon his damp skin. If anything brought him pleasure in this situation it was the fact he hadn’t lost the knack of tracking somebody without being seen, despite the deskbound condition imposed upon him in the last few years. Admittedly, he’d lost Freddie twice in traffic, but he’d found him again, a sure indication that some of the old instinct was still intact.

  But what now? How could he sit here motionless and wait for the return of Freddie without turning to a human loaf? Mini-buses came and went in the parking-lot, depositing scores of Japanese tourists who scampered inside the hotel as fast as they could, some of them making small squealing sounds as the heat pounded them.

  From one of the buses a geisha suddenly appeared for no reason Galloway could fathom, gorgeous and porcelain, a white vision in tiny shoes and immaculate black hair of an intricacy beyond Charlie’s understanding. She walked like a silken goddess of sunlight to the hotel entrance and vanished beyond the glass doors and, Galloway thought, into another dimension where perfection such as hers was standard.

  Did I really see that? Or am I stroked by heat to the point of illusion? Was she some kind of tourist come-on? A walking travel-poster? What the hell. She made as much sense as the odd black man Galloway had seen earlier on Hollywood Boulevard, a character with a blue plastic visor and a flowing red lamé cape, purple tights and hair dyed flamingo – a visitor, he was telling pedestrians, from the planet Garga, the undiscovered tenth planet in the solar system. Garga, it seemed, lurked behind Pluto, a temperate planet of palm trees, natural mineral spas, and a social system in which racism was a crime. It had sounded altogether too attractive to Galloway, who’d had the urge to buy a one-way ticket to the place. On nights when the moon was full, the man was saying, cruise vessels left from unspecified locations ‘very close’ to the Hollywood Bowl.

  Did the sun bring them out? Did the heat force them from their dark hiding places in the wainscoting of America? Visitors from other planets, crystal-gazers, spooks who spoke through long-dead Aztecs or Zunis, pentagram-worshippers, pendulum-swingers, odd men building rocketships from galvanised steel in their backyards, time-travel buffs, people who had close personal friendships with winged angels, crazies who perceived cosmic designs in landscapes or anagrams, some of which involved convenient poetic licence (America rearranged was almost A Crime – what did that tell you, Charlie?), loonies who’d had their heads wired to so-called energy-harnessing boxes and heard all the celestial harmonies of the stars: on and on and on, as if what lay at the heart of the continent was a great madhouse whose doors from time to time were left deliberately ajar to alleviate massive overcrowding.

  Sweating, he got out of his Toyota, stretched his cramped legs. He had to seek refuge inside the hotel or die. Lured by the beauty of air-conditioning, he attached himself to a clutch of Japanese tourists and was quickly propelled into the lobby, ice-cool and magnificent, stacked with trunks and suitcases and people who spoke no English. He pushed his way inside the bar, ordered a Coke, gulped it in an unseemly manner, ordered a second. It was then he saw Freddie Joaquin cross the lobby, followed by his tall companion. Galloway waited twenty or thirty seconds, laid some money on the counter, then went back outside in time to see the two men climb inside Freddie’s Olds.

  Concealed by mini-buses, Galloway hurried toward his Toyota. He followed the Olds out into the street, where it made a right turn down the hill in the direction of Sunset Boulevard. There it entered heavy traffic moving sluggishly into Beverly Hills, a suburb Charlie Galloway preferred to negotiate at least half-drunk because its rabid opulence offended some part of him, perhaps that left-wing residue inherited from his father, who’d spent years muttering vaguely about some impossible Revolution among Scottish shipyard workers.

  Greek statues, topiaries, Afghan hounds lolling under shade trees, white houses purified even further by the alchemy of sunlight, gold-roofed cupolas and turrets and Tudor conceits. Galloway wondered if it was the architectural horror that bothered him even more than the wealth, but the former was merely the physical realisation of the latter. Bad taste abounded. It attacked you, deadened your spirit.

  American excess! Was it this that half the countries of the planet envied? Did the blanketed Indian squatt
ing beside his colour TV with the rabbit ears on the edge of a Peruvian jungle lust for pre-moistened two-ply toilet paper available in earth tones? Did the one-legged kid living in a hole in the ground in bombed-out Beirut dream of stone-washed designer blue jeans?

  Beverly Hills made sobriety intolerable, like a penance.

  Up ahead, two or three cars away, Freddie Joaquin’s enormous Oldsmobile chugged along. Joaquin somehow managed to change lanes and make a left turn, which caused Charlie Galloway a moment of panic. Signalling with one hand thrust defiantly through the open window, he switched recklessly into the left-turn lane, ignoring the horns. He made his turn despite a sudden ruthless charge of oncoming traffic.

  Now he was on a narrow street of smaller houses where a quieter opulence was evident. Despite the water shortage, garden sprinklers busily sprayed the air. Here and there imported Mexican or Salvadoran labourers mowed a lawn or pruned a bush or dug a hole.

  Joaquin’s car turned right. Slowing, Galloway followed. He had to keep a distance. It was the rule of this game. He went right some thirty seconds after Joaquin.

  Ah, shite! Freddie had parked his car and was standing on the grassy verge at the side of the street, his face turned in Galloway’s direction. He had one arm raised in greeting and he was smiling. Galloway, cursing the recent delusion of efficiency that had afflicted him, drew his Toyota in directly behind the Oldsmobile and wondered exactly when Freddie had spotted him. He stepped out and stood in the short, brittle grass.

  “I thought I saw you in the parking-lot of the hotel, Mr Galloway,” Joaquin said. “This is coincidence, right? You don’t have any reason for following me, do you?”

  “Probably we’ve got friends in the same neighbourhood, Freddie,” Galloway said, and looked toward the Olds. Joaquin’s passenger stared straight ahead, as if this encounter were too tiresome to consider. All Charlie Galloway could see was the man’s profile, which was handsome and a little gaunt. The blueness of the eye was unexpected, like a shiver on a hot day. His black hair was short and combed straight back.

  Joaquin smiled. The gold in his teeth caught fire. When he spoke there was a touch of defiance in his voice. He was, after all, an American citizen. The Bill of Rights was probably as familiar to him as the National Anthem of the Philippines. More so. “My lawyer taught me a word, Mr Galloway. Harass-ment.”

  “Is that a fact? I’m very impressed, Freddie. And you’ve got your own lawyer too. Well, well.”

  “Are you harassing me?”

  Galloway laid the palm of one hand on Joaquin’s shoulder and squeezed it in a friendly way. “Don’t be silly, Freddie. This is pure coincidence, my wee friend. You were in the Palms Hotel and so was I. You were coming along this street and, Bob’s your uncle, so was I. Lovely thing, coincidence.”

  Joaquin had an unsettled look. He wanted to believe in this marvellous world of coincidence, you could see; but on that other level of awareness where he lived his life, that half-lit realm whose monarch was suspicion, he knew coincidence was bullshit. No cop ever followed you by chance. They always had a reason. Besides, Galloway’s front, a kind of sarcastic friendliness, clearly made him nervous.

  Galloway, thinking on his feet, said, “As a matter of fact, Freddie, I’ve got a couple of questions I forgot to ask you before.”

  “Anything you like. I got nothing to hide.”

  “When did you last see Ella Nazarena alive?”

  “Two nights ago. We had dinner at a restaurant on Pico Boulevard, a Polynesian place. Not very good. You can check.”

  Galloway looked inside the Olds again. The windows were tightly closed, the air-conditioning running. The passenger continued to ignore him. The one blue eye visible to Galloway was unblinking. “Question two. Have you got a police record?”

  Freddie Joaquin hesitantly ran the palm of a hand across his hair.

  Galloway said, “You might as well tell me now because I can find out, Freddie. I push a button. A computer buzzes. Dead easy.”

  “I served some time,” Joaquin said quietly. “There was, you know, what’s the word, a misunderstanding?”

  “Is that a fact, Freddie? A misunderstanding, eh?”

  Joaquin lowered his voice, as if to be sure that his passenger heard none of this. “It was years ago. It involved stolen goods. Furs, a little jewellery. I bought them in all innocence, you understand. I’m no criminal. Ha. I’m a barber.”

  Galloway patted the little man’s shoulder, a gesture of consolation. “Oh, it breaks my heart when a man does time and he’s not guilty.”

  “It’s the system,” said Freddie.

  “Tell me. It sucks.”

  “Sucks is right. I did two years. Nobody can give me back my time.”

  Galloway shook his head as if despair had settled on him like an albatross. “One last question, Freddie. You own a gun?”

  “No. Never. Never. No.”

  “You sure?”

  “One hundred per cent sure.” Freddie Joaquin crossed his heart, a gesture so incongruously childish, so calculated to gratify, that Galloway felt a little twinge of guilt. Was he giving Freddie a needlessly hard time? Was he allowing his instinctive dislike of the man to ascribe possibilities to Freddie that were quite without justification? Was this all the result of the shock of Ella’s murder? There was a tangible film of scum on Freddie, and you wouldn’t want to touch his skin without a precautionary tetracycline shot, but that didn’t make him a criminal, nor did it justify Galloway following him through the streets of Los Angeles.

  It keeps you busy, Charlie, he thought. It keeps you out of bars. Was that what this was really all about? These are pathetic times. These are the days of barbed-wire fences strung round your urges.

  Depressed, Galloway stared up and down the quiet street, listening to piped water falling on the leaves of plants, seeing now and then a transient rainbow on somebody’s front lawn. Then, shaking free his melancholy, he slapped his hand on the roof of the Olds and asked, “Who’s your pal, Freddie?”

  Joaquin said, “A very dear old friend. A fine man. He’s visiting from my country.”

  “Does he have a name?”

  And here Charlie Galloway lowered his face to peer directly inside the car at Freddie’s passenger, who turned slightly, but with no display of interest, to scan Galloway. The eyes were not entirely cold and humourless, yet Galloway had the thought: This one kills – then the notion left him, and he wasn’t sure where it had come from in the first place.

  He rapped on the closed window and the blue-eyed man rolled it down very slowly, almost as if it were beneath his dignity.

  “Charles Galloway,” Charlie said.

  “Raymond Cruz.”

  Galloway put his hand through the open window. The handshake with Cruz was tight but not unfriendly, certainly no contest of physical strength. Galloway withdrew his arm and said something politely meaningless about how he hoped Cruz would enjoy his visit, to which the Filipino added something just as trite. Save for the brief flash that had invaded Galloway’s mind, that arc of freak lightning, the encounter was not something you’d immediately rush home to record in your diary. He stepped away from the car.

  “No more questions?” Joaquin asked.

  “No more.”

  “Good, good.”

  Galloway nodded. “Cheerio, Freddie.”

  On the grassy verge, listening to the sound of Angelenos further deplete the city’s already diminished supply of water, Charlie Galloway for shade stepped under the nearest tree, whose cracked bark was crammed with thousands of red ants – all eerily motionless and still, as if the genetic impulses that stoked their usual frantic industry had been forced by the heat into a baffling siesta.

  For several miles after the encounter with Galloway, Teng remained menacingly silent. And then the questions came, posed in a voice so strictly controlled, so icy, it spooked Freddie. Why was this man Galloway following them? Who was he? Did he know anything?

  Freddie pretended to be totally
absorbed by the traffic on Santa Monica Boulevard, watching the street, peering into the rearview mirror, busying himself.

  “Something unexpected came up,” he said eventually.

  Teng waited for Joaquin to expand on this vague statement. He put one hand around Joaquin’s wrist, a gesture applied without pressure and yet all the more menacing for its gentleness. Freddie Joaquin wondered if his pulse was audible. I am sending a young man, Joe Baltazar had written, in whose veins I don’t think you will find any blood.

  Freddie had ‘face’ to consider, honour, his machismo. He spoke in a firm voice. “I had to make a decision. I did what was necessary. Understand?”

  Teng calmly told him to park the car at a convenience store. Freddie obeyed. For a long time Teng didn’t speak. He looked through the window at the storefront, which advertised a jumbo cup of coffee and donut for 99 cents, the Early Bird Special. A thin young girl stepped from the shop, carrying a six-pack of beer. She wore cut-off shorts and a cotton top through which her small damp nipples were visible. Teng watched her climb inside a dented pick-up; she glanced at him as she pulled the door closed. Did she smile? Or was that his imagination?

  She was pretty in a slender way. He pressed the palm of his hand upon his forehead a moment. He thought of Marissa. Why did they keep coming back, these memories, surging up even when he didn’t want them, like things rejected by a churning sea? He stared at the girl, but she’d turned her face to the side and was backing her truck out of the parking-space. He sometimes thought death would be easier than the salvage of remembrance. To close his eyes. To drift. But hatred was a raft. The urge to right terrible wrongs kept him afloat. This was the only clarity. Anything else was muddy and impenetrable.