House of Smoke

by JF Freedman

  In the backseat, alone, sits the older hooker Kate had talked to on the street. She’s nervous, hyper, a bundle of twitches. Probably overdue for a fix, Kate guesses.

  “This her?” shotgun asks the hooker.

  “Yes.” Her voice is low. Her face is drained of color, the smell of fear is on her. Kate sees that at first glance.

  He steps out of the car, looking her up and down, a quick, brutal appraisal.

  “Let me have your jacket,” he says.

  She takes off her jacket, hands it to him. He removes the wallet, rifles through it, checks out there’s nothing in the other pockets, puts the wallet back in the pocket he took it from, drapes the jacket on the roof of the car. The first man sits behind the wheel, watching stolidly.

  “Turn around. Legs spread, arms out.”

  “I’m not armed. As you requested.” She doesn’t want him touching her.

  “Wire.”

  “No recorder, either. I’m clean.”

  The choice is not hers. “Do as I tell you,” he persists politely.

  She turns her back to him, spreading her legs shoulder-width, arms ninety degrees from her body, stiffening involuntarily as he squats and begins patting her down, starting with her legs, moving up her body, sides, back, front. He knows how to do it—the way it’s been done many times, she’s sure, to him.

  He hands her jacket over. She puts it on.

  “Get in,” the man commands.

  She stands on the curb, hesitating a moment. Anything could happen; no one knows she’s doing this. She’s a single woman, she comes and goes, answering to no one.

  She opens the back door and gets in. The hooker slides against the opposite door, as far from Kate as she can get. The car pulls away in a smooth surge of power. Three blocks down it turns left on Milpas, heading towards the freeway.

  They drive south on 101, a careful five miles over the speed limit. The traffic is sparse. The radio is turned on low to a Spanish-music station. Out of Santa Barbara they travel, past Montecito, Summerland, Carpinteria, crossing the county line at Rincon. The moon, three-quarters full, illuminates the low-breaking ocean waves, the lapping whitecaps etched with a phosphorescent glow, spreading out from the shoreline for several hundred yards.

  No one talks. Kate stares out the windows as they glide past Rincon to her right and the small town of La Conchita to her left, then past the funky Cliff House motel, the highway a black winding ribbon paralleling the train tracks.

  Where are they taking me? she wonders. More importantly—what have I gotten myself into?

  They turn off onto California 1 at Oxnard, cruise down Oxnard Blvd. As they pass 5th St., 6th St., 7th St., the signage on the stores becomes increasingly, then completely, Spanish. Kate has only been in this area once. She and a Chicana friend who grew up around here, who now works in Goleta as a social worker, drove down for Mexican food. “The best Mexican food in the state,” the friend had boasted, and it was true: great, great food. You have to be from the area to know about it, or be introduced by someone who is. She had been the only non-Latino in the place.

  The driver hangs a right onto a residential street. Small stucco houses, closely spaced on both sides, well-groomed vest-pocket front yards, many of them fenced with chain link. Rottweilers stare out through the links at anything passing close.

  They park in front of a house in the middle of the block, a bungalow like the others around it. The grass has been recently cut, the edges trimmed. A large weeping willow overhangs the house, the branches brushing the roof. Inside, a few lights are on.

  The two men get out. The driver walks around the car to Kate’s side, opens her door.

  “Come with us,” the shotgun passenger tells her, getting out on his side. He looks over at the woman crouched low in the backseat. “Stay put,” he orders her.

  Kate follows them up the path to the front door. The man who rode shotgun unlocks it with a key, ushers Kate in with a nod, then closes the door behind the three of them, double-bolting it.

  The small living room is empty, but the television in the corner is on to an informational, the sound muted. The furniture, ordinary pieces, looks familiar to her. Her home in Oakland was furnished very much like this.

  “Follow me.” Again the order comes from the man who’s done all the talking—it’s obvious to her that he’s more important than the driver. The driver is muscle. This one is more than that.

  The driver guards the front door as the other man leads Kate through the house.

  The kitchen is all the way in the back. A big room, larger than the living room, with the family room adjoining it—a built-on, garage conversion; a good, professional job.

  Two men are seated at a table in the breakfast nook. They stand as she enters, a polite gesture. They’re older than the two that brought her; she guesses one of them to be in his mid-thirties, the other in his late twenties, although it’s hard to tell. They’ve led a hard life, that’s clear to see—much of it behind the bars of state prisons, she’d bet. They have the look of the con. She saw that look a lot when she was in law enforcement.

  “Have a seat,” the older of them says to her, in a voice that, while polite enough, is used to being obeyed without question. To the man who led her in: “Wait in the other room.”

  Shotgun-seat turns on his heel and leaves. He’s not important enough to remain for their conversation; this she understands immediately. There is a hierarchy here—the two men in this room are at the top.

  She sits down as she was instructed. The two men sit opposite her, chairs turned backwards, their heavily muscled forearms resting on the seat backs. Both fix her with a strong, unwavering gaze.

  “Coffee?” the man who told her to sit down asks. He gestures to a Mr. Coffee machine sitting on the kitchen counter, the “on” light glowing.

  “No, thanks.” She doesn’t know how long this will take, she doesn’t want to have to use their bathroom.

  No offer of anything stronger.

  “You’re a private detective.” Again, the same man asking the question. He’s going to do all the talking, she assumes.

  “That’s right.”

  “You got a state license?”

  “Yes.”

  He nods. “Interesting job for a woman.”

  “Beats waitressing.”

  “Not too many of you, are there?”

  A little bit of cat-and-mouse going on here. Establishing territories, boundaries.

  “No,” she answers. She’s going to give him what’s necessary, nothing more.

  “You work out of Santa Barbara, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “You live there?”

  He can find out where she lives simply by looking in the phone book.

  “Yes.”

  “Most of your work … is it in Santa Barbara?”

  “Almost all of it,” she answers. “I’m a one-person firm, I don’t have the resources to spread out.”

  He nods, letting that settle in.

  The second man hasn’t blinked. His look is right into her eyes.

  “You good at what you do?” her questioner continues.

  “I get the job done. My clients don’t have any complaints.”

  “That’s good to hear.”

  Why? she wonders.

  “I appreciate professionalism,” he explains, as if reading her mind.

  “I do too,” she says.

  “It’s good we got that established.” He leans forward slightly, locking into eye contact with her. His partner maintains his posture. His eyes have not left her face the entire time she’s been in the kitchen.

  She makes an assessment from her gut: he’s the one to worry about, the one you don’t ever want to turn your back to. He’s the one who will have no compassion, about anything.

  “One thing about a professional,” the one doing the talking continues. “They know when to walk away from a losing hand.”

  “I don’t play cards.”

  “Thi
s thing you’re doing … looking for these men? That were in the same jail cell with that dope freak that killed himself?”

  “I’m looking for someone who knows what happened to him, that’s right.” Don’t back down, you can’t back down from this.

  “Don’t.”

  She’s glad she didn’t take them up on the offer of coffee. Her leg begins to twitch under the table, involuntarily. She pushes down on her thigh with her palm to still it.

  “I’d like to leave now,” she says, amazed at the audacity in her voice.

  “You can leave any time you want. We’ll take you right back to where we picked you up, no problema. But hear me out first.”

  She looks from one man to the other. “I’m listening.”

  “You’re a smart woman. I can tell that just by being here with you for five minutes. I got good instincts for that.”

  She breathes slowly, deeply, concentrating on her breathing. “I’ll take that as a compliment,” she allows.

  “It is. One thing a smart woman knows, a smart woman detective especially, is when she’s in over her head. And right now, lady, you are in over your head.”

  “How do you know that?”

  His eyes flash.

  Be careful, she warns herself, don’t push him too far. Listen to him, let him do the talking.

  “I know shit you’ll never know,” he says, his voice low, barely audible. “This little investigation of yours, it’s much bigger than you realize, lady. You are out of your league. A lot.”

  They said she could leave whenever she wanted to. If she asked to leave now, she doesn’t know if they’d let her. Either way, she’s afraid to try—that she hates herself for having that fear is of small consolation in the moment.

  The man gets up from the table, walks to the end of the kitchen counter. He opens a black leather briefcase and takes out a manila envelope.

  “Take this,” he tells her as he sits back down, sliding the envelope across the table to her.

  She opens the clasp, looks inside. The envelope is full of money, crisp bills in bank wrappings.

  “That’s twenty thousand dollars,” he says. “Count it if you don’t want to take my word. I won’t be offended.”

  Her hands are shaking. She doesn’t try to hide it from them.

  “I can’t take this.” She pushes the envelope back to their side of the table.

  “You earned this. It’s yours.”

  She shakes her head. “I can’t do this. I wish you had never shown this to me.”

  “These men you’re looking for,” he says. “They can never be found. Never. Do you understand that?”

  She doesn’t answer.

  “Do you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Whatever happened … the jail, whatever … that is over and buried. It should stay that way.”

  “You mean somebody wants it to stay that way. Enough to offer me twenty thousand dollars.” And scare the shit out of me, she thinks.

  “It should stay that way,” he says again.

  She nods. “You asked me to listen to you. I did. Now I want to go.”

  She gets up. Her legs feel like bags of water; for a moment she’s afraid she’s going to collapse, but she manages to steady herself.

  The man’s eyes narrow. “You’re not taking this money?” he asks in surprise. “It’s untraceable,” he adds, in case she mistook the content of the offer.

  “That doesn’t matter. I can’t do it.” She forces herself to stare back at him with as much force as he’s using on her.

  He stands up. “Then go.”

  The other man, the one who said nothing but stared holes into her soul, stands also.

  “Something you should remember,” the speaker tells her. “You have revealed yourself. We know who you are, and where you live.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “No, lady. That’s not our way. We’re telling you facts.”

  “Thank you.” She turns away from them, ready to leave.

  The sound of a different voice stops her: “One more thing.”

  She turns back. The other man, the one who all this time had said nothing, has spoken.

  “What?” She feels her throat constricting, she’s immediately dry, unable to breathe.

  “You have two daughters,” he says to her. “And where they live, that we know also.”

  The world is turning black, utterly dark. “If you lay a hand on my kids …”

  “That’s not our style,” the first man says quickly, reading her fear, taking pains to try to obviate it in that regard. “But you should know what we know about you. Which is everything.”

  There is an ominous finality to his last sentence.

  “This is not your fight,” the second man cautions her. “Walk away from it.”

  On the ride home time exists in a vacuum. No one says a word. The men who brought her stare straight ahead, their eyes glued to the road. Kate doesn’t know if they know what happened in the kitchen. She figures they think whatever their leaders wanted, that’s what happened.

  The hooker hasn’t said anything, either. She casts a glance at Kate now and again, but she, too, keeps still.

  The car pulls off the freeway at the Milpas off ramp. They drive up to Mason St. The man riding shotgun turns to the backseat.

  “Get out,” he orders the hooker.

  As she opens the door the woman stares at Kate. “Where’s that fancy reward you promised me?” she finds the courage to ask.

  “Get the fuck out of here!” the man yells at her.

  “She said …” A whimper, like a beaten dog.

  “Don’t piss me off,” he warns her.

  “It’s all right,” Kate cuts the man off. “I’ll take care of it. The men you brought me to see would want me to,” she adds.

  She takes out her wallet, pulls out three twenties. Except for a couple of singles, it’s all she has on her

  “Here, take this,” she says, thrusting the money into the woman’s hand.

  The woman looks at the bills like Kate has handed her a bag of wet dog shit. “You said big money,” she sneers, too stupid to know to quit when she’s ahead.

  Kate snaps: a five-dollar junkie whore jerking her chain is the last straw. Reaching across the seat, she grabs the door handle and yanks it shut, almost crushing the woman’s hand in the process.

  “Go!” she orders the driver.

  He stomps on the gas, fishtailing up the street.

  “I have had enough shit for one night,” Kate says to no one in particular. “Take me to where you picked me up,” she demands of the men in the front seat.

  The streets are deserted as she drives home. She feels like she’ll sleep until noon.

  The Santa Barbara News-Press hits the doorstep outside her apartment. Kate rolls over, looks at the clock by her bedside: 5:45. With a groan she forces herself from her bed, pulls up the window shade, peers out. The sky is lightening to a shade of pale white, with not a hint of morning fog.

  The street outside her apartment is quiet, empty. No ominous-looking cars are parked anywhere. Her paranoia, which she had thought she had washed away in the dark water of her secret place, is strong enough in the clear, harsh light of day that she is afraid there might be something out there, waiting for her.

  She hasn’t slept—not for one moment, all night long, since she returned. The reference to her kids: that’s what got her, more than anything. She couldn’t have gotten that out of her mind if she’d swum to Catalina.

  It was a bluff, she knows that: a scare tactic, a means to an end, the end being that she should pay attention to them. In her mind she knows that. Her mind must take control, over her emotions.

  It would never happen, but it could. She has to deal with that distinction, make sure the two stay separate.

  She throws on her robe, goes into the kitchen to brew a fresh pot. Her hands are doing their own private dance, independent of the rest of her. She puts the unfilled pot do
wn, jams the uncooperative appendages into the pockets of her robe.

  This is too much—she has to do something, right this minute.

  She dials the number on the card, gets his answering machine, which gives his pager number. She calls it.

  In less than five minutes her telephone rings. She snatches it up, realizing that she’s been pacing the floor the entire time.

  “Hello?” she says. Her hand is shaking, holding the phone.

  “Do you know what time it is?” the man on the other end of the line asks her.

  “I have to talk to you. Right away.” She doesn’t try to hide the panic in her voice—she wants him to hear it, to motivate him to get his ass over to her place, pronto.

  He gets her intention, clearly. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, but I need to see you.”

  “I can be there in half an hour,” he promises.

  She hasn’t fired her weapon in six months. She needs to clean it, go out to the range, fire off a box of shells. Otherwise it could jam up when she needs it. She gets it out of the closet anyway, checks to see that it’s loaded, sits waiting on the couch, the heavy automatic clutched tightly in both hands in her lap.

  She knows he’s coming but she jumps anyway when the doorbell rings. On tiptoes she crosses to the door.

  “Is that you?” she asks, not opening the door, even on the chain.

  “Yes,” he answers reassuringly.

  She stashes the gun in a drawer, takes the chain off the latch, unlocks the door. She doesn’t want him to see her holding a gun; she doesn’t want him to know she’s scared that badly.

  Juan Herrera stands on the threshold, wearing sweats. He hasn’t shaved or showered, but he looks good, she can’t help but notice. Strong, supportive. What you look for in a man in these circumstances. He has a McDonald’s take-out bag in his hand.

  “I assume you can use this,” he says, handing her a cardboard cup of coffee.

  “Thanks.” She closes the door behind him, locks it.

  Now that he’s arrived, the tension, which has been what’s holding her together, sags from her body like air slowly leaking from a balloon.

  They sit on her couch, drinking coffee. In a voice that becomes calmer as the telling unwinds she recounts what happened to her the night before. He listens attentively, carefully, sipping his coffee, not interrupting or asking questions. Only when she tells him about their references to knowing how to get to her at any time, and about her daughters and the covert threat against them, does she start to lose it again.