The Night Market

by Jonathan Moore

  In the corner by the dead TV there was an overstuffed recliner. Calvin Tran was asleep there, a blanket thrown over him. Though it was entirely dark in the room, he wore a sleeping mask over his eyes. Carver turned to Garrett.

  “Where’s your mom?” Carver asked.

  The kid shook his head again.

  Carver glanced at Jenner, who crossed to the bedrooms. He disappeared inside them and came back out a moment later.

  “It’s just us.”

  “Go ahead,” Carver said. “Wake your dad up.”

  The kid looked at Carver, his eyes pleading.

  “You shouldn’t,” he whispered. “It’s better if you don’t. You don’t understand.”

  Carver stared at down at him, until the kid went trembling to his father’s side. He knelt there, put his hand on the man’s shoulder.

  “Dad,” he said.

  There was a round table next to the recliner. On it stood a half-full bottle of water with a flexible straw stuck into it. There was some kind of mush in a bowl. Next to that, a pill bottle lay on its side. Its cap was off. Carver picked up the bottle, but it had no label. He looked at the pills and guessed they were oxycodone.

  “Dad,” Garrett said again.

  Calvin Tran stirred awake. He raised his head but didn’t take off the sleeping mask.

  “He can hear you,” Garrett whispered. “But he can’t talk. I told you that already.”

  “What’s with the mask?” Carver asked. “Hey, Calvin? Take it off.”

  The kid did it for his father. He was shaking as he stepped in front of his father and took the mask by its corners. He lifted it off, his body blocking his father’s face. Then he pulled off the blanket and stepped away. It was only when he’d moved aside and Carver could see everything that he understood.

  Calvin Tran’s hands were gone.

  His arms ended at his wrists, which were wrapped tightly in white dressings. Square patches of gauze were taped in place over his eyes. But the bandages were sunken. They covered vacant space, were sagging into empty sockets.

  Calvin Tran opened his mouth and made a sound. It wasn’t any kind of word.

  Carver fumbled his flashlight, but caught it and steadied it. The beam jerked across Calvin’s face. His teeth were bloody. When he opened his mouth to moan again, Carver saw the stitches on the stump of his tongue. It had been cut out at the base.

  It took half an hour to calm him down. Later, Carver mostly remembered the moaning. The flashlight beams stabbing uselessly at the dark. He saw Jenner’s face in the chaos. It was tight and gray, no different from how the kid had looked when they’d caught him downstairs.

  Carver crushed two of the pills and spooned the powder into Calvin Tran’s mouth. He put the bottle under Calvin’s chin and tilted his head until his lips found the straw. After that, it was another half an hour until he was asleep.

  Then they took Garrett back to the garage.

  Jenner had found a battery-powered lantern, a bottle of Johnny Walker, and a glass. He put the lantern on the workbench and turned it up, and then he poured a shot of the whiskey for the kid. Carver thought he might take one for himself, but he didn’t.

  Garrett took the glass and winced each time he sipped from it, but he worked through the drink until it was gone. None of them had spoken yet.

  “This . . . everything that happened to Calvin . . . to your dad,” Carver said. He paused and swallowed, then tried again. “Did it happen in Folsom, or after he got back here?”

  “Prison,” Garrett said. He wasn’t looking at Carver, just staring at the amber liquid in the whiskey bottle. “They don’t know who did it.”

  “They said that?”

  “To my face.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Jenner said. “Not you—them.”

  Carver nodded. It was absolutely bullshit.

  “He spent eight, ten nights in the infirmary,” Garrett said. “Then the parole came through. They dropped him off like this. Mom saw him and started screaming.”

  “Where’s she now?”

  “Maybe L.A.,” he said. “Her sister’s there.”

  “She didn’t say anything to you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Did she pack stuff up?”

  “I don’t know,” Garrett said. “I haven’t looked.”

  “You’re still getting work from Johnny Wong,” Carver said. “The Maserati, that’s a job for him. Right?”

  The kid didn’t answer. He looked at his empty glass, his face frozen. Jenner poured another shot into it. The kid drank it right away and wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

  “Tell me about Johnny,” Carver said.

  The kid nodded. When he spoke, it was a whisper.

  “After dad went away,” he said, “our other mechanic took over. There was always work. He was looking out for us, if you know what I mean. The mechanic.”

  “Johnny Wong was looking out for you. Through this guy.”

  “I guess.”

  “And now?”

  The kid nodded at the car.

  “Nothing’s changed.”

  “Even since your dad got back?”

  “He sent the doctor, who brought the pills.”

  “You know how to get in touch with him?” Carver asked. “This doctor?”

  The kid shook his head. If he knew, he wasn’t telling. It’d be just as useless to ask him where to find Johnny Wong.

  “Why’d you come here?” he asked.

  “We knew your dad,” Carver said. “He tried to help us. He’d done it a couple times before.”

  “Helped you how?”

  “That’s between him and us.”

  Carver looked up the stairs. They’d left the door open so the kid could hear if his father woke up.

  “What are you going to do with him?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  This time, the kid filled the glass himself.

  They went up the block to the car. Jenner put the keys in, turned on the headlights, and did a U-turn. He drove two blocks to get away from Tran & Tran Auto Body, and then he stopped in the middle of the street. It didn’t matter here. There was movement in the shadows on either side of the street, but there was no traffic.

  “I don’t know what to make of any of that. I’ve never seen anything like it. Absolutely nothing,” Jenner said. He was squeezing the steering wheel. After a while he let go and looked in the rearview mirror again. “You want a coffee somewhere?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then what?”

  “I just need to make a couple calls,” Carver said. “From a pay phone.”

  Jenner thought about it a moment, then started driving.

  “I know a place,” he said.

  Carver watched the darkness ahead, watched the fog roll out from between the ruined buildings. It whipped across the road in tendrils. There was only one explanation for what they’d seen tonight.

  “Someone knew it was him,” he said. “Knew he tipped us off.”

  Jenner steered around a pothole the size of a bomb crater.

  “Johnny Wong heard it was Tran. So he put out the order to have him cut up,” Jenner said. “Like what he did when he heard we were looking for Patrick. That’s what you figure.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But when Tran got out, Johnny sent him a doctor. And he’s taking care of the kid. How’s that make sense?”

  Carver could see the expressway ahead of them. Once they reached it, they’d be back in the light, back inside civilization’s shrinking circle. But for now, they were pressed between gutted buildings and wrecked cars. Stray cats roamed through the ruins. From ahead, their eyes shone out of the dark like bits of green and yellow glass.

  “It makes sense if you’re Johnny Wong,” Carver said. “If your goal is to break people down. To take away everything until you’re the only thing left. So they need you.”

  “We should talk to the lawyer,” Jenner said. “Tran’s guy.”

  “He
wouldn’t give us a thing.”

  “Still,” Jenner said. “He could let something slip.”

  “Anything with those guys, it’s just a waste.”

  They went to a pancake house on Beach Street. It was nearly six A.M. when they sat at the Formica table. The waitress came and put down an aluminum pitcher of coffee. Carver poured for both of them. After he added cream, he drank half his mug. He’d been cold since they’d left Tran & Tran. Then he felt in his pocket for coins and brought out some change and counted it in his palm.

  Jenner slid a handful of one-dollar pieces across the table.

  “It’s down the hall,” Jenner said. “By the men’s room.”

  “I saw it coming in.”

  “You want me to order for you?”

  “Only if you’re eating.”

  He pushed out of the booth and went to the pay phone. He started with his building’s front desk. Glenn worked for a private security company and knew guards across the city. A lot of them were on the waiting list for the SFPD Academy. They might do a favor for a man like Carver. When they hung up, Carver counted his change, then picked up the receiver again and started making calls.

  21

  JENNER DROPPED HIM at the Embarcadero Center, across from the Ferry Building. The sun must have come up on his walk home, but he couldn’t see it for the clouds. The cars that passed him threw arcs of runoff onto the sidewalks. Everything was glittering. The streets, the rising arches of the bridge to Yerba Buena. The raindrops, streaking through the dark.

  When he walked into the lobby, he found a letter waiting for him at the front desk.

  Something Glenn had signed for, had left with the guard on the next shift. A rare thing, getting something in the mail that wasn’t printed on a glowcard. It was from the Personnel Unit of the SFPD Staff Services Division. The department’s seal, in embossed print, took up the entire left side of the envelope.

  He opened it in the elevator and read it while walking to his door.

  Inside his apartment, he threw the letter in the kitchen trash. He poured a glass of bourbon and drank it neat. Then he poured a second over ice and took it with him to the shower.

  When he’d toweled off, he guessed enough time had passed that Jenner would be home. He turned on both taps, switched on the exhaust fan for its added noise, and got the burner phone.

  “Can you hear me okay?” he whispered.

  “Yeah.”

  “You get one too?”

  “The letter? I got it.”

  “Approved for duty. If a medical review board gives us a pass,” Carver said. “You heard of anything like that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You know it’s a code for something else.”

  “Psychiatric evaluation, I guess,” Jenner said. “Are you going? It’s next week.”

  “I’ll call the union rep,” Carver answered. “Push mine back. Say I need more rest.”

  “Will that look good?”

  He knew what Jenner meant. It was a cowboy department, and had been since the day it was founded. Its cops were supposed to be resilient. Skin like saddle leather. An officer didn’t need rest; he needed action. That’s what the commissioners thought, and that’s what their medical review board would be looking for.

  “I’ll chance it,” Carver said. “I don’t want to stop this. Not till we’re done.”

  When he came out of the bathroom, he heard a knock at his front door. He went to the peephole and saw Mia in the hallway. She was in her white robe, and even with the distorted angles of the fisheye lens, he could tell she’d been up all night. He opened the door and stood so she wouldn’t see all of him. He was only wearing a towel, but he wasn’t worried about that. He didn’t want her to see the gun in his right hand.

  “I know you’re tired,” she said. “You want to sleep.”

  “Mia ​—”

  “I’m so scared I can’t even sit still.”

  She brushed her hair back from her face, hooking some of the locks behind her ears.

  “Mia, it’s okay.”

  “Will you—I mean—I don’t even know how to ask. I’m embarrassed to ask. Do you mind?”

  “It’s okay,” he said again. “I think I understand. Can you give me a minute? I’ll come over.”

  “Okay.”

  He shut the door. He went into his bedroom and put on clean clothes. He put his gun into the waistband of his pants and pulled his sweatshirt over it. Then he got his phone and his keys and went across the hall. Mia opened her door before he knocked, and locked it behind him when he was inside.

  He hadn’t been sure what she’d had in mind, but understood when he got to the living room and saw the pillows on the rug in front of the fire. She’d put down blankets, too. There was an opened bottle of white wine in a stoneware chiller. A wooden tray next to it held two glasses. He looked at her and she glanced away, the color already rising on her throat.

  “Like a sleepover,” she said.

  “If you had a couch, we could take the cushions. Put them around us and hunker down.”

  “That’d be good,” she said. “Safe.”

  She took off her robe and hung it over one of the wingback chairs. Underneath it, she was wearing a blue silk slip. The hem, trimmed in black lace, came less than midway to her knees. He wasn’t sure if she had anything on underneath it.

  She crossed to the rug and knelt to take one of the blankets. After she’d put it around herself, she arranged two of the pillows so she could lean against the heavy chair. She took the wine and poured it into one of the glasses, and then looked at him. When he nodded, she filled the second glass.

  He sat on the other chair and took off his sweatshirt. Beneath it, he had a white T-shirt. He pulled the gun from his waistband and folded it into the sweatshirt. She watched him do it.

  “This is safe too,” he said. “It’s never let me down.”

  “I hope so.”

  He put the gun by the pillows she’d set out for him. Then he slid off the chair and onto the rug. The blanket she’d chosen for him was a down duvet. As soft as fresh-fallen snow. He put it over his legs, then leaned against the pillows and the wingback chair.

  “Thank you, Ross.”

  She was holding her wineglass toward him. He took his glass, touched it to hers, and had a sip. It was like biting into a tart green apple. Like the first days of summer. Somewhere high up, where the nights are still cold.

  He wondered if Calvin Tran could taste anything now. Surely he wouldn’t live much longer. Sooner or later, his son would get on a southbound bus to join his mother in L.A. That would be the end of it. Calvin’s only crime had been to roll up his garage door. He’d gotten a midnight call and he’d let the wrong people in. For that, he’d gotten ten years as an accessory after the fact on a pair of carjack murders. It seemed fair at the time. But he’d drawn a punishment worse than anything Carver had ever imagined.

  “Do you want to talk?” Mia asked.

  “Not really.”

  They drank their wine. She looked at the fire, and he watched her. When her glass was empty, she put it on the tray and settled under her blanket. She shifted onto her side, her back toward him.

  “Hold me?”

  “All right.”

  She pressed against him. He wrapped his arm around her and put his face into her hair until it brushed the back of her neck. She lifted her blanket with a sweep of her arm, bringing it over him. They were close against each other, sharing each other’s warmth. He still didn’t know if he could trust her. But he didn’t consider pulling away for a second. His gun was just behind him, wrapped in the sweatshirt. He was sure if it came to it, he could reach it first.

  Sometime around noon, he woke for a moment. The curtains blocked whatever daylight there might have been. Mia had turned around, had burrowed her face into his shoulder. In the fire’s heat, one of them had pushed the blanket back. He carefully hooked his finger under her shoulder strap, lifting it to cover her left breas
t. Then he brought the blanket over her. He rolled away and sat up, leaning on the chair again. He reached to his right and felt the gun inside his sweatshirt. He lifted it, measuring its weight in his hand. The magazine was still full.

  He put his left hand between Mia’s shoulder blades. Without waking, she arched her back into his palm. And like that, he went to sleep again.

  He woke again when it was dark, and made coffee while Mia dressed in her bedroom. She came out while he was washing his mug.

  “I’m going now,” he said to her. “Give me at least five minutes of lead. Let them have time to follow me, if they’re going to follow.”

  He left before she could answer, and went across the hall to change clothes. At 6:45, he walked out the building’s front door and got into the taxi at the curb.

  “Where we headed?” the driver asked.

  “Powell Station,” Carver said. “But let’s roll through Chinatown first.”

  “Somewhere particular?”

  “Stay out of traffic, if you can,” Carver answered. He turned to look out the rear window. “Keep us moving.”

  “You got it.”

  They’d stopped at the light and were waiting to cross Bush. The Dragon Gate faced them from across the intersection. The driver was watching him in the rearview mirror.

  “Maybe none of my business, but you worried someone’s following you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What are we looking out for?”

  “Could be anything. A car, a van. I don’t know.”

  “Must be something about this block.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Last night, I pick up a lady on Bush. Right around the corner from here. She had the same problem.”