John Ridley_Those Who Walk in Darkness 02

by What Fire Cannot Burn

  All folded up, Vin was a little mass in the chair. Wanting a drink, too messed up to be able to go get one.

  Eddi would have none of it.

  “She didn’t love you, Vin, but she cared a hell of a lot about you. If you felt any of the same for her, you’d clean up.”

  Eddi took off.

  Eventually, Vin got himself up, got himself that drink he was wanting.

  Years working IA had inured Tashjian to a lot of things. Dirty cops. Dirty cops ratting out other dirty cops. Dirty cops ratting out clean cops ’cause they’ve got to give up a name, any name, to keep from doing hard time. Cops eating bullets as a substitute for doing any time at all. Never understood that. A cop’s tough enough to kill himself, but not tough enough to do a stretch inside? Didn’t seem equitable.

  The dirty, the greedy, cops with holes they’d put in their own heads: Tashjian had gotten real used to all that. A sad comment on his life was that he was very unaccustomed to a woman calling his name.

  “Hey, Tashjian.”

  He turned, looked behind him.

  Heading in his direction from across the street as he made the walk to his house was an Asian woman. Though hardly tiny—for a female she was probably just above average in height—her presence far exceeded her stature. Her mien bulled toward Tashjian over the width of the street. Formidable at a distance. It was, to Tashjian’s sensibilities, an attractive quality.

  The woman asked: “Tashjian, yeah?”

  As if he were required to, Tashjian gave the woman careful visual exam and then, sure of things: “I don’t know you.”

  “Eddi Aoki. I’m an officer with MTac.”

  “I still don’t know you.”

  “I’d like to talk.”

  “Is this official? If it’s official, then it needs to go through the bureau.”

  “It’s not official.”

  Tashjian’s features seemed to be double-jointed in that he made an expression yet expressed nothing at the same time.

  “It’s not official,” Eddi said again, “but if you’ve got a minute, I’d like to talk.”

  “And what would you like to talk about?”

  “Soledad O’Roark.”

  Another look from Tashjian equivocal as the previous.

  “You had a run-in with her, yeah?” Eddi tried to make herself as unguessable as Tashjian. Had to work at it.

  “I had business with her once.”

  “Well . . .” A look up and down the street. A casual look, not to spy anything in particular. Physical action, no matter how slight, gave Eddi a moment to do some mental calculations. “This is just personal stuff, okay? She was a friend—”

  “O’Roark didn’t have friends.”

  “Been hearing that a lot. Anyway, I call her, I called her a friend. Just some blanks I want to fill in. Maybe you can do it.”

  Hesitation. He shouldn’t bother with her. Tashjian should not bother with this woman. But how many times did he ever have a woman call his name? She had some questions, he’d give her what answers he could. That’d be the total of their interaction. Tashjian knew it would. But he liked the way his name sounded coming from her. It compelled against his better judgment.

  “There’s a diner up the block.”

  “Don’t you live here?”

  A smile from Tashjian. Suspicious, not salacious. “An unfamiliar woman alone in my house? I can see my name all over a harassment suit.”

  “All you IA guys have as little trust?”

  “I’d say.”

  “I’m just here to talk. If you want me to sign an affidavit . . .”

  Tashjian’s smile remained constant. Remained constant. Then it changed. How, Eddi couldn’t say. But it changed.

  Tashjian went for his keys.

  He said: “You’ll have to forgive the place. I don’t usually have company over.”

  Tashjian’s house—decent-sized, decent-sized for LA, Mediterranean style—was, to Eddi, spotless. A place for everything, everything in its place. So either his comment to her re: its state had been a joke, or to him the place was a wreck, meaning his mind was obsessively-compulsively beyond anal.

  Tashjian didn’t offer Eddi a beverage, didn’t offer her a seat. His unspoken way of making it quite clear he didn’t expect her to be around long.

  He asked, very much to the point: “What is it you want to know?”

  “Most people,” Eddi said, “they meet somebody who’s just lost a friend, they offer condolences.”

  Tashjian said, again: “Officer O’Roark didn’t have friends.” And, again, very much to the point: “What is it you want to know?”

  “You were handling Soledad. Why?”

  No confirmation. No denial. Just: “It’s time for you to leave.”

  From under her sweat top, from the holster on her hip, Eddi slipped out her off-duty piece. A Glock 17. A harder weapon than a whole gang of on-duty pieces some cops toted. If the sight of it had any sway on Tashjian, if it evoked unease or anxiety or any kind of concern, in line with every other emotion he seemed to own, it wasn’t evident.

  He said to Eddi with all the knowing condescension of an Ivy League professor to a first-year student: “That’s not particularly smart.”

  The blow was hard enough to rattle a man of typical heartiness. The blow, Eddi’s gun to Tashjian’s jaw, was more than hard enough to stretch Tashjian out on the floor. To send his eyes rolling back in his head for a good fifteen seconds. Fifteen seconds when his senses took a little vacation. When they finally returned to him, auditory being the first to get back to work, they heard:

  “. . . how it starts. That’s just how it starts. From here it gets worse.”

  “Made a . . . you made a . . .” Talking with blood in his mouth. Inhalation made him choke on his own fluids. Tashjian learned, quickly, he had to spit first, keep his mouth faced toward the floor, then try to talk. The day was filled with new experiences. “You have made a sizable mistake.” Better. It’d be a while before he had the act down cold. His mouth bleeding as it was would offer him time to practice.

  “Yeah, I was just thinking that while I was watching you flop all over the floor.”

  “I’m going to have you swimming in char-aaaaaah! ahhhh! ahhhhhhh!”

  One hundred and twenty-eight pounds of Eddi. All of it converged on her knee. Her knee converged at the center of Tashjian’s groin. Not for nothing was he screaming.

  And screaming.

  Loud, long and hideous.

  But he was screaming in his house in Los Angeles, in West Hollywood. A lot of men go screaming in that part of town. With pain. With pleasure. Tashjian’s screams went unnoticed.

  When her knee got sore, Eddi got up from Tashjian, stood over him.

  She said: “It’s my day off. I’ve got nothing but time and desire. We can talk about you handling Soledad, or we can, well, not talk.”

  “. . . lost your mind . . .”

  “I lost my friend. And if I’d just lost her going against a freak . . . that’s what happens. But this wasn’t about some freak. It wasn’t only about that. She was into something, and you put her there.”

  “I ca—I can’t . . .”

  “Yeah. You can. ‘I put Soledad at DMI because . . .’”

  The thing about pain—and Eddi was thinking from personal experience—quick, sharp pain you can deal with. It’s already dissipating by the time your receptors even register its peak. A lower grade of hurt that’s prolonged over time . . . that’s when real agony begins.

  She wanted to give Tashjian some agony.

  What Eddi did was guttural. Straight National Geographic animal. But Eddi was in an animal state of mind. Instinct, base emotion, had more claim to her than higher thought. She’d come to talk, not torture. Talking, as little as she allowed for, was proving futile. So, yeah, she got animal.

  She got on her knees.

  She bit, and bit, and bit, and she bit at Tashjian’s earlobe.

  More screaming.

  No
lights. No sirens. No cops. Nobody cared.

  In forty-eight minutes Eddi would look at herself in a mirror in the bathroom of her duplex, see blood on her sweatshirt, caked at the corner of her mouth. Her mouth? She would wonder what the hell she had done. What the hell had she let herself do, let herself . . . her mouth? And she enforced the law? She was given governance? She would look at herself and she would see that her professed obedience to order was a suit she labored herself into daily. Ill tailored and convenient, and the moment she didn’t need it anymore . . .

  Her fucking mouth?

  In just short of an hour’s time Eddi would consider all that as she rinsed herself. The water in the basin tinged red.

  Now . . .

  She wiped the blood from her face with one hand, threatened toward Tashjian with her gun in the other. “I’ll hurt you any way I . . . Tashjian. Tashjian!”

  He held down his whimpers. Listened.

  “Any way I have to, I will hurt you. You understand?”

  A nod from him. Blood seeping from the hand that clutched his torn ear. A dam of digits useless against the tide. But it made Tashjian forget about the blood from his mouth.

  “There . . . there are, there’re . . .” A bad motor sputtering itself started. “There are cops in DMI, we believe they’ve, we believe they’re a hit squad targeting muh-metanormals. The media, the liberals find out before we can clean it up it’d make us all look like killers, not cops.”

  “Why Soledad? She wasn’t IA.”

  “That’s the point!” Pain made Tashjian impatient. “They never would’ve seen her coming. Nuh-never should have.”

  “But they did?”

  “You knew her, knew what she was like. I’ll never believe suh-some freak got the best of her.”

  Like a riptide. Concepts coming so strong Eddi could hardly think against them. Had to force herself not to just accept them.

  “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “That’s all there is.”

  It was like her gun jumped out, jumped at Tashjian, at his head, and her hand just went along for the ride.

  From Tashjian, a corresponding scream to the blow.

  From Eddi: “What else?”

  “There is nothing else! I sent her inside DMI, she didn’t come back.”

  “What’s ‘the end of fear’?”

  “The end of fear is when we get every freak there is off the streets of every city in America. Be they live, or buh-be they dead. That doesn’t happen if the bleeding hearts . . . if they can turn things against us.”

  Heavy breathing. From Tashjian, yeah. But Eddi, chest working hard, was just then realizing how much labor was required to make even a weak man submit.

  From where she stood, she said: “I know you think when I’m gone, a couple of hours from now, tomorrow at worst, you’re going to crush me. You’re going to get IA all over me, if you don’t just go ahead and swear out a warrant. I know you’re thinking that.”

  Heavy breathing from Tashjian. Just the breathing.

  “Nothing’s going to happen to me, okay? Nothing. Something happens to me, I don’t get a chance to find out what happened to Soledad, I swear to Christ, swear on my father’s grave . . . you hearing me, Tashjian? I swear I will put a bullet in you. I have to do five to fifteen for taking a piece of your ear, I might as well do twenty-five to life for killing you. Got that?”

  Just the breathing from Tashjian.

  Eddi holstered up. She made her way from the house, to the street, to her car.

  Traffic was bad.

  The nine miles to her place took thirty-four minutes to drive.

  A little bit later Eddi was looking at herself in her bathroom mirror, looking at the blood on her sweatshirt. Her mouth.

  She took up a spot on the bathroom floor. Her head dropped between her legs.

  It’d been forty-nine minutes since she’d taken a bite out of Tashjian.

  The shower had been pointless. The kind of cleaning Eddi needed wasn’t going to come from tap water. Standing on the balcony of her duplex, letting the sun and the air do work on her hair, the thing Eddi recalled most about the last few days—trying to give condolences to Soledad’s parents, spending time with a boozed-up Vin, talking to Tashjian. Attacking Tashjian—the thing she recalled from all that was being told time and again by people connected as well as could be with Soledad was that Soledad didn’t have any friends.

  So why did Eddi care what happened to Soledad? Why travel the road that’d started with a pistol whipped against Tashjian’s head and a hunk of meat pulled from his ear?

  Because, she answered herself, someone somewhere ought to give a fuck about Soledad’s passing same as when her time came—and Eddi knew sooner or later her time was going to come—she’d hope to God someone somewhere’d give a fuck about her.

  But giving a fuck—

  Blocks away, a siren. Moving in Eddi’s direction. She could tell by the pulse it was a cop’s, not fire or EMS. The feeling teeming just under Eddi’s flesh: It was coming for her. She swore at Tashjian for being ballsy enough to call her bluff, put the heat on her. Five to fifteen for losing herself, for losing control. Doing battery on a cop. The only thing—the siren seconds away—that was killing Eddi was that now probably she’d never know what really happened to . . .

  The siren passed. Diminished. Faded.

  The balcony railing. Eddi consciously loosened her grip that had tightened without her being aware.

  So she had been thinking . . .

  “Giving a fuck” about Soledad meant getting even closer to the whys of the situation. Getting closer to DMI.

  And getting closer to DMI . . .

  Getting inside DMI.

  What Tashjian had said: They’d see an IA cop coming a mile away. They’d smell a rogue before he got planted. And, anyway, Eddi didn’t have the authority, was never going to get the authority to do a job against DMI.

  On her own, how was she going to get close? Get inside?

  And then she had the answer, the answer being absolutely ridiculous. But the ridiculousness of it was immediately shoved aside by the very logic of the irrationality. No one would know. No one would suspect. No one could contest. No one could stop her. Except Tashjian. If he was going to, she’d be in cuffs already.

  Then it was too late for debate. It was too late for trying to figure another, better way to do things. Eddi was already over the edge of her balcony and sailing for the ground a couple of stories below.

  I’ve never done anything like this before. Actually, I’m doing a lot of stuff I’ve never done before. In particular I’ve never previously expressed myself to myself in writing. And I’m not doing this because Soledad did it. I’m only doing this because it seems like a good idea, a good way to keep track of things. Seemed like a good idea until I realized the first thing I had to document is that I’m losing my mind. To jump from the balcony of my place? For a while, in the hospital while I was getting X-rayed I tried to sell myself that by dumb luck I’d stumbled off the balcony right when I’d come up with the idea of taking a header. But the self-denials just made me think I was all the crazier. So just admit it. I’m losing my mind. At least, I’ve lost direction. Direction, previously, had been easy and obvious. Straight ahead. Don’t think about anything else, don’t look around for some other road to travel. Just keep straight on because dead ahead for me was MTac. Ahead for me was a chance to pay back the freak community for killing my dad on the first day of May all those years ago.

  And for a long time, for me, there wasn’t much distraction. A couple of guys I’d call boyfriends. A couple of days thinking about the beach or skiing or something besides the knife my dad’d once given me that I swore, improbably, I’d use to kill at least one mutie. Beyond that . . . there wasn’t a beyond that. Just school, the academy, whatever assignments I could pull that’d better position me for MTac.

  And then I heard about Soledad.

  It was like hearing about the heroes again. Only, she
was our hero, not some mutie.

  Then I made MTac and I met Soledad. It was like meeting the queen bitch. She was cold and single-minded. She was also genius enough to make her own modifications to an O’Dwyer. She was unstoppable by any freak that’d been stupid enough to show its face to her. And I thought, damn. Really. That’s what I thought: daaamn! That, and how much I wanted to be like Bullet. Only, don’t let her hear you call her that. Don’t let her know you respect, admire . . . call it what it was. Don’t let her know you worship her and want to be a third of the cop she was so you can be a thousand times the cop most others are.

  And I knew she wasn’t really cold as she played. I knew, or at least I figured when I got to know her, I’d see the soft to her. Hadn’t she cut me major slack when I accidentally put a couple of slugs into Vin?

  But I never got the chance to really know Soledad. Don’t know anyone could.

  Then I read her journal. Should’ve taken something else when her mother offered. Should’ve taken her favorite sweatshirt, a hat. Should’ve taken something that wasn’t page after page of bitterness and scorn and loneliness and guilt and a whole lot of self-hate.

  That fucked me up. Not reading Soledad’s true nature in her writing. What fucked me up, what I read, I could’ve been reading my own words. It was my life she was writing, lived at arm’s length and by rote. I had to actually look in the mirror, had to stare at myself and tell me that I wasn’t like her. Bristled when Vin insinuated I was. I was human and normal and functional. Then I reminded me I’d thrown myself off my own balcony trying to collect an injury. I’d lost my mind. I’d lost my direction. I had gone on an excavation looking for signs of life and found nothing but a warning from beyond the grave in the here and now.

  Someday a freak could very well kill me. But it was my own life I was taking.

  Page after page after page after page. I expected something more from Soledad. Something better. I expected, in her private moments . . . she didn’t owe me anything, but I expected where I thought she was callow for callowness’ sake toughness because tough is what an MTac, a black woman MTac in particular, needed to survive.