Sleepless

by Charlie Huston

  These scenes of home life telling me as much as I needed to know about why this particular cop chose to exchange his oath for money. And amply supplying me with the means and weapons with which to attack and bend him, should the need arise, before I did away with him entirely.

  14

  drmr-nw inf-rqst sit-snst

  Park sent the text as the sun was rising, shortly before Francine roused herself to go take care of her own children and the baby began crying again. He received a response less than an hour later as he was trying to persuade his always restless daughter to both open wide and remain still for the moment it would take for him to get the nipple of a baby bottle into her mouth. The text he read as he wrangled her on his lap was succinct.

  0730

  He’d need to leave soon. Leave Rose alone with the baby again.

  Until the last few weeks Park wouldn’t have hesitated. Throughout her illness, from the sixth month of the pregnancy when Park had finally convinced her to have the test done if only so they could take it off the list of things to worry over, caring for the baby had always centered Rose. She’ll die without us, she’d said to Park when she first held the small bloody thing against her chest. But she’d acted more as if the baby would die without her. Not that she excluded Park. Not that. She’d always told him that one of the things she most looked forward to about having a baby was seeing how it would take him out of himself.

  You live too much in your head, Park. With a baby there’s no thinking, you just do what needs to be done. It’s gonna be great for you. You’re gonna be a great fucking dad, she’d told him more than once. Often enough for him to have it memorized.

  So it wasn’t that she didn’t want him involved. It was more that she refused to ask for help. Insisted on doing anything and everything that she possibly could. Not because she didn’t trust Park but because it gave her focus.

  The baby would die without them. And as long as she was consumed with that thought and the small daily concerns of keeping a baby alive, she did not think about her own dying. Inevitable. Imminent. Horrible. The baby drew her away from dying, into a realm where the future was not a looming wall but a limitless horizon. For many months taking care of her daughter was Rose’s refuge, a source of great calm and concentration. During those months Park didn’t simply feel comfortable leaving Rose with the baby, he felt relieved to be able to do so. With the baby in her arms, fear, an emotion he’d thought she might well be incapable of feeling, until the moment of diagnosis, left his wife’s eyes.

  Now the only time the fear appeared to subside was when she became awash in the past. The increasingly frequent hallucinations that seemed always to stretch back to the years before the baby, and therefore did not allow for her.

  Finding his daughter abandoned on the living room floor had not been the worst of it. Park had come home a week earlier and discovered her in the bathtub, squirming and crying in three inches of cooling water in the bus tub they bathed her in. Rose, he found along the side of the house where they kept the bicycles and lawn mower, sneaking a cigarette. God knows where she had found the cigarette, at the bottom of a shoe box in the garage perhaps. She’d reduced her habit to the occasional smoke behind Park’s back shortly after they had met and she’d realized just how much he loathed the damn things. When she stopped using birth control she’d given them up completely, without a second thought.

  Caught by Park in the side yard, she’d dropped the butt and begun to whistle casually, looking at the sky as she ground it under her heel, making a joke of being busted by her cop husband, just as she had on a dozen occasions in the past. But it wasn’t the past. The wet and screaming baby girl in Park’s arms had at first confused her and then brought the fear back to her eyes. So horrified at what she had done that she ran into the house and hid in a closet, to be coaxed out only after Park had sat outside the door for an hour, singing the ABCs to their baby over and over again until she calmed, and Rose calmed as well.

  More and more often she could be found drifting, either lost in the past or immersed in Chasm Tide. The baby forgotten.

  When Park had accepted Bartolome’s assignment, there had been no concerns about schedule; day or night, he did what he needed to do when it needed to be done. Two months later, as Park had just started establishing his own clientele, he had noticed the stiffness in his wife’s neck, the sweats and sharp pupils, and the increasingly restless sleep that she said was due to the pregnancy weight and the onset of an early summer.

  Everything is changing, babe. Your work. My work. A house. Baby on the way. Of course I’m not sleeping. And of course my fucking neck is stiff. Let’s slap ten, twelve pounds on your stomach and add a bra size, see how your back feels. Don’t make a big fucking deal out of nothing was what she’d said.

  Five months into the assignment and she’d been diagnosed. Doctors raised the specter of a late miscarriage, should her health suddenly erode and her body not be capable of carrying the baby to term. Inducing the birth early was discussed, then put aside by Rose.

  No fucking way.

  Park found himself silently agreeing, and soon made several phone calls to find out if LAPD health insurance would cover the expenses of a midwife and a home birth. It would. And the remains of Park’s trust fund, what the markets had not decimated in the daily roller coaster rides of ’08, covered the expense of having Francine stay on as their night nurse, initially an extra pair of hands when the one week Park had been able to take off was over (Taking a break, hitting Cabo for a week, he’d told his clients), and then as watchdog, keeping an eye out for the moments when Rose’s eyes lost clarity and she would walk suddenly from a room without explanation, seeming to edit Francine and the baby from her awareness so as to pass more easily into another place and time.

  His business had naturally inclined toward night trade, but Francine’s availability had made it necessary for Park to cut out all day deliveries, except to his oldest and best connected clients, those he relied upon for introductions and invitations to exclusive events where he could expand his base and his pursuit of Dreamer. But the last few weeks’ duty and events had pulled him regularly away from home during the daylight hours when Francine took care of her own children and gathered a few extra hours of sleep before the long nights with Rose and the baby. Park couldn’t always dictate where he would be at five in the morning, how far from home, how bad the twenty-four-hour traffic jams would be. He couldn’t anticipate where the Guard might have shut down eight square blocks around a raid on a suspected NAJi cell.

  And soon Rose would be entering what the doctors expected would be her final two months. A period referred to in the hospitals and among professional caregivers as the suffering.

  He’d planned to change something. Without knowing what or how. Change things so that he could be there. But that was before the murders at the gold farm. Before he met Cager. Before he had evidence in his hand. There was too much to do now. Too much for just himself and Captain Bartolome. The investigation would have to be expanded as soon as possible. The full extent of this abuse of power had to be exposed.

  Plague profiteers.

  The side trade in DR33M3R would be the tip of the iceberg. If they were selling it into restricted markets, that meant the supply was being shorted in other markets. Price manipulation for all intents and purposes.

  And what else? Could it be worse?

  The ability to treat the symptoms of SLP so effectively, implied mastery of several aspects of the disease. Park had heard dozens of conspiracy theories thrown about as he drove from house to house dispensing his wears. He’d heard them on the airwaves, barked and pontificated, and he’d heard them in the houses themselves, jabbered or mumbled. Inevitably Afronzo-New Day was mentioned.

  A basic precept of detective work: When a crime is committed, who stands to profit?

  Assuming a crime had been committed, no one had profited like A-ND. No one in the history of the world had profited as they had.

 
The baby slapped the bottle away from her face yet again, and Park found himself trying to shove the soft rubber nipple between her tight lips.

  “Just take the damn thing!”

  He froze. Pulled the bottle from her face and put it on the kitchen table. He touched his forehead to hers.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Daddy’s a little. I don’t know what. I’m tired is all. I’m sorry.”

  She slapped the top of his head and began crying. He picked up the bottle and popped it into her open mouth, and her lips closed around it and she started to suck, gasping between mouthfuls, her eyes rimmed red.

  He looked at the clock.

  He found Rose at the bathroom sink. She’d just finished brushing her teeth, spitting water tinged dark pink by the blood that oozed from her receding gums. She splashed water on her face, blotted it away with a towel, and looked at herself in the mirror, touching a hollowed cheek.

  “Did she eat?”

  Just outside the doorway, Park shifted, his reflection appearing in the glass.

  “It took awhile, but she did.”

  Rose ran fingers tipped with chewed nails through her hair, pulling it back from her forehead, taking an elastic band from a collection of them looped around the doorknob, snapping it around an ever thinning pony-tail.

  “How much?”

  “Four ounces.”

  She took a makeup bag from the edge of the sink and unzipped it.

  “I can’t hear her.”

  “She’s in her playpen out in the office. I put some music on the computer; she’s watching the visualizer. She quieted down a little. The monitor’s on in the kitchen.”

  Rose uncapped a tube of brick red lipstick.

  “Our psychedelic baby, tripping out on the light show. We should get some glow-in-the-dark stars for the ceiling of the nursery.”

  “We did.”

  She twirled the lipstick up and back down, recapped it without putting any on, and dropped it into the bag.

  “Yeah. I forgot.”

  She put the bag back on the sink.

  “Hey, husband.”

  “Wife.”

  She looked at him.

  “I’m kinda tired of doing the whole makeup and trying to look pretty thing. You mind if I go natural the rest of the way?”

  He stepped into the bathroom and slipped his arms around her waist.

  “That’s all I ever want.”

  She looked up at him.

  “Park.”

  “Rose.”

  She closed her eyes.

  “I’m so tired, Park. I want to sleep so bad. And I think. I may. I just.”

  She opened her mouth and muffled it against his chest and screamed.

  Park held her, the vibrations from her scream cutting through him as surely as a blade.

  She stopped, turned her face from his chest and gulped air.

  “Okay, okay. I’m back. I’m okay. I’m okay.”

  She pushed away from him, wiping her eyes.

  “I just want to stop sometimes. And I can’t. And I think about. Being done. And it sounds. Not so bad.”

  She touched his chin.

  “It’s okay, I wouldn’t. I just. Sometimes. If I could fall asleep. And skip the rest of what’s going to happen. Sometimes. That’s all. It’s just a temptation is all. Because I’m tired.”

  He spoke.

  “It’s not too late to go to a hospital. They’d still accept you. You could get Dreamer.”

  She raised a hand.

  “Park.”

  He opened his mouth, but she didn’t let him speak.

  “I won’t. And then what, anyway? If I’m in the hospital and you’re on the street. And then what? Francine can’t always be here. So, what? Who takes care of her? God knows it’s not that I’m opposed to taking the drugs. But I won’t go to a hospital. I won’t leave her alone. Not while there’s no one, no one to take care of her.”

  He forced his words between hers.

  “I’m here. I can take care of her.”

  She looked at him.

  “Parker, I love you, but you’re not here. You can’t take care of her.”

  Park remained utterly still, afraid that if he moved in the least he would shatter, shocked that the beating of his heart had not already turned him to shards.

  When Park requested a sit-down, he never specified where; they simply met at whatever spot was next on a list they’d made at the outset of the assignment. Once used, a safe location was crossed from the list, never revisited. The track that ran around the football field at Culver City High, where the Centaurs once played, was next on the list. Within walking distance, it was, literally, a little close to home, but Park was grateful for that proximity on this occasion. The meeting would take some time, explaining to Bartolome what he’d discovered and how, but at least he wouldn’t have to worry about the hazards of traffic. He’d get home soon, just as he’d promised Rose he would.

  He waited on the curve of track behind one of the field’s end zones, trying not to fidget with the thumb drive hanging around his neck, one of the ten-gig drives Rose had used for work, onto which he had loaded a copy of his reports.

  Driving around the neighborhood before they bought the house, he and Rose had talked about how loud it might be on game nights, both of them enjoying the idea of hearing the dull roar on Friday evenings. But by the time the season began and many parents pulled their children out of school, and particularly off the football squad (sports in which blood was regularly spilled did not seem like a wise choice of extracurricular activities in a time of plague), there weren’t enough players to field a team. Not that they would have played more than one home game. It wasn’t long after the school year began that most districts across the country began canceling all sports, dances, clubs, band practice, theatricals, or any other event that might require students to gather after school hours. Eventually the classes themselves would be canceled. For the time being a much-reduced curriculum was still offered to students whose parents signed waivers relieving the schools of all liability for any harm that might befall their children from morning to final afternoon bell. Classes taught by teachers who had signed similar waivers for the privilege. The numbers on both sides of the classroom greatly reduced, it was, nonetheless, a sad fact that teacher-to-student ratios had not improved overall.

  Park rubbed his foot back and forth on the latex track surface, the sole of his shoe squeaking. He’d taken another Dexedrine spansule before leaving home. He hadn’t felt he needed it to keep awake, having passed his window of sleep opportunity yet again, but his thoughts were unruly; he’d need to marshal them to make his case to Bartolome. Twenty-four hours of hard sleep was out of the realm of possibility, so the speed had been his best option. He’d taken the pill, recorded it in his journal, police report, and dealer inventory, and left Rose playing Chasm Tide in the office, with the baby cradled around her neck in a hammocklike carrier, both of them wide awake but neither of them crying.

  He looked at his father’s watch.

  “Where’d you get that watch?”

  Hearing the voice, Park almost bolted. Dealer’s instinct fueled by the speed almost sent him sprinting down the length of the football field, aiming for the dry L.A. River runoff beyond the parking lot.

  “I don’t remember seeing that watch.”

  Before he could run, another instinct had overridden the first. Cop instinct, telling him that if he ran he’d end up with boots in his backside, if not bullets.

  “I’d have remembered a watch as nice as that.”

  Parked thumbed the rotating bezel that his father had used to time course changes when sailing with only a compass and the sun or stars.

  The man walking from the parking lot raised one of his arms and displayed a pair of handcuffs.

  “I’ll make you a trade, my bracelets for your watch.”

  He grabbed the back of Park’s neck and squeezed, kicking his right foot out from under him, and Park went to his knees.r />
  “Only I’m gonna want my bracelets back.”

  Park didn’t move as the watch was removed from his wrist.

  “I’m going to look for that in my property envelope.”

  The wrist that had worn the watch was pulled to the small of his back and forced upward, and the cuff went on.

  “Yeah, you look in there, trust me, you’ll find a fucking watch.”

  Hands patted him down, took his keys and phone, his wallet and the backup thumb drive, all that he’d carried with him out the front door, and he was yanked to his feet.

  He looked at the man who’d come from underneath the bleachers as he shook the watch and held it to his ear.

  “That watch better be the one I find when I look in my property envelope.”

  “Or what, asshole?”

  “Or I’ll come looking for you.”

  The man shoved Park toward the street beyond the west bleachers.

  “Asshole, you come looking, you better pray you don’t fucking find me.”

  He shoved Park again.

  “And by the way, that’s fucking threatening a public officer as far as I’m concerned, and I’m putting it in your jacket along with obstruction, no matter what the fuck kind of rat-fink asshole you are. Asshole.”

  Park said nothing more.

  He’d asked for a sit-down with Bartolome. He’d gotten Hounds. He knew when he was being told to shut up.

  I HAD DISPENSED with burglar alarms and other home security measures long ago. That was shortly after I had become an independent contractor and found myself at odds with a long-established firm that provided services similar to mine. A boutique operation, they’d had business cards. No name, just the discreet number of an old-fashioned answering service, and a motto: Solutions for Extreme Circumstances.

  As you can imagine, having such a card offered to you by a crew-cut gentleman with obviously scarred knuckles, wearing a well-tailored suit, was very impressive. This operation had a wonderful sense of theater. They were also, I must admit, quite good. Their solutions were effective more often than not, and most definitely extreme. The specific reason they had become displeased with me personally had to do with what they perceived as my poaching of a client they had serviced for some years. Poaching was the word they used when they called to advise me that I should desist and renege on the contract I had already accepted. All fairly polite but rendered with the unmistakable subtext that I had best get the fuck out of town on the next train. Or something equally Old West.