The Pressure of Darkness

by Harry Shannon

  Burke spat on the ground. "It has to be one hell of a lot bigger than that if people at Parker Center and City Hall want to shut things down."

  "Fucking great."

  "Sorry if I'm making trouble for you."

  "I just thought you should know," Doc said. "You figure maybe this is the spooks again?"

  "I can find out soon enough."

  "Major Ryan?"

  "Yeah, it's time I talked to him again anyway."

  "Red, just so you know, I lied my black ass off. I told them I have no idea how the file got pulled, much less copied. I don't know if they believe me or not, but you know what that means."

  Burke shrugged. "It won't take them long to run the film from the security cameras in the hall and check the logs and see that I was there. Relax. If I get hassled, I'll say I did it all on my own."

  "But that's a felony, man."

  "Fuck them. The company will cover me."

  "We better hope so." Doc started the van. "Man, I don't know what is going on here, but I think you really screwed the pooch this time."

  "You checked those pages I e-mailed you?"

  "Yeah, I did. Sweet. So a piece of the dude's bowel is flat fucking gone. Now, how did the coroner miss that?"

  "It was cut in two places, clean as a whistle, probably by a scalpel. And now it's missing."

  Doc shivered, grimaced. "Yeah, and then somebody buried that fact for some reason. Look, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know this whole mother stinks. The guy has already fucked with himself for hours, he's drugged out of his mind, he's sitting in a bathtub, disemboweled and deep in shock, and he stops to cut a piece of bowel out and then what, flush in down the toilet? Or does he eat it or something?"

  "Because if he committed suicide, where the hell did it go?"

  "Exactly." Doc put the van in gear. "And some other dude can re-check his stomach, cause that idea even grosses me out."

  Burke tapped his forearm with stiffened fingers. "One more thing, Doc."

  "Not a chance, man. I'm in deep enough already."

  "Hang on a second. The baby powder by the doorway, the stuff in the carpet. What kind of baby powder was it?"

  Doc scans his memory bank. "Johnson & Johnson."

  "You're sure?"

  "It was that chemically loaded, lanolin-type stuff. Mind saying why you're asking?"

  Burke removed his fingers. "Because mine was corn starch baby powder. I bought it at a health food store."

  "Oh, shit."

  "Yeah. That means somebody else used surgical gloves in that room. And whoever it was also slipped into the next room, drugged Peter Stryker, then tortured him to death."

  "And someone heavy wants this covered up."

  "Looks that way."

  Doc started to drive away. "Red, I think you just got even more dangerous to be around than usual, my friend. Are you going to tell Scotty about all this, or is he on the shit list now?"

  "I haven't decided."

  Doc seemed bothered. "He's old school, our asshole buddy. Our brother. Somehow it don't seem right to hold out on him."

  The van rolled forward a few feet, Doc's face began vanishing into the shadows.

  "I know," Burke said. "But somebody is leaning on him, so he's out. Just let me decide, okay? You play dumb from here on out."

  "Glad to." Doc steered the van away. "Color me flat ignorant." He rolled off into the darkness, hissing tires and the fading low drone of an engine.

  At first Burke savored being alone. He stood in the parking lot, lost in the gloom, deep in thought. Suddenly he trembled. He did not know if he was feeling the cold or finally becoming afraid.

  He needed to speak to her. He drove to the hospital without awareness. Soon he was again by her side . . .

  "I'm in trouble again."

  "What?"

  "A new case. Looked really easy at first, but now . . ."

  "Oh, Red."

  "I know. But we do need the money."

  "Oh, Red."

  She did this sometimes. Repeated things in a feathery whisper before moaning back down into carefully measured breathing. Burke hugged his knees and listened for her voice. The hospital seemed even colder than the grounds. Burke was seated near the window as usual, staring out at stars covered by a wispy gauze strip of clouds. The austere room, with its pale walls and lack of furnishings, seemed distorted, oddly elongated this evening, like something from a horror film about a mental institution.

  "I love you."

  Her voice was a bone sigh, borne on the wind: "I know."

  "Are you ever coming back to me?"

  There was no answer. Burke felt his eyes begin to water. He forced a wide smile. He did not wish to upset her. He got to his feet, kissed her on the cheek and tucked her in a bit more carefully.

  "Sleep well, Mary."

  He replaced the chair precisely where he'd found it and took one final look around the room. He found a small scrap of paper on the floor and tossed it into the trash bin. Nothing but net. Straightened the one painting on the wall and wiped some dust from the top of the frame. Burke knew that he was stalling, avoiding the dread he would experience once out of her presence, but could not bring himself to hurry. Finally he waved, although her eyes were closed, and walked out.

  In the hallway, his own footsteps booming from freshly painted walls, he allowed himself to sob. The moment of weakness was brief, tightly controlled. Ashamed, Jack Burke wiped his eyes.

  A faint ping caused him to glance back at the elevators. The doors slid open. An old man, bright-eyed and with a wild shock of white hair, was chatting with a plump Hispanic nurse.

  Jesus.

  Burke's blood turned to ice. He cringed at the sight of Harry Kelso. He stepped away, and flattened against the wall, then ducked into the refreshment alcove to hide between the giant coffee and soft drink machines. Kelso entered her room. The door whooshed shut.

  Burke did not leave until he heard the voices fade.

  EIGHTEEN

  The wind whips sideways and then flows downward between towering twin pillars of concrete and glass. It feels hostile by the time it reaches the street; there is a biting chill in the air. The apparently legless man is of indeterminate age, his race obscured by layers of grime and sweat, hair long and tangled. He is known to the others as Willie Pepper. Willie is hunched in the corner of the sidewalk next to the Bank of America building, seated on a small wooden platform. He is counting out change into one filthy hand. He wears an army jacket with sergeant's stripes, a tee shirt, a blue work shirt and two pairs of wool pants.

  A small smile creases Willie's dirty face. He has scored enough cash for another quart of Red Mountain. Willie looks up, squinting into harsh slivers of sunset that are bouncing off the windows of the executive suites on the fifth floor of Kingsley Towers. He scans the sidewalk for any likely score, but the streets are already filling with expensive cars. The business men and women who work nearby have already descended en masse into the parking garage and will soon pack the streets like shiny roaches. The night crowd will eventually arrive to attend theater events, but not for a couple more hours.

  Willie decides to call it a night. He eases his small, rolling platform—made of roller skates and wood—back into the rapidly expanding shadows at the mouth of the alley. He searches his pockets, finds a damp Camel that is bent in a V, sagging but unbroken. He tears the filter off, fires up a smoke, and leans back against the wall. The razor-edge tobacco rush makes his scalp tingle and takes the edge off the shakes.

  He looks around. Satisfied no one is watching him, the tramp unbuckles the straps that keep his lower legs hidden in the platform. Tucked beneath him on a carpeted surface, his calves have long since gone numb from lack of circulation. He eases them straight and massages until the blood flow returns. His quietly healthy feet wear two sets of white socks and a pair of unlaced black basketball shoes. When he raises his eyes, he jumps a bit.

  A man is watching him from the end of the alley.

/>   Willie Pepper squints. The man has a stocky build and what appear to be smears of dirt on his exposed lower arms. He is wearing a blue Navy watch cap with eye slits. It is pulled down over his face to keep out the cold. Or perhaps hide his features. Fuck, did that bastard see me count out my change? Willie Pepper lives in a world where a man may be killed for less than ten dollars. Or did he think I was really crippled until just now and maybe he's checking out how to do the scam for himself?

  Willie keeps his head down and fumbles with his platform. He designed it himself. Willie used to work in 'the trades' as a carpenter, until his drinking got too bad. The device neatly folds up and weighs next to nothing. Willie even left an empty space for hiding a bedroll, some smokes, money, or a little bit of extra booze. He takes a quick peek up the street. The man is still watching.

  Willie slips a long, formerly Phillips screwdriver up his right sleeve. He sharpened the point years ago, and can take out a man's eye if he has to. He looks up, yawning and stretching. The stranger has vanished . . . but there ain't no other way out of that alley. Did he go into one of the restaurants through the kitchen?

  Willie Pepper shivers in the grip of a memory: the way his alcoholic father had chased him through the darkened house growling like an animal grrrrrrrrr, rrrrrrrrruff. Willie had pretended to enjoy it; acted like it was all a game. But his father—a red-nosed trucker with fists like old baked hams—had long since fried his brains on speed and boilermakers. Willie had seen what happened to his mother and his brother when the old man got pissed, and it wasn't pretty. He didn't want that kind of a whipping laid upside his own head, no fucking way. His momma used to tell him "Willie, there ain't no boogie man," but Willie Pepper knew better. He knew a monster lived in his house and its name was Daddy.

  Now why the hell did I just think of that after all this time . . . ?

  Whatever, because the strange man is gone, maybe he's a dishwasher at the Eye-talian place or something and came out to grab a smoke—yeah, but I didn't see any cigarette in his hands—and Willie has important business to tend to, so he'd best get hopping.

  There is an impossibly small, tightly packed convenience store located one long block south near the subway station. Willie Pepper insists on referring to it as the subway station, because that's what it is, no matter what these fancy L.A. fuckheads want to try and call it. The store is owned by a Korean guy whose name sounds like something off a take-out menu, but Willie likes him well enough. He stays open a little late and lets the street dwellers pick up last minute things with the change they've scored that day, like packaged junk food, but mostly they get wine, beer, or cigarettes. Willie hurries on down the street, but he can't shake the stranger, not completely, because his body breaks out in bumps and somebody seems to be walking just a step behind him going grrrrrrrr, rrrruff. He lets the screwdriver drop down into his hand completely, doesn't try to hide the blade, figuring if he's being followed, let the bastard see he's packing, spot his shiv and know that Willie Pepper won't be anybody's bitch.

  "Watch where you're going, damn it!"

  Willie has rammed into some portly schmuck on his way through revolving doors trying to catch him a taxi. "Watch your own self," he grumbles. The guy stinks of expensive cologne and even more expensive cigars. Willie knows cigars, can tell a Nicaraguan from a Honduran just by his nose, and this guy just did a Cuban, probably a pyramid Monte C, the fat fuck. Some people have all the luck. Probably ripped the money off in the stock market and walked away with millions after two years in some country club and left the rest of the country holding the bag.

  Wun Hung Low, or whatever his name is, has already started to lower the sliding metal panels and lock up his stand. Willie is about to rip the skinny old guy a new one when he smiles that wide dink smile of his and bows a bit. It's hard to get really pissed at somebody who comes off so nice, especially when most of the world doesn't seem to give a damn anymore. Willie slips the screwdriver back up his sleeve. He counts out his money—dimes, quarters, and smelly, oft-folded dollar bills—until he has the requisite purchase price in the Korean's outstretched palm.

  Two minutes later, Willie Pepper has a gallon jug of cheap California Red to carry, along with his folded-up platform. He scuttles along the darkening sidewalk, hunched over to hide the bottle—but also because the night chill has begun to slice through the holes in his stiff, unwashed garments like strands of razor wire. Like anyone who lives on the streets, Willie knows his own body oils can provide some protection against the cold, especially in a relatively warm clime such as the one here in Southern California. Although his olfactory senses remain keen enough to recognize the bite and tone of a specific cigar, he has long since lost the ability to recognize the stench emanating from his own body. Truth be told, it is intense enough that a tracker could follow him by stink alone. And someone does.

  Willie pauses to finish his cigarette. The man one block behind melts into the shadows until the tramp resumes walking. Willie turns left, toward the L.A. Center parking lot, intending to camp for the night in the large garbage area next to Cheesecake Factory. Back there, the amount of food thrown out every night is truly staggering. A man can get a terrific drunk on, stuff himself on the remains of expensive meals, and then pass out, all in relative comfort.

  The area is nearly deserted. Across the lot Willie can see headlights turning and hear the horns honking; it's a seemingly endless parade of weary, irate worker ants heading home for the night, only to pack the cracked and sagging freeways and return downtown the next morning. On the other side of the row of restaurants and empty office complexes, the brightly-lit nightspots will remain busy until after midnight. As for Willie, he intends to be out cold by then. Or perhaps 'out warm' says it better.

  He approaches the back of restaurant. The grate near the kitchen gives off huge amounts of steam. If a man burrows back into the garbage and cardboard boxes, he can remain undetected by the head chef or the kitchen crew, who wander out occasionally to grab a smoke or take a piss. At this moment, no one is looking out through the rear doorway.

  Willie Pepper relaxes. He opens the jug and takes a deep swig, then another. He wants a smoke, but can't light up without the risk of self-immolation when he's buried in boxes. Best have one now. He finds a Marlboro, tears the filter off, lights up and puffs.

  Click-click!

  The fuck was that? Willie whirls around, spraying sparks, excited breath hissing out in a smooth, white wave. Shoes on concrete, hitting something, maybe a soft drink can? Willie needs glasses, can't see for shit at night. He now figures somebody is after his hootch for sure.

  He drops the sharpened screwdriver back down into his palm and tries to see if he can spot anything, any one, moving back there behind him. The headlights around the corner create tricky geometric of light; the encroaching shadows appear, rapidly change shape, almost seem to chuckle.

  Odd. For the first time, Willie Pepper—a man quite given to bluff and bluster, a pro who is used to living on the streets—feels truly afraid to be alone.

  "Don't try and fuck with me," Willie calls, but his voice cracks and seems a tad too shrill to be intimidating, even to his own ears. He listens intently but nothing else happens. Maybe it was just the wind and a piece of paper, Willie. When did you get to be such a pussy? Willie backs away, his eyes still roaming the darkness grrrrrrrr, rrrrufff, but he doesn't see anything. He swallows, notices he's breathing too rapidly, takes another drag of his smoke and a deep drink of wine.

  Willie decides to turn his back on the ominous, rippling black. He will prove he is not afraid. He does face the other way. But then, like a man leaving a darkened garage, he has that one brief moment of atavistic, horrific dread where he realizes that something evil might be sneaking up behind him. He stumbles forward anyway, red-veined eyes glued to the sidewalk in front of his dirty black sneakers. He struggles to keep his panic hidden and to reach the safety of the back porch light behind the restaurant before the boogie man can get him.

&
nbsp; Willie runs into something solid; hard enough to take his breath away. His vision clears. It is not a something, it is a man. The man he saw standing across the street. Before Willie can react, the man smiles, spins him like a top, and kicks at the back of his knees. Willie drops like a sack of apples. The jug of wine goes flying, shatters against the pavement, and leaves a blood-dark, widening stain.

  "Don't!"

  But Willie Pepper's voice is already someone else's voice and coming from somewhere far away. He wheezes and gasps. A soft/tough something has drifted down around his neck and pulled itself taut. The rope cuts into his windpipe and steals his air. Willie struggles but it is useless to resist. The man behind him expertly places a knee in the center of his back and pulls again, hard enough to strangle but not sharply enough to crush his neck. Willie, kneeling in terror, tries to fight back but cannot quite muster the strength as the world spins noisily away.

  NINETEEN

  FRIDAY

  The Institute for Psychoanalytic Studies was located in an otherwise ordinary office complex on Balboa Avenue in the L.A. suburb of Encino. Burke parked in the nearly deserted lot, where a sign curtly informed him that tenants of the building did not validate their clients. That struck Burke as funny. The large black board in the lobby revealed that the school occupied most of the third floor, a sizeable chunk of very costly real estate.

  Burke rode up in the elevator next to a tired-looking young couple in business clothing who were squabbling about money. Meanwhile, their infant, who was fussing in a dark blue stroller, grinned and created a stink powerful enough to peel paint from the walls. The argument seamlessly shifted to whose turn it was to change the diaper.

  Burke exited onto plush, beige carpeting and into a zone so quiet the Muzak speakers had probably been disconnected. He located the right suite.

  In the lobby, a cheerful young woman with impossibly large blue eyes and glasses peered up owlishly from a garish romance novel. The receptionist was under the impression Burke was a reporter, on leave from the Daily News and doing research for a novel. To her, Burke might as well have been a rock star. She asked about and arranged for coffee before ushering him into the inner sanctum of Dr. Theodore Merriman.