The Darkness Gathers: A Novel

by Lisa Unger

  The mariachi band continued playing, their melodic voices filling the room and imbuing their conversation with a kind of maudlin energy it didn’t deserve. The room was dim and warm. Red velvet booths lined the walls, and low-hanging lamps were suspended over each table. The shade of each lamp was a different color, one cobalt, another jade, still another a flame orange. The tables were kidney-shaped and covered with fringed white tablecloths. The smell of tobacco wafted over from the next table and its scent, along with the stress Lydia was feeling as a result of their conversation, made her long powerfully for a cigarette, though it had been over a year since she’d last smoked.

  Jeffrey could sense her pulling away from him. He knew the thought of marriage terrified her. “It promises something that can’t be promised. People change and life is cruel. It’s like tempting fate,” she’d said before they were involved romantically. He hadn’t really brought it up since. He internally kicked himself for his shitty timing. It was a conversation to have at home. But it was a conversation he needed to have with her. He wanted them to be a family, legally. He wanted them to have a family.

  “Okay,” he said, letting her off the hook suddenly, “it’s a deal. You’re stuck with me forever.”

  “That’s it?”

  “For now,” he answered.

  She watched him as he looked at the people passing outside the window. She hoped that she hadn’t hurt him and that he understood. They sat in a comfortable silence for a bit, sipping their drinks. The effect of the tequila started to make Lydia tired, and she leaned into Jeffrey, who dropped his arm from the ledge behind her and placed it across her shoulders.

  “You want to head back?” he asked her, and was answered by a small yawn.

  “We need the check,” he said as the young waiter approached.

  “Your bill has been taken care of, sir.”

  Jeffrey frowned. “What do you mean? By whom?”

  The waiter turned around to look at the bar and shook his beautiful head. “He’s gone.”

  “What did he look like?” asked Lydia.

  “He was big—not muscular, but strong,” he said, then held his arms out to mimic a big belly. “He carried a lot of weight around his middle. Bald. Wore a black suit. I’ve never seen him before.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He had a thick accent, maybe Eastern European or something. He had a shot of Grey Goose, pointed to you, and said to cover the tab and keep the change. He handed me a hundred dollars.”

  “He didn’t use our names?” Jeffrey asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “Thanks,” Lydia said, grabbing her bag from the seat beside her and sliding out of the booth. They left the restaurant hand in hand as the mariachi band kept playing. The music followed them out onto the street and into the sea of people who were parading down Ocean Drive. The ocean yawned in a big black space to their right, and the giant palms across the street swayed in the breeze.

  “That’s weird,” Lydia said, leaning into Jeffrey, observing cars and people on the street around them, wondering who was watching them. She pulled her bag close to her, suddenly feeling exposed.

  “Only the people in my office know we’re in Miami,” said Jeffrey, thinking aloud.

  “And Detective Ignacio,” she answered, considering the possibilities. They pushed their way through the crowd, not moving quickly enough to be conspicuous, but not meandering, either. He draped his arm across her shoulder and pulled her in closer.

  “Did you bring your gun?

  She hesitated. “It’s in my suitcase,” she said, slipping her hand into the bag. “You?”

  “Ditto.”

  “Maybe we’re being paranoid,” she said, glancing casually around her but making a point not to look behind. “Maybe it was just a really nice guy who gets off on random acts of kindness.”

  “Nobody’s that nice.”

  “Cynic.”

  Jeffrey looked straight ahead and slowed their pace a bit. He scanned the area ahead of them, looking for someone matching the description the bartender had given. He saw at least three men in the crowd around them who fit the bill.

  “Maybe the person trailing us in the black Mercedes is just making sure we get home safely,” he said after a moment.

  “Do you have eyes in the back of your head?” asked Lydia, knowing not to turn around and look, though that was her instinct.

  “No, but I can see the reflection in the side-view mirrors on the parked cars.”

  “Very clever.”

  “Just keep walking.”

  They walked a block and made a quick left while the Mercedes was caught in traffic at the light, then hopped in a cab that was sitting on the corner.

  “Make a U-turn, go back up this street, and then take the scenic route to the Delano,” Jeffrey ordered the cabbie. Lydia knew if she had given an order like that, she would have gotten an argument. But no one argued with Jeffrey—except for Lydia, of course. He had some kind of natural authority to his tone that people responded to automatically. Jeffrey kept an eye on the side-view mirror, and when he was sure they hadn’t been followed, he told the cab to head straight to the hotel.

  They hustled through the lobby and took the elevator to their floor. When they reached their room, the door was ajar.

  “Shit,” Jeffrey said, thinking that the gun in his suitcase had probably just been stolen.

  Lydia handed him the Glock she had in her bag.

  “I thought you said it was in your suitcase.”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t want you to think I was planning on getting into any gunfights.”

  “Stay here.”

  He pushed the door open and edged into the room. Lydia followed him. The room was empty and the bed had been turned down. A tiny box of Godiva chocolates sat innocently on each pillow. The small bedside lights had been turned on, casting a soothing pink light; soft classical music was being piped into the room from somewhere. But their suitcases sat open on their bed, looking as if they’d been neatly unpacked and repacked.

  “This is the most considerate room ransacking I’ve ever seen,” said Jeffrey as he walked over to the suitcases.

  “That’s how they do it at five-star hotels.”

  He removed a black leather box from his and opened the clasps. His Glock remained where he had left it, polished and disassembled. “I don’t believe it,” he said.

  He looked through her suitcase. “Did they get the tape?” he asked. He turned, to see her removing the Jiffy envelope in its plastic evidence Baggie from her bag with a smile.

  “I never go anywhere without my bag of tricks.”

  “Nice work, Felix.”

  chapter seven

  It was pretty obvious that the whole thing had been carefully orchestrated. Paying their bill had been a kind of greeting. Following them had been a message. And entering their room but not actually removing anything had been a warning. We know you’re here, we know why, and we don’t like it. But who “they” were and how “they” could have known that Lydia and Jeffrey were in Miami and staying at the Delano remained a mystery. Jeffrey’s office knew. And Detective Ignacio knew.

  “If the police wanted to harass us, they would have been less subtle. Because they can be,” said Jeffrey. “They would have shown up here, made a scene about the weapons, seized the tape. There wouldn’t have been any guesswork.”

  “Well, that means then that either the detective’s phone is not secure or mine isn’t.”

  “Right. But who was listening, and why?”

  “They were pretty showy about it. Trying to scare us off?”

  “Then they clearly don’t know you very well.”

  “Because now I’m hotter than ever to find out what’s going on.”

  “You’re hotter than ever. That’s for sure,” he said, drawing her down onto the bed.

  They hadn’t bothered to call the police, knowing that there was nothing they could have or would have done anyway. Jeffrey had locked the
door and placed the chair in front of it, checked the room for bugs. It would require some Mission Impossible–style moves for someone to get onto the balcony. Glocks were loaded on the bedside tables. They felt safe enough for the night.

  He traced her cheekbones with his finger and looked into her storm-cloud gray eyes, moved a lock of her blue-black hair off her face. She smiled into his eyes, and he felt it move him inside. When it was like this with them, when they were close, the future didn’t matter to him anymore. Those moments were so powerful, so right, everything else seemed distant and unimportant.

  Her body was lean and strong beneath him; he could feel her tautly muscled thighs entwining with his. He took in the scent of her skin, feeling her small, warm hands lightly take hold of his back. Just being close to her in this way felt like making love, with no space between them, their softest breaths as loud as the ocean.

  chapter eight

  He was sweating, though the air-conditioning was blowing as cold as it got in his black Porsche Boxster. At nearly 1:00 A.M., Alligator Alley was as dark and quiet as a grave. He opened her up. The car was so hot, so fast, it was a shame that it had to be driven even close to the speed limit. He felt calmer as he watched the speedometer climb toward one hundred miles per hour, the dials glowing neon blue and red in the darkness. He gripped the leather steering wheel with one hand, his other hand resting on the gearshift as if it were the knee of his lover. He was about to push it even further, but he lost his nerve, slowing to eighty-five miles an hour.

  “Slow the fuck down, Sasa,” growled Boris in his heavily accented English. “If we get pulled over …”

  “If we get pulled over? What? What, Boris? What have we got?”

  Boris glared at him for a minute and then looked away, staring out the window into the darkness, turning the back of his shaved head to Sasa. Sasa took more crap from Boris than from anyone. Nobody else would dare to talk to him the way Boris did. Because Boris was older, because he was Sasa’s father’s cousin, because Boris was generally right, Sasa let him speak his mind. But even Boris knew the line, and he was fucking close. Especially tonight, when Sasa was tense and tired, going someplace he didn’t want to go.

  He couldn’t wait to get out of the Everglades and be back in South Beach. All that quiet, all that dark, all the bodies floating gray and bloated out there that no one would ever find—it made him edgy. He thought of the thousand pairs of dead eyes staring sightless, the wrinkled, rotting skin, the blood spilling into swamp water. He turned the radio on but picked up only static. He was glad he had brought someone with him on this trip. Even if it was only Boris.

  “Hey, Boris, you take it in, eh? Give me a break tonight?” he said, looking over at the older man, whose huge frame seemed even larger in the small interior of the sports car. He had to cross his arms uncomfortably in front of him to fit his broad shoulders into the car.

  “Fuck off, Sasa.” But there was no conviction in it, maybe a little sadness, maybe a little fear. Nobody wanted to go in, not even the tough guys like Boris.

  Boris smelled of vodka and body odor. With his moist baby-doll eyes edged in girlishly long lashes and the black canyons of fatigue, the pasty-white skin of neglected health, and a permanent five-o’clock shadow on his multiple chins, Boris always looked to Sasa like a malevolent Pillsbury Doughboy. Instead of giggling, if you poked him in the belly, he’d blow your head off.

  Boris sat shaking his head at his own thoughts, coughing a hacking cough that was usual for him when he was upset. “He only wants you,” Boris said finally, his voice raspy with phlegm. “They’ll only see you. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here at all.” Sasa said nothing. It was true, and they both knew it.

  He was relieved when they pulled off the highway and onto the dark road that brought them closer to the end of this errand. He could see the lights of a house ahead of him, though there were still miles to go. It was that dark and that isolated. There were a million gleaming stars above them, and the only noise was the Boxster sounding like a jet engine in the stillness.

  At the gate, a man wearing a cheap gray suit, a wrinkled navy tie, and sunglasses with a wire hanging from his ear put a hand out for Sasa to stop. His breath rolled in like a foul fog as Sasa lowered the window. “Sasa Fitore,” he said before the man could ask. As the man repeated his name into the Nextel phone he pulled from a pocket, Sasa squashed the urge to put a bullet in his brain. He hated people who tried to exert authority over him. And he really hated people who wore sunglasses at night.

  The man stepped aside, the gate swung open, and the Boxster glided up a long, winding drive edged on either side by thick foliage. Boris emitted a light snore, and Sasa elbowed him hard as they approached the house. Boris sat up straight and put his hand inside his jacket, looking instantly alert and deadly. They approached the stately home dominated by white columns and large bay windows. Landscaped artfully with lighted palms, it was grander and far more isolated than the Snug Island house and thus far better suited to his client’s needs this evening. There was no hint as to what went on inside.

  Sasa pulled up and found a spot to leave the car. There were more than twenty black sedans and limousines parked in front of him. Some of the chauffeurs stood outside their vehicles, smoking cigarettes or chatting with one another. Sasa counted three diplomatic and two government plates just at first glance as he stepped out of the car.

  He jogged up the steep flight of stairs. He rang the bell and was admitted by a butler in a leather bondage mask. Sasa kept his head down as he was escorted through the house—he didn’t want to see anyone he shouldn’t. He heard a drunken cackle come from somewhere behind him. Somewhere deeper in the house, he heard a keening wail that could have been pleasure or pain—or both.

  The butler opened the heavy wood door at the end of the hallway by its brass handle. Inside, the client was fondling the large artificial breasts of a tall, gorgeous woman, whose face Sasa had seen before but couldn’t place. She was a striking redhead, her skin like snow. Her mouth was as red and wet as cherry candy, and she pouted at Sasa in a pretty, nasty way, which made him stir inside. She straddled Sasa’s client on the sofa, though he was fully dressed. He was touching her when Sasa entered, and the woman did not move to cover herself. Sasa tried not to stare.

  “You’re late,” Nathan Quinn said simply, gently pushing the woman from him and turning toward Sasa.

  “Yes,” Sasa replied, “we had to make an important stop along the way.” He didn’t offer an apology. They both knew who had whom by the balls, in spite of the way it seemed.

  “I see. But you have it, of course.”

  “Of course,” he answered, pulling the DVD from the inside breast pocket of his thin leather blazer. He walked forward and handed the black jewel case to the client, whose large hands made it look like a playing card. The man stared at it for a moment, a wolfish expression taking over his already-intimidating face. A low growl escaped from his throat. And then he turned that look on Sasa, who struggled not to back up toward the door. “Will you stay and watch tonight?”

  “No, thank you,” Sasa said, his regretful smile not in the least sincere.

  And at that, he seemed to disappear from Quinn’s consciousness. Quinn extended his hand to the woman, and they walked from the study. As they walked past Sasa, he noticed she still had not closed the top of her vampish red Lycra dress. The butler had stood waiting to escort Sasa back, and he did so now, closing the door behind him. Halfway down the stairs, Sasa heard a cheer erupt from the house. Show time.

  He lighted a cigarette with his sterling Zippo and walked to his car. He was sweating again; it was too hot for the leather jacket he wore. Boris had managed to extract himself from the vehicle and was leaning against the hood.

  “Z’all right?”

  Sasa nodded. Boris looked away. Sasa got in his car and waited for Boris to remove his enormous ass from the hood and get in. As soon as he had closed the door, Sasa pulled down the drive fast, his tires squealing
as he went.

  chapter nine

  The opulent home of Nathan and Jenna Quinn was located on Snug Island, an enclave of exclusive waterfront properties near South Beach, a jewel nestled in giant palms. It was a peaceful and beautiful neighborhood, whispering fronds and wind chimes the only sounds, the scents of saltwater and newly cut grass heavy in the air. The tranquillity and beauty were so striking in contrast to their sometimes gritty and harsh neighborhood at home that Lydia found herself trying to remember for a moment why she and Jeffrey stayed in New York City. She figured their duplex apartment, about a quarter of the size of the grandly opulent homes they passed—if she was being generous in her estimate—had cost about as much. Oh, well, I guess that’s the price you pay to live in the center of the universe, she thought.

  It was coming on noon, and Lydia’s stomach was starting to rumble as they pulled up the steep drive edged in stout palms in their rented black Jeep Grand Cherokee. They followed Detective Manuel Ignacio in his maroon Taurus, which looked as if it had seen better days, even though it was well maintained. The same could be said of the detective. A handsome man, who looked to be approaching fifty, he had the slightest hint of blue fatigue under his eyes and just the shadow of stubble on his jaw, though it was early in the day. But he was neatly, if not expensively, dressed in a starched white shirt, navy tie, and charcoal gray suit, only the slightest paunch hanging over his belt. His graying black hair was neatly cut and precisely combed. He had the look of a man who worked hard and did his job well, but the stress of the case was obviously taking its toll. Burnout was right around the corner for this detective.

  When the detective had arrived at the precinct that morning just after 8:00 A.M., carrying a cup of Starbucks coffee and a copy of the Miami Herald, he found Lydia and Jeffrey waiting outside his office. Lydia was used to being treated like an interloper when she tried to insinuate herself into a case. But the detective had seemed glad to see them, greeting them both with an enthusiastic handshake and offering them coffee. He welcomed them into his office, which was neater and more organized than the office of any cop she had ever met in her life.