Gathering Dark

by Candice Fox

  ‘It’s like a hamster.’ Santiago was smiling. ‘Only smaller.’

  ‘I like the nose. It’s twitchin’,’ one of the big goons said. ‘See it twitchin’?’

  ‘Look at the ears. They’re so small. So stupid.’

  ‘Can I have a hold, boss?’

  Santiago tipped the gopher into the big man’s hand, which was the size of a baseball glove. Hugh Jackman ran over his palms and the men watched and laughed.

  ‘Does it bite?’ Santiago’s lieutenant asked me. I wiped my throbbing face on my palms.

  ‘No, he’s friendly,’ I said.

  ‘What’s it doing in this little box here?’ Santiago said. ‘That’s no place to keep a pet.’

  ‘It’s a long story,’ I said. ‘The arrangement was supposed to be temporary but it’s gone on longer than I anticipated.’

  The two big goons put their palms together to make a big platform and watched the gopher run between them, almost giggling with delight. Santiago picked up the gopher and put it in the pocket of his shirt, showed his crew how the gopher popped out again, looking over the hem of the pocket like a kid going for a ride at the fairground.

  ‘Alejandro here is gonna bring you a nice hamster cage,’ Santiago said, nodding at his sideman. ‘One of those ones with the tubes that go in and out. The tunnels. You know? So the gopher can run around. Can he use a mouse wheel? Get one with a mouse wheel, Alejandro. Two mouse wheels.’

  Alejandro nodded once, smiled warmly at me.

  ‘You don’t have to do that,’ I said.

  ‘I like this thing,’ Santiago said, ignoring me. He was making a tunnel with his fists now, the restless Hugh Jackman wriggling through one hand and into the other. ‘I like its stupid little ears. I might get one for my sobrina. Do you have a name for it?’

  ‘Ye—’

  ‘You will call it Santiago Mateo Nicolas Cruz,’ he said, passing the gopher back to me.

  ‘Of course, I will,’ I said.

  Santiago gave Alejandro some instructions in Spanish. I returned the creature to its box and tucked it safely away. When Santiago nodded, the men started to file out. The gang leader pointed back at me as he left.

  ‘You’re a nice person, Blair Harbour,’ he said again.

  JESSICA

  Jessica stood on her balcony and stared down at the vehicles banking up at the traffic lights on Alameda, panhandlers ducking between cars with their cardboard signs. She could see a helicopter circling the streets south of Downtown, its blue-white spotlight stabbing down, stirring, looking for someone in the murk. She had taken a flight with one of the bird crews once, just out of curiosity. She’d sat rigid in her seat, gripping the frame of the shuddering aircraft, sweat rolling down her belly under her uniform. They’d flown over one of Johnny Depp’s houses, so low they’d rustled the treetops. The unbroken view of the glittering city had been ruined when her pilot started up with a story about how the chopper had been shot at as it flew over Compton once. A bullet had pinged off the left landing skid. Another half an inch and it would have hit the fuel tank, turning the machine into a fireball rocketing towards the earth. She’d thrown up for fifteen minutes straight after her feet hit solid ground.

  The time had come. Jessica held her phone in one hand and a piece of paper with a number on it in the other. A phone number for Kristi Zea had been difficult to obtain. She filtered her calls through a website that specialised in masked numbers – generic phone numbers with an area code of the client’s choosing. According to the piece of paper, Jessica would be dialling Missouri. However, she would bet that the call would be diverted through the website’s algorithms and back to Los Angeles, where Kristi Zea was still living. People were creatures of habit, and trauma tied them to a location. She dialled the number and waited with little hope that the woman would pick up.

  Someone did. There was a shuffling, as if the phone was dropped and retrieved. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Kristi?’

  A pause. Jessica gripped her balcony rail and watched the night, listening hard.

  ‘She’s not here,’ the woman on the line said. ‘You can leave a message.’

  ‘I’m Jessica Sanchez. West LA. I was hoping to talk to Kristi about a case she was involved in some years ago. In 2009. Adrian Orlov.’

  ‘She doesn’t talk to any journalists,’ the voice said. ‘Bye.’

  ‘Wait. I’m not a reporter. It’s Jessica Sanchez – Detective Jessica Sanchez. West LA Homicide.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Do you remember me?’

  ‘I . . . Look, Kristi already knows that the woman got out. The shooter. She doesn’t care.’

  ‘I’m not calling about Blair Harbour’s release,’ Jessica said. ‘I want to ask you some questions about the case itself.’

  More silence. Jessica tapped the balcony rail, chewed her lip, bracing for the disconnect tone. She heard a dog barking in the background of the call, close.

  ‘Kristi’s not—’

  ‘I know it’s you, Kristi.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I don’t want to talk about it,’ Kristi snapped. ‘And I don’t have to.’

  ‘I just have a couple of things to clear up, and I hoped we could meet,’ Jessica said. ‘It’s nothing official.’

  ‘What the fuck does that mean?’ Jessica was surprised by the sudden desperation in Kristi’s voice, which had gone up in pitch. ‘I mean – what – clear up what things? The case is closed. Adrian is dead. That Harbour bitch did her time and she’s out now. It’s over. What the fuck could you possibly want to know?’

  ‘Can I just meet you for a drink?’

  ‘You said it was nothing official. Does that . . . What does that even mean?’

  ‘I don’t want to cause you any distress,’ Jessica said carefully. ‘I just want to talk.’

  ‘Well, I don’t want to talk, okay?’ Jessica heard a glass clunk onto a firm surface on the other end of the line. Kristi swallowed hard. ‘I don’t know why the hell you would think I’d want to talk about my dead boyfriend who got shot right in front of my eyes.’

  ‘It’s just that—’

  ‘Don’t call this number again,’ Kristi said. ‘I’m changing this number. This number is dead now. Don’t call me. Ever.’

  The line clicked off. Jessica looked at the screen, the red circle with the ‘X’ emblazoned on it, and felt the last dregs of hope draining out of her.

  BLAIR

  Sneak wasn’t home when I arrived. There was a note on the counter that just read, ‘Sorry, Neighbour.’ I scrunched it up and put it in the bin, changed Hugh Jackman’s water bowl and was just clicking the lid of the ice cream container into place when there came a knock at the door.

  Alejandro was standing there in the night with a large box in his arms. A shudder of strange emotions rushed through me, terror and desire and joy and dread, a wave that left me feeling lightheaded.

  ‘Right now?’ I laughed. ‘I didn’t think he meant—’

  ‘He always means right now,’ Alejandro said. I shut the door behind him and followed him to the counter. I expected him to dump the box and leave, but he took a butterfly knife from his back pocket, flipped it open and started slicing down the side of the box. I stood back and watched. A man cutting open a box. Muscles working in his forearms. His eyes downcast, dark lashes. Box falling open, defeated. Half my thoughts were desperate screams at how pathetic my sex-starved brain was being about this man’s presence. The other half were blazing, primal fantasies. There hadn’t been a male person who wasn’t a parole officer in my apartment since the real estate agent who had shown me the place. I broke away out of sheer necessity, opened the window by the sink and sucked in some cool night air.

  ‘You like it?’ Alejandro asked when the hamster cage was unveiled. It was a sizeable plastic tank with multicoloured attachments, curling tubes that went from level to level, spiralling up a tower to a kind of pod with a dome where the creature could look out from on high. There were indeed two mouse wheels. Alejandro p
eeled clear protective tape from a number of hatches where the different floors could be accessed for food and water and cleaning.

  ‘It’s very elaborate,’ I said. ‘A grand estate for a rodent bachelor.’

  ‘It’s like Santiago’s house. Big. Over the top. I sent photos from the Walmart. He didn’t like the first few I tried. Too small.’ We both laughed. I took Hugh Jackman from his box and put him inside his ridiculous hamster mansion, and we watched him taking tentative steps around the first floor, snuffling curiously at the mouse wheel.

  ‘You also get this,’ Alejandro said, taking a roll of money from his pocket and unclipping it from a diamond-studded fixing.

  ‘Oh, no.’ I put a hand up. ‘I don’t need it.’

  ‘I’ve got to give it to you,’ he said. ‘I have no choice.’

  I watched him peel four hundred dollars from the roll. He put it on the counter. ‘That’s about right, isn’t it? Four?’

  ‘That’s fine,’ I said. There was a long, awkward silence.

  ‘So, you’re hot right now,’ Alejandro said. ‘You know that?’

  I felt fire rush up my throat. ‘Oh, well, thank you. I—’

  ‘No, I mean like you’re running hot.’ He grinned. ‘You got a guy on your tail.’

  ‘What guy?’

  ‘There was a guy out there’—he nodded towards the door— ‘when I arrived. He’s gone now. He was watching you at the Pump’n’Jump, too. Al Tasik. He’s a detective. You know him?’

  My stomach dropped. ‘Yeah. You too?’

  ‘He’s well known to us,’ Alejandro said. ‘Not a nice guy. He picks on young cholos. Little homies who ain’t blooded yet. He planted a bag of weed on this kid from Santiago’s neighbourhood and the boy got his skull fractured in a holding cell while he was waiting to clear the bullshit charge. Now one of his eyes don’t work right.’

  ‘Did Tasik see you?’

  ‘Nobody sees me.’

  ‘Right. So if your guys hate Tasik so much, why don’t you just, uh . . .’ I struggled.

  ‘The lawn chairs?’ Alejandro laughed.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘He’s a cop,’ he said. ‘And not a boot, either. He’s got rank. It would be a big deal. Lots of negotiation required. Takes time. You get what I’m saying?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘What’s he after you for?’

  ‘A friend of mine is missing.’ I shrugged. ‘That’s honestly all I can think of that is driving him after me. I guess he thinks I know where she is, that I’ll lead him to her. Thanks for telling me.’

  My whole body was tingling with physical desire for Alejandro. I imagined myself giving off visible waves of steam or heat. He knew it. The few times I dared to catch his eye, he was smiling knowingly. I locked my gaze on the floor and told myself that I would not sleep with a San Marino 13s gang lieutenant, as another seemingly huge awkward silence swept over us.

  ‘Would you like a glass of wine?’ I asked.

  ‘Sure,’ he said. I only had one nice wine glass. I filled it and a water glass, tried to hand him the nice one. He took the water glass of wine and sipped it, trying not to laugh.

  ‘Is it that obvious?’ I asked eventually.

  ‘It’s like a big neon sign,’ he said.

  ‘How wonderful.’

  ‘How long were you inside?’

  ‘Ten years,’ I said. ‘One year out.’

  ‘Eleven years.’ He nodded appreciatively. We avoided each other’s eyes, a moment, broken only by our embarrassed giggling. He fell quiet in time and took a step towards me, reached up and touched my cheek. I twitched with anticipation at the contact, a jerky movement, rusty gears and pistons grinding to life inside my mind, sparks flying. Just to be touched at all was nearly intolerable.

  ‘We better take it slow,’ Alejandro warned as I started unbuttoning his shirt.

  Dear Dayly,

  I think it’s time you came and saw me. I’ve enclosed the visitation forms.

  John

  BLAIR

  Sneak was awakened by the clinking of my teaspoon in my coffee cup. She sat up on the couch and looked at me standing at the counter.

  ‘So, that was not a San Marino 13s guy I saw walking out of here at sunrise,’ she concluded.

  ‘It wasn’t?’ I suppressed a smile.

  ‘No, because you’d be dead if it was.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Unless he wasn’t here to kill you. Unless he was here for something else.’ She watched me carefully. I focused on my coffee.

  ‘Huh! I thought I smelled burning pubic hair.’ Sneak shook her head. ‘What the hell are you thinking, mixing with those guys? You can’t lick those tattoos off. Don’t let them tell you any different.’

  ‘I’m not mixing with them, Mother Teresa. I slept with one,’ I said. ‘It’s not going to be a regular thing. It was an accident.’

  ‘No it wasn’t. You know how I know? Because of the gopher palace. Look at that thing.’ She gestured to the tank by the window. ‘It looks like Disneyland. You didn’t buy that. That’s what a guy brings a woman with a gopher so he can make friends with her beaver.’

  Sneak waited for me to defend myself. I sipped my coffee instead. The simple fact was that the hours after Alejandro had arrived at my door had been indefensibly good, a selfish, devilish indulgence I couldn’t possibly justify rationally. It had been something I couldn’t connect to the real world, to legal or emotional or physical consequences, to predictions of it happening or not happening again.

  There was a knock at the door. Quincy. His apparently alcoholic mother was waiting for him at the kerb, the engine running, the woman leaning forwards over the wheel to eye me curiously. Obviously the child had decided that she could wait – nothing was more important than performance and chocolate. Sneak sat on the couch with her arms folded, decidedly miffed at my behaviour.

  ‘Can you play “Desperado” by the Eagles?’ I asked Quincy wistfully.

  ‘How ’bout “You’re No Good” by Linda Ronstadt?’ Sneak asked.

  ‘I’ve never heard of either of those songs,’ Quincy said. His mother beeped the horn.

  ‘Just take a chocolate, honey. Your mom’s waiting.’ I offered the box. My phone rang as Quincy bolted away across the lawn to the waiting car.

  ‘You need to drop that cop. Sanchez,’ Ada barked down the line.

  ‘Everybody’s lecturing me this morning.’ I set my coffee down. ‘I’m going to go back to bed in a minute, if you’re not careful.’

  ‘I don’t lecture,’ Ada said. ‘I don’t “ask” or “advise” people to do things. People do the shit I tell them to do or they get a squeezin’.’

  I didn’t need to ask what Ada’s idea of ‘a squeezin” was. I assumed it meant having body parts chopped off, bones broken or significant parts of oneself submerged in desert sand, perhaps permanently.

  ‘Sanchez rubs me the wrong way, so you’re gonna get rid of her.’

  ‘You rub her the wrong way, too,’ I remarked. ‘Just in case you were curious.’

  ‘I wasn’t.’

  I put Ada on speaker and told her what Jessica had told me about Marcus Lemon, my car, Dayly’s bank and phone accounts, Tasik’s concern about the Crips gang. Sneak sat watching me, listening, from the couch.

  ‘What does a woman sell for eight hundred bucks?’ Ada mused. ‘To someone who doesn’t want to be traced. You should ask the flabby ho-bag you’ve got crashing on your couch. She’d know.’

  ‘You’re on speaker,’ I said.

  ‘Hey, skanky ho-bag!’ Ada said, louder. ‘What does a person get from a dirty chicken-header in your gene pool for eight hundred clams?’

  ‘I don’t know, why don’t we ask your daddy what he paid last time I stuck my thumb up his ass?’ Sneak snapped.

  I hung up before Ada could reply, and grabbed the keys to the Gangstermobile.

  The I-110 highway. Homeless camps, factories spewing steam into the yellow sky, the desert and the scrubby brown moun
tains beyond. I watched billboards for casinos on the way to Palm Springs. Neil Diamond in silver sequins. Rod Stewart’s blazing white teeth poking out from his turmeric orange face.

  ‘San Francisco,’ I said.

  ‘Hmm,’ Sneak agreed, taking a hit of cocaine or the like from her handbag then dumping the bag on the floor.

  ‘What can you do within three hours of San Francisco airport?’

  ‘Three hours is not what we’re looking at,’ Sneak said, checking her face in the mirror. ‘If she was there for six hours total, she’d only have been able to stop for a few minutes wherever she got to three hours away. So, what – she drives three hours, spends two minutes picking up a lobster roll and hightails it back?’

  ‘Maybe not a lobster roll,’ I said. ‘But maybe she picked up something else. Something that could only be collected in person, by her, and then turned around. Maybe it was something someone paid her eight hundred dollars to go get.’

  ‘It’s just as likely she went somewhere an hour away from the airport, stayed for four hours and then drove back.’

  ‘Okay,’ I sighed. ‘I’m just trying to—’

  ‘That’s not accounting for traffic on the highways, or foot traffic in the airport. Plane delays on the tarmac.’

  ‘You can stop now,’ I said.

  ‘I saw a psychic last night,’ Sneak announced.

  ‘A psychic? Like a medium?’

  ‘I’ve known her for a long time. She helped cleanse me after the demon stole my roommate’s body. We did a sage ritual.’

  I quietly considered Sneak’s ultra-logical dismissal of my San Francisco time theory next to these new pieces of information and chose to say nothing.

  ‘She said Dayly’s under the ground. Deep under the ground. Where it’s dark.’

  ‘Well, I place about as much stock in that as I do in your roommate’s demon problem, Sneak,’ I said. ‘But if she’s right, she might have been seeing Dayly in New York catching the subway. That’s deep underground and dark.’