Midnight Taxi Tango

by Daniel José Older

  “Please, Detective, call me Evelyn,” Mrs. Fern clucks. “And of course, dear, just to the left at the end of the hall there.”

  Reza smiles and disappears down the hallway. Richard and Evelyn Fern lead me upstairs.

  • • •

  “Of course, ever since Jeremy disappeared,” Evelyn says, shaking her head, “we’ve been as involved as we can be in the community.” They sit side by side, their hands interlaced. Richard’s office is cluttered with degrees, paperwork, a few file cabinets, and a gorgeous mahogany desk. A stunning photograph of some waterfall in Brazil takes up most of one wall. “The therapists all said, when you’ve lost a child, you can either disappear from the world or you can take part.” She smiles at her husband, eyes glassy. “We decided to take part.”

  I have no idea how we got to this episode of Carlos, Fix My Life, but here we are. I barely said anything, just asked some bullshit perfunctory questions to give Reza time to do whatever she’s doing down there. At least they’re talking.

  “It hasn’t been easy,” Richard says. “And of course it was especially hard on Caitlin.”

  “Caitlin?”

  “Oh, that’s our daughter,” Evelyn says. “Jeremy’s twin.”

  “Ah. Must’ve been very difficult for her, I’m sure.” Is that what people say to those who’ve lost loved ones? The words seem stunningly pathetic, considering what we’re talking about.

  Evelyn sighs. “Just awful. She struggled, but she’s really made a turnaround since those years after Jeremy died. First in her class at Yale. Now she’s the executive vice-president at Adopt the World.”

  “That’s a . . . ?”

  “Adopt the World provides adoption services to the most war-torn, impoverished countries,” Richard says. Guess he memorized the flyers. “Real terrible stuff.” Head shaking, brow creased, eyes faraway. “I mean, just . . . awful. But you know, they say if you want to heal yourself, you have to start by healing the world.”

  “Isn’t it the other way around?”

  Richard frowns, and then Reza walks in with the Ferns’ cordless phone in one hand and a file full of papers and a framed family photograph in the other. “Call him,” Reza says. She’s back, the Reza I know and really like, and she’s not fucking around.

  “Excuse me?” Richard says.

  “And where did you get that file?” Evelyn demands. “Have you been—”

  Reza gets up in Richard’s face and shoves the phone into his hand. “Call. Him.”

  Richard glares at us. “Who are you people? What the hell do you . . . ?”

  “Stop speaking,” Reza says. She says it quietly, but Richard gleans the threat in it and actually shuts the fuck up, to my surprise. Reza looks at me. “Give me your cane, please.”

  I hand it over, and she immediately unsheathes the blade. Richard and Evelyn Fern gasp. She puts the business end a few centimeters from Richard’s nose and then says: “Call your son.”

  Evelyn sobs, her face shriveled into itself like a scrunched-up paper bag that’s wearing too much makeup. Reza hands me the file and the photo. It’s from a while back: Richard and Evelyn grinning widely and the twins in front of them: Caitlin is all teeth and dimples, baby fat carried over into early adolescence, and Jeremy—tall and lanky, arms crossed over his chest, head slightly tilted.

  “Our son is dead,” Richard says, raising his hand. “And you have no right . . .” Reza flicks her wrist, and the blade slices open a bright red line across Richard’s forearm.

  Richard gasps. “Jesus!” Evelyn yells. She jumps up, finds herself face-to-face with the blade, and sits back down. “How . . . ? What kind of! Richard!”

  Richard stares at his arm, mouth open. He looks at Reza.

  “Make the call,” Reza says. “Put it on speaker. Tell him there’s an emergency and you need him to come over. Fuck it up, cry for help, call nine-one-one instead: Evelyn eats sword. Clear?”

  Richard’s eyes look like they might pop out of his head at any moment. He nods, mouth still hanging open, while Evelyn quietly sobs.

  Me? I just sit there and look surly. Ain’t shit I can do but play along at this point, although Reza’s turned into more of a wild card than I could’ve imagined.

  Richard pushes a button and the speed dial blips out a number in quick succession. Slick-ass. After two rings, someone picks up, but there’s only silence on the other end. Then a ragged breath.

  “J-Jeremy?” Richard says.

  Another breath, long and tortured.

  “Jeremy, your mother and I need you to come over to the house. Tonight. Something’s come up, I’m afraid. It’s important. I know we haven’t . . .” Tears pour down his face, and he has to pause to compose himself. “Sorry. I know we haven’t seen you in a few years, but this is important. Okay? We need to see you, son.” He closes his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  One more shuddering breath fills the room and then the call ends. Richard drops the phone and stands. “Now, we did what you . . .” Then he opens his mouth to scream because Reza’s raised my blade over her shoulder like she’s waiting for the pitch. She swings, slicing clean across his neck. Richard’s voice cuts off midsqueal. His throat gapes open, his light blue shirt suddenly bright crimson. He’s dead before he hits the floor.

  I jump to my feet. Evelyn Fern stands, opens her mouth to scream, and then Reza slices across her neck too and she drops.

  “What the fuck?” I say when my voice finally returns to me. “Wh-why?”

  Reza’s already on the ground, doing something to the bodies. She mutters a few words over each, eyes closed, and then says, “Because people tend to notice gunshots in these parts.”

  “I mean . . . why though?”

  “Open the file.”

  Photos, printed out from a computer. They’re all taken from across the street or through a crowd, stalker-style. It’s all folks I don’t know until . . . “Kia!” There’s Kia in Von King Park, talking to a tall, overweight kid. There she’s crossing Marcy Ave., backpack on, probably heading to school or the rec center. There she is laughing with her friend Karina.

  “And the next one,” Reza says. I flip ahead and find Shelly lighting a cigarette outside her apartment. Shelly running to catch the B37. Shelly talking on a cell phone in front of a bodega.

  “Shit,” I say. There are more pictures. Many more.

  Reza wipes the blade on Richard’s sweater and hands it back to me, handle first. “And that family photo. The boy.”

  I close the file with a shudder, look at the framed picture. “Jeremy Fern?”

  “That’s the long-armed motherfucker in the tunnel I told you about,” Reza says.

  I squint as the pieces come together. “Jeremy disappeared seven years ago and really became the ringleader of some maniac insect cult? And his parents knew the whole time?”

  “Not just knew, clearly . . . Caitlin too, I’m sure.”

  “And now he’s coming here? So we can . . . ?”

  “End this shit.”

  “I mean, I get that, but did we have to . . . ? Have you no code?”

  Reza stops what she’s doing and looks up at me. “Angie,” she says. “That’s my code. Now, give me a hand.”

  • • •

  We work in silence, rolling the bodies into rugs from the bedroom. We’re lugging the second heavy bundle down the front stairwell when Reza says, “Carlos, when I said my code was Angie, that was . . .” She shakes her head. “That’s true, but that’s only part of it. I do have a code, a real one. And rule number one is cut shit off at the roots. I know to you it looks like what I did was wrong because we weren’t under attack, but this is what I’ve learned from my years on the street—this is what I’ve learned from war: if you’re going to kill a thing, kill it dead. If you half step, you’ll be the dead one. That’s it.”

  I nod. It’s all still sp
iraling around my brain too fast to make heads or tails of. We round the corner at the landing. Beads of sweat slide down my brow, my back.

  “And you also knew,” Reza says between pants, “if you think hard enough about it, that they had to go from the moment we dropped cover.”

  “You dropped cover,” I point out. Then I feel sort of childish. It’s true though.

  “Right. Point is, you think they weren’t going to call the NYPD the second we walked out the door? They would’ve. And then we would’ve had explaining to do, if they caught us. And out here, cops come quick when they’re called. So they mighta. And I don’t know about you, but I got a trunk full of guns that I don’t need the five-o asking questions about. Not to mention the charge for impersonating a police officer is no small thing. And you—you got ID, Carlos?”

  I grunt a “no” as we reach the first floor. “And you know I don’t. I still . . .”

  “Do you know what they did to Angie, Carlos? They opened her up. Dr. Tijou told me there were eggs in her lungs, her stomach, all through her trachea and esophagus. Roach eggs, Carlos. She’d been tortured.” Reza pauses for a moment as we angle the body right to get through the basement door. “She was still alive when they put those things inside her, C. I wish she’d had someone end her as quickly as I ended the Ferns. And all of that shit happened to her because these people let it happen. They’ve been covering for this monster all along. And clearly someone in this house is plotting on Kia and had Shelly killed. You see the look on Mr. Fern’s face when he knew the shtick was up?” We clomp down the concrete stairwell. “Mrs. Fern too. They both know, they been knowing. They carry it with them. I’m sure the sister knows too. I get that you see innocent suburban America when you look at the Fern family, Carlos, but I need you to work past that delusion and see it for what it is.”

  The Ferns’ basement is pristine. What kind of maniac has a pristine basement? Empty boxes are stacked neatly against one wall. A washer and dryer, immaculate, glisten in the far corner. There’s a pool table in the center and a few lawn chairs set up under the one small window. At the other end, they’ve put up a little office area: a desk with some paperwork and a desktop computer on it. We lay Evelyn’s carpet-wrapped body beside her husband’s and then lean against the pool table to catch our breath.

  “I understand,” I say. “But you came outta nowhere with it. I had no idea ’bout all that.”

  “I know. I haven’t worked with you before and I couldn’t be sure you’d play along right.” She pauses, shuffles her feet. “Sorry ’bout that.”

  I dig out a Malagueña, put it in my mouth but don’t light it. “I just . . . The last time I took a life, a living one, I mean . . . I mean, mostly living—it never left me, is all. I’m still living the fallout of that kill, Reza.”

  “I understand,” she says, her eyes looking suddenly weary. “Believe me. And believe me when I tell you this had to happen.” Reza goes into a black duffel bag beside the bodies—she must’ve run out to the car for it when she was snooping around. She takes a Glock from the bag and holds it out to me, handle first.

  “I don’t really . . .” I say.

  “What?”

  “Not my style.”

  “Take it anyway. Try for headshots; seems to drop them quicker.”

  I nod, take the gun. It’s too heavy and awkward in my hands. I tuck it into my pants and already feel it jacking up my rhythm.

  “And I’m sorry I used your blade. If we’da done it down here, I would’ve used my guns. This place is soundproofed.”

  “How can you—”

  “Extra-thick glass on the windows, that slanted angle they at, the sealing around ’em. The door is big enough to shut in a meat locker. They designed this room for activities.”

  “So now we . . . ?

  Reza’s already halfway up the stairs. “Now,” she says, slamming the giant door at the top. “We wait.” She clicks off the light. “And then young Jeremy will show up and work his way through the house, come down here, and we handle him.”

  It’s darker than I’m comfortable with, but those windows near the ceiling would announce a lit-up basement in a dark house and ruin the whole thing. In my mind, the bodies at my feet loom large, take over the whole floor, stand up and walk around. Reza’s beside me, rustling through her bag again.

  “Rule number two is always be prepared. Now, take this.” She hands me a little flashlight attached to a headband. “And this.” A ski mask and some goggles. I put them on. “Now, hold still.” She shakes a can of something and then sprays it directly into my face and all over my head and body. “It’s extra-strength. DDT-out this bitch.”

  “Yay cancer.”

  She sprays herself down.

  “And there’s a corollary to that one.” She stands, and now that my eyes have adjusted to the half-light, I can see she has a double-barreled sawed-off shotgun in her hands. “Never be outgunned. Anyway,” Reza says, her own flashlight lighting up narrow pockets of the floor as she crosses toward the office end of the basement, “this gives me time to look over whatever they’ve been working on down here.”

  I light the Malagueña and lean against the pool table, trying to ignore the creeping, endless darkness around me.

  I can’t decide whether something is actually crawling around on the ceiling or if my troubled mind is just making shit up. Then a pale quarter-sized shape skitters across the patch of light thrown by the computer screen and disappears into the shadows. “Fuck,” I mutter. “Reza.”

  There goes another. And another. I turn on the flashlight strapped to my head, and five of them scatter from the sudden glow on the ceiling.

  I draw my blade. “Reza!”

  “Hang on, Carlos. I’m onto something over here. They got more photos on this computer. I think it’s Caitlin’s and—”

  “We got roaches, Rez. Lotta them.”

  “Well, kill them. I’ll be right there.”

  I follow the line of skittering monsters back to the stack of boxes.

  “Looks like they plotting on some of your people, Carlos.”

  “What?”

  “This dude looks half dead like you.”

  I’m across the room in seconds, and there on the screen in front of Reza is Gregorio Franco, the gray-skinned man with the beard and fedora I’d seen Sasha meet with when I was trailing her. “Shit.”

  Reza moves out the way. “Let me go see ’bout this roach situation.”

  There’s a few more shots of Gregorio, crossing a street, talking on a pay phone. And then I click on the next one and my breath catches.

  Sasha.

  She’s carrying a baby in one arm, our baby. And she’s pushing a stroller. There’s a baby in the stroller. Our baby.

  “Carlos,” Reza says. “We have a problem.”

  There are two babies. We have two babies. Twins. They are tiny and round and brown and perfect. And they’re ours. I . . . We have twins. Baby twins. Twin babies. Sasha’s hair is pulled back into a bun. She’s glancing sideways, looking fierce and beautiful as always. She wears a long jacket and a red blouse, jeans, and boots. Looks like she’s in Brooklyn, but I can’t place where.

  “Carlos,” Reza says again. “There’s . . . Fuck. There’s a door back here.”

  I have babies. Two of them. And they’re being watched.

  Fuck.

  Behind me, Reza yells, “Fuck!” and I swing around to see boxes fly away from the wall as she raises her shotgun. A wooden door swings open, and a man steps forward from the shadows. The blast rips out and devours this tiny dark world: everything echoes with it. The man flies backward and a thousand small shapes flutter out of the doorway. Another figure appears, and I hear the chuk-chuking reload of Reza’s weapon.

  These monsters want to destroy my family, my friends. My babies. Reza blasts again as I’m crossing the room. Two more
of the roach men already clamber forward over the shattered remnants of their brethren, but they don’t get far. My upswing catches the first one, cleaving a dark red gash across his midsection. He drops as my blade comes down on the second; it opens up his shoulder, and my next cut leaves his head dangling from a torn thread of cartilage.

  The air fills with pale flying monstrosities. I swat through them as a fifth and sixth roach man appear. One vanishes into the shadows at the far end of the room before either of us can get at him. Reza slow-steps into the darkness after him, shotgun poised. I close on the doorway, where the other stands watching.

  He hurls toward me, arms swinging, and I catch him midstride with a cross-body slice. The man spins and collapses, roaches exploding to either side, and I throw myself out of the way.

  “Reza?” I yell. They’ve moved into the far end of the basement, and I can’t make out shit for all these flying fuckers and the encroaching shadows.

  “Hang on.” She grunts, and I hear a dull crunch and then the sound of a body dropping.

  “Reza!”

  “I’m alright. Just too close to blast him without getting got too.” I hear another thwack and then another and the air gets even thicker with roaches. A few land on me and I brush them off and then spin a wild circle, patting at my clothes, and whirl directly into another tall pale man as he emerges from the tunnel.

  “Fuck!” is the only word that I get out before he smacks my blade to the ground, and then his cool hands find my throat and roaches surge along my neck and up my face, under the mask. If I open my mouth to scream, I’ll be inundated. The world quickly becomes gray and cloudy.

  Another figure steps out behind the one choking me, and I hear Reza yell. The face staring into mine is emotionless, pale, dead. I try to smash it, miss. A diamond-shaped chunk of flesh detaches and adjusts its evil little body before settling back in.

  Darkness begins to close in.

  And then I remember Reza’s gun, which I’d tucked into my waistband. My hands scramble around it, retrieve it, and put it under the man’s chin. I don’t close my eyes when I pull the trigger; I want to see it. The blast throws his head back, shattering bits of flesh and skull as roaches burst outward. I drop to the ground, shaking. Brace myself against the pool table and stumble to my feet. Swat roaches or my own frantic imagination. Everything is alive and crawling.