Light Before Day

by Christopher Rice

  I sat with my back to the open ocean. The wind in my ears must have sounded similar to what passengers on a jetliner hear after the fuselage comes apart. Everett sat on a bench in front of the outboard motor, his eyes narrowed against the wind but his expression serene.

  The temperature dropped by about ten degrees. I pulled up the zipper on my leather jacket.

  After what felt like an eternity on the water, I glanced over my shoulder and saw Martin Cale's yacht cruising through flat seas. The twinkling strands of light on the southwestern horizon belonged to Catalina Island.

  The boat was at least seventy feet long, with a main cabin that ran almost the length of the top deck. The cabin's row of squared-off windows were full of a golden light that looked like it had been stolen from a Rembrandt painting. A canopy flapped wildly over the open back deck.

  The swollen-looking hull was clad in some kind of dark wood that had deep ridges running through it. Three black portholes stared out at me like a shark's eyes.

  The yachts engine died. The wake collapsed into strands of loose foam that drifted toward us and broke across the dinghy's soft prow. Everett killed the outboard motor, and we drifted toward a foot deck that extended off the back of the boat like Juliet's balcony. As soon as I was within arm's length of the railing, I grabbed it and used it to pull myself up out of the dinghy. I climbed a short metal ladder, which brought me to the open deck. There were three patio chairs and a curved banquette sofa bolted to the floor around a metal table.

  A man in a cowboy hat stepped out into the wash of gold light that came from the open cabin door. Martin Cale was over six feet tall. His starched white shirt bagged around an emaciated bantam figure, and his silver belt buckle carried his initials. His sunken face looked as if it had been sandblasted by years of exposure to the sun. His eyes were round and rheumy, and his shoulder-length gray hair was tucked behind his ears.

  Suddenly our noses were practically touching and he was fingering one of the big silver buttons on my leather jacket with familiar affection. He brought his eyes to mine. His razor-thin lips parted slightly, but the only sound he made was a thin prolonged sigh.

  I heard Everett jump to the back deck behind me. "Told you I would get him here in one piece," the boy said.

  Cale shot the boy a withering look. "What time is it?" he asked. A frog had taken up permanent residence in his throat.

  "Ten to eleven," Everett answered.

  Cale nodded firmly and made a vague gesture toward the cabin door. Everett brushed past us. "I must say," Cale finally whispered. "This is an unexpected pleasure."

  In this man's world, I had somehow become a star. My heart stuttered at the thought. I thought of paying customers and violations like the one Melissa Brady had watched being broadcast to the widest audience possible. Sweat laced my back, and I could feel my sharp breaths on my upper lip.

  "Mr. Cale," I managed. "There's something I'd like to discuss with you before . . ."

  "Your performance," he whispered.

  I told myself he could be expecting Everett and me to put on a show for him. But I knew that wasn't what he really meant.

  "Your nephew is missing, Mr. Cale," I heard myself say.

  His brow wrinkled. He took a step back. I was not acting out the part he had expected me to.

  "You know Corey?" he asked suspiciously.

  "I do," I said. "And I'm afraid that something's happened to him."

  "Corey has a habit of going missing," he said. "How do you know my nephew?"

  "We had a relationship," I said. "It didn't work out. He didn't approve of some things." I put the force of a perverse passion behind my words. "Some things that I did. Things that I like to do."

  His expression softened. He gave me a wry conspiratorial smile and gestured for me to follow him into the main cabin. Inside, there was a massive poker table ringed by high-backed leather chairs. A banquette sofa sat beneath both rows of windows. A false wall paneled in mahogany chevrons separated the sitting area from the master suite. A large sepia-toned photograph hung from it. Before a horizon of rounded mountains, high clouds cast long shadows over an expanse of golden tule grass..

  Martin Cale crossed to a wet bar and offered me a drink. I didn't accept it. A sudden jolt shook the floor and sent vibrations up both of my legs. The twinkling lights of Catalina Island slid south across the cabin's windows.

  "Corey and I are not very close," Martin Cale said. "He's a hard young man. His past has toughened him in ways that are no longer of use to him." He sipped his drink and gave me an arch look. "What I'm trying to say, Mr. Murphy, is that we have both been subjected to Corey's disapproval."

  I nodded and took a seat on one of the banquette sofas. "I wish he could have understood," I whispered, trying to lead him.

  He shook his head, as if trying to gain Corey's understanding was like controlling the weather. "I thought the boy looked the other way when it came to my proclivities. But a few weeks ago, he was waiting for me at the dock when I came in. Us, I should say. Everett was with me that night. When Corey saw him come off the boat. .. well, let's just say it looked like he didn't approve."

  "How so?" I asked.

  "At first it looked like Corey had seen a ghost. Then he gave me this look. I assume he thought the look would have some effect. It didn't. I don't answer to my nephew." But his face had reddened. The simple memory of this exchange had shamed him.

  He took a seat on the other end of the banquette sofa, his feet planted firmly on the floor, holding his drink rigidly against one thigh, as if we were teenagers on a first date.

  "Why did he come to see you in the first place?" I asked.

  "He used to have a room here before I got him that apartment in West Hollywood," Cale answered. "He claimed he left something behind. I let him go on board. By himself. He left quickly, didn't thank me. When I returned to the ship I saw that he had gone through some of my drawers. I figured he was looking for cash. If that was the case, he was out of luck. I don't keep cash lying around."

  "When was this again?" I asked.

  "Two, three weeks ago," he said.

  I tried to engrave this detail in my memory. Just before he had gone to meet with Billy Hatfill, Corey had caught his uncle with a teenage boy and then rifled his drawers. I was curious to know what Corey had found.

  My sudden silence made Cale uncomfortable. "Are you the only family he has left?" I asked.

  'I'm not sure," he answered. "I don't think Corey's seen his mother for years. Which is just as well, I guess. Where I saw a pile of cow shit, my brother saw an angel with a broken wing.

  Tonya. Vile bitch." He shook his head, dismissing her. "She probably died with a needle in her ankle. If God is just."

  Here was a man who took pleasure in the sexual violation of young boys, casting harsh judgments on drug addicts. I studied the veins in the side of his leathery neck and felt the box cutter burning a hole in my ankle.

  "Corey never mentioned you or his mother," I said. "Forgive me for saying this, but I figured he was ashamed of you both." His eyes flashed to mine and he made a small sound in his throat.

  "But maybe he just didn't mention you because then he would have to tell me where he had come from."

  "Hell," he said abruptly. "That's where Corey came from. After my brother died, Tonya took Corey on a little road trip through the underbelly of the Great Central Valley. It ended when she was busted for possession in Fresno. Corey was sent to live with his grandmother in Visalia.

  Lucinda. An incredible woman. You never would have guessed she had given birth to a vile bitch like Tonya McCormick."

  I routed all my energy into focusing on the details he was giving me, tried to push away all thoughts of the revelation to come. I told myself that if Billy Hatfill was about to get what he wanted, I would do my best to get what I wanted as well. But I knew the real reason. I had to gain some understanding of the man who had set me up for this.

  "I thought Corey ran away from home when he wa
s sixteen," I said.

  "He did," Cale answered. "But he didn't run away from his mother. He ran away from his grandmother."

  "Why?" I asked. "If she was such an incredible woman."

  "She was dying," he said. "And there was . . . some trouble."

  The engines throbbed somewhere below us and the glass decanters in the wet bar rattled together.

  "Corey had been in love," he finally said, as if the words made no sense to him, "with a boy named Reynaldo Reyez. He told me Reynaldo was the strongest person he had ever met. Later, after he revealed more to me about his inclinations, he also told me that Reynaldo was the most beautiful person he had ever met. But Corey had no idea that Reynaldo's father was a drug runner.

  "Reynaldo's parents had come to Visalia on something they call the Michoacan Trail. It's a pipeline of men and materials that come to the Central Valley from Mexico to work in the meth trade. Reynaldo's father was what they call a spider. He transported goods for a drug lord named Eduardo Velasquez. But nobody in Visalia knew this until after."

  "After what?" I asked.

  "After Reynaldo’s father shot his wife and then turned the gun on himself," he said.

  He contemplated his drink. "Reynaldo’s father had tried to protect his family, you see. His son knew nothing about what he was doing. But then his wife got hooked on the stuff."

  "Meth?"

  He nodded. "When Reynaldo’s father found out that his work had finally come home to roost, he tried to get out of the business. He wanted to get help for his wife. Eduardo Velasquez suspected that Reynaldo’s father was going to cross over and become an informant. So he did what any fine upstanding drug lord does. He located Reynaldo’s grandmother back in Mexico and had someone hang her from the rafters of her bedroom. When Reynaldo’s father got the news, he snapped. He went home, shot his wife, and then shot himself."

  "And Reynaldo?" I asked.

  "No one knows for sure," he said. "Some people in Visalia said they saw Reynaldo's father driving him out of town that morning—you know, to give him a last-minute chance to run. But there were only rumors. Hopeful rumors, if you ask me. The police thought it was possible that Reynaldo escaped right after his father shot his mother, but they never found any evidence to confirm it. I, on the other hand, thought that Reynaldo's father probably did drive him out of town, killed him somewhere else, and hid the body because he didn't want to be remembered as a child murderer."

  I tried to swallow every detail of this narrative, tried to incorporate it into what I already knew of Corey McCormick. Meth had torn apart his life not once, but twice. It had stolen his mother and his childhood lover. All this had been topped off by the betrayal he had suffered at Melissa Brady's hands in Oceanside. To say nothing of the discoveries he had made about his uncle after he had come to seek his guidance and his aid.

  Without meaning to, I had closed my eyes.

  "Joseph had the same reaction when I told him the story," Cale said.

  When I opened my eyes, I saw Cale had taken a seat on the banquette sofa next to me. His arm rested across the back and he held his drink against his right thigh. The expression on my face startled him.

  "Joseph Spinotta?" I asked.

  He nodded briefly. Something in my voice had raised his suspicions. "Yes," he said. "Joseph even asked to meet with Corey after I told him about what Corey had gone through in his youth.

  I think Joseph wanted to take Corey under his wing. I told him I didn't think Corey was ready for Josephs . . . world. But Joseph insisted. They went to lunch."

  "When was this?"

  "Four years ago," he said. "Right after Corey left the Marines."

  "Did Corey meet with him?"

  "Oh, yes. But nothing came of it. Corey never said anything about Joseph. Joseph didn't say anything about it either, come to think of it. I assumed he would have some strong opinions about the man." He gave me a knowing smirk. "We can't expect Corey to appreciate a man like Joseph now, can we?"

  "Absolutely not," I said, as if this were a great loss for Corey. "Did Billy know about this meeting?"

  "Billy," he asked with disdain, as if the young man didn't know arithmetic. "I think Billy was probably too busy shopping."

  I envisioned my timeline in my head and added this detail. Corey and Joseph Spinotta had met face-to-face four years earlier. Neither man had said anything about the meeting afterwards.

  Martin Cale squeezed my thigh and my stomach twisted at his touch. He got to his feet suddenly and asked me to wait for a second. He walked into the master suite. I closed my eyes and took deep breaths and heard a drawer open.

  He returned a few seconds later and handed me a pencil sketch that was as skillfully rendered as the drawing I had found in Corey's apartment. I knew who the subject was without Cale having to tell me. Reynaldo Reyez had a long narrow face and shoulder-length black hair that draped one side of his face. He had slanted eyes that were almost like a cat's and a narrow nose that came to a sharp point.

  "Corey had a room here for a while," he said. "He rarely ever used it. After I got him that apartment in West Hollywood, I cleaned it out. But I found this. I don't even know who drew it, but that's Reynaldo. How he described him, at least."

  "Corey drew it," I said.

  This fact did not seem to interest him much.

  "Can I have this?" I asked.

  Cale nodded and sipped his drink. "I don't see why not."

  I rolled it up carefully and slipped it into the inner breast pocket of my leather jacket. "What did Corev believe?" I asked.

  "About what?" he asked. I could hear his impatience.

  "Reynaldo," I said. "What did Corey think happened to him?"

  "He never said," Cale answered. "I think he wanted to believe the boy was alive somewhere and he was too proud to admit that he was holding on to foolish hope."

  He went to the wet bar and refilled his drink. I got the sense that it was his way of closing down the subject.

  "When was the last time you spoke to Corey?"

  "Almost three weeks ago," he said. "Like I told you. All these questions. Is this an interrogation or is it just nervous chatter? Maybe you've got a case of stage fright, Mr. Murphy?

  Is that it?" I just smiled. "Why are you so interested in finding my nephew? Truly. Are you trying to win back his approval? Corey will never understand men like you and me. He will never understand that there is no harm in what we do. No harm whatsoever.

  "The love of an older man can turn a boy into an angel," he said in hushed tones. "Without it, the boy is never fully realized. That is a truth so profound that people are afraid to speak it."

  "Except for Joseph Spinotta," I said.

  "Yes," he said. "It's a lesson Joseph taught me, and I will be forever indebted to him for it."

  I wanted to ask him why die boys had to be drugged to receive the precious gift that men like Joseph Spinotta had for them. I wanted to tell Martin Cale that no matter what I had done in a blackout, no matter what we were getting ready to watch, I was not like him and never would be.

  My natural desires were for another man who could think and reason and feel pain the way I did, and those qualities could not be found in a thirteen-year-old boy. The idea of having sex with one was not just repulsive to me; it was preposterous.

  I realized I had just listed several good reasons why I could never be convinced to violate a child in a blackout. I felt a small, firm knot form in my chest. I wondered if it was the first sign of what Brenda Wilton had called faith.

  Martin Cale glanced down at his watch. "Everett!" he shouted. "It's time!"

  The engines died beneath us. Cale gestured toward the master suite. I smiled and gestured for him to go first. He did. As soon as he turned his back on me, I pulled the box cutter from my right boot and slid it inside the right sleeve of my jacket. I pressed my middle three fingers down on the retracted blade On the other side of the false wall, a large plasma-screen television stared down at a king-size bed with a choc
olate-colored comforter. Two high-backed chairs had been placed in front of the bed. Martin Cale took a seat in one, his eyes already on the television screen. He patted the empty chair next to his.

  Everett stood over an art deco desk that sat against one wall of windows. He was watching the seconds tick by on his digital watch. A silver laptop computer sat open on the desk in front of him. Behind it, there was something that looked like a tiny satellite dish. It was angled toward the darkness outside. Joseph Spinotta had been a master at implementing wireless Internet systems, and I figured this was his piece de resistance. A second cord ran from the computer off the side of the desk. I traced the cord's path to the bottom of the TV on the wall above.

  Everett looked from his watch to the desk in front of him. A small white keypad sat in front of the computer. I could just make out a long series of alternating numbers on its LED display. I had seen the device before. Large corporations used it to provide their employees with a unique password every time they logged on to their e-mail accounts. I wondered if Corey had discovered the keypad and the dish when he had searched his uncle's yacht.

  The computer monitor's screen went blank. The plasma-screen TV followed suit a few seconds later. A digital countdown appeared, starting at ten and going all the way to two. Then it was replaced by a password entry blank. I heard Everett punching keys on the computer's keyboard and saw small block dots fill the blank on the television screen.

  The password entry blank disappeared and the screen went from blank to red, a slow dissolve. A message box appeared. It read Confirming Authorization.

  "How much longer?" Cale whispered.

  "It usually takes about twenty seconds," Everett answered.

  Cale closed one hand over mine, the one that had the tip of the box cutter in it. I eased it up inside the sleeve of my jacket. Cale sensed this small motion and responded by adjusting his grip.

  "Where does it come from?" I heard myself ask.

  "What?" Cale asked.

  "The broadcast," I said.

  Cale laughed in his throat, amused but distracted by what was to come. "If anyone knew the answer to that question, there wouldn't be another broadcast. We wouldn't want that now, would we?"