Fear of the Dark

by Gar Anthony Haywood

  “If you have no more questions for me, Mr. Gunner, you’ll excuse me. But I’m afraid I have better things to do with my time than lobby for a vote Lew is clearly not going to get, no matter what kind of man he may or may not be. If you’ll leave me your card, I’ll be sure to see that Larry gets back to you as soon as he possibly can.”

  Gunner took her in from where he sat and made a long, drawn-out exercise of pulling a business card from his wallet, teeming with ambivalence. The woman was young and well educated, easy on the eye and full of good intentions, but what she knew about black people wouldn’t make a short paragraph, and there was a sadness in that he could not reconcile.

  He flipped his card in her general direction and stood up.

  “Thanks for the time,” he said, and left her before the impulse to slap his third woman in six days grew too strong to overcome.

  Outside, Gunner reached his car and came to notice a familiar vehicle pulling up to the curb nearby.

  An old Postal Service jeep, badly painted and dented on one side.

  Its driver, a giant man with a meager mustache, heaved a heavy box of what looked like computer paper from the jeep’s passenger seat and took it inside Henshaw’s campaign quarters. He hadn’t recognized Gunner.

  But Gunner had recognized him, yellow windbreaker or no.

  enny Townsend’s fat errand boy worked some long hours for Lewis Henshaw. The California skyline was tying up the loose ends of a fast fade to black, well after 6 P.M., when he finally called it a day and drove home to a little one-bedroom house with wood slat sides and a tar-paper roof on the seedier side of Venice, far removed from the Pacific Ocean and its neighboring affluent real estate. Situated near the east end of the 12000 block of Victoria Avenue, the house was an architectural corpse, weather-beaten and lifeless. No lights shone in the windows; no sounds crept through the walls.

  Townsend’s friend had to open the gate of a chain-link fence surrounding the property to pull his jeep into the driveway. When he went back to lock it behind him, Gunner was standing there waiting, the only living soul on the street. The black man offered him an extended peek at the heavy S&W .357 in his right-hand coat pocket, giving him time to study its form in the dark, then stepped quickly inside the gate to join him on the other side of the fence.

  “You want to live to see another Hostess Twinkie, open the front door and keep your mouth shut,” Gunner said, nodding toward the house.

  The big man gave every indication that he was about to lose his lunch—his face had turned the unsettling shade of an August moon and his skin was lightly dotted with a cold sweat—but he managed to do as he was told without much deviation. He produced his keys at the door, entered the house with Gunner close behind, and waited for further instructions as the black man found a light switch with his free hand.

  Gunner glanced around and grimaced. The living room was right out of a Grandmothers’ Surplus catalog: cheap Indian throw rugs and bland-colored draperies, porcelain knickknacks in waist-high showcases and unreadable books killing time on dusty shelves. An old console TV stood at center ring, squaring off with an oversized sofa as a listless brass floor lamp played referee.

  The east wing of the Playboy Mansion, it wasn’t.

  “What do you want?” the big man asked, finding the nerve to distance himself from Gunner by a good eight feet. His color had not improved.

  “Your wallet,” Gunner said, now wielding the .357 openly, leaving no doubt as to where it was aimed. “For starters. Slide it over across the floor. Easy.”

  Again, the big man cooperated.

  Gunner found the driver’s license at the front of the wallet and looked it over, keeping one wary eye on its owner.

  “Says here your name is Stanley Ferris. That your real name, Ferris, or just something you made up?”

  Ferris swallowed hard and said, “It’s my name.”

  “Your friends call you Stan, I guess.”

  Ferris nodded.

  Gunner tossed the big man’s wallet back to him and, with some amazement, said, “You don’t remember me, do you, Stan?”

  Ferris didn’t, obviously, until Gunner pantomimed opening his fly with his free hand, the way he had in the locker room at the Hollywood YMCA.

  “Oh, Christ,” the big man said, his knees starting to buckle.

  “You going to faint?”

  “I think so. Yes.”

  “Sit down, then. You drop where you stand, I’m going to leave you there. Left my crane in my other suit. We alone?”

  Ferris sat down in one graceless motion of descent, mashing the ugly cloth cushions beneath him like so much thin air, and said, “Yes. Completely.”

  “You don’t have any girlfriends back there? Or boyfriends, maybe?” Gunner didn’t mind stealing another comic’s material, as long as it was sufficiently biting.

  Ferris frowned. “Why would you ask that?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “You asked if I had a boyfriend back there. Were you trying to be funny, or were you implying something?”

  He was actually miffed. As diplomatically as possible, Gunner said, “I was just trying to make sure we’ve got the place to ourselves. But if the way I phrased my question was suggestive of any buggery on your part, I apologize.”

  Ferris glared at him, cooled off, then started to swoon again. He was a man for all seasons, apparently.

  “You killed Denny, didn’t you?”

  Gunner shook his head. “No.”

  “You were at the Y last Thursday. I saw you. In the locker room.”

  Gunner shrugged. “I’m an athletic kind of guy.”

  “Please. Don’t joke.”

  “Look, Stan. You’re confused. I called this meeting, not you. I’m going to handle the questions and you’re going to handle the answers. Okay?”

  Ferris studied the black man’s face for a moment before rolling his large head up and down several times, nodding.

  “What makes you think Denny’s dead?” Gunner asked him.

  “I don’t ‘think’ he’s dead. I know he is.”

  “Okay. So how do you know? You see him fall down an open manhole or something?”

  “I didn’t see anything. And anybody who says I did is a liar.” He was getting testy again. “But I haven’t heard from Denny since I left his … since I talked to him on the phone Thursday morning. And he said then that somebody was trying to kill him. That’s why he … I mean, why I…”

  “The overnight bag. In the locker. I saw you make the drop, Stan, I know all about it. Go on.”

  Ferris was having a hard time keeping his hands still. He asked if he could have a cigarette, and Gunner consented, then watched him fumble through the process of drawing a pack of Winstons from his shirt pocket and lighting one with a book of stubborn matches.

  “I went back to the Y that night to check the locker, to make sure he’d picked up his things. But he hadn’t. He didn’t show up to get them the day after that, either. And here it is, four days later, and I still haven’t heard from him. So I figure he must have been right. It must have happened to him just the way he said it might.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d know anything about why he was killed?”

  Ferris shook his head.

  “Or what he did to earn the money he gave you to drop his things off at the Y?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t know he murdered two men in a bar three weeks ago?”

  Ferris let out a long breath, blowing old smoke out so he could suck a lungful of new smoke in. “Denny wouldn’t do that.”

  “He did it. And you helped him, you fat shit.”

  “No! I had nothing to do with it!”

  Gunner grinned. “Then he did tell you.”

  The big head rocked up and down again, a piston of fat and bone. “He said he was the one who had killed that Buddy Dorris kid and the bartender. The Brother of Evolution, or Revolution, or whatever it is those crazy bastards call themselves. He told me, sure, but
only after the fact. I’d have never let him do it otherwise, so help me.”

  “He tell you who put him up to it? Was it Larry Stewart, maybe?”

  “Larry Stewart? Who’s Larry Stewart?”

  “I followed you here from Henshaw headquarters, Stan. You work for Larry Stewart.”

  “And you think Larry paid Denny to kill Dorris? You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “And if I’m not kidding?”

  “Then you’re crazy. No way Larry paid Denny to do anything. Absolutely no way.” He was hoping that would be the end of it, but of course, it wasn’t.

  Gunner took a single step forward, toward him.

  “I’m not crazy, Stanley. I’m just fresh out of time for fucking around.” His voice had a hollow sound to it now, and he was wearing the face of a man on the edge of madness, one whose nerves felt like a frayed rope worn to a single strand. He was down to the last few hours of freedom Poole had tossed him like a bone, and he could no longer support a facade of indifference.

  “How much did he get for the hit?”

  “I don’t know. Ten grand, I think. But that’s all I know, I swear to God.”

  “Bullshit. If Townsend told you half the story, he told you all of it.”

  “No!”

  “I was in his apartment when you packed his bag. I heard you looking for the Henshaw flyer in that little box of buttons on his dresser. You didn’t find it because I found it first, but you knew what was on it just the same.”

  “No! I didn’t know what Denny wanted with that fucking flyer!”

  “You’re lying, fat boy. And you’re pissing me off. So I’m going to ask you one more time, before I start blowing your fingers off: who paid Townsend to hit Buddy Dorris?”

  Ferris’s eyes had locked onto the .357, a black metal serpent rearing its ugly head to strike. When at last he spoke, it was without actually hearing the words spill out of his own mouth.

  “Larry. Denny said it was Larry.”

  Gunner felt his pulse take off, fear and exhilaration boiling together in the fuel that was his blood.

  “But that’s crazy, like I said! I didn’t believe it when Denny first said it, and I don’t believe it now. Larry’s got a campaign to run, he’s got no time to waste on thrill killings!”

  “We’re not talking about a thrill killing. We’re talking about murder for hire.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you call it! The Dorris kid and his hoodlum friends were no threat to Lew, they were just gnats on his ass. So why should Larry care if Dorris lives or dies? Dead or alive, who was he?”

  On such short notice, Gunner couldn’t say.

  “Besides,” Ferris went on, “Larry couldn’t stand Denny. Wouldn’t even speak to him, in fact. Since he joined the campaign in August, everyone else in the office had given Denny something to do at one time or another—run a note here, pick up a package there—but not Larry. Never Larry.”

  Gunner was reminded of Terry Allison’s similar testimony. “And yet he kept Denny around.”

  Ferris didn’t say anything.

  “You didn’t think that was odd?”

  The big man shrugged. “Not really. Lew needs all the votes he can get, and Larry knows it. Although I’m sure he must have come pretty close to cutting Denny loose a number of times. For sure after …”

  He stopped himself in mid-sentence, as if realizing he was about to tell an off-color joke in mixed company.

  “After what?” Gunner said. It was an order to comply, not an innocent inquiry.

  “After the drugstore thing,” Ferris said.

  Gunner encouraged him to be more specific with a determined silence.

  Ferris burned a fresh hole in the right arm of the sofa crushing his cigarette out and said, “Denny and I made a run one Sunday to pick up a few emergency supplies. Stationery items the staff had to have and couldn’t get from our normal supplier until Monday morning. We went to a Thrifty’s, a couple blocks down from the office, and Denny started an argument with the cashier on our way out. He got all bent out of shape over the way she had handed me my change, or something dumb like that, and a couple of kids in the store took exception to some of his language. A security guard moved in to break things up and Denny just lost it.

  “He busted the guard up pretty bad, and one of the bigger kids, too. Before I could talk him down, somebody called the cops, and they took us both in. We found out later it was Larry who eventually bailed us out and got the charges against Denny dropped.”

  “He didn’t care for the publicity.”

  “No. At least, that’s why we figured he’d done it. He never explained himself afterward, and that was fine by us.”

  “But he didn’t let either of you go.”

  “No.”

  “The guard in the store. He was black, right?”

  Ferris nodded reticently.

  “And the kids? The cashier?”

  Again, Ferris nodded, starting to see Gunner’s point. “But that doesn’t mean …”

  “Save it, Stan. Stewart obviously liked what he saw. He was looking for somebody crazy enough to blow Dorris away for an attaboy and a few bucks, and he found one in his own backyard. I never met your pal Townsend myself, but from what I hear he would have been just what the doctor ordered: a moronic bigot with a short fuse and a pit bull’s taste for blood.”

  “But they tried to kill him, Denny said. He got five grand up front, and was supposed to get five grand after, but when he went to collect, he was jumped by some guy in a ski mask. It was a set-up in a park somewhere, Denny said.”

  “Dead men tell no tales, man. What was Stewart supposed to do, trust Townsend not to sell his story to the National Enquirer?”

  Ferris gave it some thought. He was no wiz with puzzles, but he had to admit Gunner’s placement of the pieces made for a snug fit.

  “Who are you?” he asked, finally. His cowardice was abating.

  Gunner brought the fat man’s attention back to the Police Special with a slight movement on his right hand and said, “I’m the man with the power, for a change. And it feels pretty good.”

  “Look. Let me go, huh? I’ve told you everything I know, I swear it.”

  Gunner shook his head. “Not yet, Stan. I haven’t heard the why of it, yet.”

  “Why? Why what?”

  “Why a man like Larry Stewart would go after a third-rate hell-raiser like Buddy Dorris. I need a reason. A motive. He didn’t do it just for the fun of it, now, did he?”

  “But I already told you—”

  “Jack shit. That’s what you told me. But then, I haven’t taken your first finger off yet. Have I?”

  As Gunner started toward him, someone at the back of the house opened a window.

  Gunner managed to jump with some cool, but Ferris lacked that kind of self-control. The two of them looked off toward the dark abyss a hallway past the dining room opened onto, and waited for the warning sound of the window to be followed by another. Time only passed in silence.

  “I thought you said we were alone,” Gunner said, closing quickly on Ferris to take hold of his shirt collar and dead-lift the big man to his feet.

  “I did! We are!”

  The cold steel nose of the .357 came up under the white man’s chin and Ferris took it as a hint to keep quiet. Together, the two men moved toward the back of the house, one leading the other along clumsily, and stopped halfway down the dark hallway, near an open door on the right that Gunner surmised led to one of two bedrooms. They waited there for a long moment, but again, all was silent; Ferris’s labored breathing was the only sound in the air.

  Gunner pushed his reluctant host forward and peered into the room ahead. He could see nothing clearly in its almost complete absence of light other than the window on the opposite wall. It was open fully and its outer screen was missing. The foul smell of salt water was growing in the little house, riding piggy-back on a limp breeze blowing in from the distant Pacific shoreline.

  Gunner found the li
ghts and turned them on.

  Two men stood in the room only a foot or two from the door, facing him directly. One was slightly taller than he, with an upper body to match; the other was short and skinny, yet somehow more imposing than his friend. They wore silken black hoods wrapped tightly around their heads and were dressed in matching clothes of the common cat-burglar variety. The skin around their eyes the holes in their hoods could not conceal was two dissimilar shades of dark brown.

  Gunner’s first inclination was to empty his gun and hope for the best, but the drawback to that reaction was obvious: the big man on his left was holding a chrome-plated Browning automatic in one gloved hand, and all Gunner could see out of his left eye was its shiny, flat snout.

  “Well, look who’s here,” the big man said cheerfully. “What a surprise.”

  Ferris made a whimpering sound and started to fold in Gunner’s arms, passing out. He hit the floor like a bag of cement when Gunner let him go, too busy watching the Browning stare him down to do anything else.

  Carrying a weapon of his own, the little man in the hood came forward to relieve the detective of the Police Special, and Gunner turned it over without resistance, saying nothing. He was trying to decide if he had ever heard the big man’s voice before this moment.

  “How the hell’d you get this?” the little man demanded, referring to the .357. Now Gunner had heard both men speak, but their voices were muffled behind the black hoods and it was all he could do to make out what they were saying.

  “I found it in a trash can out in Hollywood,” Gunner said, emotionlessly. “You don’t remember putting it there?”

  “Damn, Gunner. You are one determined motherfucker,” the larger man said, issuing the compliment with some amusement. “Anybody ever tell you that?”

  Gunner wouldn’t answer him.

  “You’ve got what some people might call stick-to-it-iveness. Which means you have no idea when to quit. Do you, smart ass?”

  Still, Gunner wouldn’t answer. The big man finally drew the Browning away from his face and gestured with it toward the front of the house. “Back to the living room,” he said. “Now.”