Fear of the Dark

by Gar Anthony Haywood

  His cordiality was gone. He left his associate to take on the task of bringing Ferris around to rejoin them and led Gunner into the living room, using the Browning to coerce him into a seat at one end of the couch. The little man in the hall slapped Ferris with an open hand until the fat man was conscious again, then jostled and wrestled the stumbling giant into position beside Gunner.

  “What the hell is happening?” Ferris asked, looking sick again.

  “Shut the fuck up!” the little man told him, lackadaisically training the midnight special in his left hand upon him.

  Watching Gunner closely, the big man said, “You’re awful quiet, my man. Cat got your tongue?”

  Gunner shrugged. “You have the floor, for now. Make the most of it.”

  The taller man’s grin nearly shone through his disguise. “All right, then. I’ll be brief. But I’d advise you to listen up, because this will be complicated. And I’m only going to recite it once.” He shook his head. “You’ve been fucking up, Gunner. Left and right. You’ve been taking yourself and the Mickey Mouse job you do a little too seriously, and the party or parties my associate and I represent don’t appreciate it. For them, you’ve become more trouble than you’re worth. So the two of us have been asked to see what we can do about persuading you to back off for a while.

  “Now. To achieve that effect we could kill you, of course. As a matter of fact, in retrospect, maybe that’s what we should have done in the first place, considering all the good it did us to fix you up for Mr. Townsend’s murder. But we’ve decided we don’t want to kill you. Seems we’ve come to like you, in a way.

  “So what we’re going to do, we’re going to help you instead. We’re going to make up for past transgressions and work something out that will hopefully prove beneficial to all concerned. You with me so far?”

  Gunner didn’t say one way or the other.

  “I’ll take that to mean you are. So here’s the plan. You’re going to wise up and walk away, Gunner. You’re going to stop annoying my employers and live to tell about it. You’re going to forget about Denny Townsend and Buddy Dorris, and you’re going to forget you ever knew Buddy’s sister Verna. You’re going to go home and hide your face for a long, long time.

  “Of course, in order to do that, you’re going to have to get squared away with the authorities. But that’s cool. Because we’re going to fix that for you, too. With ease.”

  He took Gunner’s handgun from the smaller man beside him and began to remove shells from the cylinder. “By the way. Has your buddy Ferris here told you what he really was to the late Denny Townsend? Or did he just give you that tired old ‘we were the best of friends’ horse manure?”

  Ferris started to say something, but thought better of it. He looked to Gunner as if he could use another cigarette.

  The big man in the hood glanced up to watch Ferris squirm, his hands still at work unloading Gunner’s hefty .357. “Hell, they were banging buddies,” he said, matter-of-factly. “They were partners in the crime of homo-you-know-what-is.”

  “That’s a lie!” Ferris said.

  “What they had was the real thing. An intense bonding of the souls, my sources tell me. But you know how those tempestuous romances can be. They run hot and cold. Tempers sometimes flare. Especially when there’s a jealous hot-head like Stanley involved.”

  “That’s a fucking lie! We were friends, that’s all! Just good friends!”

  The little man with the little gun stepped up to kick Ferris full in the mouth, like a ten-year-old bully imitating something he’d seen in a martial-arts movie. Ferris came out of it cheaply enough: he had a cut lower lip and a good reason to say nothing more.

  “What I’m getting at,” the larger man continued, as if blind to the interruption, “is that it just so happens that Ferris and his lover boy had one of their more impressive spats only days before the latter met his untimely death last Thursday. Ferris made some wild accusations and even threatened to do his beloved bodily harm. All in a very public place. And that means he had what, Mr. Private Investigator?”

  “A motive,” Gunner said, starting to squirm himself.

  “That’s right.” The larger man reached out to hand Gunner’s .357 back to the little man standing beside him and slipped its slugs into a trouser pocket. “So how does this story grab you: You went looking for Townsend and caught his spurned lover’s attention in the process. The drop at the Y was his idea; he set it up and made sure you followed him there from Townsend’s apartment so he could knock Townsend off and arrange things so you’d take the rap.”

  Ferris was asking for another kick in the mouth; he was shaking his head for all he was worth.

  “What about him?” Gunner asked, nodding at the fat man on the opposite end of the couch. “That supposed to be his story, too?”

  “Let me finish,” the hooded one said.

  “You mean there’s more?”

  “Oh, yeah. The happy ending. You look for the man who framed you for murder, and you find him. Here. But when you find him, he has a gun. Your gun. The one he shot Townsend with. Fortunately, being the wise man you are, you have a gun, too. This one.” He had a second weapon in his hand now, an off-brand .38 with a long nose. “Can you guess the rest?”

  Gunner could sense a wave of nausea coming on. His mouth was dry and his hands wouldn’t stop shaking. “I kill him. In self-defense.”

  “That would be acceptable to us, yes. Or maybe he kills you in self-defense. Two men, two guns. Two bullets. These things are hard to call.”

  Ferris started to scream, but the shorter man in black was on top of him before he could get it going.

  “Get him to his feet,” the bigger man said, then turned to face Gunner again. “You too, hero.”

  Gunner didn’t move. They were giving him a fifty-fifty chance to survive the night, and a chance like that was nothing to rush into.

  “One more time,” the man in the hood said, once more holding the Browning an inch from his face.

  Gunner stood up.

  The big man walked him over to the mouth of the hallway and turned him to face the living room again, where Ferris stood trembling a good nine yards away, the little pistol of his smaller unwanted guest pressed hard against his temple. He was crying. Gunner’s Police Special was forced into Ferris’s left hand as the off-brand .38 was forced into Gunner’s right. They were made to hold the weapons loosely at their sides before the two men in black backed off, a few feet from each, the Browning pointed at Gunner’s right eye, the midnight special at Ferris’s left ear.

  There was no doubt in Gunner’s mind that Ferris would play the game straight. He wasn’t strong enough to play it any other way.

  “Go for it,” the big man said abruptly.

  The corpulent white man’s arm came up at the word go, but Gunner’s .38 spat a quick yellow flash and Ferris froze, his lifeblood suddenly spilling from a hole in his chest no larger than a quarter. He went down with a look of modest surprise growing hard on his face, a look Gunner knew he would see in his mind’s eye for a long time to come.

  “Aw, damn,” the tall black man in the silken hood said to no one in particular. “You know what I think I did?”

  “It wasn’t loaded,” Gunner said, without looking away from Ferris’s prone body. He couldn’t make himself look away.

  “Yeah. Must have taken one too many bullets out of poor Stanley’s gun, huh?”

  He brought the butt of the Browning down hard upon Gunner’s head and laughed. Gunner collapsed at the waist and started downward, fast.

  It was a long fall to a far better world.

  he blind nurse, who had sold her illegitimate baby to an ex-con employed by the hospital’s linen delivery service before the speedboat accident that had claimed her sight, was paying a teenage babysitter to steal the infant back from its adopted parents when Ira Zeigler finally said, “Turn that shit off, Aaron, and listen to what I’m telling you.”

  Zeigler was Gunner’s fifty-one-ye
ar-old lawyer and recalcitrant father figure, a man with no patience for inattentive clients and no taste for bad soap operas. Especially now. Only yesterday he had prostrated himself before a bail bondsman named Zero to get Gunner released from jail, using up a hefty favor he had been saving for a rainy day, and the black man was acting as if it were no big deal; as if $25,000 were a pittance Zeigler could beg off any one of a million friends without half trying.

  Gunner turned off the TV.

  “They’ve got you by the balls, kid. You know that.”

  “By the balls,” Gunner said, nodding. It was almost two in the afternoon, and he was still dressed for bed.

  “Manslaughter, maybe. Withholding evidence, for sure. Obstruction of justice. Two counts of breaking and entering, and one count of carrying an illegal firearm. That’s just for starters. What they’ll spring on you later, God only knows.”

  Gunner shrugged. “They’ll think of something, I’m sure.”

  Zeigler glared at him. He had hard brown eyes set in deep pockets of flesh that could make a dust pile out of Mount Rushmore at a hundred and fifty paces. “All right, that’s it. Cut the crap and tell me what’s going on.”

  “Crap?”

  “I want the truth, you smart-ass bastard. I want to know what happened, and how. Or am I supposed to be just as goofy as the cops are for buying that goddamned fairy tale you came up with?”

  “It’s no fairy tale, Ziggy. I just fucked up again, that’s all. I got in a little over my head and made some poor decisions.”

  “Poor don’t begin to cover it, kid. Try masochistic. Or boneheaded. Or both.”

  “Okay.”

  “You’re telling me you let a fat bum like Ferris steal your gun and kill somebody with it. And that you in turn found another gun, broke into his home and killed him when he confronted you there.”

  “That’s what I said, yeah.”

  “That’s a load of shit!”

  “Maybe you didn’t hear me the first time. I said I fucked up.”

  “You fucked up, so you tell the police everything? Without talking to me first? I haven’t taught you how to cover your ass any better than that?” Zeigler shook his head in wonder, red-faced. “You got any fruit in the box? An apple, maybe?”

  He left the couch and headed for the kitchen. He was a physical fitness nut who spent as much of his time counting calories as he did bail money, and there was nothing his small, rock-hard frame could not do better or faster than those of many men half his age. Only the luminous bald spot at the back of his head was suggestive of his advanced years, and that was due more to worry for the low-lifes he habitually represented than the ravages of time.

  When he returned from the kitchen to sit down again, he had an overly ripe pear in his hand. Gunner’s place was a war zone and Gunner himself looked like a Skid Row reject, but Zeigler didn’t say so. The kind of problems the black man had now, the Good Housekeeping seal would do little to fix.

  “So that’s how it’s gonna be, huh? You want me to play it the way you laid it out?”

  “I want you to make it as easy for me as you can, Ziggy. Keep my time in the joint under ten years and I’ll be more than satisfied with your work.”

  “And your license to operate? To carry?”

  “Fuck ’em. Unless they go after my license to drive, let ’em have whatever they want.”

  Zeigler eyed him again. “You’ve gotta eat, kid,” he said.

  “Hey, don’t worry about me. Del’s asked me back in the fold and I’ve told him I’m in, this time for good. We’ve all got to grow up sometime, right?”

  Gunner smiled, but not painlessly. It was a difficult thing to do, treating Zeigler like a stranger, fair game for lies. For an old man whose name Gunner had found in the phone book over four years ago, he was a better friend to the black man than any Fairfax district shyster had a right to be.

  “I don’t want to see you go out this way, Aaron. Not through the back door with your tail between your legs.”

  “Let it go, Ziggy,” Gunner said flatly.

  “Somebody’s scared you off. I can see that. I’m not completely blind, yet. You’re heading for the exits because you’re afraid, not because you’re tired of losing.”

  “Ziggy, Jesus Christ …”

  “You know the first trick a dog trainer teaches a dog?” He took a bite out of his pear. “How to roll over. Not sit, like most people think. No. They teach it to roll over. And you wanna know why?” He leaned over in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees, and smiled complacently. “Because once you teach ’em that, the rest is easy.”

  Gunner’s phone rang. Zeigler alone reacted, turning. Gunner didn’t move.

  “You gonna answer that?” Zeigler asked, taking another bite out of his pear.

  Gunner shook his head. “The machine’s on,” he said.

  After two rings, the phone fell silent.

  “Where was I?” Zeigler wanted to know.

  “You were leaving,” Gunner said, getting to his feet. “Unless you have any questions I haven’t already answered thirty times.”

  Zeigler stood up, briefcase in hand. “I could help you, kid, if you’d let me. I ever let you down before?”

  “No.”

  “Then give me a chance to fight for you. Maybe there’s nothing to be done about your license to carry, but we could maybe get ’em to settle for suspension of your license to operate, we play our cards right.”

  Gunner shook his head slowly and opened the front door for him. “Not worth the trouble, Ziggy. Thanks, anyway.”

  Zeigler couldn’t understand it, the totality of Gunner’s willingness to quit—but he went to the door without further complaint. Twenty-three years in the courtroom had taught him the difference between a case he could win and one any man would lose.

  “I hope you’re not making a mistake,” he said.

  Gunner put on a show of confidence, smiling again. “Not this time,” he said.

  Zeigler shrugged once and was gone.

  As Gunner closed the door behind him the phone began to ring again. He moved to the answering machine atop a tall table in one corner of the living room and turned the volume up to screen the call. For the third time that day, the man on the end of the line was Brother Jamaal, Roland Mayes’s personal video-historian.

  “Gunner? You there? This is Jamaal Hill again. Listen, this is no joke. I’ve got something you need to see. Something of Buddy’s. I don’t know what it means, exactly, but I think it explains how he got himself killed, and by who. Understand? Give me a call, we’ll get together somewhere. I want to do the right thing, man. You know what I mean?”

  He left his number one more time and hung up.

  Gunner pulled the phone jack out of the wall and proceeded to give the same bad soap opera one more chance to hold his attention.

  Eleven pounds in three days. The Guilt Trip/Heat Wave Diet, Gunner called it.

  What it was, was three days of confinement in the sun-blasted furnace his little house had become with only the beast of self-pity to keep him company. He was better off without the weight, and its absence should have made him lighter on his feet, but he had something more burdensome than body fat to lug from room to room now, and his ability to carry it was fast declining.

  Guilt.

  Del understood what was happening, as well as he possibly could. He was biding his time, letting Gunner come around at his own pace. He hadn’t called since Thursday, one day after Gunner’s strange hibernation began. Brother Jamaal, on the other hand, had called again today, but only once. Early. He was tiring, finally. Getting it through his head that it was time to quit. Just as Gunner had days ago.

  Zeigler was doing a good job of making Gunner’s improbable account of the events leading up to Stan Ferris’s death hold water, and it looked as if the black man might spend the greater part of the following year on stiff probation rather than behind bars. Matt Poole had been no more awed by Gunner’s testimony than Zeigler had, but he
liked the straightforward way in which Gunner had laid the works out on his table, calling him in before Ferris’s body was cold, and the homicide detective was doing his part to make things go a little easier for him. Anything not to have to hassle playing cat to someone else’s mouse.

  The TV was on twenty-four hours a day now, but it was just an excuse to have his eyes open. Gunner’s mind was turned inward, locked in a closed loop. It was introspection of the most deadly order, a perpetual replay of limited images: fat Stanley Ferris falling to his living room floor, clutching a hole in his chest he could not believe was there; a tall man laughing behind a black silk mask; Denny Townsend in the dumpster he’d been tossed in, dead eyes aimed pointlessly skyward.

  Guilt.

  It was tearing him up from the inside out, making a mockery of his consciousness. Crushing his manhood down to size like a ball of tin foil in an iron fist. He had been used again, once more with fatal consequences; the game of make-believe he insisted on playing had exploded in his face anew. But this time there was a twist. This time he was helping.

  Because that was better than being dead.

  That was the important thing. He was alive. Haunted by shame and consumed with self-hatred, but alive and wiser for the experience. Better prepared to accept his limitations, both as a private investigator and a man. He had no business fucking around with incendiary men and institutions, political or otherwise. Small-time hoods and teenage punks were more in his league; against anything else, he was outmanned and outclassed.

  Prudence, then, demanded that he quit while he still had his health, if not his pride. He would move on and learn to forget. He would persevere and seek peace of mind. Not because peace of mind would make him whole again, but because the only way to regain anything more for himself required that he strike back. Retaliate. Mere rationalizations would not work. He would have to resolve to shed blood and find some joy in it.

  That was the catch.

  He was convinced he had done all the killing he could do. In ’Nam or at home, directly or indirectly, it was all the same: dead was dead, and he was accountable. Viet Cong by the score, lying face up, face down, some with no faces at all: men, women, and children alike. A fourteen-year-old black girl named Audra Dobey, left butchered on a cot somewhere by an amateur-hour abortionist. Denny Townsend, blown open at the waist by a bullet from the detective’s gun. And Stanley Ferris, last but not least, taking a header with an empty gun in his hand, the front of his shirt staining fast with blood, loser of a rigged duel.