Fear of the Dark

by Gar Anthony Haywood

  With little fanfare, Gunner peeled the package open to find a video cassette of the VHS variety, devoid of labels or markings of any kind. It shared its case with a short note on lined paper, another fine example of someone’s flair for calligraphy, which read: “Buddy had me take this. I think he’d want you to see it.”

  Brother Jamaal’s name was at the bottom of the page, along with the phone number he had left on Gunner’s answering machine half a dozen times the previous week. He had been smart to include it; Gunner had erased his earlier messages days ago. Gunner moved to the phone and tried dialing his number now, but the line only rang monotonously in his ear. He got up to find his wallet, came back to the phone, and dialed a different number, this one scrawled in an indelicate hand on the back of a green campaign flyer.

  It would be a call worth making only if Terry Allison was a big enough lady to forgive and forget—and knew how to get her hands on the right type of VCR on extremely short notice.

  A young, clean-shaven black man with impeccable taste in clothes was seated behind the wheel of a parked car, waiting for something to happen. It was dark, well into night on a residential street that was both quiet and undistinctive. Gunner had never seen the man before, but the car was a definite flash from the past: a bronze BMW with a factory rim in the rear and a chrome wheel up front, both on the driver’s side. He had to give it some thought, but in time he remembered why it was familiar: it was the same car he had admired in the drive-through line of the hamburger stand next to Boulos Kasparian’s ARCO station, only hours before someone used his gun to send Denny Townsend on his way to the Great Beyond.

  “You know him?” Gunner asked Terry Allison.

  Allison shook her head, her eyes fixed on the screen of her bedroom TV. She had taken Gunner’s late call to Henshaw campaign headquarters after a typically long day, and had played hard to appease until they both got tired of haggling and she agreed to a rendezvous at her Pacific Palisades home. “You?”

  Gunner turned back to the screen himself. “No.”

  Time passed. Ten minutes went by and the BMW driver’s image began to waver slightly, betraying the restlessness of the cameraman across the street. He, too, was seated in a parked car; glimpses of its interior kept cropping up as he regularly steadied himself. The black man in the BMW reached forward for something, then straightened back up. There was no sound to prove it, but he must have turned the radio on; his left hand started tapping away on the wheel in front of him.

  Without warning, the camera eye swung right, to the BMW’s rear, and focused on a big gray Lincoln pulling over to park behind it, one house down. A tall white man in a solid brown sweatsuit got out and started for the black man’s car, a tan leather attaché case in one hand. He looked to be in his early forties, in good shape but balding; the hair at the top of his head was fading fast, and the hair on either side was feathered with gray.

  “Jesus,” Allison said. “That’s Larry.”

  The tall man made it over to the BMW and got in on the passenger side. Brother Jamaal zoomed in as best he could, but from this distance there was no way to be sure about anything, other than the fact that the two men were on friendly terms. They chatted long enough to tell a short riddle each and that was it. Larry Stewart went back to his Lincoln and drove off, leaving his attaché case behind. His friend in the BMW performed an illegal U-turn moments later and effected his own retreat. The tape ended abruptly soon afterward.

  Allison was in a state of shock. Gunner waited for Brother Jamaal’s tape to rewind before subjecting her to any questions.

  “You’re sure that was Stewart?” he asked finally.

  She nodded and, tired of staring at it, turned off the TV.

  “But you’ve never seen the other guy before?”

  “No. Never.” She looked at him for the first time.

  “Any idea what might have been in the case?”

  “Twenty-five thousand dollars.”

  There didn’t seem to be any doubt in her mind.

  “How would you know that?” Gunner asked.

  “I’ve been going over the books at the office. Somebody’s been playing with the figures, and that’s how much is missing. I couldn’t believe Larry took it before, but now …”

  She turned away again.

  “That why you came to see me last week? When I made such an ass of myself?”

  “I had nowhere else to go,” Allison said, angrily. “I didn’t want to go to the police. Not yet. I was afraid I might be wrong, and I couldn’t afford to be wrong. There were too many careers at stake, too many lives at stake.”

  “Could you tell where that scene took place? Or when it might have happened?”

  “Not where. But I might be able to help you with the when. Larry doesn’t own that Lincoln anymore. He sold it late last month. He drives a Z now.”

  “A Datsun?”

  “Nissan. They’re called Nissans now.”

  Gunner nodded. “Yes, of course. My mistake.”

  He took his rewound tape out of Allison’s machine and gave her every indication that he was leaving immediately. His adrenaline was running on the main pump again.

  “What are you going to do?” Allison asked. “You’re not going to the police?”

  “No. I’m not going to the police.” He gave her an imploring look. “And neither are you. Understand?”

  “I want to know what you plan to do,” she said, firmly. Her arms were crossed, constricting the delicate breasts beneath the white silk blouse she was wearing in a manner that did not escape Gunner’s notice, preoccupied as he was.

  “I don’t know. Drop in on the man, who made this tape, for starters. After that, I have no idea.” He laughed, suddenly. “Why? You worried about me?”

  She didn’t so much as smile at the thought. “Do you think I’m a bigot, Mr. Gunner?”

  The question was meant to be answered earnestly.

  “I think you have all the makings of a great one,” Gunner said. “But I’d say you’re not that far gone, yet.”

  “I guess you think I have a lot to learn.”

  The black man surveyed her openly and smiled, his appreciation for her pristine beauty difficult to conceal in the woman’s own bedroom.

  “About some things, yes.”

  “Perhaps if I made a greater effort to interact with different kinds of people, I’d be less prone to make false judgments about them.”

  “Interaction would help, yeah. What kind did you have in mind?”

  She sat down at the foot of her bed and kicked off her shoes. They were soft leather pumps in a pleasant navy blue. “Not what you’re thinking,” she said. “Although anything’s possible, I suppose.”

  “You think maybe I could enlighten you to some things regarding my people. Is that it?”

  “Couldn’t you?”

  “If I thought it would do some good, sure. But I wouldn’t have to lay you to do it. The things I think you need to learn, you can’t learn on your back.”

  “Good.”

  “Or in any other carnal position, for that matter.”

  “Fine.”

  “But over a candlelit dinner in another part of the house, if I should manage to get out of this mess I’m in alive …” He paused and shrugged. “Anything’s possible.”

  They both laughed nervously at that, for a moment which quickly passed. Then Gunner excused himself and departed, before he could give much thought to the golden opportunity he was flatly kissing good-bye.

  amaal Amir Hill had a thing for the La Brea Tar Pits.

  It had taken four calls, but Gunner had finally reached the Brother of Volition at home late Thursday night. They spoke on the phone only long enough to agree that a meeting between them was in order, and Gunner graciously allowed the younger man to name a neutral site to his liking. Hill chose the Tar Pits, the prehistoric graveyard and popular historical park adjacent to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in the heart of Wilshire Boulevard’s decaying Miracle Mil
e. He wasn’t just being creative; he had an affection for the place he made obvious by being early, even though Gunner had called for an 8 A.M. Friday arrival time.

  A moist sheen of morning dew was burning off the grass throughout the park when Gunner found him, taking in the life-and-death struggle between the largest pool of raw petroleum on the grounds and a stone mastodon caught in its grasp, as if he had yet to catch on that the beast in the pit was a fake. Gunner joined him at the waist-high railing surrounding the pool and Brother Jamaal didn’t object, seemingly unaffected by his arrival.

  “He’s not going anywhere,” Gunner said, appraising the languid scene himself.

  Without turning, Hill said, “Not that one, no. But maybe there’s one still down there somewhere that is.” He pointed. “I mean, look at that shit.”

  He was referring to the tar. It was infinitely opaque, viscous, and deep; scattered bubbles popped into slow-moving ripples on its surface and bands of color glistened to betray its oily base. A leaden saber-toothed tiger stood across the way, opposite the mastodon and just as hopelessly mired in the muck.

  “You think they’ll ever know for sure what’s down there and what isn’t? Hell no. They can dig for a thousand years and still not know.” Hill laughed. “That’s why I love this place, man.”

  He faced Gunner finally, said, “Drives white people crazy, not knowin’ all there is to know about somethin’. Havin’ to guess and wonder gives ’em the creeps.”

  “There’s a name for that,” Gunner said dryly.

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  “Fear of the dark. It means you don’t like mysteries. Or people who beat around the bush.”

  He wasn’t trying to be funny; he was just passing along a heavy hint that he was in a hurry.

  “You know the white man on the tape?” Hill asked, brusquely. “The cat drivin’ the Lincoln, with the case?”

  Gunner nodded.

  “How about the brother in the Bimmer? You know him?”

  “No.”

  “But I bet you’d like to, huh?”

  Gunner didn’t say anything. Hill grinned. “His name is Price,” he said. “Jimmy Price. He’s a lawyer and tax man, works for Lou Jenkins exclusively.”

  “Sweet Lou Jenkins?”

  “Yeah. Sweet Lou. King Pimp himself. Price is his lawyer and also his boy, just like Mouse is Roland’s. Some people just have to have one, I guess.”

  “Damn.”

  Gunner was thinking about Lilly Tennell, and how hard it was going to be to apologize for his stubborn insistence that she was a moron for having mentioned Buddy Dorris and Lou Jenkins in the same breath.

  “Surprised?” Brother Jamaal asked.

  Gunner shook his head and said, “I don’t see the connection. Between Jenkins and Stewart. Or was Price hooking up with Stewart on his own that night?”

  Hill shook his own head. “Uh-uh. No way. He was acting as Sweet Lou’s second, same as he always does.”

  “And Stewart?”

  “Stewart was acting for himself.”

  “Or Lew Henshaw,” Gunner said.

  Hill shrugged. “Possibly. But not likely. Sweet Lou didn’t go to school with Lew Henshaw.” He smiled. “But he and Stewart were teammates on the varsity lacrosse team at Syracuse University, class of ’72. I know. I’ve seen the yearbook.”

  Gunner gave his next question some thought, stalling for time to avoid looking as confused as he felt. “So they took a glorified gym class together, so what? Fifteen years is a long time. Those two have done a lot of parting of the ways since then. Stewart’s a white supremacist in Republican’s clothing and Jenkins is a semi-respectable gangster. What the hell could a pair like that want with each other now?”

  “You’re the detective,” Hill said. “Go ask Roland.”

  “Mayes? What’s Mayes got to do with it?”

  It had all started with Mayes, Brother Jamaal said. Mayes and Sweet Lou Jenkins.

  The two had never had any dealings in the past—they were polarized by the conflicting nature of each’s influence on the black community—but back in the latter part of July, Jenkins had suddenly made it known he wanted to call a truce, to meet with Mayes personally in order to discuss what he called “matters of mutual interest.” Buddy Dorris couldn’t see where the Brothers of Volition and a mild-mannered pusher of “soft” narcotics could have any areas of mutual interest, but Mayes, oddly open to Jenkins’s overtures, disagreed, and the tryst eventually took place over dinner the third week in August. Jenkins brought his man Price; Mayes matched Price with Dorris.

  “Roland and Lou came out of the meetin’ havin’ made a pact of some kind, and Buddy didn’t like it,” Brother Jamaal remembered. “He came to me a few days later, lookin’ for help. He told me all hell was about to break loose, that the Brothers were gonna get fucked unless he could convince Roland to renege on the deal he’d struck with Sweet Lou.”

  “He tell you what the deal involved?”

  “No. He didn’t want me or anyone else to know. All he’d say was that Sweet Lou couldn’t be trusted, that his motives and ours could never peacefully coexist, and that we had to find a way to make Roland see that, fast, before the Brothers went the way of all the other black-power movements before us.”

  He shrugged again, this time apologetically. “So I agreed to help however I could. Not because I believed his story particularly—or had any reason to doubt Roland’s leadership—but because I knew no matter what the truth was, Buddy’s priorities were the same as mine: the Brothers first, and everything else second. Always.”

  “So you started following Lou’s boy around,” Gunner said.

  Hill nodded. “To see if maybe we could figure out what he and Lou were up to, yeah. We’d take turns tailin’ him, sometimes alone, sometimes together, but always with the camcorder. We knew he’d be the one to watch—Lou doesn’t do any of his own grunt work—so we stuck with him, day and night. From his sweet little Inglewood condo to Lou’s Kitchen in Lynwood, and everywhere else in between. The first five days we could’ve just as soon stayed at home—but on the sixth, we got lucky.

  “He left the Kitchen around eight that night, had a late dinner in Marina Del Rey, then drove out to Manhattan Beach. He took that coastal road, Vista Del Mar, all the way, drivin’ slow, takin’ his time. We thought he was just goin’ for a little after-dinner cruise until he pulled off the main drag and started movin’ through the residential district, away from the water. He parked his car on a street called Agnes Road and just sat there inside, waitin’. Around a quarter after ten, you-know-who showed up, and you saw the rest. Stewart deliverd a payoff of some-kind. Right?”

  “That would be my guess, yeah,” Gunner said.

  “That’s what Buddy and I thought, too,” Brother Jamaal said. “But neither of us could figure out what it could be a payoff for, or how it might relate to Lou’s deal with Roland, until Buddy did some checkin’ into Stewart’s background and came up with the yearbook. He seemed to have the whole picture clear in his mind after that, only he wouldn’t share it with me. He told me just to hang onto the tape for him and be cool, that he’d straighten everything out and get back to me if he needed it.”

  “But he never did.”

  “No. A week later, he was dead. Everybody said a crazy had killed him, one more fucked-up white man tryin’ to throw a wrench into the machine, and it was easier to accept that explanation than to deal with the possibility that Roland or Sweet Lou had had him killed. So I pretended to believe it. And I think I almost did, until you showed up and started askin’ people a lot of questions I should have had the guts to ask myself.”

  “¡Cuidado! ¡La pelota!”

  Off to Gunner’s right, a red rubber handball escaped a handful of Mexican children playing nearby and bounded over the railing into the black tar, landing about six feet from the edge of the pit. There were eleven people standing at the railing in all, including the recently arrived father of the children to whom the ball
belonged, but no one moved to the toy’s rescue. No one, apparently, was that crazy.

  “Anybody know about the tape besides you and Buddy?” Gunner asked Hill, as someone finally ran off to find a park attendant.

  Brother Jamaal shook his head. “Not unless Buddy told somebody about it, no. You’re the only one I’ve told.”

  “And there’s only the one copy?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m positive. Why?”

  “Because somebody’s been trying to find it, I think. They tore up Buddy’s apartment rooting around for it, maybe last week some time. They haven’t tried your place yet?”

  Hill shook his head again. “We weren’t tight, me and Buddy. Not with each other, not with anybody. We only got together for this deal the one time, and that only out of necessity. Nobody’s figured us for a team yet, I guess.”

  “That’s good,” Gunner said, nodding his head pensively. “That means you’ve still got a little time.”

  “Yeah? For what?”

  Gunner turned a hard smile in his direction. “To live,” he said, matter-of-factly. “What else?”

  Red lips on an ugly face. That was Lilly.

  “Oh, you believe me now, huh? About Sweet Lou wantin’ to kill J.?”

  “I have reason to believe Sweet Lou may have been involved in J.T.’s death, yes.”

  “You’ve come to tell me you’re sorry, then. For not listenin’ to somebody when they try to tell you somethin’.”

  “I’m sorry, Lilly. Really.”

  “Uh-huh. You’re sorry, all right. You and Howard both.”

  J.T.’s widow scowled, lighting a fresh cigarette. The sign in the window said the Acey Deuce was open for business, but no one seemed to want to believe it. Just a few minutes early for the noon rush, Gunner and a mammoth man of the cloth were the only customers in the place. The parson was squeezed into a booth near a window looking onto the street, and Gunner was at the bar, grilling Lilly.