The Mercy of the Night

by David Corbett

  Finally, Cass thought. The question. “Been meaning to for a while.”

  “But why tonight?”

  How to say this, Cass thought. Or not say it. “The news, I guess.”

  A knowing, tight-lipped nod. “The murder over near the school.”

  “The fireman, yeah.”

  “Not just a fireman. Head of the union. Ex-head. Mike Verrazzo.”

  Cass felt pinned by the woman’s stare. “I’m not very political.”

  “So why are you here?”

  “Just seemed like the thing to do, given the news.”

  “No. There’s something personal. I don’t mean to pry, but you couldn’t be more obvious.” She reached out again, tidied the same egg roll. “Something’s wrong.”

  “No. Nothing’s wrong. I just gathered from the news, you know, if Verrazzo hadn’t been where he was, a girl in his car—”

  “Not just any girl. Jacquelina Garza. She’s famous. And seventeen.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know her story?”

  Cass affected a shrug. “Pretty much.”

  “She got abducted about six months after I bought this house, opened the gallery. Her and Marina Bacay. I’m up to my eyes in debt, then that. I’m thinking: Holy hell.”

  “Anyway,” Cass said, “I just thought if there weren’t so many girls working the street here, maybe he’d be alive. Verrazzo.”

  “Yeah. Lucky him.” She leaned back, stretched, eyes never leaving Cass’s face. “But that doesn’t explain what I’m seeing. The way you interact with people here. Or don’t. Way you interact with me.”

  “Maybe I should go.”

  “Look, I’m not trying to mess with you. But believe it or not, I try to be careful with who tags along on patrols. We’ve had a few people, motives were kinda sketchy.”

  “I’m not racist, or loony, if that’s where this is going.”

  “I’m not talking eccentric. I’m talking violent.”

  From out in the living room, a voice called out, “Sam? It’s almost seven.”

  “I’ve got a watch, Lillian. Give me a minute.”

  Cass said, “You think I’m gonna go out with you folks and cap some hooker?”

  “I don’t know what I think.”

  “That’s insulting.”

  “Really? I imagine doing it almost every day.”

  Toilet flushing upstairs. Scrum of voices in the living room.

  What the hell, Cass thought. “The guy I’m seeing, he’s been tutoring over at Winchinchala House. In particular he’s been working with Jacqi Garza on her GED, but then she left the program and he’s been trying to find her, help her, talk her into coming back. Now this. It just feels, I dunno, eerie.”

  “How romantic,” Sam said. “He wanted to help.”

  Cass swallowed. Nerves. “It wasn’t like that.”

  “No?” She said it wistfully, like she’d been there, a man in her life with a fascination. A father, a brother, an ex.

  “Look, we try to let girls know they’ve got alternatives, they don’t need to be out there. Guess how many care? Yeah, they’re poor. Yeah, they’re not too bright—the schools, Jesus, don’t get me started—or they’re hooked on meth or they’re getting leaned on by a pimp. Not just some chucklehead from the neighborhood, either. We’re seeing a lot of Serbians involved, Iranians too, hauling girls here by the vanload, young ones. Granted, the girls are up against a lot. But until something truly awful happens—they OD for the fifth time, their kids get taken away, they hemorrhage during an abortion or get left for dead by some creep—if we get through to one out of fifty, it verges on miraculous. Lonnie Bachmann’s a godsend, but a girl’s gotta be in truly deep shit to wind up at Winchinchala. How do we help? We scare off the tricks. We turn off the money. It’s not romantic. But maybe, just maybe, we’re making a difference.” She uncrossed her legs, stood up, gestured to someone beyond the door that she was coming. “One thing we’re not? Tour guides. You want to go out, get a good look at Jacqi Garza, whatever the reason, go home.”

  49

  Jacqi closed her eyes and sighed with relief once the northbound 6 eased out of the transit station and headed toward Homewood, the unincorporated area north of town where LeQuan said he had a place she could crash.

  Try not to think about it, she told herself. Yeah, it’s LeQuan, your other options being what exactly? It wasn’t so much a question anymore of who was looking for her. More like, who wasn’t?

  Three other passengers already sat on the bus, heads lowered or turned aside, keeping to themselves. She took a seat close to the rear door, a brighter spot than she would’ve liked, but the smart choice in case she had to bolt.

  She pulled the edges of her hood a little tighter and curled up into herself, trying to be small, feeling light-headed and shaky and miserable with cold.

  Near the edge of town she ventured a glance out the window. God only knew what jokers were out there, corner commandos, night trade. Slanging in the rain.

  To the west the marshy wetlands sprawled into the distance toward the coastal mountains, all that windblown grass, the twisting sloughs. The slow, relentless river—Napa at one end, the bay the other, San Francisco beyond. Places where things happen: not here. This is where things get stuck.

  How quick, she thought, you could end up stuck. In that river.

  They roared past the empty bus shelter where Tierney had picked her up a lifetime ago. The streetlamp flashed at the empty intersection and in its pulsing red glow she caught sight of old Mattie—check that, Buttonwillow—wandering the culvert beside the road. She was struggling through the swordlike grass, barefoot, bare-legged, nothing on but that same old scant red dress, a knotted-up stocking on her head, tamping down her nappy-white hair. She seemed to be searching for something—her slippers, that ridiculous wig. Her money.

  Not quite left in the river but close. Ben, Hector, Navarette—what did they do?

  Quick as that, the bus roared on, the old girl vanished in the darkness behind. The message, though, lingered: Come home.

  The other passengers got off one by one, and Jacqi rode alone to the end of the line. She almost dozed off but shook herself awake as the bus eased into a turnaround on the edge of a strip mall, jolting to a stop. The door hissed open. Calling out from the front, the driver said, “Gonna need a transfer, you’re not getting out.”

  Jacqi pushed herself up, shuffled forward, and thumped down the steps, landing on gravel. She hadn’t once looked at the driver’s face and hoped he’d returned the favor.

  From behind, he called out, “Sure you know where you’re headed out here?”

  50

  “Why is it I have to hear from Katsaros,” Tierney said, speaking quietly into his phone, “what I should’ve heard from you?”

  He stood in the small station house lobby just outside earshot of Damarlo Melendez’s grandparents, Winnie Rae and Truman Broyles—soft-spoken, dignified, weathered by life—their hands folded as though at church services as they sat in plastic chairs bolted to the military-green cinder-block wall, right beneath an array of plaques honoring the town’s fallen officers.

  “Not sure what you mean,” Grady said on the other end of the line.

  Tierney glanced past the lobby’s Plexiglas wall at a half-dozen officers hustling back and forth in a grid of cubicles. “You caught a tip from inside.”

  There was a pause on the line. “Got me a source on the force,” Grady replied finally. “True dat. As the children say.”

  “And he told you—”

  “Who says it’s a he?”

  “Let’s agree upon Officer O’Color then, how’s that?”

  “Loose lips—”

  “Fine. Your source on the force to be named later tipped you off that one of the other suspects, this Lomax kid, laid the killing on my guy.”
>
  Another long pause, blurred by static. “I never said it was gonna be simple.”

  “All that cluck about a joint defense—”

  “I said it was unlikely. Which makes that briefcase you’re hauling around particularly generous, yeah?”

  Tierney glanced down at the giant antique travel bag at his feet, pebbled leather and tarnished brass, stuffed with high school yearbooks he’d just picked up from Grady’s office. “You held out on me. We’re friends. It’s rude. It shows a lack of respect.”

  “Naw naw naw, don’t go there. This thing’s perfect for you. The Melendez kid’s the only juvie of the bunch, he’s musical, he’s an orphan, he needs someone like you.”

  Tierney had covered much of this same ground with the grandparents—Damarlo’s mother barely thirty-four when, on a school-day morning, standing in her robe at the kitchen sink, she rolled back her eyes and shuddered head to foot, then collapsed like a rag right before her only child’s eyes. Three hours later she lay dead on a gurney in the ER at RM Gen—heavy drug user in her youth, ten years clean, overweight, overworked, victimized by high blood pressure and killed by a brain aneurism.

  The boy took it hard, his mother more like a stern sister than a parent, and now spent hours and hours alone, in his room mostly, listening to music or making his own. He was gifted that way, Winnie Rae said, had a kind heart, a gentle disposition. But, yes, he’d turned inward since his mother’s death. And what he’d found was his anger.

  This thing’s perfect for you.

  “In the future,” Tierney said, “I’d prefer you not cherry-pick what you think I deserve to know.”

  “Way you been moping after the Garza girl? Just give you cause to think twice. Gotta get your head straight. Kid down there at the jail needs you for real, yeah?”

  “That’s hardly the point.”

  “Not from where I sit. One last thing—listen up—there’s a fifth guy involved, name unknown. You can’t see it from the video the cops have released, but my guy’s family told me this anonymous dude came up late and took his shot and that’s when the thing went off the rails.”

  “The video I saw,” Tierney replied, “seemed plenty off-the-rails as is.”

  “Yeah well your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to prove that pictures lie. Same as me. We’ve got leverage is what I’m saying. Let’s use it, yeah? Gotta go.”

  Tierney slapped his phone closed and dropped it in his pocket, turning to offer a good-soldier smile first to Truman Broyles, bearish and white-haired, dressed in his Sunday clothes, then Winnie Rae, clasped hands thumping gently at her breastbone, wearing a crème-colored suit of winter wool, the lenses of her glasses dusty and smeared. Neither smiled back.

  Cal Katsaros, leaning down into the receptionist’s window, barked, “I’m done being told to wait. I don’t get to see my client right now, I’m walking through those doors, understand?” Transplant New Yorker, buzz-saw accent, clockwork mind—his fist drummed on the counter. “I’m gonna plant myself on the station steps in front of all those cameras and microphones and hold an impromptu news conference. Damarlo Melendez is sixteen. He’s a minor. His custodial grandparents are here, they’re sweet people, good people. They’re gonna touch some hearts out there in TV Land.”

  A frowsy, ample cadet manned the reception window from atop a stool—white blouse, blue epaulettes, moonpie eyes, no badge. She said blankly, “It will just be a matter of minutes. If you’ll just—”

  “A million years is a matter of minutes.” Katsaros picked up his briefcase and straightened to his full lanky height. He wore his wild black hair à la Trotsky sans beard, his horn-rimmed glasses a defiant statement of antistyle. “Tell Detective Skellenger his minutes are down to three.”

  He turned his back, raised his arm so his cuff cleared his watch, and started his countdown.

  Tierney turned to the grandparents. “Looks like we’re doing this the hard way. Let Mr. Katsaros make a statement to the media, then he’ll probably want you to step forward, say something about your grandson.”

  The grandparents nodded. The seconds ticked off.

  “Showtime.” Katsaros gestured everyone out of their chairs and toward the electronic glass doors. “Sorry it has to be this way. Sometimes they cooperate, sometimes no. Let’s go out there and put a human face on this, okay?”

  51

  Katsaros guided them out into the gusty dampness and onto the station house steps, the building’s stark façade lit up by spotlights like somebody was praying for a jailbreak. News vans lined the block, some with satellite dishes, others microwave towers, generators thrumming so loud Winnie Rae covered her ears.

  Most of the talent remained inside, packed into the press room, but a few reporters loitered out here, chatting up their crews, phoning in updates, grabbing a smoke, or just waiting for the unexpected feature creature to waltz on by for an on-the-spot, man-on-the-street, post-postmodern ironic self-parody, elsewise known as an interview.

  The crowd beyond the media crews split into two warring camps, separated by sawhorses patrolled by cops in orange traffic vests. To Tierney’s left the crowd seemed made up of firefighters and their supporters hefting signs like “Mike Verrazzo Died for This City’s Sins” and “Who Protects Working People?” To the right, minorities predominated, fewer signs, the one catching Tierney’s eye reading “Don’t Scapegoat Our Kids.”

  He found himself thinking of Coriolanus—he’d seen a production up in Ashland last summer, plus the Ralph Fiennes film—picturing the first moments when Menenius the senator confronts the starving mob, explaining how much they misunderstand power:

  Either you must

  Confess yourselves wondrous malicious,

  Or be accused of folly.

  Katsaros, scanning the reporters, spotted a familiar face, a woman with the local ABC affiliate. He discreetly waved her over. She gestured for her cameraman to trail along.

  “Cal, you’re working on this.” Eleven-o’clock smile. Even her gums were blond.

  “Charlaine, you look good.” His gaze was focused on the cameraman. “Can I walk you through a few things before we go live?”

  She leafed through a notepad, bit the cap off her pen. “I’d prefer that, actually.”

  “I’ve been hired by the family of one of the kids arrested today.”

  “One of the kids on the video.”

  Katsaros gestured the older couple closer. They stared back in fright.

  “This is Winnie Rae and Truman Broyles. They’re the grandparents of Damarlo Melendez.”

  “One of the kids. On the video.” Charlaine, cap of her pen still lodged between her teeth, wrote down the names.

  “The boy’s sixteen, his mother died this past year. He’s a good kid carrying around a lot of bad baggage, okay? Scratch that. Heartache. He’s carrying around a lot of heartache.” Katsaros splayed his hand across his chest. “They’ve come down here to make sure he’s okay. Cops won’t let them in to see him.”

  “They don’t have to, do they?”

  “We’re talking about what’s right here. He’s a juvenile.”

  “Mike Verrazzo’s dead, what’s right about that?”

  “That Bonnie Ferro from Pacifica over there?”

  “Cute. Okay, let’s start with . . .” She glanced past Katsaros toward the lobby’s glass doors. “Who’s that?”

  Tierney and Katsaros turned in unison. Skellenger glared at them through the tinted glass.

  Katsaros turned back and said, “Charlaine? Change of plans.” He eased the grandparents toward the reporter and cocked his head toward the door, a cue to Tierney. “Mr. and Mrs. Broyles can fill you in on their grandson.”

  Winnie Rae trembled. Truman coughed. Katsaros leaned closer to the couple, lifting a cautionary finger. “Just the things we discussed. Background. No more.”

  The glass doors slid
open. Skellenger didn’t move.

  Tierney had been anticipating this moment ever since he’d first learned who was steering the ship on this little disaster. The man, he thought, who came to Jacqi Garza’s rescue, took down Victor Cope—one of them, anyway, a limelight name. More to the point, the man who, only a matter of hours ago, threatened to put you in jail.

  I know what stalking is.

  Wondrous malicious.

  “Detective!” Katsaros stuck out his hand. “We’re here to see Damar—”

  “We?”

  “This is Phelan Tierney, my investigator.”

  Almost imperceptibly Skellenger stiffened. “I know who he is. We’ve met. I’ve got no go-ahead for an investigator.”

  Games, Tierney thought. Nobody was in the dark about why he was here. In the event Damarlo vanished, died, or changed his story, Tierney could testify. Katsaros, his lawyer, couldn’t. Nothing unusual. Nothing unexpected.

  Katsaros pointed a thumb over his shoulder. “I can always go back out there.”

  Folly.

  Skellenger glanced from one man to the other, like he was trying to determine which of them he loathed the least, then turned toward the door that led beyond the lobby and gestured for the plump woman cadet to buzz them through.

  Katsaros and Tierney followed him down a narrow line of cubicles to a brightly lit, low-ceilinged corridor boiling with thickset men in uniforms—the press room one direction, a stairway down to the holding cells and interview rooms the other.

  “You’ve been here before.” Skellenger positioned himself like a defensive end with weak-side contain, sealing off the reporters. A special wariness in his eyes for Tierney. “Sergeant Rosamar’s down there. He’ll show you which room.”

  52

  The Homewood streets—edged with gravel, no curbs—went from dark to darker, streetlights a rumor this far out. The rain had stopped, just the same damp wind, but the cloud cover blacked out the moon.