Going Dark (Thorn Mysteries)

by James W. Hall

  “What?”

  Sugar swiveled the monitor around so Thorn could see the name blinking in a small square at the bottom of the screen.

  Cameron Prince.

  * * *

  Thorn made it up to Miami in a little more than an hour and took Old Cutler Road through the Gables, then Ingraham Highway into the Grove, moving easily through light traffic, going against the evening flood of cars returning to the suburbs, until finally he rolled up to the address Sugarman had supplied for Cameron Prince.

  A block off Tigertail Avenue, five blocks from the bay, the white wood cottage had clapboard siding and a shingle roof. Weeds and roots had pushed aside chunks of the cement walkway, and more weeds were flourishing in the gutters. The few screens remaining on the front porch were torn, and the entire house seemed to slouch several ramshackle degrees to the south as if it were slipping back into the soil from which it had risen almost a century before.

  Thorn rolled past the house and parked two doors down and sat for a while considering how to proceed. Months before, he’d mourned the loss of Leslie Levine, even forced himself to go to her memorial service at the Lorelei Bar, her favorite hangout, down in Islamorada. He had a few beers too many, stood up when the tributes were given, made a few clumsy remarks about the shitty childhood Leslie had overcome, and sat back on his barstool and was silent the rest of the night. Afterward he let her loss go as he’d done with so many others in the last few years.

  But for these last few weeks it nagged him. The circumstances of her death, the suddenness, the location, out in the cooling canals of the nuclear plant where she was working to restore the endangered croc population.

  Most of all it bothered him that she would be killed by a crocodile at all. That last day he’d seen her, he’d witnessed her sure-handed way with those creatures, seen her roping and dragging the crocs to the boat, tagging them, weighing and sexing them, releasing them back into the wild. All done with an effortless, natural ease. That a croc had killed her and dragged away her body didn’t add up.

  Then for her partner in the croc-breeding program to appear at Thorn’s house, nosing around, feigning interest in his water tower, then refusing to identify himself, well, damn it, that was too much to ignore.

  While Thorn was still mulling over his next step, the front door of the house where Thorn was parked blew open and a white-haired man in a grubby undershirt and purple sweatpants appeared. He glared at Thorn for a moment, then stalked down his walkway, carrying what looked like a shillelagh.

  The man marched up to the front of Thorn’s VW Beetle and raised the gnarled club over his head and whacked the hood of the car. Then raised it and whacked again.

  Thorn got out and walked to the front of the VW to survey the damage.

  “I warned you assholes not to park in front of my house.”

  “I’m a new asshole,” Thorn said. “I didn’t get the warning.”

  The man peered at Thorn, cocking his head to the side, running his eyes over Thorn’s body, as if evaluating his physique. “You’re not one of them muscle boys? Them goddamn bodybuilders.”

  Thorn held out his arms so the man could see he was not a muscle boy.

  “Well, okay.” The man lowered his club. “My mistake.”

  “You’re referring to Cameron Prince, that house?” Thorn waved at Prince’s dump.

  The man huffed his disgust. “Those idiots coming and going all hours, day and night, clanking them barbells and dumbbells and whatnot. Runs an illegal gym out back. Charges these turd brains good money. A dozen times I reported him to the city and the county, code enforcement, police, you name it, but does anybody give a rat’s ass? Hell, no. I’m an old man, a war vet, I got asthma, I got insomnia, bad kidneys, I got herniated disks, pains on top of pains. You name it, I got it. And then him and his muscle boys. Bunch of hair balls, back there banging away. And the cars coming and going, parking right here, blocking my sidewalk, squealing their tires. It ain’t right.”

  He raised the club again and took aim at Thorn’s hood, then thought better of it and lowered it to his side. “You’re not one of them, huh?”

  “I was coming to see Mr. Prince on a different matter. I’ll be happy to move my car.”

  “He ain’t there.” The old man bent down and ran a finger over the fresh dents he’d put in Thorn’s hood, looking mildly pleased at his work. “Ain’t been there for a few weeks. But does that stop the muscle boys from using his illegal gym? No, sir, it don’t. They’re back there twenty-four/seven clanking away with them weights.”

  “Hasn’t been home in weeks?”

  “Fucker goes off like that. Out to his island. Stays weeks at a time. Camping on that godforsaken spit of land.”

  “His island?”

  “Prince Key, it’s out in the bay somewhere.”

  “Oh,” Thorn said, “he’s that Prince.”

  “You’re sure you’re not one of them muscle heads?”

  “No, sir. Big muscles, they only get in the way.”

  The man squinted at Thorn. Relaxing his grip on the club. “I like that, Only get in the way. Yeah, that’s good. What’d you say your name was, kid?”

  “Sorry to bother you, sir. Good luck with the muscle boys.”

  Thorn got back in the VW, eased around the old man and his anger, circled back, and parked the VW behind a flashy, low-slung sports car sitting at the curb in front of Prince’s house.

  He walked down the driveway following the clang of metal.

  In the back he found a black woman not more than five feet tall wearing a string bikini, lying flat on her back on the weight bench pressing what looked like three or four times Thorn’s weight above her chest, raising it, lowering it. Puffing out huge breaths. Striated bands of muscle quivered beneath her shiny flesh. She wore earbuds and the music she was listening to was turned so loud Thorn could hear the hip-hop’s lyrics from several feet away. Thugs and bitches, knife in the heart. Killing my love.

  She pumped away, eyes open, but never cutting a look at Thorn.

  The outdoor gym was simply a concrete slab with a roof of translucent plastic and walled on three sides by flimsy sheets of lattice. The backyard was overgrown and hedged with ancient coco plums and fishtail palms. Aside from the free weights scattered about, there was a single Nautilus machine with its adjustable seat and stack of weights.

  Hanging on the lattice were dozens of black-and-white photos, some shots taken at bodybuilding contests, men and women holding up trophies. But mostly beefcake shots of the denizens of the backyard gym. Men in their twenties and thirties, a couple of women, a few older folks. All of them gleaming with sweat, their eyes glowing with that narcotic high that came from pushing their bodies beyond human limits for hours on end. Cameron Prince was in most of the photos, smiling, stripped down to a skimpy thong. A massive pulsing specimen. The impresario of brawn.

  Thorn was about to leave when one of the photos stopped him. He turned back, stepped closer to the wall. Behind him was the thumping beat of the rap, matching the pulse of his heart.

  The photo was smaller than the others, taken on a sunny day. Standing next to Cameron in almost the same spot where Thorn stood now was a man in his late twenties. He was shirtless, wearing only yellow gym shorts, and though his body was well proportioned, he wasn’t in the same muscular league as the others.

  His sandy hair was the color and coarse texture of Thorn’s, but unlike Thorn’s it was precisely and fashionably trimmed. He had a stern set to his brow, and the solemn eyes of one plagued by grueling dreams. Standing alongside Cameron Prince’s bulk, the young man seemed boyishly slender. But his stance was resolute, his head high, a shoulder-back posture.

  It was Flynn Moss. Thorn’s son. The young man he barely knew.

  Thorn reached out and ran his finger along the edge of the photograph, his hand trembling, the ground vibrating beneath him.

  * * *

  From a pay phone outside a convenience store on Bird Road, Thorn called t
he only number he had for Flynn. After three rings his voice mail picked up and Flynn spoke in a rushed, anxious voice, saying he was going away for a while, taking a hiatus from his TV show, not sure when he’d return, telling his mom not to worry, something had come up, and he would be taking on a challenge he’d wanted to do for a long time, something important. She’d hear all about it soon. Leave a message if you want, then the beep.

  Thorn broke the connection, dropped in another coin, and dialed April Moss, Flynn’s mother. He let it reach ten rings before cutting off. He didn’t remember her cell number, so he set the phone back, went to the VW, and drove the several miles north to her house along the Miami River.

  No one home. No car, no lights.

  He considered scribbling a note, but couldn’t think of what to say. That their son was mixed up with Cameron Prince. That Prince had stopped by Thorn’s house earlier today on some mysterious mission. That Prince had worked alongside an old friend of Thorn’s, Leslie Levine, and had been present at her violent death.

  The sequence unsettled Thorn, but without anything more definite than that, he decided that leaving a note for April would only scare the shit out of her for no good reason.

  So he got back in the VW, joined the ruthless traffic, and worked his way across the city, back to the turnpike, and headed south to the Keys. As he drove, a loop of images rolled in his head, all of them featuring Flynn Moss. The young man’s striking face, the stubborn clench of his jaw, those eyes that were both defiant and anxious as if he were always bracing himself for some fast-approaching calamity that only he could see. Thorn could even hear the kid’s rich, plummy actor’s voice.

  Such a demanding career Flynn had chosen. Assuming the identities and mouthing the words of imagined people, giving flesh to fictions. Standing for hours before fussy directors who critiqued his slightest gestures. Required to perform his work in full view of the probing cameras, the brutal glower of lights, a man fully exposed but completely hidden. There, but not there.

  Last year this talented young man, this son, had come as a staggering revelation to Thorn. He’d never imagined or wished for children, never felt unfulfilled or less complete than friends like Sugar, who had fathered two girls. But the discovery of a grown son had blindsided Thorn and left him reeling.

  Flynn’s mother, April Moss, was now a writer for The Miami Herald. But a couple of decades back when she was barely out of high school, she and Thorn had spent a few rambunctious hours in his Key Largo bedroom, then she bid him good-bye and he hadn’t seen her again till last year, a quarter of a century later, when he discovered she’d borne twin boys from that single encounter. Sawyer and Flynn.

  Days after Thorn met them for the first time, Sawyer attacked Thorn and April, tried to kill them both, and died in the ensuing struggle. Placing the blame for his brother’s death squarely on Thorn, Flynn had rejected any future contact.

  To have discovered the twins and to have lost both with such finality within days of that revelation had whipsawed Thorn so badly he’d sunk deeper into isolation than was already his habit. It had been months since he’d belly-laughed or felt a tingle of arousal for any of the women who wandered across his path. He’d been experiencing the longest period of celibacy in his adult life. A condition he’d begun to feel might last indefinitely.

  And there was another thing. He knew it didn’t sound like much, but in the last year, Thorn had begun to talk to himself. A new, disquieting habit. Mumbling beneath his breath, he found himself describing the rosy afternoon light or the foul reek of low tide, or whispering his complaints about the airless heat. Sitting alone at the breakfast table retelling his dreams aloud.

  Sometimes he found himself quietly spelling out the step-by-step process he was using to tie a bonefish fly or the course he was navigating to some secret fishing hole. Soliloquies spoken in a murmur, his fantasies, his stray recollections. As though compelled to share his concerns and expertise, the trivia of his daily rituals, with some missing party, a ghostly presence hovering at his shoulder.

  Of course he knew what he was doing and how pathetic it was. All these months he’d been pretending to share his days with Flynn, bonding with an absent son.

  In the brief time he’d been around Flynn, they’d managed only a few strained conversations. He knew little of Flynn’s history, almost nothing of his childhood or the source of his passion for acting. A year had passed without his seeing the kid. Yet simply encountering his image on Cameron Prince’s gym wall roused Thorn like nothing else in these last twelve months.

  A few miles beyond the sprawl of Miami, he pulled off at a gas station in Homestead, filled his tank and bought a Budweiser and a bag of peanuts, and half an hour later, by the time he crossed the Jewfish Creek Bridge and entered Key Largo, he’d finished the beer and the nuts, and he’d decided what he had to do next.

  FIVE

  SIX IN THE MORNING, THURSDAY, the ninth of August, Claude Sellers was in a long-term parking lot near Miami International. Keeping his head down while he applied magnetic AT&T logos to both sides of the white Ford van—an image of a white globe wrapped in blue swirls.

  Fuck if he knew what that image was supposed to be. The earth with Saturn rings? Did that make sense? Hell, no. But you could bet someone was getting seriously rich designing the goofy-ass crap. Rich fucks, everywhere you looked, and hardly any were doing anything useful.

  He straightened the logo, got behind the wheel, backed out of the space, and headed off. Forty minutes later, out beyond the palm-tree nurseries and tomato fields, he cruised through a grubby rural neighborhood, located the street, and parked the van under a power pole a block from his target house.

  He climbed back between the seats and pulled on coveralls with the same telephone-company emblem on the back and the breast. He put on a yellow hard hat, tucked the heavy, insulated gloves into his rear pocket, and jumped down from the back of the van.

  He unhooked the aluminum stepladder from the roof of the van and tucked it under an arm and started down the broken sidewalk toward 11777. All the sevens in the world weren’t going to save this unlucky guy.

  Concrete-block houses, graffiti. Peeling paint, cracked windows. A few houses completely boarded up, several with blue tarps on their roofs, covering missing shingles blown away in the last hurricane, which for christsakes was two years ago. A few with stunted trees and some half-assed hedges.

  No dogs barked, no one looked out any windows, no children playing anywhere. It was barely light, and most of the crappy cars were still parked in the driveways. He left the sidewalk and followed a dusty path to the side of the house where the electric meter was. The old-school analog model had four display dials across the top, and a wire loop held together with a yellow piece of plastic was supposed to prevent tampering. The aluminum rotor wheel wasn’t revolving.

  He walked down the north side of the house and found the main transmission line, which ran through the branches of a mango tree to the power pole, a single transformer serving this house and three of its neighbors. Claude looked back at the curtained window and thought he saw the shadow of someone moving behind it.

  Claude opened his stepladder and climbed up to inspect the connection. And, yes, there it was, as he knew it would be. Marcus Bendell was diverting current, using an illegal hookup that was as crude as they came.

  He’d shaved open a two-inch section of the service drop line and peeled back the heavy insulation. Both clamps of a twelve-foot red jumper cable were fixed to the service drop, and on the other end the two clamps were attached to the house line. Bypassing the meter.

  Twenty-two thousand volts came out of Turkey Point, which the transformers upped to over two hundred thousand volts for cheaper long-distance transmission, then the substations dropped that down again, and the local step-down stations lowered it even more. The transformers on the pole behind Bendell’s house cut the power back to the standard 240 volts, which, with the right amperage, was still plenty enough juice to fry someo
ne’s guts.

  The red cables were hidden in the branches, but weren’t well concealed. Claude had spotted them right away when he’d done his recon on this dwelling, scouting the neighborhood, deciding how to take out Bendell. Soon as he saw the hookup, bingo perfecto, he had his plan.

  Claude was a burly guy. Five-nine, 180, with a cue-ball shaved head and a thick Fu Manchu cropped neat. Short of stature, yeah, but thick-wristed, heavy-boned, and possessing extra-long arms. A back-alley gorilla motherfucker.

  Back in his twenties, before bucket trucks took over, Claude spent years shinnying up wooden poles like a Jamaican kid harvesting coconuts. Happiest hours of his life were on top of those power poles amid the rat’s nest of step-down transformers and porcelain insulators and bundle conductors and the slender telephone lines, doing his delicate surgeries while thousands of volts buzzed around him.

  Because Claude was efficient and reliable, he’d been promoted down from the sky to a ground-floor cubicle, then came another promotion and another, until now he had his own computer screen, a twenty-man staff, and a cell phone on his belt that put him on twenty-four-hour call. But his true calling was out here, working the street like today. Following his own righteous duty roster.

  Claude drew out his yellow insulated gloves, pulled them on, then unclamped the battery cables from the house’s drop line.

  He climbed down the ladder, clamps in hand, and tucked them carefully in a clump of weeds. He took off the gloves, crammed them in his pocket. The Spectra gel came in a blue tube. He ordered it from Amazon, kept it in his medicine chest. You never knew when you might want to glop some on your heart monitor or defib paddles.

  He squeezed out a handful and wiped it up and down both sides of the ladder’s handrail. Probably not necessary, but Claude wanted to be extra sure this worked. He smeared a little more of the electro gel, then wiped his slimy hands on the sleeves of his jumpsuit and stepped away from the ladder.

  All set, ready to go.