A Particular Darkness

by Robert E. Dunn

  “But,” I warned them, “don’t take your aim off of him.”

  I pushed through the shop door as Givens marched up the gangway.

  “That’s far enough,” I told him at the halfway point. “What do you want here?”

  “You’re a surprising one,” he said, trying hard to keep it light. His hands remained open and spread out from his body. “I would have never believed you could get Keene on your side.”

  “I was wrong about you two from the start.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I had you pegged as the smart one.”

  His laugh was almost genuine. He sounded like a man who was trying to keep a good face on a small problem. It made me dislike him even more.

  Givens raised his hands again, showing me the empty palms as if he could feel my renewed animosity. “That’s yet to be seen, isn’t it? Keene is already on his way back to CID, HQ. He has a lot of explaining to do.”

  “Don’t we all?”

  He laughed that same, almost real, almost good-natured laugh again. “That’s it, isn’t it? Do things right and who cares. One little thing goes bad—there’s a world of explaining to do.”

  “What’s wrong, Givens?” I nodded in the direction of Massoud who was staring bullets in my direction. “Get a spanking from your sugar daddy down there?”

  He didn’t like that. I could hear it in the laugh again. That time it was a cold, sneering sound. The same sound echoed when he said, “The girls are safe. You accomplished that much.” The way he said it, the contempt in the tone and the flat look in his face said, I’d accomplished nothing in his estimation.

  “How do I know that?”

  “It was stupid really. Nothing that should have ever happened in the middle of”—Givens shrugged and rolled his head like he was trying to encompass the whole world in a gesture—“bigger things.”

  “I guess we all decide what’s big in our own eyes.”

  “That’s such a bitch thing to say.” He waited for a reaction that I didn’t give. “Anyway, Keene killed Banjo. And you want to talk about stupid—Banjo? What the fuck? Who goes around letting the world call them, Banjo? And anyway, the case stops there. Connor—Banjo—Watson was acting alone to traffic the girls whom Reverend Roscoe Bolin, in good faith, and with the most”—he sneered again—“Christian intentions, saved from the poverty and violence of their homeland.”

  “Is that a press release?”

  “Close. It’ll be the official report.”

  “Who’s going to buy that?”

  “Everyone who needs to.”

  “So what’s the truth?” I opened my hands and held them both as if I was weighing out two invisible quantities. “Were you selling girls to fund the nation building? Or was the Reverend doing it to fund the church building?”

  “Say now, Hurricane.” He grinned like a great thought had just come to him and he was dying to share. “You remember that movie a few years back? Everyone saw it. Seemed to be the only thing people talked about for the whole year. You know the one—with the slow guy and the box of chocolates? Well he got it wrong. It’s not life that’s like a box of chocolates. It’s truth. You know—you reach in and take the one that tastes best. Life? Well that keeps going on and doing its own thing.”

  I looked out at the vehicles and armed men. Then out at the lake that I loved so much. “Situational morality from a spook,” I said before turning back to look at Givens. “What a surprise.”

  “Smug, self-righteousness from a cop. The world is full of surprises. But no one cares. Things happen. Things are complicated. What’s important to most of us is what cash is coming our way and how can we feed little junior, son of a bitch. And that’s fine. It makes my job easier.”

  “And what exactly is your job here?”

  “I serve my country.”

  He must have seen the look on my face as soon as he said it. He must have read the words forming on my lips or the fire that bloomed in my chest, because he laughed again. That time it was a machine sound. It had no heat. It carried no chill. The sound was mirthless and lifeless and I thought for the first time that I was seeing the true man.

  “Don’t give me that look, Hurricane,” he said once he swallowed away the laughing sound. “I serve. I sacrifice. I. Do. When people like you fail or cry or run to daddy, I do the dirty work that keeps the taps flowing for my country.”

  From behind me, I had the sense that Orson’s finger had tightened slightly on a trigger. Any more and Givens would be dead. If my uncle could beat me to it. I suddenly realized that my hand was all but strangling the grip of my pistol.

  “We’re working beyond the law here, aren’t we?” I asked him quietly. “Your boys aren’t going to the police no matter what happens.”

  “You’re getting it now.”

  “But you understand—if my badge doesn’t protect me, it doesn’t protect you.”

  “You don’t have a badge anymore. No badge. No uniform. No daddy.”

  It’s possible he believed that I wouldn’t do anything with guns pointed at me. Possible but foolish. He didn’t have time to react when I pulled the pistol already in my hand. I imagine that he had some sense of satisfaction at having provoked me. I imagine also that he pictured me standing with my gun aimed at him while he talked and taunted some more.

  Whatever Givens expected it wasn’t the hard contact of my pistol barrel with the side of his face. It hit his right temple above the orbit bone gashing as it passed and turning his head to the left. I know he didn’t expect what happened next. I followed through, letting the arc of my swing die low on my left side then pulled back, leading with the gun butt and striking it right on the bridge of his nose.

  He was tough. His knees trembled and got a bit rubbery but Givens didn’t go down. He should have. Instead he shouted, a sound of pain and anger without words. He still thought he had some control.

  I took that belief away when I stopped his cry with the point of my weapon. It clacked against his teeth as I jammed it into his gaping mouth. That was the moment he understood.

  I pushed harder, choking him on the barrel.

  He had the sense not to fight or pull away. His legs, wanted to crumble under him but his brain fought back. I could see the struggle in his eyes and I enjoyed it.

  “You want to run to your daddy?” I asked.

  Givens didn’t answer.

  “Let me tell you a little something.” My voice was too small to carry the rage with which it had been burdened and so had faded to a ragged whisper. “No one ever served a nation by facilitating its crimes. And you be careful whose experience you belittle.” I rattled the gun in his mouth like ringing a bell. “Because there is still room for you to learn exactly what I went through in service to my country.”

  I took a deep, slow breath. The focus of my eyes widened out, so I was able to see more than Givens’ fearful eyes. Massoud was walking up the gangway with his hands raised.

  Chapter 20

  The front sight of my 9mm took two teeth with it when I pulled the barrel from Timothy Givens’ mouth. With his hand cupped over his gushing mouth, he crumpled and finally fell to his knees as I turned the weapon on Massoud Masum.

  “General,” I said.

  The wind chose that moment to return. It brushed past me on its way to the shore whipping my hair. Rain was once again carried on air that was warmer than expected.

  “Let Mr. Givens go,” he said in that surprising American accent. “I believe your true concerns are with me.”

  “I believe that too.” I looked down, tempted to spit. I didn’t. I’m at least that much a lady. “I never said he couldn’t go. Givens got caught up in the conversation, that’s all.”

  Massoud nudged Givens with the toe of an expensive-looking shoe. “Go back to the cars.”

  Givens spit blood on the gangway. Even from the floor and dripping from the mouth, he managed to look surly, holding up a finger to put the world on hold as he sputtered out another stream
of red.

  Massoud toed him again. That time instead of waving the finger around Givens turned to spit into the lake. Bad timing or it wasn’t his day. The wind surged again blowing the stringy mess back into his face.

  I wanted to laugh. If he hadn’t beat me to it, I might have. It was that same, lifeless sawing of sound he’d produced before. That was the real Timothy Givens. I knew it then.

  He stopped and shook his head as if he was the only one in on a joke. Then he dropped and reached into the lake and washed his face with the cold, green water. Without another word or look at either of us, he rose back to his feet and walked away.

  It wasn’t until Givens had reached the SUV that I returned my gaze to Massoud. I got the impression that he’d never taken his eyes from me.

  “This is a dangerous point in history,” he said, still sounding more like Harvard than Red Guard.

  “History is nothing but dangerous times,” I gave back.

  He shook his head. “No. Not times. Places. Events. Sides. The times simply are history.”

  “Why do I get the feeling that you’re trying to say something more?”

  He stroked his mustache like a silent movie villain while looking me over as if considering a used car.

  “You are an interesting—” Massoud shook his head behind the fingers on his mustache then used the same fingers to point at me. “No. Remarkable. You are a remarkable woman. The sobriquet applies. Hurricane. You remind me of the Kurdish women. They fight. There are many women in the Kurdish Defense Forces, did you know that?”

  I didn’t. Not that I was going to respond. I wanted him talking, not a conversation.

  “They are treated with respect, fighting alongside men for the same cause.” He touched his mustache again, then he said. “Not like your story.”

  “Careful,” I warned. That was when I noticed that the pistol was still in my hand. I’d been so unaware of it I had to tap my finger to reassure myself it was outside the trigger guard. As I reseated the weapon in its holster, I reminded Massoud, “Remember what happened to Givens when he tried to provoke me.”

  “He was clumsy, a butcher knife, something that cuts through bone and sinew. The delicate work is done by scalpel.”

  “You sound like Lex Luthor. Did your commission come with a super villain handbook?”

  “And you sound like a petulant child.” He slapped the words at me. “A girl who can’t get her way kicking out and screaming at things you don’t understand. You are selfish with no real understanding that the world does not revolve around you.”

  “Are you going to tell me it revolves around you?”

  “It revolves no matter who is in the center. We are irrelevant. Only the things we build are important and last.”

  “A nation?”

  “A people.”

  “And what do I have to do with it?”

  Massoud laughed. Everything about it was the polar opposite of Givens’ dead amusement. The general barked a loud guffaw, all round edges and surprise. Then, as quickly as it had burst forth, he sucked it back in with an audible gasp. Delight remained in his eyes as he said, “Nothing.”

  That caught me off guard and I was forced to think about what he’d admonished—the world does not revolve around me.

  “Then what . . .?”

  “Disorienting isn’t it? When one finds themselves a spear carrier in their own play.” He laughed again enjoying my confusion. “You stumbled into something.” Again he lifted the finger and pointed at me before putting a hand within his jacket.

  As he moved I reached to put a ready hand on my pistol.

  Massoud nodded and slowed his movements. When his hand came out from his jacket pocket it held a pint of whiskey. “You could have staggered,” he continued. “But you showed amazing restraint. Believe me, it is not a quality you are known for.”

  “You.” I understood then that he’d been the one leaving the temptations in my path. If not his actual hand, he was choreographing.

  “Not me,” he said. “Always you.” With a quick twist he cracked the seal on the bottle and held it open under his nose. He smiled from behind the glass and his eyes danced, black lights in a dark face, taunting.

  “Put it away,” I told him.

  He set the bottle on the handrail and the cap beside it. Even in the rising wind I could smell the rich liquid. It settled into my chest like an old friend—my father’s cologne—the lake at night. I was tempted.

  I touched the scar at my eye. It was my past and a talisman. Somewhere between memory and need, I found a bit of strength. When I lifted the bottle, the warm wind rushed, whipping little, lapping tongues up in the lake. I poured the whiskey into the water. “You never understood me.”

  Massoud nodded, the humor still in his eyes. “Apparently,” he agreed. “As I said though, it is not about you. Your involvement was all an accident, all errors without comedy. Who knew that faggot, Sergeant Boone, was going to get himself killed and drag us all into his impure hell? Fish eggs and faggots. Useless girls and a man who calls himself Banjo. You. And a mere captain. These are the small things. Small people. But even small matches too close to the fuel tank can make a big fire.”

  “You’re forgetting my father, and the congresswoman.”

  “No. I’m not. If you were a match they were the gasoline. They matter. She is an adversary. You are a pothole.”

  “I’m the one you’re here talking to.”

  He burst again with that laughter that bristled with secret knowledge. “Clearly, failure to understand is a defect we both share.” He turned and looked at the still-running center SUV.

  Givens was standing beside the closed rear doors. It was impossible to miss him. Even through the gloom and bluster the smear of blood still showed on his face. He raised a hand and slapped the roof of the vehicle. The far door opened and Reverend Bolin stepped out.

  Behind me the shop door opened. Clare was trying to get out.

  “Don’t, Clare.” I blocked his way.

  “They have my brother.”

  Massoud’s laugh turned vicious. Then he said, “No.” He turned to look down at the car again. “But we have him.”

  I followed the gaze in time to see Givens with the second rear door open. He reached inside and jerked out a bound man, with duct tape over his eyes and mouth.

  It was Billy.

  It was the Reverend Roscoe Bolin who moved next. He marched around the vehicle and up the gangway with the rising wind blowing his silver hair into a shimmer of tarnished light.

  “You should go inside,” I told Clare without taking my sight from his brother.

  “I want to talk to him.”

  “I know you do. But I don’t think you want to hear what he has to say right now.”

  Massoud stood with his back to Roscoe and looking over my shoulder. At first I assumed he was looking at Clare. But he smiled and tilted his head in a small bow. I heard Whilomina speaking softly to Clare and I heard the door open, then close again as she drew him back inside.

  Once more, Massoud shifted his eyes to mine. “So you see?” he asked. “You are not the one to whom I am speaking, at all. I was talking through you, not to you.”

  Roscoe stopped his march behind the other man’s shoulder. Regardless of what the general had said a few moments ago about being irrelevant, history, and nation building, it was obvious, even before he said a word, that Reverend Bolin was the true believer. His disturbing eyes, couldn’t contain the fire that blazed behind them. The air that had brought chop to the lake, swirled around him seeming to touch only his hair.

  “Hurricane,” he said.

  I wasn’t sure if it was my nickname or a pronouncement of impending storm.

  Before I could say anything, Massoud squared his shoulders and stroked his mustache as he projected his voice, through me, to Whilomina waiting within the shop. “If action is not taken, there will be hearings. The money promised to my nation will languish and the hope of a people will be lost to
committees. That is a tragedy I cannot suffer for the conscience of Americans.”

  It was impossible to gauge if he put more disgust into the word conscience or Americans. I expected more, but, abruptly, Massoud turned and slipped past Roscoe heading back down the ramp.

  “Is that how you feel, Reverend?” I asked Roscoe.

  “Judgment hangs easily off your shoulders, Katrina. But some things are worth fighting for.”

  That time I struck with an empty hand. When I did, the shards of color in Roscoe’s eyes flashed with internal lighting. He said nothing.

  “People who don’t fight find it easy to talk about what’s worth the sacrifice of others.” I looked past his shoulder and watched Billy. He was bloody and teetering on his feet. “But there is going to be a fight.”

  “No, there won’t. At least not for you. That’s why the deputy is still with them. He’ll remain safe but in their care until the funds marked for the cause are released.”

  “And why are you here telling me?”

  “I want you to understand.”

  “Oh I do.”

  “You don’t. You’re angry. You see the battle but don’t see the ending or the result.”

  “I see murder, slavery of girls, and kidnapping of a cop.”

  “I had no part in what was happening to those young women.”

  “Children,” I corrected.

  “Refugees from war—whom I brought to peace.”

  “You abandoned them to predators.”

  “I acted in faith that the girls would be cared for.”

  “You’re lying.” I said it to his glaring face. “On behalf of liars. Turn around and look.”

  Roscoe turned his head. Givens was forcing Billy back into the SUV.

  “Those men are criminals. Do you really believe they will release Billy when they don’t need him anymore?”

  “Criminals?” The question came as a bellowed refutation, as though the suggestion itself was suspect. “Crimes.” He all but shouted, spreading his arms as if at the pulpit. Around him, the air charged. Above, the clouds lowered. Dark tendrils, like living mist, reached for the tops of hills. Roscoe whipped out his arms again. “You speak about infractions of man’s law. I endeavor to uphold the desire of God. Ending a war for millions. Think of it. Imagine the suffering that will end. Then complain to me about petty crimes.”