Blue Avenue

by Michael Wiley

  Perkins seemed to have considered the problem already. ‘Can you get me to a taxi?’

  ‘I can,’ I said and turned west.

  The Checker Cab Company depot was in an industrial strip on Old Kings Road and ran taxis from dawn until midnight and by request during off hours. A man was reading a paperback book in the dispatcher’s booth when we pulled up.

  Perkins climbed out and asked, ‘Do you want to know where I’m going?’

  ‘I wish I’d never met you,’ I said, ‘and since we’ve met I’d prefer to know as little about you as possible.’

  He nodded. ‘Thanks for pulling me out of my house.’

  ‘Have a safe trip,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘You too.’

  I turned and drove toward downtown. The lights on the office towers glimmered in the humid air. I drove slowly and thought about my options. It seemed to me that I had only one.

  I dialed home on Thomas’s cell phone.

  Susan answered, her voice full of fear.

  ‘Hey,’ I said. ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Oh.’ Disappointment that it wasn’t our son. Relief that it wasn’t the hospital or worse.

  ‘You haven’t heard from Thomas?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Can you come home now?’

  Only one option. ‘I might not be coming home for a while.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she said, her voice as close to panic as I’d ever heard it. ‘How long is a while?’

  ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen tonight.’

  ‘It’s almost morning,’ she said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Come home.’

  ‘I can’t,’ I said.

  ‘What are you going to do, BB?’

  I hung up.

  What happens when the monster inside you cuts teeth and chews its way out?

  Two semi-trailer trucks barreled past, their headlights searching the dark. I dialed Daniel’s cell phone. When he answered I told him, ‘I’m ready to talk.’

  ‘OK. You can turn yourself in at the station.’

  ‘I’m not turning myself in,’ I said. ‘I want to talk with you. Alone.’

  ‘What’s there to talk about?’

  A long red light stopped me. No traffic came from either direction. No cars were parked along the curb. No one walked on the sidewalks. I waited anyway.

  Daniel said, ‘I’m at University Hospital, wrapping up the reports on Don Melchiori. We can meet here. Inside or outside, whichever.’

  ‘Outside.’

  ‘Fine.’

  I said, ‘I’ll be on the third floor of the parking garage in twenty minutes.’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ he said. ‘You want me to bring you a cup of coffee?’

  ‘Don’t fuck with me.’

  ‘Just trying to be friendly,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t.’

  Ten minutes later I parked across the street from the hospital, jogged across an outside parking lot, crossed through a memorial garden and walked up the ramp into the garage. A security camera, mounted above the garage entrance, eyed me. I no longer cared.

  On the ground floor about ten cars were parked in spaces reserved for doctors and clergy. Orange sodium lights threw long shadows on the floor. A yellow arrow, painted on the wheel-polished concrete, pointed deep into the garage. I walked up the incline past a stairwell, around the first two bends, past an elevator and on to the second floor.

  A helicopter hovered in the far distance, its rotor ticking through the walls of the garage.

  I passed the second entrance to the stairwell, rounded two more bends and stopped at the third floor. A motorcycle and five cars were parked in various spots, and three more cars and a pickup were clustered by the door to the stairwell. The air smelled of concrete, oil and the muggy night. A pipe was dripping somewhere, as softly and persistently as a clock hand chipping away at time.

  No one else seemed to be in the garage. I went to the top of the third floor, stopped and listened to the pipe dripping and the silence around it, and returned to the stairwell door. The pickup was parked next to a black VW Passat. I stepped between them and sat on the oil-stained floor.

  Fifteen minutes had passed since I’d called Daniel.

  If he’d alerted hospital security early enough and they’d been watching the video feed from the garage security camera, he would know I was waiting for him. If not, I would have the advantage of surprise.

  A vehicle approached from the lower levels of the garage and as it rounded the bend to the third floor I crouched out of sight behind the pickup. It was a yellow-and-white sheriff’s department van. It stopped about ten yards beyond the elevator, the side door slid open, and a man dressed in black and carrying an automatic rifle stepped out and silently disappeared behind a parked car.

  Daniel was stupid.

  The van continued up the incline and stopped next to the pickup. The door slid open again and two men, also dressed in black and carrying automatic rifles, climbed out. One stepped into the stairwell and closed the door. The other, a compact Hispanic man with a moustache, stepped between the pickup and the VW, spit on the floor and crouched. I could hear him breathe.

  The van drove around the bend, stopped, drove further, stopped again and then turned around and drove down toward the garage exit. We were alone – me and five SWAT officers Daniel had promised not to bring.

  The pipe dripped softly.

  The Hispanic officer spit again.

  I unbuttoned my shirt, slipped it off my shoulders and arms, and twisted it into a thick rope. The Hispanic officer shifted, got comfortable and repositioned his rifle. I moved silently behind him. He cleared his throat. I slipped the roped shirt around his neck and tightened it. I whispered, ‘If you make a sound I’ll break your neck.’

  He tensed for a long moment and relaxed.

  ‘Put down the gun,’ I said.

  He did.

  I shoved it under the pickup and got his handcuffs from his belt. ‘Behind your back,’ I whispered.

  He put his hands where I wanted them and I cuffed them. I gagged him with the shirt and knotted it behind his head, pulled him toward the garage wall and said, ‘Lie on your belly and stay quiet.’

  He did.

  The pipe dripped. The man breathed. Two minutes passed. Three. The third-floor elevator chimed and Daniel got out.

  ‘BB?’ he called.

  He walked part way up the incline, past the first SWAT officer. He showed no sign of seeing him. The orange sodium lights made his face look jaundiced. He stopped and checked his watch. He looked up and down the incline and continued walking, his footsteps echoing off the concrete walls. Far in the distance a freight train sounded its horn.

  The man on the floor behind me grunted when Daniel stepped past but he alerted him too late. I yanked Daniel toward me and threw him against the roof of the VW. The other officers, all but the one in the stairwell, sprang from their hiding spaces, rifles ready. I held Daniel close from behind, pulled his head back and said, ‘Tell them to stay away.’

  ‘Back off,’ he yelled.

  None of them moved.

  ‘Now,’ he yelled.

  They backed away.

  I pulled Daniel toward the door to the stairwell, holding him between me and the other officers. ‘Tell them to stay where they are,’ I said.

  He did.

  ‘Tell them I’ll kill you if they follow us.’

  ‘No.’

  I yelled the warning myself, then said to him, ‘Now turn the doorknob.’

  He turned it.

  I spun and kicked the steel door and felt it hit the weight of the officer on the other side. He fell on his back and his rifle clattered down the stairs.

  ‘Go,’ I said to Daniel and he stepped over the officer.

  The officer looked up, surprised to see me.

  ‘Don’t get up,’ I said.

  He tried to sit.

  I kicked him in the chest.

  At gro
und level, I held Daniel tight to myself and forced him through the door, expecting more officers with more guns.

  No one was there.

  ‘You did a bad job of this,’ I said.

  ‘You didn’t give me a lot of time.’

  I dragged him through the memorial garden and across the parking lot toward my car. Officers followed fifty yards behind, fingers on their triggers. When they realized we were heading to a car, three of them ran toward the hospital yelling into radios.

  I got Daniel into the passenger seat and veered to miss a man who’d run into the street. We blew through a red light and another before the sound of sirens reached us. I turned on a side street and we circled behind the hospital, zigzagged through a residential neighborhood and arrived at Springfield Park, a mile-long strip of grass and trees that flanked a sanitation canal. I pulled the car off the road, over the curb, and into a stand of palm trees.

  ‘Give me your shirt,’ I said.

  He shook his head but unbuttoned it, and I dressed myself as a helicopter flew over, its spotlight shining through the palm fronds.

  Daniel watched through the windshield as it passed to the south. ‘You’ve really fucked up, BB,’ he said.

  ‘That’s the story of my life.’

  He spoke calmly, slowly. He seemed to force himself to. ‘It’s time to give up.’

  ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘We know what you’ve done,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah? What’s that?’

  ‘We’ve got Aggie’s body. Cut up but scrubbed clean like the others. Wrapped in plastic. Lying in some weeds on a vacant lot on the Northside.’

  That made my head spin. ‘But …’

  ‘But what, BB?’

  ‘Did Charles …?’

  ‘He’s been helping us. Since the beginning. Since before the beginning. We talked to him when Jerry Stilman died with a shank in his heart. He hinted at you then with your obsession with Belinda Mabry, but it was only hints. Ashley Littleton’s neighbors didn’t report men outside her house when her roommate got killed. Charles told us. Aggie too. Charles said you were at the Luego Motel.’

  I felt lightheaded. ‘He told you where to find Aggie’s body?’

  ‘He told us where you put her.’

  I almost laughed but Daniel looked at my grin as if it validated his worst suspicions about me. I asked, ‘Did you ever look at him as the killer?’

  ‘Of course we did. But face it, the man is eighty-four years old. He can’t do much more than get up to pee four or five times at night.’

  ‘I don’t think you know who he is,’ I said.

  ‘I know everything there is to know, BB. He’s a wannabe. No threat unless he hangs around someone like you. He grew up in Maryland. Dropped out of high school his junior year. Was married for five years in the early fifties. No children. Moved here in seventy-three. Got into occasional trouble with us since then, mostly in connection with you. Drove long-haul trucks for a living until retiring eleven years ago.’

  ‘Jesus, Daniel, who told you that?’

  ‘He did. And our background check verified it.’

  ‘You don’t get teardrop scars from driving a truck,’ I said.

  ‘You do when a battery explodes. Happened in seventy-five. Except for safety glasses he would’ve been blind.’

  ‘No, Daniel.’

  ‘How do you explain it then?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t. But he’s the most violent man I’ve ever known.’

  ‘In your imagination he is, BB. But really? He’s an eighty-four-year-old retired truck driver. And he’s the bad excuse you use for the terrible things you’ve done. At most he’s been your cheerleader. That’s all he’s ever been.’

  ‘I’ve done nothing,’ I said.

  ‘You killed Terrence Mabry. Your own son. Would killing the rest of them be any worse?’

  ‘He was coming after me with a knife,’ I said.

  ‘You’d chased him all night. He was scared to death of you. Your son.’

  ‘I didn’t make things the way they are.’

  ‘Yeah, BB, you did.’

  ‘Did Terrence say I lit his house on fire?’

  ‘He didn’t see who did it. But he thought it was you or Charles.’

  ‘Charles,’ I said.

  ‘You know what? I wouldn’t be surprised. That old man loves you and would do just about anything for you. But not protect you when you’ve done what you’ve done. It’s too much.’

  Daniel’s words dizzied me. A moth batted its wings against the windshield. A police cruiser flew past on the street, its lights flashing but its siren off.

  I asked, ‘But how would I have found out about Melchiori’s party and why would I want to kill everyone there?’

  ‘I’ve got no idea, BB. But I know you did,’ he said. ‘It would take a smarter man than me to figure out your motives. Why did you beat those men when you were in college just because they were teasing a couple of Mexicans? What was the motive there?’

  ‘Hondurans. The men were attacking them.’

  ‘And why did you beat an innocent man after that six-year-old boy got killed?’

  ‘He wasn’t innocent,’ I said.

  ‘He didn’t kill the child, BB.’

  ‘He wasn’t innocent.’

  ‘You’ve spent your life lying to yourself,’ he said.

  ‘Get out of the car.’

  ‘It’s time to give up, BB.’

  ‘Get out!’

  ‘It’s time,’ he said, and climbed out into the night.

  TWENTY-SIX

  I drove to Charles’ house, wondering if Daniel was right that my life was a lie and wondering how much it mattered if it was. Living a lie or not, I would do what I needed to do. The electronic gate was open at the end of Charles’ driveway but a green light showed that the closed-circuit camera was on. I got out of my car, picked a branch out of a ditch by the mailbox and smashed the camera. I drove up the driveway, the headlights reflecting off the trunks of old trees and the palmetto undergrowth. Spanish moss hung in gray webs from the branches.

  It was time.

  To kill and heal.

  If that’s what it took.

  Charles’ house was dark. The spot where he usually parked his Dodge Charger was empty. I got out and walked toward the place in the woods where we’d buried Aggie. In the deep darkness a narrow trail in the dead leaves traced our steps but no loose soil or evidence of a grave remained.

  It was time.

  I climbed the front steps and knocked on the door.

  No one answered.

  When I tried the knob the door swung open and Charles’ calico cat sprang into the night as if something were chasing it and disappeared into the brush at the side of the driveway.

  A switch inside the door lit up the living room. Charles had set up a long wooden worktable and laid out a series of photographs. They were before-and-after shots. Tonya Richmond before Charles had put his hands on her and after. Ashley Littleton before and after. Belinda before and after. Ashley Littleton’s roommate before and after. There was a photo, taken through a windshield, of David Fowler leaving City Hall and another of the SUV hood, dented and streaked with blood. There was a picture of Aggie lying unconscious in the Luego Motel room and another of her after Charles had dug her up from his yard, bathed her and stuffed her into a plastic lawn bag. A little Canon digital camera stood at the end of the table. I threw it across the room into the fireplace and the pieces splintered on to the floor. I looked again at the before picture of Belinda. It showed a woman in her early forties with a tight, graying afro. She was smiling, one side of her mouth turned upward. Charles had gotten her to smile before he’d killed her. Something of the seventeen-year-old girl I’d loved remained in her eyes but I realized that I didn’t know the woman.

  I gathered the pictures. Charles had left them for me, I felt sure. He’d taken them for me.

  In the bedroom, Charles’ bed was made and the dresser top was clean. But
he’d left scraps of clothesline on the bathroom floor and a sheet of twist ties on the back of the toilet. He’d scrubbed the bathtub and left an empty bleach bottle by the garbage can. In the medicine cabinet a toothbrush lay next to a tube of Colgate. A half-dozen white shirts hung on the rod in the closet next to a half-dozen pairs of faded blue pants. Charles hadn’t left town. Not yet.

  I went into the kitchen. Plates and glasses were neatly stacked in the cabinets. The sink and counters were wiped clean. A half-gallon carton of milk stood on the top shelf of the refrigerator above a long, plastic-wrapped slab of pork loin. On the bottom shelf a rotting cantaloupe smelled like death.

  I went to the garage and flipped on the light. A green Mercedes SUV stood in the parking spot, its hood crushed by the impact with the dumpster outside the grocery store. The metal still radiated warmth and the engine clicked as it cooled. Inside the driver-side door, a spot of blood and phlegm stained the dashboard and a gleaming white front tooth lay on the carpet. I picked it up. It weighed in my hand like a pearl or a gemstone. I put it in my pocket.

  Damn Charles. Where was he? I called his cell number though I guessed he wouldn’t answer.

  He picked up on the third ring.

  ‘Where are you?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m gone.’ He sounded cheerful. ‘Long gone.’

  ‘Your clothes are still in your closet.’

  ‘Ah, good. You made it to my house.’

  ‘Your toothbrush is still in the medicine cabinet,’ I said.

  ‘Can always buy a toothbrush and clothes.’

  ‘I found your tooth,’ I said.

  He laughed. ‘That was a sweet move you made behind the store.’

  ‘You’re out of control,’ I said.

  ‘You know better than that, BB. I assume you found the photographs too.’

  ‘Yeah, I found them.’

  ‘That’s one of the sets. I’ll place the others carefully. The police’ll think you shot the pictures. Did you see the camera too?’

  ‘I threw it in your fireplace,’ I said.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d be able to keep your hands off it. The memory card’s inside. They’ll match the prints on the camera to you.’

  ‘You’re a bastard.’