Private Midnight

by Kris Saknussemm

  “He’d apparently had a couple and then stepped out quietly into the alley,” Lance said, breaking that missed train of thought.

  “That seems a bit suss,” I replied.

  “Maybe that’s why you’re here,” he shrugged. “I just call ’em like I see ’em and I have the Coast Starlight to catch.”

  “Any ID?”

  “Mervyn Stoakes. The beat cop over there has more details. Guy worked for the City.”

  “Well, then we know why someone would want to do this,” I snorted.

  “Ixnay,” Lance shook his head.

  “You thinking drugs?”

  “We’ll do the tests. There’s a good chance—because he also tried to eat the evidence.”

  “Pardon me?” I said—and you can imagine how many times I’ve ever said that.

  “It’s the most extreme example of repudiation I’ve seen.”

  “Repudiation,” I echoed. “Of what?”

  “His masculinity, of course.”

  “Oh, right,” I said. “Well, we’ll run this Merlin Stoakes through the system.”

  “Mervyn,” he said under his breath. “God, what’s happened to you, Birch?”

  I let my shoulders droop. “A few too many mangled bodies I guess. A few too many strange nights and definitely too many strangers.”

  “Don’t bullshit a bullshitter,” Lance barked, and then lowered his voice. “It was that Briannon cupcake—and the damn shooting. I told you then you should pursue the counseling program.”

  “Appreciate your concern. I didn’t know my groin or my head was of public interest,” I replied, spitting out the pickled olive I’d been rolling around on my tongue.

  I’d once snuck a peek at my debrief evaluation after that little episode. Apparently I have a tendency to something called “magical thinking.” Fucking weasel of a union shrink. Made me sound like some fairy godmother. I had no intention of repeating that humiliation. After all, there were so many new kinds to try.

  “Birch,” he said. “Get some help. I know someone who consults to the Force. Someone good. I could set up an appointment? Don’t be a big girl’s blouse. There’s no shame in it. As to this case, consider it a suicide with extenuating circumstances. I’d at least recommend checking the guy out.”

  “Thanks Lance,” I told him. “But we tend to do that in my division.”

  He patted my shoulder and headed to catch his train—probably wishing he was going out with his new tall drink wife. I knew he meant well, and I liked him. He always said my choice of car showed “individual style.” But I’d been doing this job a long time and I wasn’t about to sit down with another “trained listener” to work through an Anxiety and Depression Inventory. Tick the boxes that apply … Do you have frightening fantasies or daydreams … fears that something terrible is about to happen …?

  I’m one of the guys who get called in when terrible things do happen and I had my own copy of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a.k.a. DSM, which I took perverse enjoyment fanning through. I didn’t need someone with a gilt-framed diploma to hip me to the price paid for taking my pay check. I could look it up for myself. And I wasn’t about to do a Meryvn Stoakes, no matter how messed up I got. Poor guy. And to think that he tried to eat it.

  Ah, well. Mine was just the street level carnage—I thought of the other stuff Lance had to face every day. Banks of stainless steel sinks and bleached white cutting boards … that fine cloud when the cooler door opens … metal trays with bodies wrapped in heavy clear plastic. X-rays revealing what a hollow point did to an occipital lobe or a xyphoid process. I knew he was just looking out for me. But still, what I needed wasn’t a counselor. I needed—something to look forward to. I needed a woman. Or hope in the shape of a woman.

  The shooting incident Lance was referring to was a little too well known (and talked about). I’d gotten plugged by a girl half my age near my privates. Good police work, huh? I wasn’t careful enough, for reasons you can probably guess. Believe me, I wasn’t proud of it. But that didn’t detract from the fact that ever since I’d stepped out of uniform I’d been an investigator who closed cases. If I was a damn street musician, I’d have been given my own ferry boat to work. As it was, I had high blood pressure and a mint condition heartache. I was a two-time loser at divorce, living in a change-your-shirt apartment and peeking under sheets in front of a terminal lounge, wondering why a public servant had slit his Johnson off and then mistaken it for a Dilley’s Chocolate. I made some calls back to the Precinct and then went cross town to the Long Room and shot pool with Jimmie One Leg. I let him win, as I always did. Afterward we smoked primo Cubans. His late wife had come from Miami and knew the right wrong people.

  Old Jimmie was grass stem thin, wasted and trembling a lot of the time, and yet still mainlined with that unexplainable Old World joy of living, even if his life was crap. I never believed a thing he said and yet I loved to hear him talk. There was something deeply fatherly about him, despite his pint size—and yet motherly too. You just naturally poured out your troubles to him, even though he so obviously had plenty of his own. I’d have trusted him with my very soul but not my wallet. Still, I looked up to him. As small as he was compared to me—and missing a limb—I looked up.

  Once when I was so sick and shaky I didn’t think I could make my shift, I stopped into the Long Room just on sunup. He’d spent the night on one of the tables. It was right after Camille died and I don’t think he could face going back to their hotel. He was rickety and flustered—but he hobbled around and made me an omelet on the Long Room hot plate—just a simple omelet with some shavings of spring onion he found in the back. It was Heaven.

  He looked a little jaundiced and palsied now—kept scratching himself. It worried me. He’d worried me for a while. He looked thinner every time I saw him.

  “Hey Jimmie,” I joked as I was leaving. “You think I’m crazy?”

  “Course Rit,” he tried to smile.

  “What if I said I was really going crazy-crazy?”

  “Then I’d say you was in love. Or, in your case, maybe you’re just finally finding yourself. Just watch your back,” he added, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “No man has to like what he finds.”

  “And you, you old wop, go in and see the damn doctor and have those tests you’ve been talking about!”

  “Tomorrow, Rit. I promise.”

  He’d been saying that for about as long as I had. We both talked a lot about tomorrow. That’s what too many yesterdays will do to you. Too many last lost nights.

  L MIEDO. TASTE OF METAL AND THE SMELL OF sheetrock when a hammer’s been slammed through it, making a hole that looks like some animal head. Sometimes it came just as voice, soft and cloying. Sometimes heaving with breath. Every so often I’d get a glimpse of the shadow, like a cockroach skittering out of sight. And other times, good and terrible times, it would seem to sit right down with me, slipping inside and hitting my intestines like the first blood warm rush of bonded bourbon. With any luck, you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about and never will. Good for you.

  It was still dark when I straggled out of bed in the morning to find the empty box of Dilley’s Chocolates. I thought I’d left both boxes in the car, but the physical evidence indicated I’d brought one in—and eaten every last piece. Just the thought of it made me feel like upchuck in a bag—but the chocolate itself made me feel worse than the alcohol the night before. At first I was constipated, then I had an explosive bout of diarrhea that still left me cramped. I tried munching on a bowl of Bran Flakes and slivers of a leopard-skin banana, which along with a mug of instant coffee that tasted like bong water, had the effect of cleaning me out well and truly. I couldn’t remember anything from the night before other than coming home and flicking on the TV. It was like El Miedo had taken a new form since my little adventure at Eyrie Street. Maybe I did need to see a therapist. Or another kind of therapist. When I’d first moved into the apartment I’d run a tight ship. Looking
around at the mess now, it was obvious things were falling apart.

  If you’ve ever lived alone, maybe you know what I mean. It’s not just the pile of laundry or jacking off on the toilet when other normal people are snuggled on a couch canoodling to a horror movie. It’s the real horror of seeing your face reflected in the oily water of a frying pan that’s been sitting in the sink for days, remnants of stir fry noodles looking more like dead worms than any kind of food—although I guess there are a of lot things out there that feast on worms. In fact, I’d met more than my share of them.

  But maybe such squalor is only a “guy thing.” I was starting to look like a guy thing all right. And I felt like I’d had a razor bath in sea salt and lighter fluid. I fucking hated being alone. But it beat getting cozy with El Miedo over twenty quick ones and cleaning my old back-up service revolver for the umpteenth time.

  I decided to grab a newspaper and nibble on some raisin toast at Cheezy’s. They had clean lavatories in case of another emergency, and the bustle of the morning crowd always cheered me up a little. I limped in and out of the shower and tried to find something decent to wear. It was starting to get desperate clotheswise—and you know what they say about clothes. How else you gonna hide the man? By the time I hit the street, the hum of the traffic had risen. Maybe it was just the sorry condition I was in, but I felt like I could hear the traffic in people’s heads. That’s never good.

  When I got to Cheezy’s, I slipped into a booth near the restrooms with an early morning edition. There was no more follow-up on the Whitney case, but The Sentinel had a half-page on the Stoakes story with a photo of the jake legs out in front of the High Five. I was scanning through the rest of the paper, listening to the crash of the silverware as the Nicaraguan busboys dumped the tubs under the counter, when I caught a snippet of the tune on the radio in the background. “Maneater” by Hall and Oates. The song flushed out a dream I’d had during my uneasy sleep. I don’t think I would’ve remembered it otherwise, but it came back as clear as anything when my toast arrived.

  I’d run into this girl I’d known in high school at a bar. Naomi Sparks, an alternate cheerleader I’d made out with once in my car and had never spoken to since—after she called me Mayonnaise Face. She was alone, both of us freshly separated. We had a couple of drinks, then it turned into Saturday and we were going for a picnic on the beach. I stopped by her house, which was unusually messy for a woman—like the inside of her handbag. She went into her bedroom and changed into a two-piece. She asked me if I thought it made her look fat. Naturally I said no. I didn’t care that it made her look fat, but there was something about her that didn’t sit right.

  We got into my car and headed towards the beach. Then she blurted out, “Do you mind if we swing by the hospital? A friend’s in there and he’s really depressed.”

  Yeah, I thought. I do mind. A hospital was the last place I wanted to go. Then she told me we were going to visit Les Frame and I felt my stomach turn.

  Les had been her boyfriend in high school, always driving to the coast to surf. He later went pro and made a bit of money in Hawaii. But he got busted for drugs and came back to Cal with his tail between his legs and opened a surf and beachwear shop in the city.

  He looked traumatized and pale, staring up at us from this gruesome metal bed in a private room. He called Naomi “Bubs” and started recounting in a high cracked voice what had happened to him. He’d been surfing up the Coast Highway early in the morning and had been attacked by a shark. All he remembered was hitting it on the snout as it pulled him down—trying to gouge its eyes.

  While he was saying all this, my eyes were drawn to a television on an adjustable metal arm stretched out across the room. Some cooking show was on and an anonymous female hand was dusting a raw pink chicken breast with flour. Les looked spaced out—his tan faded to a color that looked a little too much like the chicken. The room went silent except for the sound of the breast sizzling in a shot of white wine—and then he burst into tears and babbled, “You wanna see it? You wanna see it?” He ripped back the sheet to reveal a mass of bandages where his groin should’ve been. Fingers sprinkled something that looked like parsley on the TV chicken that now seemed to take up the entire room.

  We left Les sobbing, and drove down to the beach. There were old men scouring the sand with metal detectors. After a while we ended up kissing. Then I ran my hand along Naomi’s thigh and over her bikini—and I got the shock of my life when I saw the imprint. She was getting an erection.

  I didn’t know what to make of the dream. To be honest, I usually don’t remember my dreams, and most of the time they’re about a case—something I should’ve seen earlier. That’s the thing with the job and what can drive you nuts. Everything’s important. An ash tray—a shoe lying in a street. You don’t get to say what matters. Not at the time. Later you can—if you can remember when later is. More often than not later comes in a dream.

  That’s the way it was with Briannon, the lovely little tramp who shot me. She had a laugh like Stevie Nicks on nitrous oxide and a slow burn gotta-get-there bed moan like an ambulance in Friday night rush hour. I shouldn’t have had to shatter her jaw before limping out into the street with people staring at me. At that part of me. In that part of town. I should’ve seen the whole thing coming. And the damnest thing is I think I did. I actually wanted it in some way. Just not the staggering out of the bar and falling down on the sidewalk part. Polly was on to me—and so was Briannon. She knew it wasn’t her I had in my mind when I had her. She was a crutch I was using to prop up something gold and gone. So she shot that truth out of me. But she still couldn’t get that song out of my head. “Only regrets will endure … there’s still no cure … for a Wayward Heart …”

  I tried to pull myself together and drove to the Precinct. I drive an old Buick Electra. It’s a classic—from an era when there was optimism to spare in America. It puts a smile on my dial. Your mileage might vary, but the roomy back seat has come in handy as a place to transact business of many kinds.

  Despite my diligence, the hive was alive already, with an eager beaver sales rep from Surefire checking on field performance reports, extra security beefed up for a high profile line-up in Ms. Colby’s latest case (with poor Stutter Strothers flopping around behind her like a prick in a shirt sleeve), reminders about the Captain’s upcoming birthday and word of a demonstration of new embedded face identification technology. I thought I just might get in before Cub Padgett, but he was there, looking more boyish and dashing than ever. Made me feel like an old bloodhound trying to keep up with one of those sniffer beagles.

  After the pep talk-duty roster biz, he jumped into backgrounding Susan Traynor’s ex-boyfriend. The charbroiled real estate man may have had more chips in his stack, but the wife’s ex squeeze still had a substantial operation of his own to protect, and a truck fleet means big overheads. Meanwhile there were phone lugs to be pulled. Had they been in contact in recent times? Just by phone, or had there been motel meetings? If it was a conspiracy, there had to be a plan—and that meant a communications trail.

  I started checking into Traynor’s personal affairs, but to be honest I was starting to lose the juice. Maybe it really was suicide, and she should just be left alone to be rich and stacked. I had other butterflies to chase and I was thinking my net wasn’t big enough. Still I tried to focus. Couldn’t throw away all the professional disciplines because of a silk scarf—or a hypnotic voice.

  If Traynor had any real wampum of her own though, any conspiracy theory would really start to wobble. Of course, there was always the chance that someone had a gripe with Whitney independent of family connections. I felt to be righteous, I should at least have a look at his books as well as the terms of the will. Were there any codicils? And the relevant insurance policies. Was anyone suing him? Any threats or hassles? Most likely we were just chasing our tails, but sometimes that’s what an old dog needs to do. It helped take my mind off McInnes and more importantly, the Eyrie Street ench
antress and the Jamaican handkerchief routine she’d pulled with my mind.

  Over the course of the morning, in spite of the muscle spasms and the nerve-wracking fluid feeling I had in my chest and abdomen, I made some progress. I visited Whitney’s office and his lawyer’s. Then I worked the phone lines and paid a solo call on the widow. Can’t blame a buck for trying.

  She did have money of her own as it turned out. Not a fortune maybe, but her bank balance sure would’ve put pluck in my pecker. It certainly helped prop up her version of the story. Her only insight into a possible explanation was that Mr. Whitney “hadn’t been acting like himself” for a few weeks—which naturally wasn’t all that helpful. Other than that he’d gone sour on her sexually and seemed a little “body conscious,” she didn’t have anything specific.

  She’d done well out of an earlier divorce, which appeared to have been no more acrimonious than usual—plus the ex-husband was alive and remarried. She had a relatively thriving business of her own booking temp office staff. The more I sniffed around, the less the conniving bimbo she seemed and the more her aggrieved and confused act seemed on the level. Why Mr. Whitney, who’d been so admiring of her physical assets, had gone cool on her was the question. I’d have been more than happy to bang her silly, but maybe he’d found another field to plow.

  His past was checkered to say the least. It was more a question of who didn’t want him dead. He had a list of trust account queries from the Real Estate Board that overflowed the file and had been invasively audited by the IRS three years before. Of still greater significance was the fact that even without a probate lawyer’s opinion, it appeared that the terms of the will didn’t cover all the dealings he had in progress by quite a long shot. He owned properties in the names of other companies and had shares in companies that were tangled in a canny, and I suspected not entirely textbook way. I’m sure the IRS would’ve agreed and most of the knotwork looked like it had been arranged after the audit. Two major developments were in the pipeline, one in Cliffhaven, and he’d been making more than just inquiries regarding the Funland site. That piqued my interest. Could’ve been coincidence of course, but as I said, I’m kind of superstitious. The sure thing upshot was there were indications of a considerable amount of business activity that he’d deliberately tried to keep free of the disposition of the will. So I could make him for fraud and embezzlement—he definitely had the odor of advantage by deception. Just not suicide by arson.