The Darkness Inside: Writer's Cut

by John Rickards

  35.

  Swimming drunkenly in a sea of pain, I barely registered another two blows driven into my ribs. The carpet smothered one cheek like pins and needles, I was seeing bright lights fuzzily through swirling frosted glass, and there was a roaring in my ears.

  Over it, I heard one voice, slow and distorted like it came from deep underwater, saying, “He’s out. You make the call, then we can report back to Mr Heller.”

  Another voice replied, “Let’s get the fuck outta here. Small towns, dunno how quick they’ll be. Do it from the car.”

  A third voice said, “You’ll never see free air again” but I was pretty sure that was just the TV in the background.

  Then I blacked out.

  The men were gone a couple of minutes later when I forced my eyes open and fought to stand. My knees felt like rubber and my head was full of loose wiring. I couldn’t feel my neck at all, but my limbs seemed to be working after a fashion so I figured nothing was broken.

  Tucker’s body was next to me, his one outstretched arm flung towards me as if he didn’t want me to leave. There was something dark in his clenched right fist. It looked like a glove, black leather. A little worn and starting to show threads. Exactly the same as the pair that had been in a drawer in my apartment before the fire.

  It was my glove in a dead man’s hand.

  My heart quickened, adrenaline cutting through some of the molasses in my head. As I lurched to my feet, I saw a knife, barely visible where it had been dropped under the couch. The murder weapon, I guess. It looked like one from the set I had in my kitchen.

  Before the fire.

  I was being set up.

  In the distance, a siren’s wail briefly cut the air. Clearing traffic. Racing to the scene. We heard a violent argument, officer. Suspect found at the scene. Evidence of a struggle.

  I wanted to grab the knife and the glove so the cops wouldn't find them. But if I took too long, if they were closer than I thought, if they caught me here, I was finished. And every second I spent trying to decide only made that more likely.

  Fuck.

  Fuck.

  Fuck.

  I took a huge gulp of air and forced myself to move. Reeled shakily outside, pulling the door back to its original position, and jogged down to my car as best I could. Fumbled the key in the ignition, concentrated on making it go. Not to go anywhere special, just away.

  Blue lights were coming into view in the distance behind me as I eased away from the curb and got the hell out of Dodge.

  You’re found with a dead body, signs that both of you were in a fight, your prints on the weapon that killed him, then you’re screwed. Case closed. Even if the two guys who were there left traces, there was no need for the cops to check them. They’d already have the killer, so who’d care about the details? I’d used almost the same scenario — aside from being caught at the scene — to send Cody down for murder. If anyone knew how tight this kind of frame could be, it was me.

  On the outskirts of Worcester, the sick feeling in my head suddenly flushed out, migrated south. I pulled over to the side of the road and threw up all over the shoulder.

  I had to make the cops work the scene and hope they found something from the real killers. I had to figure out what I was going to do about all this and where the hell it left me.

  And I had to find out what the fuck all this had to do with Gabriel Heller.

  36.

  No stops until I was back in Boston. My nerves felt like lines of ice. I was, or would be, a murder suspect, and I didn’t know just how far they’d arranged it all to look like it was me that stabbed Tucker.

  Fuck.

  The motel — where I was booked under my own name — was no place to hang around, thinking things through. I needed space and a chance to calm down, think rationally. I needed not to be where the cops would come looking. I packed my meagre things and stuck them in the trunk, then drove to a bar a good half mile away.

  Perched at the counter, one bottle of Bud sunk and another on the way, and Billy Idol’s ‘Rebel Yell’ was drowning out the conversations of everyone else in Bailey & Munroe’s. Some guy — Jack or Jock or something — had latched onto me. Slouched on the next stool, a good three or four beers over the line where he’d remember anything the following morning. I wasn't sure if he’d mistaken me for an old friend, or if he was just in the habit of picking strangers to flap his gums at. I let him talk, acted like I was listening, and I thought.

  “… and ‘cause I hadda brother who’uz in the business, y’know — doin’ the same thing — I tol’ him I’d…”

  The murder weapon probably came from my kitchen, but I didn’t know how much there’d be on it to link it to me. And even if it did trace back, I couldn’t imagine any half-decent cop thinking I’d brought a knife all the way from my gutted apartment just to kill some stranger.

  “… You been there before, ‘s right? Have you ‘ver been there? Course you have. Loadsa times — alla time, right? So…”

  My prints would be on the front door, where I’d opened and closed it, and if they thought to check there, on Tucker’s neck where I’d looked for a pulse. If they didn’t, the door might even be explainable as the result of my visit earlier. No prints anyplace else, which would surely look strange if it seemed the killer wore gloves the rest of the time. Not that it’d be the first time a murderer made that kind of mistake. And they might just assume it was a lousy wipe job.

  “… ‘n this wuz a coupla years ‘go, so this wuzza big thing…”

  My glove in the victim’s hand was bad, though. I was no OJ — that thing would fit me. But traceable? It wasn’t like it was monogrammed or anything. It was possible there’d be some kind of hair or other trace evidence on the inside, but otherwise it might’ve been OK. I doubted anyone would even remember I’d owned a pair like that. There’d be hair on the carpet, though, from where they hit me. Maybe blood too.

  The girl tending bar gestured at the bottle but I made a ‘still drinking’ gesture, mirrored by my drunken companion, and she went away again. The jukebox switched to Iggy Pop’s ‘Gimme Danger’ and I had to stifle a laugh.

  “… ‘S right! That’s ‘xactly what I said. ‘S no way, I said, yer can…”

  The cops also had whatever bullshit description the killers used when they made the call, maybe my license plate to go with it. That’d tie in with the prints and the knife when they followed the chain. But they wouldn’t be able to find the person who’d made the 911 call, and that would be a red flag. Plus point for me. And I had no motive to kill Tucker.

  Cody had no obvious motive to have killed Travers, and they’d still locked him away based on the physical evidence I’d provided. Happy thought.

  On top of all that, I had no damn idea what motive Heller had for getting involved. Unless he was also Goddard, or he was protecting Cody’s old cellmate Billy Perry, or there was another Heller in the city with goons ready to kill on his order, but all those scenarios seemed unlikely. And with a heavyweight like Heller involved, all bets were off as far as far as the cops playing fair or doing what they were supposed to. No counting on a clean investigation at all.

  “… So I figured, fuck ‘er, y’know? No one wantsa… a… a… bitch, thing, like that…”

  Apart from the one tenuous suggestion I’d heard about Perry working for him once upon a time, I knew Gabriel Heller only from the news, and from stories cop friends told me. He was one of the ‘honest businessmen’ involved in the free-for-all in the North End underworld after the Whitey Bulger affair blew up in the early Nineties. Boston’s Mafia, never huge and already gutted by RICO charges and Bulger’s work grassing to the Bureau, had cut themselves half to shreds in an internal turf war after Whitey was indicted and were losing ground to the Asian gangs, the Russians and just about everyone else. Southie was a mess too as Bulger’s old lieutenant tried to keep his hand on the reins, and before long chunks of the gang’s old turf were up for grabs. Mob leadership was dead or in jail,
no one trusted anyone else, and the organization collapsed as everyone decided to stake out their own piece of the pie.

  Heller was one of them. Carved himself out a bunch of business interests, a gang all of his own, and a police investigation into his activities that fell apart when they tried to use evidence obtained in breach of his Constitutional rights. Big goddamn mess, and the Boston PD hadn’t been able to touch him since. I’d heard a year or so back that someone had tried to kill him but shot up his brother Jack and his wife by mistake. What I’d heard from the cops was that Heller had been extra-cautious ever since, kept himself out of the public eye.

  It seemed obvious now. His men stole some things they knew they’d need from my apartment and used the fire as cover. They followed me the first time I went to talk to Tucker and waited for me to get home. Then they killed him, sent me a message from his phone, planted the evidence and waited for me to show up to complete the picture for the cops. Caught red-handed at the murder scene. Stabbed to death following a struggle. The Crown Vic didn’t seem to fit, but maybe they’d wanted to be sure I was coming. Maybe that had been someone else entirely.

  None of which explained why Heller would kill Tucker and frame me. Nor why he’d do it for Goddard, which seemed like the only explanation. It wouldn’t be for money — Heller had to have more than enough of his own. Maybe they were friends. Maybe Heller knew who he was and where I’d find him.

  “… an’ I haven’t ‘ver seen her since – not, like, in years – not ‘t all. An’… an’…”

  I considered turning myself in. Going back to the motel and waiting for the call, or the knock on the door. Ride out the music and hope the evidence wasn’t enough to send me to jail.

  Hope. Right.

  Wait around in a holding cell for days, get bail, don’t get bail, months before a trial, maybe have the Travers case dug up again and the whole thing go to hell, and all that time Goddard would be free to kill Holly, move her, hide her again, cover his tracks. And all this, everything I’d been through, would have been for nothing.

  Heller was in Boston.

  Perry was likely to be in Boston, and might know Heller.

  Whoever was in the Crown Vic had followed me from Boston.

  Any of them, and especially Heller, might give me Goddard. Give me Holly. I’d abandoned her once before. Let her go. And she’d paid for it in ways I couldn’t even begin to imagine.

  I wasn’t going to let that happen again.

  The drunk clapped me on the shoulder and drained the dregs in his glass as he lurched unsteadily off his stool. “‘S good t’ see you, Jack,” he said. “Funny, funny, shit that. You take… take care, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” I said. I didn’t know if he even heard me as he stumbled towards the door.

  I drove over to my apartment and left my car in my space. Slung my bag over one shoulder and walked the few blocks to the office. Dropped a sealed note for Rob through the door, explaining what had happened and asking him to get in touch by email if he needed me, then I headed down the ramp into the parking garage.

  Less than a minute later, I was driving out in the company’s pool car, the bland piece of crap we used for surveillance and errand-running. I was placing a lot of trust in Rob. If the shit really did hit the fan and the cops came to ask him questions, there was nothing to stop him telling them I’d taken it, and then everyone’d be watching for it. But I had no choice — I couldn’t rent a car without drawing the same heat, couldn’t buy one for cash this time of night, didn’t know the first thing about stealing one.

  In Natick, west of Boston, to make it look as though I’d left town, I maxed out my daily withdrawal limits on every piece of plastic I owned, then waited for midnight and the reset, and did it all again. Cash only from then on. Switched off my cell phone as well; no sense letting them track me that way. Equipped as best as I could manage, I headed back into town for an uncomfortable night in the car and an uncertain morning to follow after.

  37.

  I woke up with a jerk to be met by a deep, throbbing pain in my neck where my head was scrunched up against the window, probably a hangover from the punishment it had taken last night. I’d holed up at the back of a cracked and tumbledown parking lot that must’ve originally been a building of some sort; a single structure, a bar occupying what would have been the corner of the block, was the sole survivor of whatever had stood here before. Dawn was rising over Boston and the city was slowly coming to life.

  Through the windshield I watched traffic moving on Ellis Avenue. Delivery trucks making their morning rounds. Early shift workers. The first overly-keen cubicle jockeys heading for work an hour or two before most of their colleagues, trying to get that pay rise, make that promotion. Or maybe just correct the mistakes of yesterday before the boss showed up.

  A young couple walked past. Hair still damp. His clothes a little more creased than hers, an extra day’s wear. Hands clasped together as they leaned into each other. Smiling with the unfamiliarity of it all, still adjusting to each other. Going for coffee, breakfast, a ride home, or not.

  I watched it all with a sense of dislocation. As if there was more than just a simple pane of glass between me and the city. A physical disconnect separating us, knowing I’d crossed some invisible, intangible line. Crossed into another land where there was no law to rely on, no safety net to catch me if I fell. Where I was alone in a sense I found hard to quantify. On the run.

  First order of business was coffee. I tugged my baseball cap down, collar up, just another guy trying to stay warm on a cold morning, and headed for the nearest Starbucks clone. Bought a bland coffee and a muffin from the equally bland store and took it back to the car.

  Next was a place to stay. I waited for the morning rush to burn itself out, then went to find a hotel. Cheap, inattentive staff, cash rates. Little chance of anyone calling the cops for anything short of a dead body showing up in reception. Somewhere even the slightest police presence would probably cause its residents to vanish into the night like rats.

  The Heart Of The Fens Hotel fitted the bill nicely. The name was an outright lie — the place sat on Bridlington Street, right on the boundary between the Fens and Roxbury. From the outside it looked like someone moved an old Soviet apartment block to Boston, gave it a crumbling brick façade and hung a non-functioning neon sign from the corner near the manager’s office. The inside lived up to the expectations set by the outside. Peeling boiled cabbage-green paint speckled with dark spots of mildew, old carpet, terrifying furnishings and the smell of air that hadn’t seen an open window in a long, long time.

  If I’d had to pick a place to die from a heroin overdose, this would have been it.

  It was ideal. I paid for the next few days up front and by the time the manager had finished telling me where the parking lot was, his eyes had already glazed over with the haze of disinterest and selective amnesia that came with the job. Dropped my stuff in my room, checked to make sure I could get out in a hurry if the need arose. The building was pretty quiet — at the moment anyway. With luck, if someone came for me, I’d hear it. Then, in the tiny en-suite bathroom, I shaved my head with my electric razor; no use looking like my description when the cops released it, which they would.

  On Milton Avenue there was a blocky brick building whose high, empty windows stared out darkly over the street like glassy tombstones. In the early 1900s it was a linen factory. One day a fire broke out in the stacks of dry cloth and twenty-three workers trapped inside were burned alive.

  Now the shell of the old building was a pool hall for lowlifes to play games in dead women’s ashes. A petty crook and sometime coke-head called Angie told me she didn’t know where Heller was. “Saw him once,” she said as she tried to justify my fifty bucks. “At Metro’s, way back. Think he probably sold after that thing with the cops. Dunno where he hangs out now.”

  Tom Booth thought he was talking to Rob. Tom used to be a delivery driver with a sideline in hauling things over state lines withou
t bothering with taxes and paperwork. Our agency had done some work for his lawyer when one of his employers tried to charge him with theft. He didn’t know where Heller was, either. “But shit, Mr Garrett,” he said over a crackling phone connection, “you don’t want to get involved with him. Gabriel Heller’s a mean son of a bitch. Paranoid too. He thinks you’re messing with his business and he’ll… well, you see what I’m getting at.”

  “Why you asking me abou’ Heller?” said a youngish pimp and pusher called Thierry that Tom recommended I speak to. We were in a fearsomely trendy coffee shop near the river, a maze of bright orange couches and a haze of mochaccino steam. He was sitting with a couple of guys who were either hangers-on or minders. I wasn't sure which, but they didn’t look like much. “Why would I say anything to you? I don’ care if you are a frien’ of Tom’s. That gets you nothing. Even if I could tell you anything, which I can’, I wouldn’. You get away from here.”

  That was how it went with just about everyone I could think of who might have been able to help. Two days playing deadbeats and dead-ends. After that, I figured I might as well have a look at Metro’s; even if Heller had sold the place after his arrest, as Angie said, the management might have kept a number for him. Nothing else seemed to be working.

  Heller’s old nightclub was a windowless concrete block squatting on an unwelcoming street corner. Walls painted all black, starting to crack and crumble, with double steel-bound doors. Like the sacrificial temple of some long-lost cyclopean civilization thrust up through Boston’s crust.

  No flyers were posted on the walls, and only a bare minimum of graffiti — both good signs; either it was well-cleaned, or people knew not to mess with the owner. No answer to my hammering on the door — not such a good sign; no use finding the place if they wouldn’t talk to me. I gave it one more try, then circled the building, looking for a service entrance. The back doors were almost identical, and just as shut.