The Darkness Inside: Writer's Cut

by John Rickards

  “Why the hell didn’t you just call me and speak to me? You could have told me everything back then and maybe I’d already have found Holly. Jesus Christ.”

  Kris’s eyes were stony. “Would you have listened? Or would I have been just another crank call? You must have been getting them, right?”

  “Yeah, I got some.”

  “So that’s what you’d have thought, right?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Exactly. You’d have deleted the things and forgotten all about it. Or even if you hadn’t, you’d have wanted to speak to me, the cops would have wanted to speak to me, and I can’t fucking have that. Understand?”

  “I guess,” I said.

  “So I sent you the clips, and I followed you. You finally spotted me that night you left town. After you lost me, I went back to your motel and waited until you came back. Tracked you all the way to that shithole you’re staying at now, and I’ve been keeping an eye on you since. Especially when you went looking for Heller. I’ve been after him a while now, but he’s been untouchable.”

  The Crown Vic steered a lonely path through streets fogged with electric light. I didn’t know where Kris was going, but I guess it was back to the hotel.

  “Speaking of Heller, how did his guys find me tonight? For all I know there’s a welcome party waiting in my room when I get back.”

  “They were watching you at the waterfront. Then when you took off, they followed around the block and watched you get into the cab. They stuck with you when you changed, and tailed you all the way until the second cab let you out.”

  “How do you know all that?”

  “I was doing exactly the same thing, only I hung back behind them when I saw them after you. You’re a popular guy, Alex. Everyone wants to know where you’re going.” He bared his teeth. A smile, of sorts. “Look on the bright side.”

  “There’s a bright side?”

  “There’s always a bright side, you look hard enough.”

  “I was right about Heller knowing something,” I said. “And that he still has something to do with that nightclub.”

  Kris nodded. “And he probably doesn’t know where you’re staying. Unless his guys called it in before they grabbed you. You should be safe a while longer.”

  “Probably.” I rolled my eyes, reached for a cigarette.

  “Probably is about as good as guys in our position get, Alex.”

  Our position. I thought of the car with a trunk full of corpses. A parking lot covered in blood. Victor’s gun in my pocket. A child-abusing gangster hunting me, and his former buddy holding Holly prisoner somewhere.

  Great position.

  We pulled up by the Heart of the Fens Hotel. Kris handed me a crumpled piece of paper. Said, “That’s a number you can reach me at. Get some rest, see what else you can find out tomorrow. Call me with what you get.”

  “You don’t want to check the hotel for more of Heller’s guys?”

  “They won’t be here. And I’ve got things to take care of. Don’t worry about giving me your number; I’ll call the room if I need to talk to you.”

  I didn’t bother asking how he knew which room was mine. I got out of the car and watched it make a right at the next intersection and disappear. The streets were an empty black grid with me, alone, at their centre. I eyed them for a moment, then walked into the hotel, half expecting the lobby to be crawling with Heller’s thugs.

  It wasn’t. Empty, dimly lit by a couple of sputtering uplighters. From somewhere behind the manager’s office I heard a TV playing. Rode the elevator up to my floor, and the only noise I heard when I stepped out was the muffled sound of a couple having sex a few rooms down from mine. My door was locked and when I stepped inside, the place was empty. Without turning the light on, I crossed to the filthy window and looked out at the street for Kris’s car or anyone else watching the hotel.

  No one was there.

  The pane was cracked heavily and dirt had built up in the gaps. I wondered why I hadn’t noticed it before.

  Sleep was patchy. The night’s bruises and the injuries of the past few days made it hard to get comfortable for very long. Every so often I woke with a start. Building noise. Sound off in the distance. Paranoia.

  Some time past three in the morning, I figured I might as well get out of bed and take care of Victor’s gun. I watched for a tail all the way to East Boston but the roads were deserted. I buried the gun on a patch of waste ground not far from the airport. Wiped thoroughly for prints, along with the shells and magazine inside, and wrapped in plastic. I’d collect it if and when I needed to. A backup weapon would be handy, I told myself, but I didn’t want to run the risk of being caught with a weapon used for God knew what.

  I was back on TV next morning over the incident with the cops at the fairground, albeit only a brief segment on the local news. There was no mention of a car full of dead gangsters showing up at the dockside. No mention of Victor or a mysterious fight in a parking lot late at night. Just that police believed Rourke could be in the Boston area, and here was Sarah with the weather.

  And the weather was: rain. The heavens opened and nothing seemed to close them again. It just wouldn’t stop.

  When I checked my email in a hybrid phone/internet booth a few blocks north of the hotel, I had a message waiting for me from Sophie.

  Still looking for Billy Perry through channels. Had one lead that might be useful though. Guy called, said he was his old parole officer from way back. said Billy was living at an apartment in the North End. Address is down below.

  Red Breast says to call, needs to talk. Been kinda grouchy recently. More than usual, I mean. Not sure why.

  Good luck, and keep in touch,

  - S x

  For a moment the ‘Red Breast’ thing threw me, until I understood the ‘robin’ connection and realized she meant Rob. I offered a silent prayer of thanks to her, copied down Perry’s details, and signed out before calling Rob.

  “Hold on, hold on,” he said before the word ‘hello’ had barely left my lips. I heard the sounds of doors opening and closing, then his voice took on a tinny, echoing quality.

  “You’re taking this in the toilets?”

  “Shit, Alex, do you really want me talking about whatever you want to talk about in front of Simon or Liz? You want them becoming accessories as well?”

  “You told Sophie.”

  “Sophie guessed straight away. She’s smart like that. Wouldn’t leave it alone. You know what she’s like.”

  “Yeah, I know what she’s like,” I said. “She’s a good kid. The others probably know as well.”

  “But I don’t want to confirm anything and then have them suddenly get guilty about helping you. You want them telling all to the cops?”

  “Good point.”

  “And while I’m making them, how about I point out that you’ve put me in a seriously bad position here? I just want—”

  “Rob, I’d prefer to do this face-to-face,” I said. “You got a little while free to meet up?”

  “Maybe. We’re coming up on lunchtime and everything. But first, I just want you to tell me — did you do it? Really?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  He paused for a moment, then said, “Where’d you want to meet?”

  “Craigsdown Park, there’s a bench by the pond, west side.”

  “I’ll be there in half an hour. And I’ll bring something to eat. Might as well look the part.”

  44.

  Under the cold iron skies, the park was almost deserted. The ground was sodden and the gravel paths swamped by standing water. Even the pond’s jumbled surface lapped over the edge of its concrete banks. And I watched every single one of the few visitors passing beneath the blanket of rain; every hardcore jogger, every businessman taking a shortcut somewhere, every lone mother hurrying home with the groceries could be something more. An undercover cop, part of a surveillance team. One of Heller’s people. One of Goddard’s. If Kris was still tailing me, I hadn’t
seen him. Nothing. Gone back into the shadows he’d been lurking in for the past twelve years if his story was true.

  I’d circled the park off and on for thirty minutes, twitchy, before Rob showed. Staring at the pond with water trickling down the back of my neck and running in a stream from the peak of my baseball cap, I saw him, huddled beneath an umbrella, sloshing his way towards me from the eastern entrance. He had a bag from Walker’s Deli and two plastic coffee cups wedged precariously in his free hand. No movement in the background, no sign that things weren’t entirely kosher.

  He stopped ten feet from me, looking old and tired, wrapped up in his dark overcoat.

  “You couldn’t have gotten us into all this back in the summer, could you?” he said.

  “Sorry. Real sense of timing.”

  “Or are you just trying to add pneumonia to your list of problems?”

  I laughed, although we both knew the joke wasn’t his best.

  “Did you do it, Alex?” he asks for the second time today. “Did you kill him?”

  “No, like I said.”

  “No?”

  “Why would you even think I would, Rob? How long have we known each other?”

  He turned to glance at the water. The rain rattled from the umbrella’s canopy. “I don’t know. I’m not sure now whether I’ve ever completely known you, Alex.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It was just the other day you admitted killing one guy and framing another for it.”

  “Both bad guys, as you know.”

  “You’ve crossed that line, and it’s not something you can ever take back. What’s to say you wouldn’t cross it again?”

  “How many times did you pull your gun in the Bureau, Rob?”

  “Once. Fired off half a clip without killing anyone. Not even sure if I hit anyone, come to that. And I don’t mind admitting I was crapping myself the whole time.”

  “So don’t talk to me about what it means to kill someone.” I sat down on a rain-soaked bench by the pond and rubbed my face with wet and frozen hands. “I’m not having this argument, Rob. Either you believe me, or you don’t. Either you accept that in the years you’ve known me, I’ve never been the sort to do this kind of thing, or you ignore all that, say ‘fuck it’ and walk away. I didn’t kill Tucker. Hell, even if I had, you think I would’ve stabbed him to death? And then dropped my own goddamn kitchen knife at the scene? I’ve got a brain, and a gun, for Christ’s sake. They snatched my stuff when they torched my place. Nearly killed you too, if you recall. It’s a fix. Not the best there is, but enough to get me out of the way.”

  He sat next to me, doing his best to cover both of us with the umbrella’s canopy, and passed me one of the coffees before reaching into the bag and producing a sub.

  “Cream cheese, pastrami, pickles, hot sauce,” he said. “Figured you could use something with a bit of bite to it. I like the new hair, by the way. Makes you look like an escaped mental patient, or a member of the Russian Navy.”

  “Thanks.” I made a start on the thing, trying to keep it in one piece. Rob took out a BLT.

  “We got something on Perry,” Rob said. “Might help you out.”

  “Yeah, Sophie sent it to me. That’s why I called you, remember?”

  “Dammit. I must be getting slow in my old age. Give it a couple of years and I’ll be forgetting what day it is or where my pants are.” He smiled grimly. “She’s good, Sophie. Guessed that you’d left me a message straight away.”

  “Not too hard. Me and you have been friends for a long time.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, we have.” He sighed, and I waited for him to get round to saying what he’d come here for. “How’s the case going, anyway?”

  “Some good, some bad.” I left it vague on purpose; telling him about Kris probably wouldn’t make him think more highly of me. “I think the guy who’s got Holly is in a town over in New York State. Perry might be able to give me something I can use to narrow the search. Maybe Cody gave him Goddard’s real name, or described where he lives, or something.”

  “And the bad?” He tore a huge mouthful from his sub.

  “You don’t want to know about the bad.”

  “I saw you on the news.”

  “That wasn’t the bad. That wasn’t even close,” I said.

  “I don’t want to know about the bad.”

  “Told you.”

  “Is there anything else you need from me?” he said after a moment’s chewing time. “You’ve already got the company car, right?”

  “Does anyone else know about that?”

  “No.”

  “If they ask…”

  “If they ask, I’ve got it.” He jabbed the air with a strip of bacon. “Or one of the kids has got it. Or it’s in for repairs. Or my in-laws are holding it hostage in revenge for my failure to provide them with grandchildren. The one thing that definitely hasn’t happened to it is that you’ve got it.”

  “Thanks, Rob.”

  “Just don’t write the damn thing off. I’m going to be real pissed if all this comes out because of an insurance claim. So what else do you need?”

  “Keep my emails so I can check them over the net. I can’t do that if you’ve already accessed them from the office. I’m still hoping Goddard will come back to me, and if he does, I need to know about it. It’ll also give people a way of contacting me if they need to.”

  “No phone?”

  I shook my head. “Don’t want my cell traced, or anyone to know where I’m staying.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “If anything comes up on Perry, or anything like that — any of the old leads we were working before — drop me a message and let me know.” I finished the last of my lunch and lit a cigarette.

  “Still on the case.”

  “Can’t work it from inside a cell,” I said, staring at the pond. For a moment, there was a break in the rain and the surface suddenly flattened and stilled, a mirror for the sky and the trees on the other side. That sense of disconnection, everything flipped, a reflection of the world I normally inhabited. “Have the cops been in touch with you yet?”

  “Yeah,” Rob said. “Two detectives dropped by first thing the morning after to ask if I’d seen you. Perigo and Morton. Either I just caught them on a bad day, or they’re always jerks with an authority complex.”

  “Great. A couple of hardasses.”

  “Like concrete. They’ve called once or twice to check on me, but I’ve kept quiet.”

  I shrugged. “I guess I’m lucky this is Worcester PD’s case.”

  “They are Worcester PD. Specially assigned to liaise with Boston on Tucker’s murder.”

  “Shit.”

  “In your favor, at least having no suspect straight away meant they should’ve processed the scene properly. If your guy dropped anything himself, they’ll be looking for him too.”

  “Guys, plural. If they dropped anything. And if the police haven’t been paid to look at me and only me.”

  “Why’d you think they killed Tucker? Did they just do it to get you, or did Tucker know something for real?”

  I shrugged. “They grabbed my stuff to plant with the body before I’d even been to talk to the guy. My guess is they wanted someone they could kill where I’d take the blame. Get me out of the way. Tucker was just their first opportunity.”

  Rob crumpled his trash into a ball and weighed it thoughtfully in one hand. “These guys, did you get a look at them?”

  “No, I was pretty out of it. I heard them talk, but that was about it. Why?”

  “I told you Perigo and Morton came to see me, and they’re the cops on the case. But yesterday afternoon we had another visit from a couple of guys who called themselves Harvey and Andrew. If they were cops, I’m a goddamn ballet dancer.”

  “What did they want?”

  “Wanted to know if I knew where you were,” he said. “Same answer as before. But they had that feel to them. Body language, whatever. Tough guys, or at le
ast they thought they were.”

  I thought of Gabriel Heller and the corpses in the BMW’s trunk. “Not cops.”

  “They weren’t even dressed like cops.”

  “No suits?”

  Rob shook his head. “Only time those two would’ve worn a suit would be in court. Shirts and jeans, and neither of them expensive. Boots too. One guy was big, one smaller. The smaller one had a scar on his face. Looked like someone had rammed a broken bottle through his cheek.”

  “And this was yesterday afternoon?”

  “Yeah. You know them?”

  “Gabriel Heller’s people, I think. The guys at Tucker’s place mentioned him so that’s what I’d assume.”

  “They didn’t say why they were looking for you.”

  “Hard to say you’re planning on killing a man if you find him, isn’t it? I don’t suppose they left a number in case you changed your mind?”

  “No. Their kind never do.”

  “Guess there’s no point having a cell phone when most of your friends are in the slammer.” On the far side of the pond, a bedraggled crow paddled in the flood, occasionally pecking at flotsam by its feet. “Look, Rob, I’m sorry I got you into all this.”

  “It can’t be helped.”

  “Yeah, it could have been. I just hope it’ll all be okay once I’ve got it all figured out. Cops is one thing, men like Heller are another.”

  We sat there for a few moments more. I finished my coffee, then said, “Spit it out, Rob.”

  “What?”

  “Something’s on your mind. It’s been bothering you since you got here, it was the reason you wanted to speak to me, and it’s still bothering you even after everything we’ve talked about. So what is it?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I guess.” Another sigh. “I guess there is something. Look, Alex, some of the clients have been… well, they’ve been asking…”