The Violet Hour

by Richard Montanari

  ‘Well, we’ll see,’ Amelia said, hoping he wouldn’t ask her any specifics.

  He did not.

  If buying a computer had been the most exasperating experience since she and Roger had bought a new car two years earlier, buying computer software beat them both. At least with cars and computers you only had to think in terms of cylinders and megahertzes and RAMs. Add a couple of megabytes here. Subtract a few MPGs there.

  But computer software meant you had to finally do something. Something creative. Something important. Something meaningful.

  Something.

  Amelia St John considered herself a technophobe in the purest sense. She had resisted every new advancement of the past decade or so with the fierce determination of a Mennonite preacher, preferring instead to visit the library when she wanted information, writing an honest to God letter with pen, ink, and paper when she wanted to communicate with friends and family, and actually sitting in her own kitchen when she wanted to make a phone call. She didn’t own a cell phone or an iAnything, and readily admitted – with no small measure of smugness or pride – that the entire digital revolution had rolled merrily along without her. Terms like Yahoo, Google, MySpace, and Facebook might just as well have been Swahili.

  But now, here in the store, shopping for software, she felt a bit overwhelmed. The names made it worse. WordPerfect. FoxPro. Nuance. Access. Acrobat. No one could understand it all. But she was very pissed off at Roger these days, and seeing as it was his Visa, she decided that three hundred dollars for software sounded about right.

  Would she be doing any spreadsheets? the salesman asked.

  Only on laundry day, Amelia thought. Maybe. She didn’t know. Probably.

  In the end she bought an integrated software package called Microsoft Office. It contained Microsoft Word, a word processing program, and Amelia discovered she could choose from thousands of color combinations for the type and background of her screen.

  On the way to the Food Fair, she and Maddie decided that her novel should be written in magenta on black.

  They ambled into the grocery store, rain-soaked in their matching green slickers, and fell into their happy, familiar routine. Maddie bounded over to the rack where the current coupon books were displayed; Amelia tried to round up a cart with four functioning wheels. Then, as the custom went, they would get something from the soft drink machine that was strategically placed by the deli counter. Today it was a Grape Crush.

  ‘Do we need dog food?’ Maddie asked, a thin purple mustache above her upper lip.

  ‘It’s on the list,’ Amelia said. ‘Maybe we can get him one of those rawhide bones, too. Keep him from chewing up the Ethan Allens. Remember that when we get to the doggie section.’

  ‘Okay,’ Maddie replied, handing Amelia the bottle of soda, heading off toward the produce section.

  Twenty minutes later they stood at one end of the fluorescent tundra of frozen food that ran the entire depth of the store. The rule was, nobody cooked on grocery shopping day, and that meant that Maddie always got her choice of microwave dinners.

  In the end, they both agreed on something called Shrimp Maria – a ‘light and piquantly satisfying’ entrée with only 290 calories – from the concerned folks at Healthy Meal.

  As Amelia and Maddie St John moved through the checkout line, neither of them noticed the man in the dark overcoat standing behind them, three aisles away. He wore a tweed cap, brown leather gloves, tinted glasses, all purchased from a mail-order company in Boston, all delivered to a post office box in South Euclid, Ohio.

  It was grocery day and that meant Amelia and the little sprite went shopping together. Suburban clockwork. Usually they came to this Food Fair, but sometimes, right before a dinner party, they went to the Whole Foods at Cedar Center.

  From the shelter of his gradient lenses he watched Amelia remove items from her cart, her faded denim skirt sliding up her smooth, pretty legs. He glanced down at his one purchase, a national brand of cotton balls. He always bought national brands because, in the unlikely event that he would leave something behind, it would be far more difficult to trace than a house brand.

  He looked back at Amelia’s soft skin, the inch or so that appeared enticingly between the waistband of her skirt and the bottom of her sweater as she leaned over the counter. He closed his eyes for a moment and imagined swabbing a small spot of that skin with a cotton ball, then slipping a hypodermic needle through the translucent surface, into a deep blue vein. He thought of the scarlet nimbus of blood swirling into the glass syringe, and knew in his heart that, for two decades, it had never been just about the blood. Not for him, not after what they did to Julia, and how they did it.

  The AdVerse Society had taken Julia from him in 1988, and now the interest had grown to the point where the lives of the members alone would not be sufficient payment. He would take their worlds, if he felt like it. And everyone in them. Wives, daughters, mothers. Little girls and bigger girls.

  Julia, all.

  It would be a few more days until he lived his dream fully, but in the black wake of twenty years, a few more days just meant a few more stains on his pillow. No more. No less.

  Still, he thought about how easy it would be to take her now, in the parking lot, to hold her by the throat, to push her tight skirt up around her waist.

  ‘Eight sixty-nine,’ the cashier said to him.

  To dispatch the sprite and fuck her mother in the back-seat of the family Toyota, to mist the windows with the humid smells of sex, of blood.

  ‘Eight sixty-nine it is,’ he said, handing her a ten-dollar bill. Another glance at Amelia. She was almost out the door.

  ‘Thanks for shopping Food Fair,’ the cashier added.

  ‘My pleasure.’

  He took his change and, with the chill swagger of a man full of secret knowledge, headed to the parking lot, awash in the wisdom that, in addition to buying national brands, he always paid cash for everything.

  Always.

  4

  THE POLICE ATHLETIC League gym on St Clair Avenue was a peeling, patchworked building near East 140th Street, a converted banquet hall built in the 1930s. At one end of the huge rectangular main room was the gym’s solitary boxing ring. At the other, a tableau of greasy full-length mirrors, a trio of taped-up heavy bags.

  Nicky had spent most of the day at the Cleveland Heights main library on Lee Road, doing cursory research, trying to find some background on John Angelino. A pair of Plain Dealer articles reported on the father’s charity works. A Sun Press article showed him leading a pack of three- and four-year-olds on a nature walk through the North Chagrin Reservation. But there was nothing that tied him to the seamier side of this life, no inner-city drug-outreach stuff that might have put him in daily contact with dealers and users.

  Okay, I’ll just have to scratch a little harder, Nicky thought as he opened the door to the gym, momentarily drenching the room with sunlight, drawing every head toward him in the collective hope, at least among the twenty or thirty young men scattered about the room, that a shot, any kind of shot, was walking into their lives.

  The one thing all boxing gyms in the world have in common is a Resident Superstar, that one kid on the fast track up. This PAL, on the day that Nicky Stella first learned of John Angelino’s death, had Terry Jackson. Black Lightning, he called himself. Nineteen, a body cut from stone. Nicky had seen a lot of fights, had retired as an amateur welter-weight with a record of twelve and five, and had never seen anyone as fast as Terry Jackson.

  Nicky changed into his sweats, warmed up a bit, then worked the heavy bag for a full three minutes, feeling every cigarette, every Hot Sauce Williams short-rib dinner, every ounce of Jameson he had ever ingested in his thirty-five years. But he did the full three, working hard from buzzer to buzzer – that shrill, omnipresent timepiece that keeps all boxing gyms on their rigorous three-minute-one-minute-three-minute schedules.

  Nicky felt he was in fairly good shape for a guy his age, no more than ten
pounds overweight, but the truth of the matter was that he didn’t want to be anything for a guy his age. He just wanted to be it, whatever it was, no qualifiers. He was going to fight this middle-age thing as hard as he could.

  The buzzer buzzed.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Nicky watched a Hispanic kid to his left work the heavy bag – sixteen, short and wiry, Floyd Mayweather kind of build. Smooth. Bap-bap-bap. The kid was hardly breathing. But something happened when he began to pick up the pace, as it often does when heavy bags are lined up in a row, as they often are. Two fighters falling into the same rhythm. The kid started shooting quick combinations, and for some reason, Nicky was able to keep up. Jab, jab, jab, straight right hand, left hook to the body. Repeat. Nicky no longer felt the impact in his hands and wrists and arms. It was as if he were in someone else’s body, a world champion’s body. He continued to punch, faster and faster, each impact resonating loudly through the gym – bob, weave, duck, slip, counter. Bam!

  Awesome.

  Then, at the exact moment he realized he could go on forever, at the precise instant he seriously considered being the oldest guy in history to try out for the Cleveland Golden Gloves competition, the buzzer sounded. He’d done the full three. And then some.

  Nicky staggered back, triumphant and spent, heavily lathered, absolutely certain that the entire gym had seen and heard his violent demolition of the heavy bag. No longer would he be just the lone, crazy white boy who dared walk into this building.

  He was Rocky Fucking Marciano.

  As it turned out, someone had noticed. As Nicky tried to catch his breath – his muscles shrieking their discontent, his lungs a pair of raging lava floes – he felt a gloved hand land on his shoulder. He spun around. It was Terry Jackson.

  ‘You’re pretty good, man,’ Terry said. He handed Nicky some headgear. ‘Let’s get it on.’

  ‘Erique. What up?’ Nicky tried to sound hip-hop and it immediately made him wince. The gym always had that effect on him. He was standing in a phone booth on St Clair, across the pitted parking next to the PAL gym, having given Black Lightning Jackson a very tentative rain check on the sparring session, a chit the lithe and dangerous Mr Jackson actually seemed to think Nicky would one day cash in.

  Right, Nicky thought. Only if you spot me a grenade launcher.

  Over the past year or so Nicky had been moving from prepaid cell to prepaid cell. He was currently between payments, and thus had to use the ever decreasing number of pay phones around the city.

  ‘Hello, Nicholas,’ Erique said. Erique Mars was second generation Somali, thirtyish, the managing editor of the Cleveland Chronicle, the city’s big alternative weekly newspaper. ‘How are things?’

  ‘Got a hot one,’ Nicky said. ‘Definite cover story.’

  ‘Hit me.’

  ‘Well, to begin with, there’s some pure heroin making the rounds.’

  ‘Drugs?’ Erique said, his boredom sucking a measure of energy out of the idea. ‘Been there. Brought home a lunch box.’

  ‘Yeah? How about a face-to-face interview with a mid-level dealer?’ Nicky began, not having the slightest idea as to how he would pull that one off. ‘How about pure Chinese heroin making the rounds with the Catholic clergy?’

  ‘Clergy?’ Erique asked, suddenly a little more interested.

  ‘Yeah. Dead clergy.’ Nicky flashed on John Angelino’s ready smile and suddenly felt like a pimp. ‘I mean . . . you know . . . deceased clergy.’

  Erique was silent for a moment, the headline evidently forming in his mind. ‘We have dead folks?’ he asked.

  Got him, Nicky thought. ‘Yes. A priest and a young woman. Found him in an apartment on Cedar, found her splattered on the sidewalk.’

  ‘Yeah . . . okay . . . heard something about it.’

  ‘They also found a heroin packet stamped with a red tiger and a blue monkey. It has to be Chinese dope with marks like that, right?’

  ‘Probably . . .’

  ‘Plus, the priest was in my cousin Joseph’s parish. I can get way inside this.’ When Erique had been silent for a full twenty seconds, Nicky continued. ‘Think of it as a community service piece.’

  Erique Mars burst into high-pitched laughter. ‘Oh . . . you want to do a public service announcement? Suddenly you’re the Ad Council?’

  ‘C’mon, Erique.’

  ‘All right . . . get me something on paper by tomorrow at noon. I’ll see if I can fit you in as a “City Streets” item.’

  ‘City Streets’ was midbook, a quarter-page feature. No more than three hundred words. No more than two hundred dollars, either. ‘“City Streets”?’ Nicky said. ‘Man, why you insult me, bruh?’

  ‘Bruh?’ Erique asked.

  ‘Yeah . . . you know . . . bruh.’

  ‘I went to Cornell, Nicky. I don’t say bruh. I’ve never said bruh in my life. I played hockey, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ Nicky said. ‘Touché.’

  ‘Tooshay? That’s mah sistuh. Wutchoo want Tooshay fo?’

  ‘All right, already. Jesus. You wanna quit with that?’

  ‘Whatever you say, soul man,’ Erique said, laughing.

  Nicky pulled his heaviest weapon. ‘Remember that crack piece I did for Sunday?’

  ‘Who can forget? Don’t you bring it up every time you pitch me a cover?’

  ‘Well, I’m still tight with the two cops I worked with on that one. I knock, I’m in. Simple as that. I can get under this like nobody you know.’

  ‘Tell you what. You put seventy-five words together as a cautionary blurb about this red-tiger dope and I’ll stick it in the “Murmurs” section up front. If you can get anywhere near the investigation into the deaths, I’ll give you a cover.’

  Yes.

  ‘I want to French-kiss you, Erique.’

  ‘Don’t go Jungle Fever on me, Nicholas,’ Erique said. ‘Tomorrow noon on the front of the book piece, right?’

  ‘Noon,’ Nicky said, thinking that he would hit Erique for the advance when he turned in the ‘Murmurs’ piece. Which he knew he would begin writing around eleven forty-five the next day. ‘Not a minute later.’

  5

  WHEN THEY OPENED the side door and edged into the small foyer, they could already see some of the mess in the living room. When they stepped into the kitchen, they saw the extent: an overturned planter, a dumped magazine rack, and a very penitent-looking Molson lying under the dinette table, trying to get small. His tail was on hold for the moment, straining to wag because his family had just returned home, but at the same time, clearly indicating culpability in the living-room caper. He was still too young to know whether the destruction he had wreaked made him a baddog or a reallybaddog.

  Amelia put the groceries on the countertop, exchanged an expectant glance with her daughter, and followed Maddie into the living room. The initial damage report had been accurate. The TV was still intact, as were all the lamps and end tables and Hummels and eight-by-ten pictures. No Buick-sized holes in the drywall, thank God. Amelia looked at Molson and swore that the dog had put on another ten pounds in just the past week.

  ‘I’ll get the DustBuster,’ Maddie said, already assuming some of the blame for this. It was officially her dog, so it was officially her mess, she supposed.

  Later they ate their Healthy Time Shrimp Marias in front of the TV, deciding, by consensus, that Maria could cook for her own family in the future. Maddie offered the rather astute observation that Shrimp Maria tasted like a combination of tuna fish and candy apple.

  Roger was supposed to make a pit stop today, a brief appearance with his family between flights. Amelia glanced at the day’s mail on the hall table and surmised that Roger hadn’t yet been home. There was a time, and not too long ago, that her husband would leave her love notes and tea roses on his stops, but there wasn’t a whole lotta love to make note of around Casa de St John these days, Amelia thought sadly.

  Was there something wrong with her? There had to be. Why else, after nine years of
marriage, does a man stray?

  After dinner, Maddie changed clothes and asked if she could run over to Polly MacGregor’s for what she promised would be no more than a half hour. Although the St John house stood alone at the end of Wyckamore Lane, the MacGregor house was a mere two hundred or so feet away, toward Falls Road, and Maddie had no major highways to cross to get there.

  ‘Wear a jacket,’ Amelia yelled as Maddie walked toward the front door.

  ‘Okay,’ Maddie answered.

  A few moments later, the front door closed, and the house was silenced.

  Amelia dialed Paige’s number.

  ‘Well, I’ve done it,’ Paige said. ‘For the first time in my adult life I’ve actually gone twenty-four hours without food. The very first time. Does this make me, like, anorexic or something?’

  Amelia said, ‘I don’t think that it—’

  ‘Am I bulimic now? Jesus Christ, I’m nervous.’

  As a thirty-three-year-old working woman, Paige didn’t get to see too much of the Lifetime Channel, so her catalog of women’s afflictions was a bit backlisted. Still, it didn’t prevent her from coming down with every single one of them – sometimes three or four at a time.

  Paige was taller than Amelia by an inch or so at five six. Where Amelia’s shoulder-length hair was a woefully lifeless auburn, Paige had thick, wheat-colored hair that argued its way to the middle of her back, and conversation-halting aquamarine eyes. She was a little bustier than Amelia (then again, Amelia thought, who wasn’t?), but she foolishly considered herself plagued by that little bit of tummy that simply refused to go away.

  Yet, when you cleaned her up and put her in a little black sheath and heels, Paige was a knockout. Amelia had caught an inebriated Roger St John gawking at Paige at many a friend’s wedding. ‘It doesn’t make you bulimic,’ Amelia said. ‘And – no offense, I say this because I love you dearly – it’s not like you’re up for the Feed the Children poster-girl spot. Maybe it’ll be good for you. Cleanse the system.’

  ‘But what if I pass out tomorrow? What if I’m talking to someone and I just faint, or fall into a book display? What if I swoon?’