Bones of the Barbary Coast (Cree Black Thrillers)

by Daniel Hecht

  "But the biggest category," Ray finished, "is the 'werewolves' who were brought to trial, tortured and killed during the Inquisition. Garden-variety eccentrics, herbalists, hermits, holdout pagans, individualists—anybody who didn't fit cultural norms had a tough time when the witchcraft hysteria was in full bloom. Ten thousand werewolves, burned alive between 1200 and 1600."

  Thinking of what that number meant in human terms awakened a familiar pang in Cree: all the senseless pain people inflicted on each other. Apparently feeling the same thing, Ray subsided suddenly, his thoughts veering elsewhere. Or maybe his headache had returned.

  "So . . . which kind are you, Ray?" Cree smiled, letting him know he could take it as banter.

  He glanced up, surprised, then pleased. "All of the above? None of the above? I guess I don't quite know yet. How about you, Cree?"

  32

  BERT PUT THE bag of tools on the front seat of the Suburban, checked his guns, and drove down toward the Bay waterfront. The area immediately around Raymond's warehouse wasn't conducive to surveillance, too exposed, but luckily the railroad and finger channels restricted the number of routes leading out. He chose a spot near the first intersection where Ray would have a choice of directions, then parked the truck and waited, hoping he was right that Ray would go out for Friday night entertainment. The position was good, with a clear view of every car that came out of that section. There weren't many.

  When the red Honda SUV approached the intersection, he didn't recognize it until it stopped and the streetlight at the corner lit Cree's face. She was at the wheel, Ray was in the passenger seat. A strange sensation ignited in Bert's gut and burst upwards into his chest, somewhere between outrage, fear, betrayal, sorrow, curiosity, what else he didn't know. There was no way they could see him through his tinted glass, but he reflexively hunched lower in his seat. To his astonishment, they both looked relatively relaxed, Cree looked in control. She even chuckled at something Ray said. Like she had made some kind of social contact with the freak.

  But you couldn't be sure, it could all be an act, and anyway he should know where they were going. Change of plans.

  He waited until the Honda turned and was past him, then fired up the truck, figuring he'd give them a block lead before he'd pull a U-turn and follow. But then a semi loaded with crushed cars pulled up alongside and stopped at the light. Cut him off completely, no view, no way to move. Bert pounded the wheel in frustration. By the time the light changed and the big rig eased its long ass out, there was no sign of Cree's car.

  He took the U anyway and scouted the streets for a time, hoping he'd pick them up again. But no luck. He tried to imagine where she would be going with Scarface, and couldn't. Waves of frustration and anxiety pummeled him until he felt shaky and breathless, and all he could think of was to call her.

  He sighed out loud with relief when she answered. It was an effort to make himself sound normal when he hadn't thought through what he was going to say and was out of breath from the surge of fear.

  But she sounded like her regular self. He asked if they could get together tomorrow, go over a few things, she said she could meet him early afternoon. Listening carefully to the nuances of her tone and wording, he heard nothing to suggest she was being coerced or was in danger.

  "How you doin'?" he asked when he couldn't think of what else to say. Trying to sound like an uncle: "You doin' okay?"

  "I'm doing fine. How about you?" A little chilly, like his question had been patronizing.

  "Stellar," Bert told her.

  Wherever she was, she didn't seem to be immediately at risk. So it was back to the original agenda. This might be his only chance. He turned the truck and drove back to Ray's place.

  The street was dark and deserted. Bert pulled up a hundred feet west of the place and backed the Suburban into the shadow of a defunct box truck. He put on a pair of gloves, checked his guns again, and gathered up his duffle bag. His heart did jackrabbit stunts as he walked to the man door in front of Ray's minivan and bent to check the locks.

  The noise of dogs barking and the rattle of chain-link came from just around to the left, several dogs really having shit fits. Bert got out his picks, but then decided the first order of business had to be shutting up the animals, they'd clue anybody nearby that something wasn't right. He dug in his duffle, found the can of Mace, walked over to the storage yard fence. Three big dogs barking and snarling and leaping, and he recognized them: his tormentors from the morphing e-mails and pop-ups. Their self-righteous territorial ire pissed him off. He took a couple of shots of them with his digital camera, portraits to match the e-mails, then came up and sprayed them as they lunged against the mesh, right in their eyes, right down their throats, and in seconds they were scraping their paws over their faces, stumbling blindly, whimpering, wheezing. There was some satisfaction in putting them in their place.

  Back at Ray's door, the first lock went quickly but the second gave him trouble. It was taking too long, this had to be in and out, eventually somebody would come by and see him. Originally he had wanted this to be totally covert, leaving nothing that would clue Ray he'd been here, but he'd already done the dogs and anyway seeing Ray with Cree had ignited something inside him. It scared him to think she didn't have a better grasp of what she was dealing with, was getting chummy with this psycho. Maybe a message was in order here: Letting Ray know Bert was onto him, wasn't a stickler for procedural niceties, could very well save Cree's life.

  He took out his department-issue pry-bar. It was a heavy, forked steel shaft designed for breaking open even armor-clad doors, and he worked it into the crack at the bolt and levered it with all his weight. First time nothing, then again and nothing, but the third time he heard something give in the jam. Being out here, exposed, he felt freakishly nervous, energized, strong as a bull. Another all-out crank and the door flew open.

  This was where it got scary. He and Nearing and Koslowski had talked about it from time to time, about the mind-set of any cop who bent the rules. They'd agreed that with this kind of thing, once you'd made the decision you had to go at the job with a commitment to stick it out, to see it through and get it done no matter what it required. No bet-hedges or half measures. For a cop breaking the law, it was all or nothing. Stepping inside Ray's, that was the point where he crossed the line. The point of no return.

  He didn't hesitate.

  Inside, he could tell it was cavernous and hollow even before he panned his flashlight through the empty warehouse. For a second his wired-up high faltered: Maybe Ray really didn't live here and there was nothing to find. But then he shined his flashlight to the left and saw a brick office pod cut into the space, topped by raw plywood construction, and he put it together. He walked over to the inner door, tried it, found it locked. He put his duffle down again, got out the picks, and then thought, screw it. The lock popped with one good yank of the pry-bar, and then he was inside.

  33

  IT IS BARBARIC," Ray admitted. "That's its allure, right? People get something they need out of it, a connection to something primal. That's my point."

  "How did you even hear about this place?"

  "A guy at work. He loves this stuff."

  Cree sat next to him in the dark car, staring at the grimy three-story factory building, the plywood-blanked windows, and felt her doubts rise again. There were a few lights on over the entry, enough to illuminate the men who were arriving furtively in twos and threes. Two blocks south was a busy thoroughfare, but this was a quiet street that dead-ended at a gate across the entrance to a factory parking lot. It was the kind of neighborhood Cree had been trained since infancy to avoid, and her urban instincts were putting her on edge.

  Ray sensed her unease. "We don't have to go in if you really don't want to. I went last week, and it is pretty . . . intense. I just thought—"

  "No. We're here, might as well follow through. I want to understand your point."

  Cree turned to him and was startled to see that a group of me
n had appeared near the passenger window, right next to Ray. They were tough-looking guys and they peered into the car with suspicious looks. Cree felt the sizzle of alarm, but Ray just turned his face so they got a better view. They moved on quickly.

  Ray chuckled, then checked his watch again and tipped his head toward the factory. "We should probably go in. It's a mob in there, we won't be able to get seats if we don't get in now. But you have to be, um, kind of alert, okay? Probably you should hang onto your purse, put the strap over your shoulder or something. And don't make eye contact—some of the clientele are a little rough around the edges." Ray cracked his door, but hesitated before he opened it, looking back at her with concern. "But I did warn you, right? And you promise you won't think I'm crazy?"

  "Duly warned, Ray," she assured him. "So stipulated."

  They went into a cigarette-hazed foyer where four bouncers gave them the evil eye and took twenty bucks, then walked dowm a long cement hallway toward a muted hubbub of voices from deep inside the building. Passing a cross corridor, Cree spotted two men jockeying a big crate through a side door. She briefly heard the distant barking and snarling of dogs, cut off suddenly as the door swung shut again.

  When her cell phone rang, she grabbed it and hit the talk button before she thought about whether it was wise to answer.

  Uncle Bert again. What was with him tonight? She stepped out of the corridor into a doorway and put a finger in her other ear. Again Bert said he was just checking in, but he sounded worried and groped for words. Cree was sure he'd been drinking hard. This time he told her that he had some new information on his theory, and that Ray was definitely implicated. He apologized again for the way he'd talked at his office, even though they'd pretty well smoothed that out. She was cautious as she talked, too aware of Ray standing there, and was glad to cut the connection.

  Neither commented on the call as they continued down the corridor.

  "So my point is," Ray said, "there's a central idea or concept in play here. People have been trying to get a grip on it for thousands of years. The various kinds of werewolves, that's important to consider because it reveals a lot about human nature, and I agree, people's ideas and reactions were mostly misguided and stupid. But there is a truth at the center of it all. A stubborn fact. The werewolf idea was just one attempt to give it a name."

  "Give precisely what a name?"

  They had come to a pair of broad swinging doors, and Ray raised a hand and tapped the chipped gray paint. "This, I think."

  * * *

  They pushed into a narrow plywood tunnel, then shuffled through into a large room full of jostling bodies and the scent of tobacco and sweaty skin. Once the room must have housed manufacturing equipment, but now it was mostly full of makeshift bleachers, built so that the seats at the walls rose about eight feet higher than the middle of the room. At the center, a sawdust-floored square had been sectioned off in chain-link, about twenty feet on a side, well lit by cone-shaded hanging lamps.

  The arena. The pit.

  They fought to a seat high against the outer wall, just below a ceiling crossed with ducts and pipes. From here they had a good view of the bright square at the center. Down at the edges of the arena, bookies were taking bets, accepting fistfuls of cash that they passed to hulking banker-bodyguards.

  The audience was mixed. Many were Hispanic, working-class men, but there were also quite a few older white guys in expensive casual clothes, plus a good sprinkling of white college kids and some sharply dressed black men. There were some tough-looking, shady types and a few real down-and-outers, but mostly they were men you wouldn't look twice at on the street. Whatever their class or race, they all had something in common: a sharp-eyed air of anticipation, a hyperanimated, sweaty look as if every one of them had some kind of fever.

  A commotion broke out across the room. People pressed against the walls as a pair of men came in with a big dirty-yellow dog that strained at its leash. When they got to the pit, they opened a narrow gate and shoved the animal inside, but they kept it pulled hard against the mesh. A moment later a second dog was let into the opposite side, this one a little smaller, dark brown, some Rottweiler or pit bull in the mix. The dogs craned their necks to look at each other, quivering with fear and eagerness. At first they were forcibly restrained by their handlers, but soon both pulled away from the barrier to face each other, standing on hind legs with leashes taut, choking on their collars. The people sitting near Cree and Ray argued about their relative merits. Apparently these weren't great dogs; the better fighters would come out later.

  Cree leaned close to Ray's ear. Do they kill each other? she was going to ask. Do they fight to the death?

  But her question was drowned out by a roar of voices. The dogs had been loosed.

  Cree had thought they'd be wary at first, circling and sparring, but the instant their collars were slipped they flung themselves at each other. They moved so fast she could hardly see them. They collided in the middle of the arena, rising up on hind legs, chest to chest, as both tried for throat holds. Their speed was appalling. After an instant of grappling, they each found a grip and came down on all fours, straining, shaking. The Rottweiler mix was more muscular, but the mustard-colored dog had a better hold, a wide-mouthed clamp on the front of the throat. Their necks twitched and tossed, legs braced and repositioned, hindquarters strained, paws scraped and slid in the sawdust. Always the two growls, gargling, muffled by fur and flesh.

  The crowd went crazy as the Rottweiler gave a tremendous twist that threw the yellow dog down. For a moment the brown dog stood above, worrying frantically, but the yellow dog hadn't let go and the Rottweiler weakened and suddenly the yellow dog was up again. The Rottweiler lost its grip as one yellow ear tore in its mouth. It tried for another hold, but abruptly its hind legs splayed and the powerful body dropped into the sawdust. Its growl became a high screaming stifled in its clamped throat. The yellow dog hunched over it, tossing its head With movements of shoulders and neck so powerful the Rottweiler's whole body jerked back and forth. Its legs flailed. The yellow dog's teeth snatched a new hold right under the enemy's chin. The yellow dog's handlers vaulted the sidewall, warily noosed their animal, pulled it away. Ravening, relentless, it strained back at the twitching Rottweiler.

  The loser's handlers were slower to come over the fence. The dog's jaws were snapping as the men hoisted it away, but Cree was pretty sure it was dead. The crowd subsided to a quieter gabble as the bookies paid off and private bets were settled.

  "I don't know about this," Cree said weakly. It had lasted maybe sixty seconds. So much savagery condensed into one minute, an explosion. Nausea bloomed in her belly. "What're we here for, Ray? What is it you want me to understand?"

  "That's what I'm trying to figure out. It has to do with the primal self, our animal self. Isn't 'werewolf' just an attempt to give it a name? To understand it?"

  Cree shut her eyes. "But why the focus on . . . this?"

  "The way it makes you feel."

  "All I feel is sick, Ray."

  "No! Look at it closely. Please. It upsets me too, believe me—I'm a dog lover! But isn't there something else in the feeling?"

  The images came back at her: that furious energy, that mindless singleness of purpose. The raw murderous urge in the straining muscles. Seeing it had blasted energy into her, set every nerve firing. She couldn't deny that it echoed something distantly familiar inside, like an intense memory she couldn't quite recall. It had to do with the energy or living force of the dogs. The sheer elemental power, a tornado compressed into those bodies.

  "Like fear," she told him. "But different. The power of it, I don't know, maybe . . . awe."

  "Yes! Fear leads to awe which merges right into reverence. 'Fear thy God.' People need something like this to make them remember. To let them feel it again. For a while I thought it was the sheer savagery, the killing—the freedom in letting go completely, maybe we know we're not fully alive without it. But now I'm thinking it's even mor
e basic, it's death itself. Any form of freedom has to accommodate the reality of death. It's uncomfortable for us, but a wise person has to live in the continuous knowledge of death. Has to face that big bad secret we keep from ourselves. Because death weeds weakness and irrelevance out of you! Death is a wolf in the sense that death is a winnower, the way the wolves winnow the deer herds of the sick and frail and keep the bloodlines strong. You live more urgently if you're aware you're going to die. You celebrate your existence and live each moment fully. You become strong. You know what freedom is."

  "Aren't there other kinds of freedom?"

  Ray didn't seem to hear her. "I mean, look at them! Every last man will walk out of here more energized, more vivid than when he walked in. He'll be a stud with his wife or girlfriend tonight. He'll look in his kids' bedroom doors and love them fiercely. Because for a little while he'll remember he's mortal! He'll feel his life as high drama, tragic, heroic. And that's what he's paid for! That's what he came here for!"

  She hardly heard the last words. The noise of the crowd had risen sharply as the next dogs appeared at the outer doors. This time the animals were a little smaller, one a Doberman mix, the other some kind of terrier about the same size. Their handlers pushed them into the pit, and again there was a wait as the bookies finished taking bets for this round. With its head pulled against the mesh, the Doberman strained so hard to see its enemy that its eyes rolled white around the edges.

  The prospect of watching another fight gave Cree a panicky feeling. "That's all for me," she said firmly. "I need to leave now."