[2010] The Violet Hour

by Daniel Judson

  Oil.

  The rear tire, losing its contact with the pavement, immediately began to spin wildly, creating a gyroscope effect that not only caused the back end to whip around suddenly but made the bike itself begin to lay over. Cal pulled in on the clutch to cut the power to the rear tire, but as the bike went down, leaning to the right, the left grip was ripped from his hand and he completely lost his hold on the lever.

  The right-hand grip remained with him, but as the bike continued its spin-out, the rear tire taking the lead, he naturally clamped down on the throttle—it was the only thing he had to hang on to—causing the engine to redline and, with the clutch engaged, the rear tire to spin even faster.

  In a quick second the bike was gone from beneath him, and he went down hard, Angelica still clinging to him, the two of them landing on the pavement. They began to slide on their sides, the bike spinning out ahead of them like a four-hundred-pound top.

  Cal rolled onto his back, putting his elbows and heels down to help slow him. Angelica didn’t know to do this, so she maintained full momentum, speeding past him, still on her right side. Within seconds they were beyond the oil patch, skidding across dry pavement. The bike crossed onto the road’s shoulder and came to an abrupt stop against a bank of dirt. Cal watched as Angelica’s body, still traveling close to fifty miles an hour, slammed into the underbelly of the motorcycle.

  One second in motion, a sudden and complete stop the next.

  Crossing onto the shoulder as well, slowing but still moving, Cal came to the bank, rose up and over it like it was a ramp. He was suddenly airborne. His flight lasted only a second, maybe two, just long enough for his body to turn in midair. He landed hard, facedown, his right hand caught between his ribs and the solid ground.

  He immediately felt several bones in his hand break. The pain was like long needles of fire piercing him. He slid a bit more, then came finally to a stop. Dazed, he wanted to stand, felt the need to do so, immediately, but he couldn’t. He barely knew which way was up. He could smell the motor oil; his clothes and jacket were covered with it. He heard voices, sensed people rushing toward him. He lifted his head, struggling to remove his helmet and looking for these people. He saw instead Angelica, maybe twenty feet away, her body, motionless, all but tangled with the bike.

  Someone was dragging him suddenly. Roughly. His helmet was off now. Had he taken it off or had someone else? Above him, the clouded sky was rushing. There were open patches now through which he could see fading stars.

  Then he was being lifted and placed in the backseat of a car. He glimpsed a face above him, Tierno’s face, heard Tierno speaking to someone else but couldn’t see who.

  “Angel,” Cal muttered. “Angel.” No one responded to him. He craned his neck to see back to the field they had crashed into, but then a car door swung closed and cut off his view.

  The next thing he knew the vehicle was in motion, making turns. Streetlights above, approaching, passing, then gone. Some time later he was being carried again, by two men now. Tierno and someone else—the same someone who had helped get Cal to the car after the crash. They brought him through a dark kitchen, down a set of narrow stairs, into a basement.

  Cold, damp, dimly lit.

  Placed in a chair—an office chair with a high back—he was stripped of his jacket, boots, and socks. His forearms were quickly secured to the arms of the chair with duct tape. The pockets of his jeans were emptied. His left hand was throbbing, the pain searing, unbearable.

  Not far away, in another chair, secured in a similar manner, was someone else.

  A man. Cal’s view of him was blocked, but then, as people moved about, the way was finally cleared and he could see the man’s face.

  It was Messing. His head was hanging limp, the front of his shirt bibbed with blood. Cal looked at him for several long seconds before he was even able to focus on the bullet hole in the man’s temple. Even then it took a bit for him to realize that this meant Messing was dead.

  Cal squirmed suddenly, feeling the overwhelming, if not delayed, urge to get free, but the tape held. His strength quickly diminished, his will to run undermined by the pain surging through his hand.

  Standing beside Messing was another man. Someone Cal had never seen before. Tall, well dressed, in his sixties.

  “Where’s Karl?” this man said.

  He was in charge, that much was clear by the way he stood and the tone of his voice.

  Janssen? It had to be.

  “We don’t know,” Tierno answered. “We were able to track them, though, with the device. We managed to get ahead and spread the oil.” He nodded toward the other man. “We were lucky he had some in his trunk.”

  Cal looked toward the man to whom Tierno had nodded. He was standing to the right of the chair, behind Cal, in a corner. Cal couldn’t see him.

  “Angel,” he said again. He was able to do little more than mumble now. “Angel.”

  “What the hell is he talking about?” Janssen said.

  “A woman was with him,” Tierno answered.

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “He crashed his bike when he hit the oil. She was killed.”

  Cal closed his eyes, lowered his head.

  “Jesus Christ,” Janssen said, suddenly angry. He told Tierno to go the garage, see if Karl was still there.

  Tierno turned away, saying nothing, and climbed the stairs.

  Janssen spoke to the man standing in the corner, behind Cal. “Help me put him out,” he ordered.

  The second man approached.

  Cal’s head was still hung low, so the first thing he saw of this man was snakeskin cowboy boots.

  Looking up, Cal found the man’s face, didn’t want to believe what he was seeing.

  “C’mon,” Janssen said. He was getting impatient. “Hold his arm. He’s going to squirm.”

  Eric Carver nodded, then placed both hands on Cal’s right forearm, pinning it against the arm of the chair. Janssen found a vein, pierced it expertly with a syringe, and pressed the plunger forward with his thumb. All so fast. Cal, when he finally realized what was happening, struggled as best he could, but Carver held firm, kept his arm still.

  “Now what?” Carver said to Janssen

  “Leave him. He’ll be out for a while. When she’s ready, she’ll go to work on him.”

  Carver let go of Cal’s arm, straightened his back. He remained for a moment, looking down at the kid.

  “Sorry, buddy,” he said. “I tried to keep you out of this. I really did. Fucking Lebell, you know. He had to drag you into it.”

  “Let’s go,” Janssen ordered.

  His heart still pounding, Cal’s mind quickly began to spin and roll. The last thing he saw was the two men climbing the stairs.

  Then the basement went dark and the door above was closed and locked.

  So cold, and the whole of the world reduced to only pain and wild fear and the sound of his own breathing.

  Then, suddenly, nothingness.

  PART THREE

  November 1

  THE DAY OF THE DEAD

  Twelve

  In her room at the end of the hall, lying flat on the worn-out bed, Evangeline Amendora waited for the sunset.

  The morphine Janssen had given her had put distance between her and her pain but hadn’t knocked her out—it never did, not in all the times they had used it together, at first during her training and then, later, recreationally, to pass the occasional night. Unable to come and go freely, not till all the loose ends were tied up, they sought escape in other ways. One night a week, usually a Saturday, he would inject them both and they would lie down together, giving themselves to the effects. Instead of making her drowsy, morphine caused in her the side effect of excitability—her body would be perfectly still, her breathing deep and easy, as though she were sound asleep, but inside her chest, an ever-spilling euphoria, and in her mind, pleasant, calmly racing thoughts. The joy of m
orphine was that, ultimately, nothing could reach her—memories that would otherwise fill her with fear or rage suddenly had no power to do so, evoked in her no reaction whatsoever. Medicinal, then, these nights with him. Precious escapes from old wounds.

  Medicinal, too, now; the blow to her head, as Janssen had pointed out, meant she shouldn’t fall asleep, which she hadn’t done at all during the long day. Nor had she felt any pain, or fear, or rage. Nothing but hour after hour of a waking sleep, an alert but profound peace, and Janssen, through most of it, right there with her, solid anchor to her drifting balloon.

  He was gone now, though, and she heard voices coming up from downstairs. Business, unavoidable, otherwise he’d be here. Good to hear, after so many days of silence. Night was approaching, and it had been a few hours prior to dawn when she was brought back here, so she was out of danger, or at least far enough out of it.

  Lifting her hand, she touched the bandage covering her temple. Crisp, dry—her bleeding had stopped. She was still high, but at the tail end of it, pain beginning to emerge. Touching the wound wasn’t the right thing to do; she felt a deep nausea when she did, and suddenly couldn’t focus well with her left eye, so she stopped fussing with it, instead lay still and watched what could be seen of the sky through the window on the other side of the room.

  This sunset would be, thanks to the morphine, the first sunset in a long time that didn’t send her back to those days of humiliation and terror, those long-ago hours when she was a child in bed, waiting for the sound of footsteps in the hallway outside her door. Just a girl then, nothing about her even remotely womanly. He, though, was a fully developed man, hairy and smelling of sweat and booze, and so hard. Normally, these thoughts were enough to cause her to relive those nights as though they were happening in present time, or as though they were just about to happen. The dread, the shame. Now, though, she could look at these thoughts and feel nothing but joy that she was alive, that she would never again be that little girl lost to desperation and fear, nor that young woman selling her body in the slums of São Paulo.

  So the sunset came, light autumn gray darkening into blackest night. Dark out here, the darkest place she’d ever known, easily. Downstairs, men were moving about; she heard the sounds of boots upon old floors. Several voices, doors closing.

  It would be time, soon.

  She made herself sit up. It wasn’t the easiest thing to do. Janssen had stripped her at some point, but she had no memory of that. She remembered bleeding, though, so that was why. In panties and a half-shirt, she looked at her strong legs, and her stomach, lean and hard, then, finally, studied her long arms, muscular and crisscrossed with veins.

  She was the strong one now, she held the power.

  There were clothes nearby, on the chair Janssen had sat in all day. She stood, felt a wave of blinding nausea, but fought through it. Dressing herself—again, not the easiest thing—she then stood at the window, looking out at the vehicles parked in line in the rear driveway. Her Ford sedan, the Town Car, and two other vehicles, an unmarked police car and an old Corvette. A full house, below.

  Eventually the nausea became too great, and she returned to the bed, sitting on the edge of the mattress. The sick feeling subsided, but in its wake was a headache, the sensation of pressure, like something was growing inside her head.

  The drug was wearing off; she’d need more to continue. She had a high tolerance for pain—her training, at times, thanks to Karl, had bordered on brutal—but this was something else, a kind of pain she’d never known before.

  Waiting on the edge of that bed now. Waiting to do what she had been trained to do, what she did so well.

  Cal heard the sound of his name.

  “Cal. Cal.”

  A whispered voice, sounding distant at first, and then, suddenly, right there in front of him.

  “Cal. Cal.” Spoken with an insistent tone.

  It was Eric Carver’s voice, that much had been clear almost from the start. Cal opened his eyes, followed the voice to its source. A dim light was on, and it stabbed his eyes. Nonetheless, he could see Carver, standing just a few feet ahead of him, dressed in the same clothes he had been wearing two nights ago. European jeans, designer black sweater, Belstaff leather jacket—and those cowboy boots. He offered Cal a bottle of water.

  “You must be thirsty,” he said softly.

  Cal nodded, closing his eyes against the light. He felt the bottle touch his lips. Water poured into his mouth. He swallowed.

  “More?” Carver said.

  Another nod, more water in his mouth. Cal opened his eyes again. Carver waited a moment, then capped the bottle and placed it on the cement floor. He pulled up a chair and sat, just feet from Cal now, directly in front of him and eye to eye.

  “I need you to listen to me,” he said. “Are you listening?”

  Cal didn’t have another nod in him. He just looked at his boss, saying nothing.

  “They’re going to be coming down in a few minutes,” Carver said, “and they’re going to hurt you. Do you understand me? They’re going to hurt you, bad. But that doesn’t have to happen. They want to know where the tapes are. They want to know if the tapes even exist or if the whole thing was Lebell trying to bluff them. Just tell me the truth right now, and I’ll go upstairs and tell them. I swear, they won’t hurt you if you tell them what they want to know. Do you understand me?”

  Cal shook his head once. It took all he had. He felt groggy and weak. He remembered being injected but had no idea how long he’d been out.

  Carver leaned closer. “Cal, I need you to listen to me. Are you listening to me?” He paused, holding out for eye contact. Eventually Cal gave it to him. “They’ve got someone who’s supposed to be very good at this, at hurting people. Do you hear me, Cal? She’s going to come down here and fuck you up. And trust me, you’ll tell them what they want to know. It’s just a matter of how long it takes you to give in. Hell, Janssen got Messing to make that call to you in a matter of minutes. A couple punches to the face, a threat to his wife and kids, and he did what Janssen wanted him to do. That’s how serious they are, Cal. They killed a fucking detective. They used him for their own ends, and when it became necessary, they tied him to a chair, made him talk, and then shot him in the head with his own fucking gun. These people, they do whatever it takes. I’m scared for you right now. They’re going to get you to tell them, and it won’t just be a few punches to the face. So tell me now and save yourself the torment.”

  Carver paused again to allow that to sink in. Then, in a softer tone, the tone of a friend, he said, “I tried to keep you out of this, you realize that, right? That’s why I had you work on the Benz, so they’d be able to make their move without anybody in the way. I was looking out for you, Cal, like I always do.”

  “You gave them the code. It wasn’t Messing, it was you.”

  “Messing was a Boy Scout. In fact, it sounded like he was trying to scare you into running with those threats of arresting you. He was supposed to get you to stay put till Karl got there, not take off. Janssen put a bullet in his head for that. He tried to save you, and it got him killed. These people, man, they don’t leave anything to chance. They know what they’re doing, they don’t fool around. So let me help you, okay? Tell me what they want to know, and you won’t have to go through what they’re about to put you through. Do you hear me? Cal? Do you understand what I’m saying here?”

  Cal shook his head again, then said, “I don’t know where the tapes are.” Despite the two sips of water, his throat was painfully dry, so dry that it pained him to speak.

  “So they do exist?”

  Cal said nothing.

  “According to Messing, Lebell said that if something happened to him the tapes would become public. So someone has to know where he hid them. Who knows, Cal? Is it you? I fucking hope not.”

  “She did.”

  “She who?”

  “You were the one who laid down the oil, right?” Cal said. “It was the oil I had
given you the other day. That was you, right?”

  “Cal, who knows? Do you know? Just tell me.”

  “You laid down that oil, right?”

  “What does that have to do—”

  “You laid down the oil?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “Then you killed her. And I swear, you’re going to fucking pay. Do you hear me?”

  Carver ignored the threat. The kid’s rage, though weak, unsettled him slightly.

  “Angelica Pulaski knew,” he said.

  “Yeah. So that’s it. Wherever the tapes are, they’re just going to sit there.”

  Carver got sidetracked by this. “Was she one of his women?” he said. “Was he fucking her, too? Jesus, was there anyone he wasn’t fucking?”

  “Shut up,” Cal said.

  “Oh, so you were the one fucking her. Quite a coup for a grease monkey like you, banging a woman like that. It’s been all over the radio today, by the way. ‘Prominent local woman found dead, killed in an early morning motorcycle crash.’ That’s how we found out who she was. The good news is, you seem to be in the clear so far. The bike was unregistered, so there’s no way to trace it back to its owner. The scene clearly shows that there were two people on the bike, though, so they know she wasn’t driving the thing. Of course, the cops will search the thing for prints, take it apart if they have to, dust every scrap of it. Once they lift a print, all they have to do is get a print of yours to match it to. Plenty of those at the garage, right?”

  Cal said nothing.

  “Of course,” Carver continued, “no reason for the cops to come to the garage at all. No reason to connect you to that bike. Yet. All the more reason to tell me the truth, Cal. She was beloved in this town, friends with all the right people. I’m no lawyer, but you might be looking at a charge of negligent homicide. I know how you feel about cops. Do you really want to put your future in their hands, trust that they’ll do you right?”