Four Ways To Midnight (An Anthony Carrick Short Story Collection Book 1)

by Jason Blacker

  “I’m good, you know.”

  “At what,” I said over my shoulder, as I walked out the door and closed it behind me. The sun was burning up the sky really good now. A fireball scarring the blue canvas. Too bad it couldn’t burn up the stink in the rotting Big Orange.

  I got in my car and turned around to leave. From my rearview I thought I saw her watching me as I went. Sad, hollow lives that not even money can fill.

  I exited the Antonucci’s drive and headed south looking for the house with the tennis court visible from the road. It was where she said it was. I pulled up on the side of the road just in front of the gates. I took out my phone and dialed John.

  “You lost again?” he said when he answered.

  “You could say that. But no, I’m outside Ray Hope’s place. Has next of kin been informed.”

  “Not yet. But seeing as how you’re there, could you take one for the team?”

  “For double my rates.”

  “Not in the budget, Anthony. You know that.”

  “Worth a try.”

  I hung up the phone and looked through the well-manicured hedge, past the tennis court and at the house. There was an Hispanic man watering some flower beds up by the house. I got out of my car, leaving my fedora riding shotgun. I walked over to the gates and paused by the intercom. It had a camera on it too. I pushed it like it was my play on a Vegas slot.

  “Hello.”

  The voice was a woman’s. White I would have guessed and older.

  “Is Phyllis there?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “Anthony Carrick with LAPD Homicide.”

  “This is Phyllis,” the voice said.

  I looked at the camera and put on my stoic, hardboiled face. The sort of face it seems I’m always wearing.

  “I have a personal matter I need to discuss with you, in person.”

  “Come on in.”

  There was a side gate that buzzed and I pushed it open. It closed behind me and I walked up the long driveway towards the house. I passed the tennis court and it looked pristine. Like it had never been used. The lawn was immaculate and green. That’s not a natural color here in The Big Orange. Not that bright green anyway. The gardener looked over towards me and I nodded at him. He looked back at his watering.

  The water was coming out of the hose attachment in a large spray like a shower head, and I kept thinking of elephants. Maybe because the hose was black and reminded me of an elephant’s trunk. But more than likely because there were elephants in just about all the rooms in all the houses around here.

  I got up to the main door of the house, and what do you know if there wasn’t a knocker on it that was of an elephant’s face. The trunk curved like a J and I used it to knock a sprightly tune onto the door. Sometimes a funeral dirge starts out sprightly. That was me.

  An older woman answered the door. Gravity had made a mess of her. Makeup was thick but carefully done, but her whole body sighed like a deflated balloon towards the floor. Her hair was blonde. Unnaturally blonde and she was plump. Not the bombshell I had just shared a Perrier with across the street. Though to be fair, Phyllis, if this is who answered the door was a good twenty years her senior.

  I looked at her with a bright smile. She didn’t return mine. An aura of imbued unhappiness emanated from her like old grannys’ perfumes. I almost gagged on it. But my smile held tight.

  “Detective Carrick?” she said.

  “Please, call me Anthony.”

  “Come in.”

  I walked in behind her and closed the door. This one wouldn’t close itself and Phyllis had started up ahead of me. She led me into a living room that was the gauche brother to Naomi’s living room. The furniture and ornate decorations reminded me of Napoleon for some reason. Old and flowery and ornate. Above the fireplace was a large painting. I’d guess it was four by six feet, of Ray and Phyllis. Ray sitting in one of the ornately shaped chairs I saw in this living room. Phyllis standing above him with both her hands on his right shoulder. Not a glimmer of a smile shared between them.

  I walked up to the fireplace and studied the signature. It looked like Roger Barratt’s work. We’d gone to art school together and he was doing well painting portraits of the rich and those who thought they were famous. Last time I bumped into him at an art show he’d bragged about how he’d crack a quarter of a million dollars that year. And that was a few years ago.

  I didn’t care for him and I didn’t care to be prostituting my art for greenbacks.

  “Do you like it?” she asked as she came up and stood beside me.

  “It’s nice,” I said, “great technique.”

  I didn’t really want to tell her what I thought of it. I can be an ass, but I needed this woman’s help in understanding her husband.

  “Please, sit down.”

  I sat down in an ornate chair. I wanted to call it a French arm chair, but I don’t know my arm chairs from my cushions. But that’ll give you an idea. The arms on the chair were padded with a floral pattern and they ended in balled fists, in natural wood. It was surprisingly comfortable for such an ornate but rigid chair.

  “Can I get you anything to drink.”

  I shook my head. With the coffee I’d had at home, the coffee John had given me, and the Perrier, I felt like my teeth were bobbing buoys in the back of my mouth. Phyllis came and sat down across from me on a couch that was just a larger version of my chair.

  “You are Phyllis, I presume?”

  She hadn’t given me the courtesy of an introduction so I took one for myself.

  “Yes, I thought you knew when I answered the outdoor buzzer.”

  I smiled. In the corner of my eye I saw movement. A tall lanky young man came into the living room. From the pictures I’d seen, this was the sullen son. I stood up walked over to him and offered my hand. I wanted to see just how sullen he was. He didn’t accept it. His hands were thrust deep in his pockets. He was a few inches taller than me, but he’d been in my fighting class. Light Heavyweight, if you were wondering.

  He had deep blue eyes and a straight nose. He was a handsome lad if you could get past the sullenness of his features. His hair was a brown, dirty bird’s nest of a mess. His mouth was thin and sharp like a shark’s and he held my gaze steadily. Then he turned to his mother.

  “Who is this?”

  He asked in the vacant tone of schoolboy kicking over a dead bird.

  “That’s Detective Carrick with the LAPD. He has some information about your father.”

  “Did you look at his badge?”

  “Well...no.”

  Still standing rigidly with hands stuffed in his pocket he looked back at me.

  “Can I see some ID?”

  I pulled out my PI’s license and held it open in front of him. He went to reach for it with his left hand.

  “You got eyes on your fingers?”

  He stopped for a minute trying to figure out what I meant and then he pulled his hand away and looked at it steadily for a minute until I put it away. He turned back to look at his mother.

  “He’s not even a real cop. His a private investigator.”

  He said those last words like he was accusing me of being the whore of Babylon. I wasn’t going to let her say anything before she’d heard me out.

  “I’m here in an official capacity with the LAPD. I’d suggest you might want to hear what I have to say, Phyllis.”

  He looked at her and glared. She nodded at me. I sat back down on my French chair, feeling like royalty.

  “Please, tell me why you’re here.”

  “I first need to determine that you’re both kin of Ray’s. I understand you are his wife, Ms. Hope...”

  “Ms. Rivera.”

  “Ms. Rivera, and you are his son?”

  I looked at him and he nodded then he went and sat down next to his mother. He kept a steely gaze on me the whole time.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Curtis.”

  “Curtis Hope or Curtis Rivera
?”

  “Hope.”

  I looked back at Phyllis and weighed my words carefully.

  “I’m afraid, Ms. Rivera, that we found Ray in De Neve Park this morning. It looks like he’s been murdered.”

  She swallowed hard and blinked her eyes several times. They got wet but they didn’t leak. I looked at Curtis. He was looking off someplace in the carpet, chewing his left fingernails. His stare was vacant.

  “Murdered, are you sure?” asked Phyllis.

  “Yes, ma’am, we’re quite sure. You’ll be invited to come down to the coroner’s office later today, maybe tomorrow, to identify the body, but that’s just routine. We know it’s your husband we found. ID and photographs found on his body confirm it.”

  She nodded again and then her wet eyes started to leak. Curtis got up from the couch and disappeared. He came back moments later with a box of tissues and offered them to his mother. She took one and dabbed at her eyes.

  “How was he killed?” asked Curtis.

  “We can’t release that information just at the moment. But it appears, if this is of any comfort, that death was quick and painless.”

  I don’t know why I said that. The two of them, especially the son, didn’t seem to be all that concerned. This is the rot behind these gilded walls. The families that put their best faces forward are often wearing masks to hide the monsters underneath.

  “Were you close to your father, Curtis?”

  He shook his head, took his fingers out of his mouth and looked at his manicuring like a thoughtful professional.

  “No.”

  “Why would anyone want to hurt Ray?” said Phyllis.

  Sometimes folks say things because they think they’re the right things to say. This family wasn’t all torn up about their patriarch's death. They were just putting their best faces forward for my benefit.

  “Well,” I said, playing along with this ball of yarn as we batted it around like kittens, “if we can determine why Ray was at the park so late at night, we might find motive, and from motive we can often find the killer.”

  I looked at Curtis and a wave of anger spilled like high tide behind his eyes, but no sooner had I seen it, did it retreat again.

  “You said he was at the park late at night?” asked Phyllis

  I nodded.

  “We haven’t confirmed time of death but from all accounts it was after midnight.”

  “And he was only found this morning?”

  I nodded again. Phyllis was getting good at asking the questions and I wanted to get her good at answering them.

  “A neighbor found Ray in the park this morning just after seven thirty.”

  Phyllis dabbed at her eyes again.

  “He was all alone all night.”

  She said it quietly, mouthing the words, feeling them in her mouth like small marbles. She balled up her tissue in her fist and looked out the window to her left, past her son. I didn’t know much about this murder yet, but I knew she had some feelings for him. Maybe some distant ones that the sun of misunderstandings and broken dreams hadn’t burnt up like morning fog.

  “Why do you think he might have been out in the park late at night, Ms. Rivera?”

  She turned back and looked at me and tried to put on a brave smile. It didn’t look natural on her face.

  “You know, Mr. Carrick,” she said, her voice broken and sad like a threadbare rug, “about sixty years ago, or more, Elvis Presley used to come out to De Neve Park and play touch football with his friends, when he used to live out here in LA. Simpler times then, I suppose. More carefree and more honest, too, I guess.”

  She looked back out the window, a wistful far-away look on her face.

  “I don’t know about that. I think there’re some carefree, honest times around now, just not for all folks. You have to practice honesty to get good at it.”

  She didn’t say anything but I thought I saw a smile inch up the corner of her mouth like a worm.

  “You know why he was there at the park late at night, don’t you?” I asked.

  She nodded, at least it looked like a nod. Maybe it was a twitch.

  “He was meeting men to have sex. Correct?”

  “That’s bullshit, that’s a fucking lie! My father wasn’t a faggot, you can’t say that!”

  I looked over at Curtis, and he was balling his fists in anger. His face flushed red with it.

  “I didn’t say he was a faggot, son, but I reckon he was a closet homosexual.”

  Yeah, I was poking the bear. But the son was either in denial or playing me for a patsy. No way his mother knew without him knowing, too.

  “Tell him it’s not true. Tell him to stop lying!”

  Curtis was almost getting hysterical. His voice was raised and the veins on his neck sticking out like snakes. Spittle was doing squats between his lips. Phyllis reached out and placed her left hand, which still held the balled up tissue, onto his leg.

  “It is true, Curtis, you know that. It’s okay.”

  Curtis gritted his teeth and his jaw bulged at the sides like he’d stuffed gum there. But he didn’t say anything.

  “Still, it doesn’t mean he deserved to die. The world needs more love, Mr. Carrick.”

  “I don’t figure how disloyalty and philandering is love, Ms. Rivera, but I’ll give you that he didn’t deserve to die.”

  “How can you be so goddamn understanding, after everything that asshole put you through.”

  Curtis was looking at his mother. Anger still hot on his face like a birthmark. His blue eyes smoldering.

  “A part of me still loved him, Curtis.”

  “No, no. You just couldn’t leave because he wouldn’t give you a dime, you...”

  Curtis found himself finally; he remembered I was in the room. He looked over at me guiltily and saw I was listening, so he looked away and stopped talking. Probably the best for him.

  “I did love him, Mr. Carrick, though it was an unrequited love that died a lonely death. But I never gave up on hoping I might become what he needed. Everything that he needed. Can you understand that?”

  I nodded. I could understand it. The same way I see the same old suckers at the horse races, their jackets threadbare, the lines of misery written deeply all over their faces, and yet, they still hope their pony will come in one final time, just like in the good old days when they danced with lady luck. Ain’t gonna happen.

  My phone rang and I answered it. It was John. He asked where I was and I told him.

  “Great, can you hang tight for fifteen to thirty? My guys’ll be coming by with a warrant and we want to nab Ray’s computer before anyone takes wind of it and has a chance to erase it.”

  “Sure thing, boss,” I said, facetiously.

  “See, just like the old days.”

  “In the old days,” I said, “I was the boss.”

  “But this is the new reality. Listen, I also heard back from the coroner. Ray was killed with a hit to the head by that rock Mike found. Coroner also puts his death at between twelve and two a.m.”

  We hung up and I put my phone away. Phyllis looked at me with a question on her face. I was feeling magnanimous.

  “That was the Homicide Captain,” I said. “He’s heard back from the coroner and your husband was killed by blunt force trauma to the head, sometime between midnight and two a.m.”

  I already had a good idea who the killer was and he was sitting in front of me. Nine times out of ten the perp and victim know each other. Most times intimately. Phyllis wasn’t up to it. I didn’t see her heading over to the park after midnight just to confront her philandering husband and knock him on the head with a rock. She’d been living with his disappointment for years.

  The son however, I reckon he could be good for it. Just out of his teens, I’d put him in his very early twenties. He’s got a huge chip on his shoulder, that I noticed the moment he came into the room. And he’s trying to pretend he doesn’t know what type of man his father is. I figure, he confronted his father and the
whole thing went sideways on him.

  But I needed evidence. Well, not me so much as the LAPD Homicide Unit needed evidence. I’m sure they’d get it. There’d be DNA on the rock if they could get at it. And footprints, too. I saw one of the techs taking footprint casts.

  Anyway, I wasn’t about to tip my hat, I’d left it in the car, and I wanted to find out who Ray’s hope was. The man in the shadows with his pants down. Could be a jilted lover or we could have one of those homosexual serial killers out there who prey on closeted men. I’d seen that before. Those homophobes get a real hard on for “teaching” closet homosexuals a lesson.

  I didn’t have much else to ask. Not until after John and I had figured out who the other man in this cloaked closet was. Then we’d come back and I could ask Curtis some more questions. Even if he wasn’t good for this, his alibi was going to be shit. Probably home asleep. That’s likely what he’ll say. But I had some time to kill, so I asked her if I could get a coffee. I used the washroom too. Just as ornate as the living room.

  And we sat and I complimented her on her decoration which got her talking. We spoke about the painter, Roger Barratt and I ended up apologizing for her loss. It was a loss for her. Because even though Ray might have been an ass, she seemed like a sweet woman, lost in a dark night where her youthful dreams had turned to nightmares.

  By the time I had finished my coffee, the cops were here with the warrant. I left discreetly and went back home to my apartment the size of Ray’s living room. I was working on another painting. This one I was calling Blood Orange. It was about LA. You might have figured it out.

  At three thirty I was at the North Hollywood station where John likes to hang his hat most days. I was waiting while the desk cop called John out for me. I knew the routine. I signed in and I was issued a visitor pass. John met me in the lobby. He came up to me grinning and patted me on the shoulder.

  “Cat got a mouse?” I asked.

  “Yeah, we’ve got great news, come along and I’ll show you.”

  I followed him through some doors and down some halls. He showed me into a bigger office than the closet we’d met in many times before.

  “You’re moving up in the ranks,” I said. “They’ve let you out of the closet.”