Darkness Descending

by Penny Mickelbury

Cassie whipped out her phone and punched a button. “Boss, can you come here to the front door of the club? Right now? Just you and Linda? Not the guys.” Cassie closed the phone to avoid having to explain her request in front of Darlene, to whom she did explain herself. “My boss is coming. Will you tell her what you told me? About Tosh and about Lili?”

  Darlene looked at her watch. “She better hurry up.”

  Gianna did hurry. In less than a minute, she and Linda pulled up to the curb going the wrong way up the one way street. Darlene whistled through her teeth when Gianna stepped out of the car. “If that’s the Boss, can you get me a job?”

  “Boss, this is Darlene. She runs the door here. Darlene, this is Lieutenant Maglione and she runs the Hate Crimes Unit. And this is Officer Linda Lopez. Darlene thinks our vic’s name is Tosh, and her girlfriend, Lili, is one of the dancers.”

  “Is she here now?”

  “She just finished her set about ten minutes ago.”

  Cassie spoke up, loudly and quickly. “The owner, Miss Dee Phillips, has forbidden us to enter her establishment again.”

  Gianna paused for a single beat. “Has she?”

  “Yes, Ma’am. She said since no crime was committed on her property, she’s got nothing to do with it.” Cassie waited for the reaction she knew was coming.

  Gianna gave Darlene the Dangerous a full wattage smile of thanks and the big woman melted like ice cream under the summer sun. “We appreciate your help, Darlene.” Then she turned toward to door, which Darlene unlocked and opened. “Let’s find Miss Phillips.”

  There were easily five hundred bodies packed inside the club, two-thirds of them on the dance floor. The music was so loud that Gianna felt her blood pounding in her veins. She looked around to get her bearings and stopped short at the images projected on the screen behind the bar.

  “That one right there, I think that’s Lili,” Cassie yelled into Gianna’s ear as she pointed to one of the gyrating images on the screen.

  “What?”

  “Third one from the left, Halle Berry look-alike? That’s Lili.”

  “I thought they were real,” Linda said, finally collecting her wits.

  “This is a video of tonight’s shows. They were very real on top of that bar until a few minutes ago,” Cassie assured them.

  Gianna looked from the women projected against the screen to the women on the dance floor to Cassie. “Where’s Dee Phillips?”

  Striding toward them, eyes snapping, dark skin glistening, hands opening and closing at her sides, was where she was. “I told you to get out of here,” she snarled at Cassie, ignoring Gianna and Linda.

  “I can have the Fire Marshall here in fifteen minutes and this place shut down, the doors barred, in thirty,” Gianna said.

  Gianna won and held the other woman’s gaze. Neither blinked for several long seconds.

  “What do you want?” Dee Phillips finally asked, gaze unwavering.

  “Lili,” Gianna said.

  “She’s gone. Left right after her show.”

  “Not out the front door, she didn’t,” Cassie said.

  “Private door for the dancers. Exits directly to the parking lot, so they can avoid the crowd.” Dee Phillips sounded proud of the arrangement.

  “Did you tell her about Tosh?” Cassie asked, and the other woman’s gaze finally wavered. “What a shitty thing to do. Lili’s girlfriend is laying dead out on the sidewalk and you wouldn’t do her the kindness, the courtesy, to tell her.”

  “I told you, that’s got nothing to do with me. It didn’t happen here and I’m not responsible and you can’t hold me responsible.”

  “But I could make your life miserable,” Gianna said in a tone so matter of fact it was scary. “And I’m sure the Fire Marshall and the building inspector and the ABC Board would help me out.”

  “What do you want?” Dee asked again.

  “Lili. What kind of car does she drive and where does she live?”

  “One of those little PT Cruisers, red, Maryland license plates, and she lives in Silver Spring, but she didn’t go home. Her mother’s in the hospital. She went there.”

  “Linda, get a copy of Miss Phillips’s personnel records. Names, address and phone numbers of all her employees—”

  “I’m not giving you that information. I don’t have to.”

  “I guarantee I will shut you down, Miss Phillips, if you give me reason to,” Gianna said, locking eyes with the enraged bar owner. Dee blinked first and stalked away, Linda Lopez trailing with obvious reluctance. Cassie followed her boss through the crowd, to the front door and out.

  Darlene was sitting on her stool, smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer, looking relaxed. Nobody was in line. She leaned over and put out her cigarette in bucket of sand at her feet and expelled smoke through her nose. “Dee is ‘bout ready to chew nails.”

  “How do you know that?” Cassie asked, then nodded when Darlene patted the cell phone in her shirt pocket.

  “I hope we haven’t caused you any trouble,” Gianna said.

  Darlene’s reaction, a head-thrown-back belly laugh, surprised them both. She shook her head, then sobered, and looked directly at Cassie. “Would you let me know what happens? About Tosh? I mean, about a funeral or memorial service or anything like that?”

  Surprised, Cassie nodded. “I’ll do that.”

  “We haven’t had any real trouble around here since the beginning of the summer, and I guess I was stupid enough to think that maybe they’d leave us alone,” Darlene said softly and sadly. “So much for wishful thinking.”

  “Who’d leave you alone?” Gianna asked, on alert.

  “Our friendly neighborhood dyke bashers. They usually just drive up and down the street giving us dirty looks, maybe some name-calling. But before, it was worse. Throwing stuff—”

  “Stuff like what?”

  “If we were lucky, just scalding hot water or urine and ugly words. If not, lye, rat poison. Bullets.”

  “Why didn’t you ever report this?” Gianna was coldly angry.

  Darlene was, too. “You think we didn’t? Hell, we had to buy a weapon scanner ‘cause some of our people were ready to fight back.” She reached down behind her stool and retrieved a metal detecting wand. “I don’t check much any more, but used to be, I waved this thing over everybody going in that door.” She looked hard at Cassie, then down at the Glock clipped to her belt. “I might start again, too.”

  “You said you reported the harassment? To whom? And when?”

  Darlene looked at Gianna. “What difference does it make? Didn’t nobody do nothin’, as usual.”

  Gianna reached in her pocket for a card and gave it to Darlene. “I would have done something had I been notified. Now. Who did you tell?”

  “That asshole Mid-Town commander. O’Connell’s his name and he’s one nasty bastard. We went to see him, me and Dee. He wouldn’t even let us sit down in his office, made us stand in the hallway. He said there wasn’t nothing he could do long as our ‘clientele’ was ‘inciting’ hostilities. And he had the preachers and church people on his side. Between the cops ignoring us and the holy rollers sending us to hell on a weekly basis, we didn’t stand a chance, in this world or the next. Maybe now that somebody’s dead we can catch a break.”

  Gianna was too angry to speak, so Cassie attempted to broach the silence. “He was flat out wrong, Darlene. O’Connell or whatever his name is—”

  Darlene cut her off, waving Gianna’s card in her face. She’d read it and was looking at them in wide-eyed amazement. “Where did y’all come from? All the hate people been throwin’ at us since the day we opened, where the hell were you?”

  “We would have been here helping you if we’d known you needed help,” Gianna said. “And if you’d known to call us. Frankly, I don’t know why you didn’t.”

  “I know why,” Darlene said darkly, her voice even lower and softer than usual, and Gianna braced herself for what she knew was coming. “I bet the white gay folks in Georget
own and DuPont Circle and Capitol Hill know to call you. We’re probably the only ones who don’t know.” She fixed her gaze on Cassie. “How come you didn’t tell us? This ain’t the first time you been here.”

  “I didn’t know anything about the trouble you’ve had, Darlene, I swear I didn’t. If I’d known, I’d have told my boss and we’d have done something. That’s for real. Please believe that, I don’t care what O’Connell said.”

  Darlene looked from one to the other of them. “Well. Now you know,” she said, stifling a yawn and checking her watch. “Almost closing time.”

  “We owe you an apology,” Gianna said.

  Darlene nodded. “Yeah, you do.” She stuck out her hand and Gianna took it. “Accepted,” Darlene said. “But just so you know, it hurts when your own people discriminate against you. Some gay people treat us worse than straight people. They won’t even let us in that club cross town, that Louisiana place. And on top of that, we got the cops telling us it’s our own fault what happens to us.”

  At that moment, the door opened and Linda Lopez emerged, followed by a trio of leering Latinas, all clad in baggies and backwards baseball caps. Her relief at the sight of Gianna and Cassie bordered on the comical. Darlene did laugh. She also stood up and planted her feet.

  “Why are you dudes hassling the lady?” she queried in her deceptively gentle way putting a protective arm around Linda’s shoulders and edging her forward.

  “We would never hassle nobody so pretty. We just tryin’ to talk to her.”

  “Well, she’s a little busy right now,” Darlene said, using her body to create even more distance between Linda and her admirers.

  “She don’t look busy to me,” one of them said, trying to step around Darlene, and making a grab for Linda, but there was too much of Darlene for success.

  Linda hurried to the car, Gianna and Cassie following, slid behind the wheel, started the engine, threw the car into gear, and peeled off. Off-color jeers and taunts followed them.

  “OK, help me out here,” Linda said.

  “We’ll try,” Cassie said, knowing what was coming.

  “Those...women. They’re scarier than men. I mean, the licking sounds and the wagging tongues and the pelvis thrusts and grabbing my ass. They’re worse than men. What’s that about?”

  Gianna wished she could say, It’s a gay thing, you wouldn’t understand, but it was more than that, and she didn’t understand it, either. Not all of it. And Cassie seemed to be battling the same dilemma. She needed to give Linda an answer. Wanted to give her one because an answer was required, and not only because a cop had been rattled in the course of doing her duty. Linda was not one of the gay officers on the Hate Crimes squad, and that had never mattered, any more than it mattered that Cassie wasn’t Latina or that Kenny Chang wasn’t Black or that Bobby Gilliam wasn’t Jewish or that Tim McCreedy wasn’t straight or that the men weren’t women. Their commitment was complete and total. Now, here was a situation that, as far as Gianna could tell, didn’t have any easy answers.

  “A sad fact, but a true one,” Cassie said sadly, “women get more like men every day. What’s a girl to do?”

  “And what about how they’re dressed?”

  “You just blew it, kiddo,” Cassie drawled. “How somebody dresses is how they dress, period. You can’t judge somebody by how they look on the outside, you know that, Lopez. And not every woman who wears baggies and baseball caps calls women bitches and grabs their boobs.”

  “And whether they do or not, they can’t be murdered for it,” Gianna said, and punched a button on her cell phone. “Eric, where’s my subway map?”

  Gianna cursed under her breath and snapped her phone shut. Cassie leaned forward. “Maybe I can help, Boss. I ride the trains a lot.”

  “Our victim had a fare card in her pocket with one ride taken. She also had a single car key, but no wallet or driver’s license. We’re thinking that she parked somewhere and rode the train here. We just don’t know where.”

  “She probably parked at the Rhode Island Avenue station, just like we did. There’s a big Park-and-Ride lot there. And this time of night, or morning, there won’t be many cars left. We take her key, we might find a car it fits.”

  “But why not park in the club lot?” Linda asked. “Why bother with the train, then have to walk three or four blocks in this neighborhood?”

  “I forgot about that lot!” Cassie said.

  “Take a pass by it, Linda,” Gianna said.

  Linda made a U-turn and a hard right. The street that ran beside the club was dark as a tomb. Not a single street light still burned. Gianna didn’t wonder that the club patrons came armed. What surprised her was that nobody had been killed before now. She sat forward in her seat as Linda slowed to a crawl, looking for the alley that ran behind the club. She found it and turned in. As soon as the car came even with the end of the building, motion detector lights flooded the alley with intense, bright light, and the parking lot was even brighter. It was enclosed by a fourteen-foot high steel fence with a remote control sliding gate. Despite her instant dislike of the woman, Gianna’s respect for Dee Phillips as a savvy business woman continued to grow. She obviously was concerned about the welfare of her customers and her employees.

  Cassie whistled when they reached the parking lot. “No wonder she keeps it locked! Will you look at that?”

  They all looked. What they saw was a brand new Bentley, cream colored and shining like a polished diamond, parked right at the door. Next to it was an equally new Cadillac Escalade, all shiny black and chrome and damn near a block long. A dozen other cars were parked in the lot, none so new or so costly. Or so large. Cassie whipped out her notebook and started taking down license plate numbers.

  “The Bentley, no doubt, belongs to Ms. Phillips. You think the monster SUV does, too?”

  “I’d guess that belongs to Darlene,” Gianna said, thinking the big woman would need a big car.

  “And the regular cars belong to the dancers?” Linda asked?

  Cassie nodded. “Probably. And the bartenders and Moms, who takes the money at the door.”

  “So how many’s that? How many dancers are there, by the way?”

  Cassie hesitated. “Don’t make this sworn testimony, but I think there are twelve of them. I know there are two shows of an hour-and-a-half each, and there are different dancers each show, six of them. And four or five bartenders, I think.”

  Linda was counting personnel sheets. “I’ve got twenty-two,” she said, “but I can’t tell who works when or doing what.”

  “In any case, there’s no red PT Cruiser back here, and that’s what Dee said Lili drove. And she did say she parked back here and left right after her set.”

  “And given how those women looked, I can’t picture them walking up this street to catch the train. And given my reception in that place—and I don’t look like Halle Berry—it’s no wonder they need to be able to escape out the back door.”

  “Pull Lili’s sheet out of that pile, Linda. We need to find her so we can ID our victim, since nobody seems to know who she is. Or they say they don’t.”

  “They probably don’t, Boss,” Cassie said, and sounded so sad that it frightened Gianna, but that was a conversation for another time.

  When they drove back around the corner, the crime scene block still was lit up like a movie set and a sizeable crowd still hovered. As Linda parked, Gianna noticed that the ME and the body were gone. Crime Scene techs on hands and knees scrutinized the sidewalk and the vacant lot, though Gianna knew better than to hope for or expect anything significant or useful. She knew better, too, than to expect results from the neighborhood canvass. Still, it had to be done, all of it, by and according to the book. Gianna had never had a case in which, television-like, a piece of broken glass, a smudged fingerprint, a discarded cigarette butt, found and analyzed by the crime lab, had led investigators to the guilty party. She’d also never met a smart perp. She had, of course, encountered more than a few who’d th
ought themselves clever, but for whom arrogance or conceit was the predominant trait, with clever never making the top ten. This case, however, felt different, though Gianna could not articulate a specific reason for the feeling. It was more than just the extent and nature of the violence—the nature of the hatred. This one’s clever, she thought, and the thought brought no comfort.

  “Boss!”

  She turned to see Tim McCreedy jogging toward her, loose-limbed, lithe and too good-looking by far. He was scowling, though, not a good sign. Tim was a genuinely light and happy being, even in the midst of a tortuous investigation. She’d seen him ruffled only once: He’d almost come unglued in the aftermath of the attack on Cassie. They were best friends, and not simply because they were the only gay members of the Hate Crimes Unit. They were kindred spirits, though Cassie was less light and happy these days.

  “What is it, Tim?”

  “There’s a situation brewing over in the crowd.”

  “That’s all we need,” Gianna said, “is a brewing situation in an angry crowd in the middle of the night.” She looked over Tim’s shoulder toward the three dozen people still clustered behind the crime scene tape. Then she looked up at the sky, dark and dense with fast moving clouds heavy with moisture, and wished they’d release their bounty. “What exactly kind of situation is it, Tim?”

  “Between some of the women from the club and some of the boys from the ‘hood,” Tim said.

  He didn’t need to say any more. Gianna, remembering Darlene’s description of attacks on club patrons, nodded at him to lead the way. As she followed, she let her eyes roam the scenery. It was bleak, at best. The houses and businesses were ramshackle and run down, their best days in the past, and same no doubt could be said of the people who lived and worked in them. Except for Dee Phillips and her night club and the women who patronized it.

  “Fuckin’ ugly ass bull daggers!”

  “Your mama is a bull dagger and she uglier than you!”

  “Why don’t you come over here and get some real dick?”

  “How ‘bout I shove your real dick up your ass? You know how you get it in the joint, like you like it.”