Good Morning, Darkness

by Ruth Francisco

  “Excuse me.” The sculptor’s barrel body filled the doorway. “I need to run some errands. Do you mind locking the door on your way out?”

  Reggie slowly pulled himself away from the view and turned to the sculptor. “That’s all right. I’m done here,” he said. “Will you be renting out the apartment soon?”

  “I hope so. I have several people stopping by to take a look at it this evening. I want to get a tenant settled before I leave for Europe. Is that a problem?”

  Reggie wanted an excuse to keep it vacant. He sensed she’d left something here for him, but he didn’t know what it was or where to look. He had no cause to ask the sculptor to keep it empty. It wasn’t a crime scene after all. “No. Go ahead and rent it. If Miss Finnegan contacts you, would you please ask her to give me a call?”

  Reggie handed him a card and left.

  * * *

  The third time I saw the cop was on a Saturday morning. He was off-duty and was wearing long cotton shorts with a Hawaiian print. He looked even bigger out of his suit. His shoulders looked as strong as a railroad trestle, and his calves were the size of my thighs. He had his two sons with him, and they were playing in the waves with Boogie boards. They tried to drag him in, but he shook them off. He sat down and dug holes with his toes. He stared out at the ocean, running sand through his fingers like he was thinking ’bout something.

  I was fishing close to the end of the jetty. The Salvadoran beside me hooked a big one. We were all helping to bring it in, four or five of us, arms around each other’s waists in a chain, yanking hard, laughing, so I was surprised after it was over and the Salvadoran was mugging with his thirty-pound fish when I turned and the cop was climbing onto the jetty. As he passed, the muscles in his back quivered like the haunches on a buffalo; he turned at the very end, then walked back toward us. I was the only one who knew he was a cop, and he must’ve sensed I was nervous ’cause he came up beside me and spoke.

  “That’s a beautiful fish,” he said. His voice rumbled through the ground like a passing freight train.

  The Salvadoran didn’t speak English, so I answered, “It’s a bonito. That’s a type of tuna.”

  “He’s full-grown?”

  “No way. They get to be a hundred pounds. But you have to go out to sea to get the big ones.”

  He really seemed to admire the fish, like he was touching it with his eyes. “You fish down here a lot?” he asked.

  “A few times a week.”

  He looked down into my pail. “What kind of fish you got there?”

  “Sea bass. They haven’t been around here for a couple years, but they say the warm currents shifted, and it’s bringing them up close to shore.”

  “El Niño?”

  “Probably.”

  We were talking like this for a while, about different kinds of bait and stuff, when he turned and looked at the girl’s house back up on the sand. The sun was glinting on her windows and it made it look like there was a fire inside. He kept watching, as if he expected her to wave. He had this expression on his face like I’ve seen in churches in Mexico, like after the ’85 earthquake, when people prayed to statues of the Virgin of Guadeloupe as if she could do something about it. I knew the girl meant something to him.

  He turned and caught me watching him. My ribs squeezed around my heart. It was like running into someone you grew up with who knows the clay you’re from, and no matter what you’ve made of yourself, he remembers why you left the neighborhood. At that moment, I knew we were linked.

  “You know who lives there?” he asked, almost whispering.

  I told myself to be cautious. “Sure. Some famous artist. A sculptor or something.”

  “Not him. The girl who lives in back, over the garage.”

  I felt my face turning red. “Really? A girl, you say?”

  He knew I was lying. His stare felt like a tongue depressor shoved down my throat, and I knew that if he ever got me in one of those interrogation rooms with the florescent lights and the one-way windows, he’d have me pissing on myself in seconds.

  “Her name is Laura Finnegan,” he said. “The sculptor who rents to her told me she left a few weeks ago. Apparently, her mother had a stroke, so she flew east. I was wondering if she was back yet.”

  I realized he didn’t know she was dead. “That’s too bad,” I said. “About her mother, I mean.”

  “You haven’t seen her?”

  “Nope.”

  He gave me that look again, and I felt like an egg being tapped on the edge of an iron skillet. I should’ve told him then. I should’ve said, “You know those arms they found on the beach? They belong to her.” But I didn’t. I don’t know why. Maybe part of me still wanted to believe she was alive, standing beside the bed of her sick mother, head bent to one side with that gentle smile she had when she fed the birds out her kitchen window. Or maybe I didn’t want to cause any more sadness for this man whose eyes said he’d had plenty. Or maybe I was still afraid they’d peg me for a Mexican psycho-killer.

  He knew I was holding back something. He handed me his card, white with blue letters and the LAPD insignia. “If you ever see her here again, would you give me a call?”

  As he climbed back down to the beach, grabbing each of his sons around the waist, charging into the water, the boys squealing and giggling, excited by their father’s strength, I knew he was trying to forget her.

  * * *

  Scott turned left off San Vicente Boulevard onto Twenty-sixth Street, up to Sunset Boulevard, then left again on Mandeville Canyon Road. He took the first left and wound up the Santa Monica foothills to a ranch house on top of a crest, nestled behind cypress trees. The house was one of the least expensive and oldest homes in Mandeville Canyon, a solid, three-bedroom that still smelled of the old woman who had died in it. It didn’t have the granite countertop kitchen or the Jacuzzi or the master bedroom or the marble tub or the DSL hookups, but it did have a great view of Will Rogers Park and, in the distance, the blue horseshoe shape of Santa Monica Bay. In most other neighborhoods, it would be considered a modest home, but here he hoped to get at least a million dollars for it.

  His clients were late. He parked his BMW by the curb and opened the car door to let the cool breeze blow through. He leaned back in the seat and tried to relax.

  As he waited, he calculated he had a 60 percent chance of getting the asking price for the house. Scott organized his life around percentages. He enjoyed rattling them off to his clients: 80 percent of the neighborhood incomes were over two hundred thousand; 2 percent of the neighbors were Asian, 1 percent black; real estate values rose by 14 percent last year; vacancy rate of 3 percent; 95 percent of the local children went to college. He had a 15 percent chance of selling the house to this couple, and a 65 percent chance of selling them one of his own listings. The market was hot, and the percentages were in his favor.

  Like a gambler, knowing the odds gave him a sense of security. He never questioned the importance of winning.

  He’d read somewhere that only 33 percent of L.A. County homicides resulted in a conviction. If there was no murder suspect within forty-eight hours of the killing, there was only a 10 percent chance the case would be solved. So far, only the arms had been found, which remained unidentified, and no one had questioned Laura’s disappearance. Everyone accepted the sick-mother story. As each day passed, he began to feel more optimistic, revising the probability of life incarceration downward.

  He tried the story out first on the sculptor, whose own mother had fallen ill a few years back and who had made numerous trips back and forth to Belgium until she passed on. Scott knew this, and he knew the effectiveness of a lie depended on knowing your listener. The sculptor even helped load up the truck. Scott drove straight to the Salvation Army. He saved a box of paperwork so he could cancel her car insurance, utilities, and magazine subscriptions. He found the pink slip to her car and sold it for cash within days through The Recycler. He became proficient at forging her name. He sent a letter of r
esignation to her boss at work, using the same ill-mother excuse for her hasty departure. It wasn’t the kind of job where anyone was likely to check up on her. He disconnected her phone but kept her message service in order to monitor anything that might crop up later and cause problems. He forwarded her mail to a post-office box where he could pick it up at any time, day or night, without being observed. He figured he’d only need it for a month or two.

  Luckily, both of her parents were dead, and she was an only child. She had few personal friends. Her acquaintances from work would get word of her sick mother. He supposed there was a chance she’d told friends her mom was dead, but he knew Laura was reticent about such things, and he was counting on her not having told anyone.

  She did have one close friend, a roommate from college named Vivian Costanza with whom she’d toured Europe after graduation. From Laura’s telephone bills, he saw that they talked at least once a week. Still, Vivian lived in New York, and he didn’t think she’d create a problem.

  Scott figured he could explain almost everything away if he had to, even the forging of Laura’s signature. He could say she asked him to handle things for her. He wasn’t writing checks to himself, after all; he was merely taking care of her business affairs.

  At first, when the arms showed up, he panicked. He immediately thought of buying a ticket to Brazil, but then decided to wait to see if they identified the body. Just in case he had to make a quick getaway, he packed a suitcase and spent the week at his sister Pat’s apartment. He called his neighbor every day and asked if anyone had been by. No one had. After two weeks, he began to relax a bit. The arms remained unidentified, and the rest of the body never showed up. He got no surprising messages on his answering machine, no unexpected visits from police.

  He was amused that everyone seemed to accept Laura’s abrupt departure, but he supposed that was the kind of town L.A. was: people came, spent a few years, then disappeared. It happened all the time. No one thought twice about it.

  His only problem was the ring. He should have told his mother he lost it, but now it was too late. He’d have to try to find a replica, and that was going to be pain in the ass.

  Scott watched a black Mercedes wind slowly up the hill. His clients had finally arrived.

  When he first met the couple, Sara and Ted Brighton—wife, studio executive; husband, small business owner of several copy shops downtown; second marriage; no children—he’d thought his chances at a sale were pretty good. The wife liked to garden, the husband wanted to be close to a golf course. They both wanted that feeling one got in the Santa Monica Mountains—of being far away from Los Angeles yet close to town. But as he watched them climb out of their car—the husband forgetting his cell phone after he locked the car, unlocking it, setting off the alarm, getting the phone, then, after the car was locked for a second time, the wife deciding she wanted her nylon running jacket after all, unlocking the car, getting the jacket, locking again, all this in a neighborhood that hadn’t seen a car theft in five years—Scott wasn’t sure he had the patience to see it through. He felt an insufferable boredom, a hysteria, building inside him. He figured he could force politeness for about half an hour before he’d start to lose it, before he’d have to hustle them out, jump in his car, and screech down the hill.

  Sara Brighton wore running tights and sneakers and probably thought she looked good in them. She marched around the house quickly, as if she were looking for someone; Ted Brighton shuffled along behind. When they got to the overgrown garden, Mrs. Brighton pulled her husband to one side for a private consultation. Scott stepped back into the house and wasn’t surprised when they returned for another look, this time going through the rooms slowly.

  They had so many questions and those irritating comments bargain hunters always make: “Looks like it could use a new roof. How old is the water heater? Isn’t that a crack in the foundation? There’s no air conditioning, you say? Just to make the place livable, the kitchen will have to be redone.”

  Scott detested them. He was trying his best to be patient, but he was starting to get the jitters. He let them wear themselves out poking and nitpicking before he gave them his spiel. “The house was built twenty years ago by a building contractor for his wife and himself. As you’d expect, the construction is fabulous. He made it strong enough for a bomb shelter.” He added a friendly chuckle. “Instead of two-by-fours, he used two-by-sixes, and the studs are placed every twelve inches instead of every sixteen. They haven’t done that since the fifties. He even used steel beams bolted into bedrock. You don’t have to worry about earthquakes with this baby.” The built-by-a-contractor-for-himself story worked well as a guarantee of quality. No one ever questioned it.

  The husband seemed impressed. “What was the last offer?”

  “The owners turned down nine-twenty-five.” That was almost true. They probably would turn down that offer if they got it. “They were hoping to get a million.”

  “A million! That’s a hell of a lot of money,” the husband said anxiously.

  “Considering the neighborhood, it’s an absolute steal.” Scott made his voice sound folksy, as if he really cared about saving them money and was letting them in on a good deal. “You’re not going to find anything close to that price range around here.”

  “It’s a bit small,” said the husband.

  “I think it’s charming,” said the wife.

  “It certainly has charm, all right.” Scott flashed his Hollywood smile, and Mrs. Brighton smiled back, appreciating a man who, unlike her husband, understood charm. “The foundation is built on a ten-inch poured concrete slab. You won’t have any problems adding a second floor if you want,” he assured, not mentioning that building permits were difficult and costly to get.

  “The view is incredible,” said the wife.

  “Sure is solid,” said the husband.

  “Yup. It’s solid, all right,” said Scott, smiling to himself, sensing that he had a sale. His commission, 3 percent less incidentals, would be an easy twenty-five thousand.

  * * *

  The night-watch commander called Reggie at twenty minutes after twelve. By the time he got to San Juan and Sixth in Venice, four patrol cars were double-parked on the street, along with a van from SID, the scientific investigation division. Squad-car radios crackled with dispatches, and on both ends of the block, orange flares hissed. The street was unusually dark. The streetlights were shot out, and the neighbors had turned off their lamps to peek between the curtains.

  He heard voices: SID technicians already inside the ramshackle Craftsman, collecting fingerprints, fibers, and blood samples. Outside, two night-watch detectives secured the block with yellow tape, and two investigating detectives, Sanchez and Gates, were hunting down shell casings and interviewing neighbors. Reggie could tell by the way the mothers were shaking their heads that no one was talking.

  He sighed heavily, grabbed a flashlight, climbed out of his unmarked squad car. Jasmine perfumed the moist coastal air. It might be a tropical paradise, except the trunks of the palm trees had bullet holes.

  Detective Velma Perkins was primary on the case, a hard-core, hard-bitten black woman, six-feet of solid muscle, with a mean mouth and a meaner sucker punch. She was the best Reggie had. She met him at the front gate, whipping her thigh with a half-finished diagram of the crime scene.

  “What do we have so far?” asked Reggie.

  “It’s a fucking mess inside. Five vics, black, two children under five, one grandmother, two male teenagers. Looks like a drug kill turned into a massacre.”

  “A drive-by?”

  “No. They entered the house.”

  “Any witnesses?”

  “One neighbor said he saw a white Cadillac pull up to the house and one guy enter the place. He’s down at the station giving a statement.”

  “Keep him for me. I want to talk to him,” said Reggie. “You get an identity on the vics?”

  “Looks like the targets were the boys in back, known as T-Bone
and Viper, or Sam and Teddy Ellsworth, fifteen and seventeen. I ran their prints from the squad car. Both have arrest records: auto theft and possession.”

  “Gangbangers?”

  “Looks like it.”

  Reggie shook his head. This forty-block area of Venice, Oakwood, was a gang-infested neighborhood of subsidized housing complexes and run-down stucco boxes with yards of naked dirt and hurricane fences. Land developers had been trying to gentrify the area for thirty years. Around the edges, a few brave artists had set up house until the evening serenade of gunfire drove them out. It was a nasty hive of evil surrounded by some of the most expensive real estate in California.

  You couldn’t drive through Oakwood without feeling the currents of venom, everybody overcharged, wary, and watching, the asphalt itself vibrating with tension. Every few years the gangs heated up. Reggie remembered the long bloody summers of ’94 and ’97. This time around, the war was between the Venice Shoreline Crips and the Culver City Boys fighting over the Westside drug trade. They used bullets the way dogs piss to mark their territories.

  Captain McBride gave Reggie a six-man task force of investigating detectives to clean things up. Things weren’t going well. Since the beginning of the year, Reggie’s men had investigated twelve murders in a ten-block area between Brooks and Westminster. Two cases had cleared. With the addition of these five, that made seventeen murders and the summer hadn’t even started. Reggie was under serious pressure to get results.

  He walked up the cracked cement steps into the house. The air smelled of cats, old bacon grease, and the metallic stench of fresh blood. Two SID technicians crouched by the corpses in the living room, collecting fingerprints. The rugs were stained; the furniture, sparse and worn, looked like it had been stolen from a cheap motel. The grandmother splayed back on the couch, her jaw blown away. Two children lay at her feet, collapsed over their toys.