Good Morning, Darkness

by Ruth Francisco

  Scott knew Samantha had seen the ring only once, when she house-sat at his place and snooped through his drawers. His mother had seen it, of course, but not since Grandma gave it to him fourteen years before. He had it appraised for apartment insurance, so he knew the cut and size: two-carat solitaire. He also had a Polaroid of it. The diamond would be simple to duplicate, he figured. The hard part would be the setting.

  Scott turned off the Santa Monica Freeway by the convention center, at the Union Street exit for downtown. He turned down Sixth Avenue, then to Broadway, to the jewelry district. Within a block, the lavish glass skyscrapers leased by lawyers and stockbrokers deteriorated into crumbling three-story brick buildings with broken windows, electronic and textile stores with signs in Spanish and English: Novedades, Libreia, La Catedral Wedding Chapel, Giros a Mexico, Latmos Jewelry, Benny’s Jewelry, Broadway Jewelry Mart, and the omnipresent Checks Cashed. There must’ve been over a hundred jewelry stores. The street smelled of urine and dirt. The sidewalks were thick with garbage; bums camped out on collapsed cardboard boxes; drunks staggered into pedestrians; punks sold dope; hookers scanned the passing cars.

  Who would ever want to have sex with something that looked like that? Scott wondered.

  Warily, he parked his car in front of a jewelry store. He had an alarm, and the store was right there, but he figured there was 30 percent chance his car would be broken into before he came out. As he locked up, a bum asked him for change. He gave him five bucks and told him to bang on the window of the store if anyone bothered the BMW. The bum said he’d do it, but Scott didn’t really expect to see him when he came out.

  The store was called Gems Galore. A colleague at work told him about the place; it was supposedly reputable and would give you a good deal. It was a two-story building with grimy windows and heavy grating that the owners didn’t bother to pull back during the day. He wondered if it wasn’t worth spending an extra thousand dollars not to have to come here. It dawned on him that’s why people were willing to pay Rodeo Drive prices.

  Inside, a Middle Eastern guy, about Scott’s age, dressed in a sharp white Armani shirt and slacks, was waiting on two Chinese women. Scott noticed coarse, black hairs like two paint brushes sticking out of the salesman’s nostrils, clipped but not recently. He was grateful the clerk had enough sense to keep his shirt buttoned.

  The other clerk was with a young Hispanic couple. In the back were two scurrilous-looking fellows in black leather jackets. Scott couldn’t tell if they were buying or selling.

  There was no obvious danger in the store, but, like a bus station at night, it wasn’t a place one felt particularly comfortable. He detected the vague smell of a men’s locker room wafting across the counter from the direction of the clerk.

  He fought the impulse to clamp his hand over his nose. The place was revolting. He couldn’t help himself. In a sudden panic, he backed up and bolted out the door.

  He drove a few blocks, then pulled in to the underground parking lot under Pershing Square. He decided to try the California Jewelry Mart, an eight-story modern building on Hill at Sixth. He’d have to pay more, he figured, but the prices should still be wholesale.

  He took the elevator to the third floor, which was divided into separate shops by narrow corridors and glass partitions that gave the diamond exchanges a look of openness and efficiency. The halls were soundless, the air still and heavy. Scott stopped at a store called The Diamond Factory. The door was locked. A man who looked like an Irish prizefighter buzzed him in.

  To the right as he entered was a large glassed-in room where two heavyset men sat cutting diamonds. At first glance they appeared hunched over, but then Scott realized the tables were built to come up close to their chins. A machine that looked like an old phonograph was polishing a large diamond.

  Scott showed the clerk the ring appraisal and the yellowed Polaroid.

  “I’m sorry. There simply isn’t enough information here to go on.” His accent was South African. “I couldn’t possibly make you a duplicate.” He had a nose that looked like it’d been broken a couple of times; his eyes were the color of sapphires.

  “What do you mean?”

  The clerk smiled, his manner relaxed, like he wasn’t worried about making every sale and found the bargain hunters who wandered into his shop mildly amusing. “The photo tells me only that it was a pretty ring. The appraisal tells me the general cut and size, and the appraiser’s value assessment, but it doesn’t describe the clarity or color grades. And there’s no diagram of interior flaws.”

  Scott kicked himself. He should’ve gotten a professional jeweler’s appraisal instead of using Peter’s friend. Fucking Peter. “Flaws? I don’t understand?”

  The clerk looked pleased with himself, like an evangelist before an apt pupil. “Almost all diamonds have inclusions, which are little flaws or crystals in the stone. They make each diamond completely unique.”

  “So you can’t make a duplicate?”

  “It’s impossible. If I had more information, I might be able to replicate the cut. From the appraisal I see that you had a two-carat solitaire with forty-nine facets. That tells me it’s old. Most round diamonds now are cut with fifty-eight facets: thirty-four facets above the girdle and twenty-four facets below.”

  “The girdle?”

  The clerk pointed to a wall diagram of a solitaire cut. “That’s this narrow rim at the largest diameter of the stone. What you probably had was thirty-three facets above the girdle and sixteen facets below.”

  “Can you cut a stone like that for me?”

  “Sure. But there’s nothing here about the color, the height of the crown, the depth of the girdle, the size of the table—”

  Scott began to lose patience. “Do you have some two-carat diamonds I could see? Maybe you have something that’s close enough. I don’t need an exact match.”

  “Just good enough to fool the wife?”

  “Something like that.”

  The clerk smiled as if he’d anticipated this revised request from the beginning. “Let me make a selection of two-carat white solitaires, brilliant cut.” Moments later, he returned with a black velvet tray with three diamonds.

  To Scott, they all looked the same. He pressed his fingers on either side of his temples trying to remember what his grandmother’s stone had looked like. “Are they all about the same price?”

  “Goodness, no. That one is eleven thousand, this one is forty-five hundred, and the other is thirteen hundred.”

  “Why is this one less expensive?”

  “It is a white, color grade L, with many crystal inclusions in the pavilion, and you’ll see the girdle is slightly thick. That affects its brilliance.” The jeweler handed Scott a loupe. “Here, take a look. You’ll see the difference immediately.”

  “Never mind. I’ll take it,” said Scott, annoyed. He didn’t want to become a gem expert. He simply wanted a damn diamond.

  “It’s a lesser quality than your appraisal, which sets the diamond value at about five thousand.”

  “That’s fine,” said Scott. He felt a headache coming on; he didn’t want to hear any more. He hated salespeople who made you feel guilty about taking the cheapest item. The diamonds were simply shiny rocks to him. He couldn’t imagine what all the fuss was about.

  The South African recommended a store upstairs for the setting. Scott figured the guy was getting a kickback, but at this point, he didn’t care. He took the elevator to the sixth floor and a place called Dornbirn Jewelry.

  Multicolored wax casts sat in the window like Halloween candy: rings with dragons, lizards, flowers, even a miniature suspension bridge. A round Bavarian woman buzzed Scott in. She wore glasses, with two gray braids wrapped around her head like a halo, and had round red cheeks like lollipops. Behind her stepped out her son, a lanky kid with a long greasy ponytail.

  The woman was the chatty sort and told Scott some story about bringing home a young German tourist she’d met and feeding him stuffed cabbage, the poi
nt being, Scott surmised, that they were honest folk. Her son, who hung back at the door between the showroom and the workshop, chuckled as she told the story, like a punk kid sniggering at fart jokes. Scott began to wonder if the German boy made it back to Europe or ended up in a dill sausage.

  He showed them the Polaroid and asked if they could duplicate the setting.

  “We can do anything, anything at all,” the woman said, pulling out a thick portfolio of photos. “People even bring in pictures of their dogs, and we make pins out of them.” She flipped to a picture of an Irish setter, gold, encrusted with diamonds and rubies. “The lady who ordered this was a judge for the Westminster Kennel Club. Very nice lady.”

  The son nodded and repeated, “Very nice lady.”

  Scott imagined a fiftyish woman who wore a Pendleton suit that hung below her knees, thick stockings, and those funny walking shoes they wear at dog shows. He thought the pin was hideous, but the quality of the craftsmanship was obvious.

  “Do you have the stone?” the woman asked. Her son continued to lurk at the doorway, his long fingers playing arpeggios on the doorjamb.

  Scott shook out the diamond from a small white envelope into her palm. She popped a loupe in her eye, then sighed, disappointed. “Your setting is going to be more expensive than your diamond, I’m afraid.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” snapped Scott, losing patience.

  She gave a chuckle. “Mothers aren’t always so easily fooled.”

  “What?”

  “You lost the ring, no? You’re not trying to fool a girlfriend. No. First time you have a fight, a girlfriend will run to a jeweler to find out how much the ring is worth. But a mother will take you at your word . . . usually.” She smiled at her son, who then disappeared into the workshop.

  “Can you make it up?”

  “Certainly.” She peered at the photo again. “I can’t tell from the picture if it’s white gold or platinum . . . it’s so yellowed. Your diamond even looks greenish in the photo.”

  “Whatever is cheapest,” said Scott.

  “Well, we don’t use anything less than eighteen-karat gold.”

  “Fine, fine,” said Scott. “How long will it take?”

  She estimated about a week. He wrote a check for a thousand, and she gave him a receipt for the deposit and the diamond. The setting was going to set him back three grand.

  As he pushed through the lunchtime crowd back to his car, Scott thought of his grandparents, trudging in the alpine snow, spending all their money on a ring, unsure if they’d even live another day, yet wanting this symbol of hope and commitment as they embarked on a new life in a strange country. What had Oma said when she gave it to him? “You carry with you all the riches you’ll ever need.” She probably meant love, or talent, or ingenuity.

  Scott began to regret giving up his grandmother’s ring. But the moment Laura rejected him, he lost all illusions about love, a love that would redeem him, a love so absolute she would flee across continents with him to start life anew. She killed his love and left him a cynic.

  No, it was better the ring had disappeared with her.

  * * *

  Reggie called Ronda Wiley, an officer he knew at the LAPD detective headquarters division who handled adult missing persons for Los Angeles County. He asked her to see if there was a missing-persons report on Laura Finnegan. Ronda was in the middle of something but promised to call back. Reggie began the search for who might be handling the arms case, which was not as easy as it sounded.

  Los Angeles was a jigsaw puzzle of police jurisdictions. Some parts, located in unincorporated zones outside the city limits and therefore serviced by the Los Angeles County sheriff’s department, had L.A. in their addresses and seemed more part of the city than places like Simi Valley, which was serviced by the LAPD. When a crime happened in two jurisdictions, the decision on which department handled it was a toss-up based on who had time and resources available. Then there were those cases co-opted by Robbery & Homicide, downtown because they were important or glamorous. Venice beach was LAPD, but Malibu beach was the sheriff’s department. Since the arms had washed up on the beaches, the crime presumably happened at sea: the sheriff’s department.

  Reggie looked in his state law enforcement directory and the homicide bureau of the sheriff’s department down in Commerce. For whatever reason, the detective bureau at the Malibu/Lost Hills station was handling the arms case, so Reggie called Malibu and asked to speak with the lead detective. “Oh, you mean the empty embrace case,” said the female officer who’d answered the phone. “That’d be Detective Mike Morrison. He’s not in, but I’ll leave a message for him. What division you with?” Reggie gave his division and telephone number. Detective Morrison called back in twenty minutes. He told him to come on out that afternoon.

  Just before Reggie left the station, Ronda Wiley called back; no one had reported Laura Finnegan missing.

  Reggie drove toward Malibu on Pacific Coast Highway, a narrow ribbon of asphalt that ran up the coast. On one side, the turquoise sea; on the other side, perilous cliffs that scattered rocks across the road at night like termite dust, reminding Los Angelinos that the process of deterioration continued, unabated, at the edge of the continent.

  The view made Reggie contemplate mortality. It made him think of Laura. How many others like her, he wondered, escaped to California to re-create themselves, to begin new lives as if they had no past? How many others would vanish without anyone ever knowing or caring, disappearing like an inspired thought someone forgot to write down? Thousands, tens of thousands? Actresses, runaways, parole violators, college dropouts, those who’d had enough of dead-end jobs, abusive boyfriends, and oppressive families, escaping cold weather that no longer gave them joy, reminding them only of the coldness in their hearts. But in escaping these things, they were left with no one to give a damn, no one to file a missing persons report.

  Reggie understood because he was one of them. After he lost his father and brother, and his mother died, Reggie became a foster child of the Boston projects, passed between parents who housed him for money. When he won an athletic scholarship to UCLA, he kept no ties to his childhood. He, too, reinvented himself. He took diction lessons, studied martial arts, and practically lived in the library. He attended courses in art history and Chinese. But he yearned for family, and as soon as he and Audrey knew they wanted to spend their lives together, he began trying to convince her to have children right away. When his first son came, Reggie felt reborn.

  Reggie understood where gangbangers were coming from—calling their homeboys family, their loyalty and obedience to their gang more visceral than to blood relatives. Their need for family was so strong that they made one up.

  As he crested the hill by Pepperdine University, Reggie realized he was now endangering the one thing he treasured above all else—his family—placing it if not in jeopardy, then in a state of ambiguity. But his searching—if that’s what it was—wasn’t something he felt he could stop. Nor did he want to.

  Reggie parked his car next to a gleaming red Dodge Ram. Out here, all the cops drove trucks to work as if they were cattle ranchers. The insides of the truck beds were spotless; Reggie suspected they were used for little more than picking up potted plants at Home Depot for their wives, or occasionally moving a sofa for a buddy.

  Mike Morrison turned out to be a young, round-faced fellow who looked like he spent a lot of time mountain biking. He showed Reggie to an empty interrogation room. A blue three-ring murder book and a small evidence box were already set out on the table.

  “We figure this is one of those cases that’ll never get cleared, so any help you can give us would be great. If you get bored, I’ve got twenty others like it sitting on my desk. Can I get you coffee or anything?”

  “Is it any good?”

  “Are you kidding? It’s the best. One of our guys has a wife who imports the stuff. We get freshly roasted Colombian every day.”

  “In that case, I’d love a cup.”<
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  After Morrison brought him a cup of coffee, he left Reggie alone. Reggie opened the murder book: lists of evidence and preliminary reports, statements from patrol officers, photos of the arms, photos and crime scene diagrams of where they’d washed, a photo of the ring. He took the ring out of its clear plastic envelope and passed it back and forth between his palms. He didn’t know anything about diamonds. It was bigger than Audrey’s ring, but nothing fancy.

  The detective’s reports revealed little. Worse than a body dump, there was no evidence whatsoever from the crime scene. No witnesses. No murder weapon. Almost nothing to go on.

  He turned to the medical examiner’s report. The bones in the right arm were bigger than those in the left, so it was assumed the victim was right-handed. The medical examiner was 90 percent sure it was female because of the size of the arms and fingernail polish. They could, however, be the arms of a small man, a transvestite, perhaps. The report estimated the height based on the length of the arms as between five-two” and five-eight. Weight based on height and frame was estimated at 110 to 140 lbs. Age anywhere from twenty to fifty. The hair on the forearms was fine and brown. A small scar on the left elbow. No tattoos or moles. Blood type was A positive, the second most common blood type. Tissue type was inconclusive. No fingerprint match.

  The medical examiner found no fiber or skin under the fingernails, which wasn’t surprising considering how long they’d been in the water. To rule out drowning as cause of death, the bone marrow was tested for diatom skeletons, a microscopic algae that penetrated lung tissue, then moved into the organs and bone marrow. The test was negative.

  She’d been killed, then later dumped into the ocean.

  Reggie forced himself to look at the photographs. Both arms were roughly severed by a sharp instrument; the medical examiner suggested a machete or butcher knife. It must’ve made a terrible mess. Reggie didn’t think the arms looked like Laura’s. He remembered her striking out tentatively in class, then, as the weeks progressed, with more assurance, her triceps and deltoids gaining muscle mass. The arms in the pictures resembled chewed-up pieces of plastic. However, the medical examiner’s profile was general enough to include her. Reggie would see if he could find out Laura’s blood type. Maybe in her employee records, if she’d participated in an office blood drive. He would ask Johnson. It was a long shot, but he couldn’t get access to her medical records without a warrant.