Gathering Dark

by Candice Fox

  ‘You said she wasn’t that kind of kid. The running-from-the-law kind, I mean.’

  ‘We’ll soon find out. But this. This is a terrible idea,’ Sneak said, gesturing to the club with her cigarette. ‘Mav’s a raging psychopath. Like, she’s got a diagnosis for it and everything.’

  ‘Are you allowed to have a name like Ada Maverick and not be a raging psychopath?’ I wondered.

  ‘I heard Ada isn’t her first name.’ Sneak exhaled cigarette smoke into the wind. She looked hard-faced and cold despite the sunshine. ‘She changed it because her mom gave birth to her in a courtroom and called her Custa’d.’

  ‘In the courtroom? Like, in front of the judge?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Sounds like jailhouse bullshit to me,’ I said.

  ‘I heard that when a girl I knew asked her about it, if it was true or not, Ada threw her off the second tier in B Block. Nearly broke her neck.’

  I’d known Ada in Happy Valley. The beautiful, shaven-headed Black woman never went anywhere except the visiting room without a cohort of followers, like most criminal overlords inside the prison. Dangerous women with heavy tattoos and severe cornrows, women who cleared the halls of looky-loos and beggars and potential threats before Ada arrived. At the time, Ada had been doing a stint for dealing guns, but all that followed her were tales of extreme violence, lines crossed and bones broken, warnings like the one Sneak had just given me about questioning her given name. I’d heard my fair share of dorm rumours about Ada. That she’d set a cell on fire with two women in it. That she’d kicked off a riot and killed a guard who was trying to blackmail her. I knew not all of it could be true, but the sheer number of rumours about her spoke of danger, of a menace much bigger and more powerful than me. Looking at Ada brought a tight, shallow feeling to my chest.

  I’d been waiting for my lawyer to arrive in the visitor’s centre one day, sitting with other inmates in a row of cubicles behind glass, when Ada arrived to visit with someone I would later learn was her cousin. My lawyer was chronically late, so while I waited, trying not to listen to the conversations around me, I’d shuffled my chair back to the wall to get a better view of the women coming and going on visitor’s row. I’d heard a baby wailing and saw Ada’s cousin bend down and retrieve the infant from a stroller parked out of my view. She’d lifted the heavy baby to her chest, joggling it in a failed attempt to stop it crying. The baby was wriggling in its mother’s arms, trying to get free, sweaty cheeks and brow glistening as it shied away from the overhead lights. I watched as, presumably, the cousin explained the baby’s symptoms, pulling up the leg of the baby’s pants to reveal a swelling rash on the child’s thighs to Ada through the glass.

  ‘Oh no,’ I’d said. Before I realised what I was doing, the dangerous waters I was hurling myself into, I’d grabbed Ada Maverick on the shoulder. ‘Tell her to—’

  Ada had my hand in hers, like a rattlesnake seizing a mouse, in a movement that was so fast I didn’t even see it. She twisted my hand backwards towards my wrist and came around at me, out of her chair, suddenly closer and taller and more terrifying than I could ever have imagined. My wrist cracked and my fingers ached. She forced me down to one knee.

  ‘Hands off, bitch,’ she seethed.

  ‘I’m a doctor,’ I yelped. ‘Oh god. Oh, please let go. I’m a doctor. The baby is sick—’

  ‘The baby is sick, yeah.’ Ada forced me down further. ‘It’s none of your business.’

  ‘She shouldn’t be here,’ I managed. The pain was searing up my arm. I imagined my veins bursting. Bones splintering. A guard was watching from the end of the row, arms folded, doing nothing. ‘The rash. The purple rash! It’s—’

  ‘It’s what?’

  ‘I’m not sure, but if there’s bruising—’

  ‘You better speak faster, bitch, before I break your arm.’

  ‘She might have meningococcal disease. It can be deadly. She needs to get to a hospital now.’

  ‘What is she saying?’ Ada’s cousin was pounding her fist on the glass, her voice muffled from the other side. We both looked at her. The distraction caused Ada to go too far. I felt two of my fingers pop, dull heat, broken proximal phalanx bones. My mind grabbed at deep, detached thoughts to try to drag me away from the pain. I thought about my hands. About how once they’d been the fine instruments of my craft as a surgeon, and now a criminal overlord was using them as her tools of punishment in a filthy prison visiting room.

  Ada reluctantly released me on her cousin’s command and I slithered pitifully to the bench, dragged myself up so that I could see the child in its mother’s arms. I took the receiver from where Ada had dropped it and held it to my ear with a trembling hand. As I asked the mother about body stiffness and the child’s reaction to food, Ada breathed in my ear, hot and menacing, the whisper of a devil.

  ‘You better not be tellin’ me my cousin’s a bad mother, little whore,’ Ada said. ‘You better not be sayin’ she can’t take care of her own kid.’

  ‘Take the baby to a hospital,’ I told Ada’s cousin. ‘Go now. Show them the rash and the bruises and tell them about the fever and the sensitivity to light. You haven’t got much time.’

  Ada’s cousin disappeared with the baby. I tried to turn around but Ada slammed my head against the desk and pinned it there with a hand like a steel claw. Her thighs were against mine, trapping me in a painful, humiliating crouch in the cubicle.

  ‘Either you’re right about that kid, or you’re dead,’ she told me. ‘Nobody interrupts me on a visit.’

  I never heard from Ada Maverick directly if I’d been right about the child. But as word of the incident spread throughout the prison, I waited hour by hour to receive a brutal punishment from the terrifying and beautiful gangster or one of her minions. None came. I made myself scarce, slept with my shank and discouraged anyone I heard speaking about the event from spreading it further or developing it into something it was not. After a few weeks I assumed, right or wrong, that Ada had forgotten completely about me. She and her crew breezed past me in the prison halls without even a glance in my direction.

  Now I stood outside Ada’s club, waiting for a break in the traffic so that Sneak and I could follow the men in the queue into the darkness.

  ‘Just follow my lead,’ I said as we approached the doors.

  Following my lead turned out to be impossible. As we stepped into the small foyer, I had just enough time for my eyes to adjust to the dark, to see the glossy black tiles on the walls and the velvet curtains hanging before the entrance to the club. Then an arm swept around my neck. I felt suit buttons against my back. The man yanked me into an embrace against his chest and from the corner of my eye I caught sight of Sneak being similarly grabbed by another huge, suited man.

  ‘This way, ladies,’ the man who had me said. He shoved me through a small side door padded with leather and ornate gold studs. I was blind. The narrow hallway was pitch black. Only his guiding hand on my shoulder got me to the end of the passageway and into Ada’s office.

  We arrived in a grand, windowless room lit only by huge gold candelabras and a diamond chandelier the circumference of a four-seater dining table. Ada sat behind an enormous oak desk, her elbows splayed, a bottle of what looked like whiskey at one and a huge red leather notebook at the other. She was dressed in black lace, pushing closed a small gold laptop, through which I assumed she had watched us approach the club from the road out front. The suited men shoved Sneak and me into wooden chairs before our queen.

  ‘Just follow your lead?’ Sneak sneered at me. I frowned back.

  ‘There’s only one explanation for this,’ Ada said. Her voice took me all the way back to Happy Valley. My fingers burned as though broken anew. ‘You two must be high as fuck.’

  ‘I’m kinda high,’ Sneak agreed, nodding. The man behind her whipped out his big hand and slapped her on the back of the head.

  ‘This ain’t In-N-Out Burger, bitches,’ Ada snapped. ‘You don’t just roll up here u
nannounced and come strolling through the doors. This is my house. Last person who decided to come barging in here without calling ahead and requesting a meeting left half a set of teeth on the floor before Fred here showed him out.’

  I looked at Fred, the goon standing behind me. There was a tattoo of a woman being raped by a devil on the side of his neck. He looked down at me and I straightened in my chair.

  ‘I’m really sorry, Ada,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know the protocol.’

  ‘I’m not surprised, punk-ass Brentwood girl like you.’ Ada sniffed at me. ‘But this fat little meat puppet here should have known the rules. I’m shocked to see you here after you ripped me at Happy Valley.’

  ‘You what?’ I turned to Sneak, who was reddening around the neck while the fingers that gripped the arms of her chair were turning white.

  ‘I stole a pair of earrings from her on my last day,’ Sneak said.

  ‘Sneak! You think you could have mentioned that outside?’ I cried.

  ‘I forgot!’

  ‘You forgot?’

  ‘They were really nice earrings,’ she huffed. ‘This cute dude I met through the inmate penpal program was picking me up. I wanted to look nice.’

  The man behind Sneak stepped forwards. I thought he was going to slap her again, until I caught a flash of silver in the dim light. I failed to stifle a yelp of terror as he grabbed Sneak expertly by the ear and sliced off her earlobe in one swift, seamless motion.

  ‘Oh my god! Oh my god!’ I tried to rise but Fred pinned me in my seat, his hands on my shoulders like steel.

  ‘You sure look nice now.’ Ada smiled as Sneak bled. ‘Red is a good colour for you. You should say thank you. I’ve done you a favour. From now on, it’s half-price on earrings for you.’

  Ada leaned her chin on her fist.

  ‘Mike’s ex–Special Forces, Iraq,’ she told me, watching Mike deposit what he’d cut from Sneak into a chrome trashcan by the desk. ‘He’s the one you hear unfolding his toolkit while you sit tied to a chair with a hood on your head.’

  ‘Listen.’ I shifted to the edge of my seat. ‘I know we shouldn’t be here. It was a mistake to come the way we did. I promise you, Ada, we didn’t mean any disrespect.’

  ‘So tell me what the fuck you’re doing here,’ she said. ‘And I get bored real easy, so make it interesting.’

  I told her about Dayly, the robbery at the Pump’n’Jump, the blood in her apartment and the phone call to Sneak in the middle of the night. I told her about Dayly’s boyfriend, and Al Tasik roughing me up. Sneak wasn’t making a sound. There was blood running down the side of her neck as she sat rigid in her chair, staring at the floor.

  ‘We need some help,’ I concluded.

  ‘Why are you in on this?’ Ada jutted her chin at me. ‘Surely this idiot has stolen from you, too. Thieves are the worst kind of people. The sex trade is full of them. When I started up this place here, every third girl I hired was a thief. It took a while to get the message out around town that you don’t steal from me. There was so much blood on the floor in those days, I had a rug salesman on speed dial.’

  ‘Look, you’re right. Sneak has stolen from me,’ I said. ‘She steals from everyone. But I looked her daughter in the face and that kid was scared, and I’ve got a child myself. I want to help.’

  ‘You’re risking a lot,’ Ada said. ‘You’re throwing more jail time on the table to help this walking trash bag and her scum-sucking kid. Why?’

  ‘Sneak is my friend. She’s always been good to me. And I . . . Well, I’m trying to do something with my life,’ I said. ‘I was a good person once. I was happy. I was respected. Now I work at a gas station and my son’s afraid of me. I live in a shitty apartment and I can’t afford the basics sometimes. I just want to do something good.’

  It was the first time I had put my reasons into words. It sounded weak, and behind my meaningless utterings my mind unveiled subtext, the words between the words, my real reasons. Being around Sneak and Ada, the two of them together, reminded me of conversations in my dorm with other inmates. Plans for the future. For redemption. We were a trio of people who had experienced the sheer terror and crushing demoralisation of prison. Though I was horrified with what Ada had done to my friend, there was a familiarity to being in the presence of these women that was comforting.

  Dangerously comforting.

  I’d felt it first when Sneak turned up and shoved her way into my apartment. Now it was in full force. I felt at home around these underhanded, dangerous people. My feet were on the floor – steady, safe – for the first time since I had left the prison gates. I knew the rules here. Some of them, anyway. And I was no better or worse than either of these women. I gripped my wooden chair and thought about that. About letting myself be led, step by step, into something criminal and dangerous, and risking the life I had spent a year building, just because I felt safer and more comfortable in prison than I did outside.

  ‘Tell me about this boyfriend,’ Ada said. ‘The video.’

  I went to the desk and put my phone before her. I had the video Sneak had sent to me on the screen. Ada took the phone and leaned back in her chair, put her feet, in black python-skin boots, on the desk. She looked at the screen and recognition came onto her face. She smiled, gave a small, dark laugh.

  ‘Look who it is,’ she said, beckoning Fred. Fred went and looked at the phone, gave a quarter-smile.

  ‘You know Dayly?’ I asked as Fred returned to his station behind me.

  ‘I met this bitch,’ Ada said, nodding.

  ‘Where? How?’

  ‘Never mind.’ Ada waved me off. She tapped the phone and watched the video. The whole video. Sneak, Mike, Fred and I were silent for twelve minutes and fourteen seconds as Dayly and her boyfriend had sex on camera in front of Ada Maverick.

  Eventually, Ada put the phone on the desk and I dared to creep forwards and take it back.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ Ada said.

  Sneak looked up from the floor.

  ‘You think this guy posted the video without her knowing?’ Ada asked.

  ‘We don’t know,’ I said.

  ‘So you want to go put his head in a toilet, ask him,’ she concluded.

  ‘That was sort of the plan . . .’ I said, looking to Sneak for help. ‘Maybe not with the use of a toilet. I mean, that wouldn’t be our . . . first strategy.’

  Ada yawned, looked at her goons as if her curiosity had been piqued and had settled again, and she was about to order them to throw us out. I drew a deep breath and counted to three.

  ‘You owe me, Ada,’ I managed.

  Ada stiffened, her gaze locking onto mine.

  ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about,’ I continued, surprised by my own daring. ‘I saved the life of a member of your family. People know that. They might know that you never paid me back.’

  ‘You’ve got some balls, Neighbour girl,’ Ada said quietly.

  ‘I know you’re curious,’ I said. ‘You owe me, and this case makes you curious. You know Dayly and you don’t like what’s happened to her. I can see it on your face. You’re just afraid of doing a nice thing, what people will think of that. You have a reputation to maintain. Well, I can promise you, Sneak and I will never tell any—’

  ‘You think I sit here all day long sweating my perfect ass off about what people think of me?’ Ada asked, her voice heavy with menace. ‘You think I’m that fucking pathetic?’

  ‘No.’ I struggled with the word, every muscle in my body tensed with terror. ‘No, Ada.’

  She fell quiet. I held her gaze, but only just. A minute passed, maybe the longest minute of my life. I counted the seconds and wondered what piece of me Ada might order her goons to chop off when she finally spoke again.

  ‘I can give you five thousand dollars and a reasonable car,’ Ada said.

  Sneak made a sound, like a shocked exhalation. I felt the dread fall over me like a blanket.

  ‘That’s too much.’ I put a hand u
p. ‘We couldn’t possibly pay back anything like—’

  ‘We could use some guns,’ Sneak said.

  ‘No we couldn’t,’ I snapped. ‘We don’t want any guns. We don’t even want—’

  ‘Get these assholes out of here.’ Ada waved at the men behind us. I was dragged out of my chair by my arm, Fred’s fingers digging into the tender flesh under my bicep. I tried to call to Ada as we were ushered out, but she ignored me, taking a whiskey glass from her desk drawer and pouring herself a nip.

  Fred and Mike shoved us down another dark hall and out the back doors of the club. I lifted the hem of Sneak’s shirt and pressed it against her ear, pushed her hand against the wad of fabric so she would hold it and stem the bleeding.

  ‘Why did she do that?’ Sneak asked.

  ‘Because she’s crazy,’ I murmured, in case there were cameras with audio around us in the parking lot. ‘I shouldn’t have brought us here. I’m sorry. We’ll go back to my place and I’ll fix your ear.’

  ‘No, I mean why did she agree to help?’

  ‘She likes things to be even. And I challenged her pride,’ I said. ‘What was all that about guns?’

  ‘We could use them,’ she said. ‘We don’t know what we’re up against here.’

  ‘I’m not hanging around you while you’re armed,’ I said. ‘The only time you’re sober is when you have to go to court.’

  ‘Should I give this to you, then?’ She pulled an enormous black gun out of the waistband at the back of her skirt.

  ‘Jesus! Where did you get that?’

  ‘I lifted it off Mike. I got his wallet, too.’ She produced the wallet from her cleavage.

  ‘Give me those.’

  Fred and Mike emerged from the club doors again. I presented Mike with his gun and wallet, and the big man snorted in surprise and anger, patting his coat pockets as though he was sure they were replicas I was offering. Fred put a banded stack of cash in my hands, as thick as a sandwich, and handed Sneak a single car key attached to a keyring with a miniature eight ball on it. He pointed to the back of the lot without taking his small, mean eyes off me.