Nightcrawlers

12

ROBERT LEMOYNE

He looked at her sprawled out on the couch where he’d pushed her down. Nobody he’d ever seen before. Scared and trying not to show it. Young, black-dark chocolate. Pretty enough, nice tits, good ass, but not his type. Skinny women, white or light-skinned black, had always been his thing. Like Dinah. Like Mia.

His head had stopped hurting and the anger and confusion were mostly gone now. He was starting to think again, real clear, and he didn’t like any of it. He liked everything to move along in a straight line, according to plan. Unexpected things threw him off. Complications he didn’t understand threw him off. What was he going to do about this one?

He said it aloud. “What am I going to do about you?”

“Better let me go, man,” she said. She kept tonguing her lips, shifting her eyes from his face to the pocket of his coat where he had the Saturday night special. “This is all a big misunderstanding, you know what I’m saying?”

“You were prowling around my property. Why?”

“Stupid mistake. I got the address wrong.”

“What address?”

“The one I’m supposed to be checking out. It’s across the street.”

“What’s that mean, checking out?”

“I’m a private investigator,” she said, “trying to find a guy skipped out on his child-support payments. I think he’s living on this block, in a relative’s house, but I got the address wrong. That’s all.”

He stared at her. “That’s some story.”

“It’s the truth.”

“Private investigator? You?”

“Lots of women in the profession now, black and white. No lie. Listen, if you don’t believe me, call the police, have them check me out.”

“No.”

“Why not? You don’t want to let me go, call the cops and have me arrested.”

“Show me something that says you’re what you say you are.”

“I don’t have ID on me…”

“Where is it? Where’s your purse?”

“Purse?”

“In your car? Where’s your car?”

She sat up straighter, tonguing her lips, looking at his coat pocket. Didn’t want him looking in her purse. He kept watching her. Now she had her head cocked a little, as if she was listening for something. What? She’d been snooping around out back… what if she’d heard something? Angie. Angie hadn’t stopped bawling since he brought her home, kept calling for her mother. What if Dark Chocolate had heard her?

Private investigator. Christ!

“Where’s your car?” he said again.

That tongue of hers was doing double time. And she was still listening.

“Can’t be far away,” he said. “You think I won’t find it?”

“Why bother? Why don’t you just let the cops check out my ID when they get here?”

“You’d like it if I called them, wouldn’t you. Tell them all about it.”

“All about my stupid mistake, that’s right.”

“All about me.”

“I don’t know you.”

“All about Angie.”

“… Who’s Angie?”

She said it too fast. She’d heard, all right, she knew about the kid.

“Stand up,” he said.

“What?”

“Stand up, give me your car keys.”

She didn’t do it right away, so he took the gun out and showed it to her again. Then she did it. Got up on her feet, good and scared now and not trying to hide it anymore. Fished the keys out of her coat pocket.

“Toss them over here.” He caught the ring left-handed, dropped it into his own pocket. “All right, now move. Door to the kitchen over there.”

“Why? That where the phone is?”

“Shut up.”

“Listen, man, if you-”

“I said shut up!”

He gave her a shove through the door into the kitchen, crowded her over to the basement door and made her stand to one side while he unlocked it one-handed. He pushed it open, switched on the staircase light.

“Go on down there,” he told her.

“Why? What’re you gonna do?”

“Shove you down the stairs, you don’t walk down by yourself.”

She walked, quick, without looking back at him following behind her. Cold and damp down there usually, even in nice spring weather, so he’d left the furnace turned up to seventy for Angie’s sake. Warm now, she’d be warm. Good. But as they started across the concrete floor he could hear her crying and that took the good away and made him feel sad. He hated it when she cried. He wanted her to be happy, laughing. Crying cut into him like a knife. But not as deep as when she started yelling, screaming, making his head hurt. And when his head hurt he got mad and the pain got worse.

The former owners had built the room down there, next to the alcove where the washer and dryer were, for some relative of theirs. It had a toilet and shower, and a bed and other furniture that they’d left behind. He hadn’t had to do much except close off the window, put a door and lock on the closet, reinforce the other door and add a hasp and padlock. He rattled the padlock getting his key into the slot, and the crying stopped inside. He slid the lock off, pushed the door open. Dark Chocolate went in this time without being told. He put the Saturday night special away in his pocket before he followed her, so Angie wouldn’t see it.

Angie was sitting on the bed, the sheet and blanket pulled up to her neck, her pretty little face all scrunched up and wet with tears. The big round eyes stared at him, at Dark Chocolate, and he saw the fear in them. It put an ache in him. He couldn’t stand to see her scared and unhappy. He loved her so much.

“Don’t be scared, honey,” he said. “Daddy’s here now.”

“You’re not my daddy.”

“Sure I’m your daddy. Didn’t I give you a nice present?”

“I want to go home.”

“You will. Pretty soon we’ll go home, see your mama.”

“You promised I could go home if I didn’t wet the bed again and I didn’t, I didn’t!”

Dark Chocolate gave him a murderous glance. She hadn’t been surprised to see Angie. Oh, she knew, all right-she knew too damn much.

He said to her, “The closet. Inside.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Inside the closet.”

She hesitated, her body tensing, her face pulling tight. He moved in on her, gave her a two-handed push that banged her into the wall next to the closet door. She let loose a hurt sound and that started Angie wailing again. He shoved Dark Chocolate into the closet, slammed the door, and snapped the lock on it. Angie was still wailing. The sound of it sawed across his nerves, started the red hurt behind his eyes.

“Stop that! Stop screaming!”

“I want to go home, I want my mama!”

“Stop it or I’ll put you in the closet too. It’s dark in there, you want to be shut up in the dark with that strange lady?”

“No!”

“Then be a good girl, be quiet. You hungry? Want something to eat?”

Sobs but no more shrieks. “… Yes.”

“I’ll get you something pretty soon. You just sit there nice and quiet and play with your coloring books or your pretty new doll.”

“I don’t like her, I want my own doll.”

“What’s the matter with this one? Her name’s Kimberly, she’s got a nice pink and white dress-”

“She’s white, Mama doesn’t like me to play with big white dolls.”

“Your mama’s full of shit. That doll cost me seventy dollars at Toys‘R’Us. Seventy dollars, Angie, that’s a lot of money.”

“I’m not Angie, my name’s Lauren.”

“Be good, now. Don’t make Daddy mad.”

He smiled fondly at her and moved over to the closet door. “You in there, listen to me. You be quiet too. You can’t break through this door and you can yell your head off and nobody’ll hear you, the walls are too thick. Understand?”

No answer.

“You better understand if you know what’s good for you,” he said, and smiled at Angie again, and went out and set the padlock on the door.

Upstairs he looked at the woman’s car keys. Wouldn’t you know it: Toyota. Damn Jap car. He hated Jap cars. Sure, they were well engineered but they weren’t American. GM was American, he was American, he loved this country body and soul. He just didn’t see how any good American could buy foreign cars, any other kind of foreign shit, when loyal Americans were busting their asses building quality merchandise right here at home.

Didn’t take him long to find the Toyota. Parked right out front, practically within pissing distance of the house. Dark Chocolate had balls, he had to give her that much. He unlocked the passenger door, found her purse right there on the floor on that side. He slipped it under his coat, took a look around after he shut the door again. Nobody in sight. Wouldn’t pay any attention to him if there was, not in this neighborhood. People minded their own business on this block. Country’d be a lot better off if everybody minded their own business the way the folks here did. Except when it came to watching out for fucking Arab terrorists-you had to be vigilant about that like the president said.

He went back inside and dumped everything in the purse out on the kitchen table. Wallet first. Driver’s license… Tamara Corbin, age twenty-six, San Francisco address. And another one issued by the State Board of Licences that proved she really was a private investigator. Young black woman like that, a private cop. Women these days, didn’t matter what color they were, they had all kinds of jobs you’d think were just for men. That was all right by him. He didn’t have any prejudice against women earning a living so long as they didn’t take jobs away from family men. But a private cop… he didn’t like that. Not one bit.

He rummaged around among the rest of the stuff. All women’s purse junk except for a folded piece of paper. He unfolded it, saw that it was a computer printout. Then he saw what it said and his head started to throb again, that heavy throbbing ache behind his eyes. He squeezed them shut and jammed the heels of his hands against the socket bones and pressed and pressed until the pain began to ease some. He looked at the paper again, read everything that was printed there.

His name, his address, the kind of car he drove, where he worked, where he was born and the places he’d lived and who he’d been married to… his whole life! The hell she was after some deadbeat father hiding out on this block, the hell she’d made a mistake about the address. It was him she was after. Her car parked right out front, prowling around the property, listening for Angie and wasn’t surprised to see her. That was why she was here, why she was after him. Take Angie away from him.

But how? How’d she find out?

Nobody’d seen him take the girl, he was sure of that. Nobody could know, but Dark Chocolate knew. How could she know?

Who else knew?

Not the police, they’d’ve taken Angie away from him by now if they did. Just Dark Chocolate, or somebody else at that detective agency of hers?

He’d find out. He’d get it out of her, one way or another.

No matter what, he couldn’t stay here, couldn’t wait until the weekend like he’d planned to head east. Not him, not Angie, not Dark Chocolate. Leave now or wait until morning? He wasn’t thinking clearly anymore, couldn’t make up his mind. The pain was like fire behind his eyes. He jammed his hands against the socket bones again, pinched his eyeballs. It didn’t get any better, it wouldn’t go away.

Oh God, the things he’d done when he couldn’t make it go away..