Slippin' into Darkness

6:06 P.M.

Bat Bautista stepped from the Jeep Wrangler, gripping his nightstick so tightly that his hand seemed as heavy as concrete. His son Carlos romped on the front lawn, equal distance between Bat and Ozzy Austin.

“Come here, Carlos,” Bat said, his voice low and even.

The boy turned-a big grin shining on his face, a softball held in his hands. “Watch, Daddy!” Giggling, Carlos tossed the ball, and Ozzy Austin took two fast steps forward and caught it.

Austin slapped the softball from one hand to the other. “Want a little pepper, Bat?”

Bat ignored him. His attention was focused on his son. “Go inside, Carlos. It’s almost dinnertime.”

“Watch, Daddy! I’ll catch the pepper!” Carlos ran toward Austin. The big man wound up, his face a mask of bulldog determination, and then he tossed the ball nice and easy.

Carlos made a hobbling breadbasket catch. “See, Daddy, see!”

Bat said, “Do like I told you.”

Carlos held on to the ball. “Okay.” The boy looked at Austin. “Are you from Texas, Mr. Austin?”

Austin pushed his hat high on his forehead and looped his thumbs over his leather gun-belt. “No, I’m not, pardner.”

“I just ask because Austin is the capital of Texas. Did you know that, Mr. Austin?”

“I sure did. But only my name is from Texas. I’m from right here, just like your dad.”

“And you’re a policeman just like my dad, too.”

Austin glanced at Bat’s prison guard uniform, which was somewhere between washed-out brown and mustard, the unfortunate color of baby shit. “Well, I’m a different kind of policeman than your daddy.” He grinned. “Do you want to be a policeman when you grow up, Carlos?”

Bat’s fingers were going numb around the nightstick, and Austin’s words were burning his ears deep red. Enough was enough. “Carlos…go inside.”

“Yes,” Carlos said, but he was answering Austin’s question. “I want to be a policeman. My daddy says I can be one, too. Just like him. If I’m good.”

“Well, that means you have to do like your dad says. If you do that, your dad and me will swear you in and make you a li’l deputy.”

The boy’s eyes were wide, astonished. “You can do that?”

“Sure.”

“All right!” Carlos caught hold of the screen door and threw it open. He was halfway through the doorway before he turned and asked, “Daddy, is Officer Austin going to stay for dinner?”

Bat shook his head, glowering at Ozzy Austin’s dark blue uniform. He glanced to the street, but he saw no sign of a police cruiser. There was only a beat-up sedan pulled close to the concrete curb in front of his house. It had to be Austin’s car.

The cop wasn’t here in any official capacity, that much was plain.

Bat’s son had his answer; he sighed and closed the door. The two men stood on the lawn, separated by clumps of grass that were losing the battle to bindweed and clover. Both men wore gun belts. Both had clubs. Austin’s tonfa hung from his belt; Bat Bautista’s nightstick filled his concrete hand, and now the chipped black wood was slick with sweat.

“The boy’s smart,” Steve Austin said. “Knows his state capitals. How old is he?”

Bat studied Austin as he would study an insane person. “I’m only going to say this once. I want you to stay away from my family, and I want you to stay away from me.”

Austin snorted. “Jesus. I just dropped by for a friendly little chat. No need to get tense, Bat.” He took a step forward, one hand motioning toward the nightstick. “And why don’t you put that thing away? You never could hit worth a damn, you know. That was plain twenty-five years ago on the sandlot, and it’s plain here… Just look at the way you’re sweating.” He laughed, short and low. “I always thought it was funny, you being called ‘Bat’ when you had about as much chance of getting a piece of a pitch with a little old toothpick as you had with one of those aluminum cannons we used to swing.”

“Shut up, asshole.”

Austin stiffened. “Well, now. I can see this isn’t going to be very friendly, after all.”

“I don’t have any interest in being friendly with you. Why don’t we just leave it at that.”

Austin pushed his dark glasses high on his nose, and Bat glimpsed himself in the mirrored lenses. “That would be just fine,” Austin said. “But unfortunately I have an interest in you.”

“Oh? And what’s that?”

“I want you to leave April alone.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“Austin, I hate to be the one to break this to you, but April’s dead.”

Austin stared up at the sky and his mirrored sunglasses were masked with clouds. The clouds rolled and heaved as he shook his head, and his voice was the whisper of a cold spring rain. “You were at April’s grave last night. You and those other morons. I don’t want you going near her. You guys were her nightmare, and you tried to bring it back-”

“Wait a minute. You’re way out of line.”

“Don’t get jumpy. Bat.” Very slowly, Austin unbuttoned his pocket and produced a reel of film. “Y’know, Shutterbug handled this a little better than you.”

“Give me that.”

“Not likely”

“Shit.” Bat stepped toward his car. He turned and advanced onto the lawn. He slapped his nightstick into his other hand and pointed it at the coil of 16mm. “That’s nothing. Doesn’t mean a thing. Nobody says anything on it. It’s a goddamn silent movie. It’s just a party, everyone having a little fun on a choo choo ride, and you’re just pissed off after all these years because you weren’t in on it.”

“It’s not a party, Joaquin. I don’t have time to explain the difference, but what’s on this film is a rape. And it’s-”

“Come off it, Ozzy. I know you had the hots for her. You just never had the guts to-”

“-it’s a nightmare, and April is very tired of it.”

The two men stared at each other. Austin slipped the plastic reel into his pocket, and Bat almost laughed. “Are you trying to hit me up for money? Is that what this is about? Because if it is, do I have a surprise for you.”

“No. Not money, Joaquin. I just want you to leave April alone.” Austin shook his head. “You just don’t get it. We don’t have to lock horns on this. It’s real simple. April doesn’t want to be part of your nightmare anymore-she’s been stuck there too many years already. Now she wants to be with me.”

Bat exhaled, smelled beer on his own breath. So much for his plans to blackmail Austin. Jesus. The guy was pitching mental Nerf balls.

But Austin had the film. That could be dangerous. Bat had to play it cool, close to the vest. He could figure out the rest of it when he had a little more-

“I want an answer, Joaquin.”

“You’re nuts, Austin. Oh, man, you are loony.”

Austin ignored the comments. “I want you to pass the word to Derwin and Griz and Todd. If you don’t do that, there’s going to be trouble. And you don’t want trouble with me, because the movie will only be the start of it.”

Bautista flushed. He tossed the nightstick on the cement driveway, and it rang hollowly there, and his hands balled into fists, and he wanted to blurt it out: YOU DUG THE BITCH UP YOU SICK MOTHERFUCKER!

No, that wasn’t the way. That wasn’t smart. Austin had already turned and started for his car, but Bat caught up to him, walked with him from the weed patch that passed for a lawn to the broken cement curb.

Find a way to get under his skin. Punch the robot’s buttons. That was the thing to do. “Your problem is that you just can’t handle it,” Bat said. “That I was better than you. That I did everything you wanted to do. Won all-city. Fucked April Destino. She was just a whore-”

“Don’t call her that.” Steve whirled, and Bat saw his own wild eyes reflected in Austin’s mirrored sunglasses, and seeing his eyes hanging there on Austin’s face frightened him more than he could have imagined.

Bat stumbled backward.

Austin grinned. “I just knocked you out of the box, and I didn’t even have to throw a pitch,” he said. “Maybe you did win some ball games. Maybe you did that. But you raped April Destino, and you stole her dreams.” He took off the glasses, and his eyes were cold green things in a face too white.

Austin chuckled at Bat’s baby-shit brown prison guard uniform. Glanced up at the crummy house where Bautista lived with his wife and kids, understanding that Bautista’s glory days were the only memories that kept him going. “Maybe you were a winner when we were kids,” Austin said. “But you never won when it counted. Now did you. Bat?”

Bat fought for control, but his fingers slipped over the scored grip of his pistol. The house behind him was honeycombed with dry rot. Even with his back turned, he could hear his kids yelling in the living room because the TV was on the blink again, and he could smell Hamburger Helper and pepper oil coming from the kitchen, and he could feel the uneven weeds beneath the worn soles of his boots, and his burning gut screamed for Maalox.

“You get the hell out of here,” Bat whispered.

Austin nodded, opened the door of his car, slipped on his sunglasses. “Don’t make me come back.”