Sarah Cortez - Houston Noir

“It changes,” I told Waters. “And it doesn’t hurt to check it out, given we have somebody who knows the area.”

Waters inhaled. He planted his tongue in his cheek, rolling it around while he seemed to contemplate the idea. “All right,” he said. “You head over there with her. I’m gonna drive by White Chapel. Kill two birds with one stone. We meet back here and hopefully the ME gives us a positive ID. Then we get a warrant and hit the place.”

“Got it,” I said. “I’ll meet you back here by sunup.”

They say it’s always darkest before the dawn. I’ve got no clue who they is, but they’re right. I’m guessing they’ve lived a life like mine, always fighting the glare of the light, seeking the shadowy quiet between midnight and the alarm clock.

I’ve never been one for daylight. It offers too much promise. I learned a long time ago that hope is nothing but a sexy woman behind the glass. You stuff your credit card into the slot, the curtains peel back, and she smiles at you. But you’re not looking at her face. And there’s nothing but the promise of a big bill at the end of the month, with an interest rate you can’t afford. It’s a nasty cycle, the sun coming up every morning. I’d just as soon it stayed sunken low.

It was five fifteen on Friday morning. That’s what the clock on my Chrysler said. I couldn’t be sure it was accurate. Didn’t matter.

The clouds had the streets darker than normal. Third Ward didn’t get the attention nicer parts of town got. Powers that be would never let the streetlights go out in Memorial or River Oaks. Hell, if a blade of grass was too long on Inwood Drive, the mayor himself would show up with a pair of scissors. But in the Tre, as local rappers called it, a dead body wouldn’t catch much glare, let alone a string of busted streetlights. Gentrification or not, Third Ward was still Third Ward.

I had my window cranked down, enjoying the musty air and fine mist that had settled over the city. Annie tugged on her seat belt, trying to get it to click. “Your car is old,” she said, “and I think my belt is broken.”

I turned onto Elgin and headed southeast. “I’ll drive slowly,” I said. “Just focus on where we need to be.”

A shirtless man on a bicycle peddled past us, riding the wrong way. His wheels were warped and he had to work the handlebars to keep from tipping over.

“Turn right up here,” she said. “Near the train.”

I tapped the brake and swung the wheel to turn onto Scott. We were parallel with the light-rail tracks. I started to accelerate, but Annie told me to make a quick right onto Reeves.

“This is one of the spots,” she said. “They like us to stay close to the train.”

I slowed to a stop, flipped the car into park, and listened to the windshield wipers squeak back and forth, barely cleaning the glass of the water that had collected on it. There was nobody here. We were alone.

I undid my seat belt. “You sure? This is the spot?”

Annie shifted in her seat, inching into the space between the seat and the door. She was facing me. “Yeah. One of them.”

She was right. This was one of the spots. Reeves and Scott. Delano and Berry streets. Milby and Tuam.

“When do I get my hit?” she asked.

“You can have it now,” I said. “Check the glove box. I’ve got a couple packets of potpourri in there. Take whatever you want.”

Her eyes lit up and she fumbled for the latch at her knee. She plucked it open and leaned toward the opening. She felt around for the drugs, but she pulled her hand back empty.

I rolled up my window.

“There’s nothing there,” she said.

“Sorry. Check under the seat, maybe I put them there.”

Annie reached down between her legs, bending forward as far as she could. I turned on the radio. It was a static-riddled AM station playing jazz. Herb Geller, I think. His saxophone cried through the blown speakers. It was like the sax was drowning.

Annie started to pull back from her search when I reached across the seat and placed my hand firmly on the back of her neck. She struggled, but my fingers slipped through the greasy tendrils of her mouse-brown hair. I wrapped them tightly and applied pressure, forcing her to stay down, while I used my other hand to manage an orange rope from underneath my seat and around her head. I pulled it tight around her throat and yanked her back toward me, where I could watch her.

Her eyes bulged, looking at me in a way that told me she either finally recognized me from the last time we’d been together, or she recognized that her sad, pathetic life was ending. The pain was almost over.

She kicked against the door, reached behind her head to grab at me with her fingers — the fingers she’d spent much of the night chewing. Annie was stronger than I’d figured. Her legs pushed. Her arms flailed. There was a determination, a desire to live I didn’t expect from a drug-addled hooker forced into the sex trade by bad men who kept her under their violent thumbs. For a split-second, I considered letting go, letting her breathe.

It crossed my mind I could give a couple of hundred from my wallet and put her on a Greyhound toward Oklahoma or Kansas. She could start clean.

Who was I kidding? There was no such thing as clean. So I pulled harder on the rope. I closed my eyes and tugged. I gritted my teeth and tightened my grip.

As I watched the life and color drain from her face, I promised her this was for the best. It was the same thing I’d told Mary Ann four nights earlier. And Liz a week before. And Cathy two months before that. And Jane. I couldn’t remember how long ago I’d helped Jane. Six months? Nine?

Annie’s body shuddered and went limp, her head dropping onto my shoulder as the rattle left her lungs. I sat there for a moment and stroked her forehead. I told her about the things I’d done, the women I’d saved one way or another. I told her she wouldn’t be the last. I couldn’t let her be the last. There were too many to help, too many to set free.

I told her how, in some ways, it had gotten easier with each of the girls. In some ways, it had gotten harder. I told her about how I’d first understood my calling, as Harvey roiled under the doors and walls of my dank first-floor apartment off the South Loop. I was neck-deep before I escaped, ducking under the water, tasting the gasoline and motor oil, the dog crap, and the grass clippings, as I’d swam through an open window and free of my home.

I’d blown the air from my lungs and surfaced next to a flooded Ford F-150. As I’d risen from the water, the distant calls for help, the sounds of sirens, and the whoosh of cars driving the wrong way on the Loop above filled the muggy air.

The lights were out. It had been dark, the sky almost milky from the storm that would not go. And yet, as I’d wiped the water from my eyes and spit it from my mouth, I could see clearly for the first time in a very long time.

The city needed this flood. It needed a cleansing. And after the waters were gone, it would need me.

I found the task itself less daunting, more automatic. It ushered in less anxiety but produced less of an artificial high. Mary Ann’s salvation hadn’t sustained me as long as Liz’s. Liz’s ascension wasn’t as satisfying as Cathy’s.

Somehow, I’d built up a tolerance.

I inched Annie off my shoulder, gently setting her upright in the passenger seat, and reached into my jacket pocket. It was still damp, but the pill bottle inside it was sealed. I uncapped it, shook the last of my Cilatopram into my mouth, and chewed.

On the radio, Geller’s sax screeched through the broken tweeter, sweetly eulogizing the girl next to me. Outside, the clouds grew too heavy and the rain started again.