Johnny Temple - USA Noir - Best of the Akashic Noir Series

The row of magnolias was empty so I circled back to the parking ramp. She’d be waiting for me, my getaway driver. At my parking spot I discovered three things almost simultaneously: Rebecca wasn’t there, my car was gone, and my keys were no longer in my jacket pocket. I ran home through the alleys trying to keep my mind blank, trying not to remember that last embrace with Rebecca, her hands snaking around my waist. Lou’s house was dark, as was mine. My door was unlocked. Inside I called her name.

Then I read the note:

Please forgive me. But you must see the bright side. The cloud of suspicion above you is lifted—evermore.

R.

I had my shot of whiskey, felt my body shudder, and then it came, the mean bang of fists against my door and the wave of blue uniforms through the halls. I heard my name from the lips of one officer, a young sergeant, who explained his warrant for search and seizure. I saw John in his suit, straight from the gala, and Lou Hamlin dressed in black like some prowler.

The young sergeant said solemnly, “Mr. Vance, is there a safe in your basement?”

I managed to ask if that was illegal.

“What you’ve got in it is ,” said Lou, sneering.

They ushered me into my basement and Lou coughed with laughter when he saw the safe in plain view. The sergeant tried the handle.

“Open it up, shitbird,” said Lou.

The sergeant raised a finger to quiet Lou—this pleased me—and said, “You’ll have to open the safe, Mr. Vance. That, or it’ll be opened in the lab.”

I felt my cold body rise and fall with my breath; I waited, but nothing came to me: no idea, no plan of escape. I was done.

“No need for that,” I said, and went to open it.

“No,” said the sergeant, blocking me. “Just recite the combination.”

It was an unoriginal set of numbers, the poet’s birthday: 01-19-18-09. As I recited them I remembered spinning the dial earlier in the evening to retrieve the perfume, Rebecca behind me on the bed doing her makeup, mirror in hand. The click of the lock woke me. The flashlights came out like swords and the beams ferreted through the dark, but where the light should have by now found the black hair, the thin nose, the quiet eyes, there was nothing but more dark, and more light chasing in until the beams struck the rear wall of the safe.

All eyes—and the beams of flashlights—turned upon me.

“Where is the painting, Mr. Vance?” asked the sergeant.

I looked at Lou’s face, white and fishy, and kept my eyes on him when I said, “What painting?” It came out weak, unconvincing, but what did it matter? The empty safe was proof—the empty safe would hide my crime. Only John was touching the brackets on the opposite wall, and looking at the spotlights.

Lou erupted, snatching me by the collar and heaving me into the wall for some of his paternal policing. He got in one blow to my face before he was restrained by the officers. He fought at them too, and when he was finally subdued and handcuffed on the floor he was nearly foaming at his white mustache.

“She said !” Lou spat. “She said the painting was here! She saw it!”

Rebecca. His spy all along. I let this sit on my thoughts for a moment, as if seeing how long I could hold an ember.

The sergeant looked beat. He shook his head at Lou. Then his face brightened. “Mr. Hamlin, where is your niece?”

“She doesn’t have it,” he said. “She made this happen !”

Oh, treacherous Rebecca! But her note was coming into focus. She’d duped me good, but she’d gone to great lengths to dupe her uncle too, and leave me protected.

The sergeant peered at me. “Where is Rebecca? Does she have the painting?”

I said nothing.

That’s when I heard John: “Rose. I smell rose.”

Suddenly, I could smell it too, as if it had exploded in my pocket; it was all over me, all over the bed and the walls and the safe. I looked away from John.

“Mr. Vance,” the sergeant continued, “if you can help us, it’ll be good for you.”

John leveled his gaze at me. “The perfume is here. I smell it. I smell the rose perfume!”

The sergeant patted me down and found the vial. He took a disinterested sniff, handed it to John, and turned back to me.

“Now there’s this,” he said, like a tired parent. “We could forget this altogether if you cooperate.”

I looked at the sergeant and at Lou and I savored it, my chance to turn the tables on her, to beat her at her own game. And then I let it go. “Sergeant,” I said, “Mr. Hamlin. Respectfully, I don’t know where Rebecca is and I have no idea what painting you’re talking about.”

“Arrest him,” Lou barked, sandwiched between officers. “Arrest him for the perfume!”

And they might have. But there was John again, the vial in his hand. “This isn’t it.”

“What?” I shouted, unable to stop myself.

John held up the vial and pointed to an unblemished lip. “No chip,” he said. “Anyway, smell it. Putrid!” He placed the vial on a cabinet and made sure I saw the great disappointment in his eyes.

I was berated for another hour by the officers. What kind of game are you playing with us? Do you think you’ve gotten away with it? Don’t you know it’s just a matter of time? Do you really think this is going to end here, tonight? I just stared into a corner, hardly listening. I was thinking of Rebecca on westbound 64, driving fast with my car into the night. The questions weren’t for me; they were for her. And when I found her, I would make sure she heard them.

When I was at last alone, I found the forged bottle where John had set it. Rebecca must’ve made the switch during our final night together. The vial rolled around on my palm. I was so disappointed that she’d forgotten to add the chip, I didn’t have the heart to remove the cork and smell the candy spray she’d put inside.

Here’s the thing—I never took drugs in my life. Yes, all right, I was the champion of my share of keggers. Me and the Pope. We were like, Bring on the Corona and the Jäger! Who wasn’t? But I never even smoked the chronic, much less used the hard stuff. Until I met Pope’s little sister. And when I met her, she was the drug, and I took her and I took her, and when I took her, I didn’t care about anything. All the blood and all the bullets in the world could not penetrate that high.

The irony of Amapola and me was that I never would have gotten close to her if her family hadn’t believed I was gay. It was easy for them to think a gringo kid with emo hair and eyeliner was un joto . By the time they found out the truth, it was too late to do much about it. All they could do was put me to the test to see if I was a stand-up boy. It was either that or kill me.

You think I’m kidding.

At first, I didn’t even know she existed. I was friends with Popo. We met in my senior year at Camelback High. Alice Cooper’s old school back in prehistory—our big claim to fame, though the freshmen had no idea who Alice Cooper was. VH1 was for grandmothers. Maybe Alice was a president’s wife or something.

You’d think the freak factor would remain high, right? But it was another hot space full of Arizona Republicans and future CEOs and the struggling underworld of auto mechanics and hopeless football jocks not yet aware they were going to be fat and bald and living in a duplex on the far side drinking too much and paying alimony to the cheerleaders they thought could never weigh 298 pounds and smoke like a coal plant.