Jonathon King - Midnight Guardians

All right, all right, Marty, calm yourself; you’re a real cop. You know that CSI television is bullshit. But you gotta wonder, don’t you? Yeah, you listened to the shrinks talk on and on about the anger and frustration that’s normal after an amputation, the anxiety and all that shit- and how this is all an ongoing gradual process. But what about those guys at the gym? What happened there? What? They don’t want to associate with a gimp wheelie? You were tight with those guys, and now they are definitely pulling away. Yeah, you know things were getting a little hinky about the other thing. But shit, they were your boys, liftin’ and studdin’ over at Marbury’s together, man. Maybe you were getting a little away from the drugs and stuff, but you weren’t gonna spoil it for the rest of them. They understood that, didn’t they-all except that asshole McKenzie, anyway.

Ha! McKenzie. Wasn’t that a kick when that Richards broad came in and showed that fucker up on the dip bars? Little prick turning red in the face, blowing like some kinda wounded cow, while she just kept on kicking out the reps. Man, the woman was impressive. But what was up with that anyway, her coming down to shoot the shit? You knew the department shrinks would get around to it sooner or later, trying to find a way to dig inside your head and get you to “accept.” You were all ready to blow her off, too, but there was something about her, and not just because she’s a wheelie like you. When you were talking at the cafe, man, it wasn’t like she was trying to psychoanalyze you. It was more like she was asking questions that she needed some answers, too, you know. I mean, you ain’t stupid. You know they sent her in. But she ain’t bad to look at, and with that display on McKenzie, you gotta respect the lady’s workout ethic, right? And everybody’s heard about that time she put a 9 mm in that serial killer dude’s face. Righteous shoot. You gotta like a girl like that.

But you also gotta watch it. They tried to get a lot of internal affairs guys into the gym before, and we always smelled them out. What makes her different-because she’s missing a leg? You gotta be careful, man. And you were, right? All you talked about at the cafe was that stuff about the forensics, and why the hell they hadn’t found the guy who fucking rammed you. And she said she’d ask around. That can’t hurt, her being a detective and all.

So you make a date, right? She gave you her cell. Meet her at the cafe again. Why not?

To say that Billy Manchester and I were rolling down an asphalt lane through a decrepit mobile home park at dawn in Billy’s Lexus is enough to say that this case had become unique. The sun had not yet surfaced from the edge of the Atlantic Ocean when I met Billy, on his insistence, at his building. He’d called at the uncharacteristic hour of five in the morning:

“Max, I need you to get here as soon as possible. We have a seven A.M. appointment with Ms. Carmen and her brother.”

Billy does not do this kind of thing-I do. It’s what PIs do: Meet with the scumbags, hook up in the alleys, and sit with coffee for hours on surveillances. The attorneys don’t do this, especially Billy. Just look at him: He’s dressed down this morning in a light, camel-hair sport coat and tailored poplin trousers. His white shirt is impeccably pressed. He deigned to leave the tie at home.

“I was able to reach Ms. Carmen late last night, and told her that if she had any way to contact her brother, she should do it. At four this morning, she called and said she was meeting with him here, and begged me to come,” Billy said, looking out beyond the headlights in the still neighborhood.

I knew he was concentrating. He rarely drives. Hell, he rarely leaves his apartment unless he’s in court or walking to lunch along Clematis Boulevard in downtown West Palm Beach. His eyes were focused. When he’s concentrating, he can lose the stutter in someone’s presence. Even I take note, because it’s as if you weren’t even there. But I don’t take it personally.

“Now I fear he’s put his s-sister in harm’s way,” Billy said.

I looked at the side of his face but withheld my urge to respond: “Duh, you think so?”

“It is an enduring tragedy to see what family will do to one another,” he said. Having an intimate knowledge of Billy’s upbringing, I kept my mouth shut.

We’d slowed to a near crawl as Billy’s GPS system announced, “Destination two hundred feet, at 320 Harriett Street.” The pleasant computer voice was highly inappropriate for the milieu of sagging, broke-back trailers, autos up on cinder blocks, rotting fences failing in their attempt to offer some privacy from the trailer next door, and the ubiquitous scarred picnic table set out on a grassless strip of yard as a respite from what it must be like inside each home.

“There’s her car,” I said to Billy when I spotted Luz Carmen’s little red Toyota in the driveway ahead. He pulled perpendicular to her car, with just enough room to open his driver’s door. She would not be leaving before we did. Billy turned his car alarm on manually before getting out, thus foregoing the bleeping sound of doing it with his remote. When I joined him at the side of Carmen’s car, there was just enough sunlight to see the address of the trailer spray-painted on a piece of plywood covering the front windows. It had been a year since the last hurricane. Most people took down even their minimal barricades against the storm to let the light in and reconnect with the view. But when I surveyed the trash-strewn landscape around us, I figured even that act of procrastination might have made sense in this case.

There were no obvious lights in three windows on our side of the trailer. I’d been in a few of these tin cans before and worked the layout in my head: kitchen at the south end where plywood covered the small front bow of paned glass, living area behind the entrance door, bedroom or bedrooms at the north end. Billy stepped up onto the cinder blocks that formed a stairway to the base of the door. Before he could raise his hand to knock, I heard a low roll of guttural vocal cord, vibrating just enough to be audible. Both of us looked to our left and saw the muddy yellow-brown eyes of a pit bull watching us from the inside of a low fence.

Even in the low light, I could see the whitened slashes of scar tissue across the mutt’s face, but also the ripple of muscle in its neck and front quarters. The dog turned its head just so, with the kind of curious look you find endearing in some species. But in this one, it seemed more like that of a beast assessing which mouth-size chunk of human calf it’d like to chew into first. There would be no advanced warning of a bark or howl that would spoil its inherent surprise. This was the kind of dog that comes up in silence and buries its teeth deeply before you realize it. Billy looked at me and then rapped lightly on the metal door.

On the third try, Luz Carmen opened just wide enough to let in a sliver of sunrise that illuminated her face. Once she was sure we weren’t a SWAT team or warrant servers, she stepped back. As we entered, the smell was the first thing that slapped me.

If there is an odor of unfettered and decadent despair, this was it: the ripeness of soiled fabric, the sweat of unwashed bodies, the fetid smell of spoiled food, and the sweet cut of marijuana smoke, all muddled by a cloying overlay of burning incense. The room was lit only by the glow of a big-screen television and shards of the sunrise leaking in through the kitchen windows. On a worn couch, a kid about fourteen worked an Xbox remote. He was thin and dark. Though I thought his head was wet, later I realized that the long black locks were simply greasy.

He did not look up, at first, as we shuffled into the limited space, his eyes intent on the television screen, his fingers moving precisely on the control buttons. Luz Carmen did not bother to introduce us, and instead stepped back into the kitchen area, drawing us with her. I cut my eyes to the hallway to the left, watching for movement, for the brother, for any sign of threat. The far-too-confining space inside the trailer put me on edge.