Jonathon King - Midnight Guardians

Then you saw her from inside the garage, the cab pulling up outside your place. The driver gets out and pulls her chair out of his trunk and wheels it around to the passenger-side door. You had to smile when she kind of slapped the driver’s hand away from helping her. She’ll do it herself, dude. This girl has her shit together; don’t baby her.

You were watching from up high, your own chair rolled up onto the lifts you used to use to raise up the front end of the car to change the oil. She couldn’t see you yet; the sun outside too bright, making the inside of the garage dark. She was checking out your house, the neighborhood-the whole two-bedroom middle-class thing going on here. Yeah, she probably noticed the lawn hadn’t been cut for weeks, and that the front windows were carrying a film of dust, and that the hedges had gone fucking wild without a trim.

But what the hell-I’m a legless man. What do you want? So you gave the accelerator one last jack before shutting the engine down, rattling the raised garage door a little. Her head snapped around. Nice hair, catching the sun and those blue-green eyes, piercing when she looked at the place. That alone was enough for you to lose some anger. She rolled up the driveway, and you rolled down the lifts to meet her. Not exactly the Hollywood scene of the guy and girl running in the meadow to meet in some corny slow-motion embrace, but you take what you can get, right?

So you’re trying to get your shit straight, be cool, be more upbeat than you are, and what does she say right off, “Hey, 1969 Mustang, right?”

I mean, what are you gonna say to a woman who knows a ‘69 Mustang when she sees just the ass end of one? Then she legitimately likes the car, rolls around the garage, touching the body, letting her fingers glide along the fenders, flips the chrome rings on the cable hood tie-downs. Then she asks you, actually asks you, to start the car up again, so she can listen. You swing your chair around and get the driver-side door open, and reach in to hit the ignition. We listen to the purr. Then you swing around, roll yourself up the lifts, and while she watches, you poke the accelerator arm and get that bubble of power going through the exhaust manifolds. She seems legitimately interested.

Then she starts saying something, maybe asking questions. But the noise gets in the way, so you shut the engine down again.

“You know, there’s this guy down in Hollywood who had hand controls installed on his restored GTO.”

You nod, but don’t say anything.

“He came back from Iraq without any feet after some IED explosion wounded him-happy as a clam to be driving again.”

Yeah, OK, possible, you say. But then she looks at you and gets it out of her mouth, coming straight to it, no more bullshit. “What’s really bothering you, Marty? What’s got a hold of you inside?”

It was that plain and simple. She asked, and you spilled, man. Don’t know why. Even now you don’t know why. But you tossed it all right out there and, man, if she were a plant by IA and were wearing a wire, you put it all down there on tape-stool-pigeoned on the whole gang. Fuck ‘em.

Fuck me, too. I mean, how the hell did you get involved in taking deliveries of drugs from a fucking twelve-year-old kid anyway? Shit, the first time, you actually thought the other guys were just messing with you. Hey, go pick up the box from the dealer out at the Swap Shop on Sunrise. Here’s the money everybody put together. And when you get there at the designated time, this kid walks right up to my Mustang and starts checking her out, staring and cooing and touching her just like the detective did.

He’s saying, “Whoa, a ‘69 Stang! Man, that’s sweet.”

And you say, “Hey, great kid, but I got business here, so take off, eh?’ The kid just nods his head, squeezes the box under his arm, and says, “You got the rim blow steering wheel and that teak accent stuff inside?”

He’s starting to stick his head in the passenger-side window. You’re like, “Hey, hey, hey, little dude, you know your cars. But I’m workin’ here.”

Then he backs off and holds up the box and goes, “Cool. If you don’t want your merchandise, I’ll just take it back home.”

And fuck the guy who sent him out. Fucking Brown Man. Shit, the drug squad says they’ve been messing with that guy for years, say he doesn’t work the streets anymore, but he’s plugged into whatever anyone wants. Still, what kind of dealer sends a child out to make deliveries?

Yeah, I know-the kind who knows that a minor won’t get popped as hard as an adult even if he gets caught. But shit, you even felt sorry for the kid. He loved the car, man, loved the classics as much as I had when I was his age. You actually like the kid. So why make the exchange?

Shit. You don’t even know why. You fucked up again, got into it, and could have gotten out, but didn’t. You made the exchange and had been making them ever since, buying up the steroids, and then turning the other way when the other shit started showing up in the box as well.

And you told all of it to her-told Sherry Richards the whole deal. I ratted them out to a pretty, one-legged detective, and you know what? Fuck ‘em. It felt good.

In the morning, I was sitting outside on my small dock at water level when Billy called. The sun was still rising, and low beams were working their way through the veil of green.

After my conversation last night with Sherry, I’d rejoined Luz Carmen at the table and silently finished my coffee. Then I gathered a sleeping bag from my armoire and told my guest that I’d be sleeping down on the dock. It wasn’t the first time I’d spent the night there. At certain times of the year, the mosquitoes are dormant and the temperature pleasant. I like the openness of the air. I like to stare up at the tree canopy and watch stars slip in and out of the foliage. That wasn’t my motivation last night. With a woman client upstairs, I told myself I was being a professional. Maybe sometime in the future, I’d tell Sherry the same thing.

Billy’s call had come while I’d still been dozing.

“My ballistics guy says it probably came from a pistol with a suppressor attached. He based that on the lack of extensive powder burns on the animal’s scalp,” Billy said.

“You have a ballistics guy?”

“I took photos of the bullet removed during the necropsy and passed them on to an expert, Max.”

“And the original went to the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office?”

“Of course,” Billy said. “We are cooperating one hundred percent with the authorities.”

“They could trace it with a comparison,” I said. “Maybe get lucky.”

“Yes. If they expedite it, they might come up with something in a year or two.”

Again, that cynicism in Billy’s voice-that’s usually my way of talking. But we both know how swamped and understaffed crime labs are. No one in the business watches the popular TV shows without scoffing at how they depict results that magically pop up instantaneously.

“Anything else with the dog?” I said.

“Like?”

“Well, maybe it had a wallet in its mouth along with a chunk of butt flesh?”

“No such luck, Max. But that breed is known to clamp down and never let go. I wouldn’t doubt if Fido got in a bite. You saw how silent and sneaky the beast was. We can turn the dog’s remains over to the sheriff along with our theory. They might take some blood samples from its mouth, but again…”

“Yeah, by next year,” I said.

As we spoke, I became aware of a subtle movement to my right. I did not turn my head, and looked only by cutting my eyes in that direction. A tricolored heron about two feet tall was just yards away, stalking the shallow water for baitfish. The eye on my side of its head wandered, but I can never tell what direction a bird is looking. This one’s bill was long and tapered, like an old woman’s knitting needle, and its wings, neck, and head were slate blue. A white line ran the length of its throat. It raised one orange-colored foot and then froze, like a dancer, balanced for a strike or for a sudden leap in the choreography. Billy’s and my conversation had stopped, and the silence seemed to have frozen us all.