Stephen Gallagher - Valley of lights

'Have you seen the time?' She yelled from the doorway, and then clattered away again.

'You have to go somewhere?' I asked Loretta.

'Would you believe disco classes? For nine year olds? And they're not cheap, Alex, believe me.'

'I believe it.'

'But all the other girls go, so…'

'Yeah, I know,' I said as I held the screen door open for her. 'It used to be ballet.'

'Not any more,' she said. 'Not enough pizzazz in the accessories.'

I heard them going out again in the jeep, five minutes later. I didn't know the exact nature of Loretta's financial problems, but I did know from the odd remark she'd dropped that her late husband had been somewhere around my own league as a business genius. She was training now as a window dresser in one of the big mall stores somewhere over in Scottsdale; her supervisor was a nineteen-year-old kid who was, from all accounts, a complete and utter jerk who thought it was quite a joke to have an older woman as an assistant. We'd had a few barbecues in the summer, and I'd taken her out twice while Georgie stayed home with a sitter. She stood five-five and was dark-haired with blue eyes; it was an unusual combination, and the first thing that had struck me about her.

I turned the TV on again and ran through the channels, but I couldn't find anything to hold my attention. Everywhere seemed to be running cop shows except for Trinity, where a middle-aged pansy with a fluffball haircut was talking about snatching the land out of the devil's hands.

So then I took out the trash, keeping a wary eye open for Mrs Moynahan and her notebook full of real and imaginary misdemeanors observed about the site, and all the time my mind was running around and around in the same circle. Mercado and the zombies, the zombies and Mercado.

Then I sat and tried to think of somewhere that a nine-year-old might like to visit on the coming Wednesday, but still it was the same.

I'd told Loretta that I wasn't going to be doing anything about this on my own time.

And I wasn't, of course.

Of anywhere in the city, Produce Alley is probably the first area to come alive in the mornings. It's a low-rise zone of warehouses and sheds close to the freight tracks, and in the hours before dawn all of its doorways and shady corners fill up with people in thick jackets and baseball caps who squat with their bundles and wait for the citrus trucks to come in. The trucks unload their boxes and then, if the waiting hopefuls are in luck, they'll load up again with documented workers who are prepared to go out to the valley farms as cheap non-union labor. Mostly Chicanos, the workers can look forward to a few weeks of fruit-picking as they live either in dormitories or in makeshift camps.

I hadn't been able to sleep. This was a long shot, I knew, but it had occurred to me that this was one possible way that Mercado might make his way out of the city in darkness without either getting his hands on a car or showing his battered face at a ticket window.

The pavement was still wet in patches from last night's hosing-down; right now it was sharp and cold, a chill that would vanish into the dusty heat of the coming morning. I was out of uniform and in my own car, and nobody paid me much attention as I cruised slowly by and tried to make out faces in the gloom. I didn't have much chance of seeing detail, but what I had in mind was the application of what an old sergeant of mine had called the Heat Factor; he mostly applied it to people in cars, zooming up close behind them and staying tight on their tails to see if guilt would provoke them into some kind of panic reaction. Most of what I was getting back here was no reaction at all, until I came around, by a row of what looked like shutter-fronted garages with big zinc garbage hoppers alongside. As I slowed and stared, I saw somebody giving me a half-hearted wave.

It was Rafael, my so-called informant who had rarely given me much more than promises. He was grinning and shivering as I stopped the car and got out, and the people around and behind him seemed to fade back into the shadows as I walked over.

'What's this, Sergeant Volchak,' he said, 'you moonlighting now?'

'Couldn't sleep,' I said. The first streaks of the dawn were beginning to tear up the sky over in the East beyond the tower of the Hyatt Hotel, and the people in the alley began to rise like prairie dogs as the sounds of truck engines came through the still air. I said, 'I'm still looking for a line on Gilbert Mercado.'

Some people were starting to move, others were staying where they felt their chances were better. Rafael said, 'How'd you know I'd be here?'

'I didn't. But I thought he might be. Have you heard anything?'

'Honest to God, Sergeant Volchak, it's a big city.' Rafael gave a nervous glance as a big six-wheeler made the turn into the alley, with another one close behind; their sound rattled the shutters on either side, forcing him to shout. 'If you people don't know what's going on, who does?'

'Okay,' I said. 'Just don't forget that I asked.'

'Please, sergeant. I'm missing all my chances here.'

I let him go, and had to move my car so that the trucks could get by. The first one made a show of almost scraping me for getting in the way in the first place; I couldn't see any driver up there, just this big metal monster that could easily have been rolling along on its own dim intelligence with nobody in the cab. I briefly thought about getting out my badge and giving him a hard time, but I let it go. Back in the old days I wouldn't even have hesitated, but the satisfaction goes out of it.

Instead I got out again and walked around, looking more closely at faces now that the light was starting to cut contrasted areas out of the gloom. More trucks were arriving and would-be workers were scrambling around them to help with the unloading and so, they hoped, improve their chances. The turnover would be fast, and by nine the Alley would be fully daylit and close to dead again, its main business already over. I walked along the rows, my hands stuck deep into my windcheater pockets, feeling the chill. They say that your blood thins in this kind of climate. Takes a couple of years if you come from somewhere cooler, but then anything below seventy degrees has you reaching for a sweater.

I'll be honest, I was starting to lose interest. I was circling back towards my car and ready to go home or to find an all-night place for some breakfast when a figure broke out from the shadows in front of me and started to run. I couldn't see his face, but his size and his speed instantly said Mercado; and I started forward, cursing myself for my slow reaction and my loss of faith in my own obviously godlike powers of deduction.

He was dressed like all the others – that is, much as he'd been yesterday with a jacket added – and if he'd kept his head down I expect that I'd simply have walked on by without even noticing him. I don't think a rat could have scampered down the alley as fast as he did; I was doing my best, but I could already see that it wasn't going to be good enough. He jumped some boxes, elbowed some people out of the way, and squeezed down by the side of one vehicle to get out the other side and into the wider access road. I slammed through after him, and gained a couple of yards; he'd skidded on some dumped skins in the gutter, but he hadn't stopped and he'd picked up his balance again as he ran.

There were more people out here, and more illumination from head and tail-lights as business hit its noisy peak. The Alley was transformed, like a graveyard that had suddenly pulled its covers away to reveal some coarse and brutish fairground. Nobody tried to stop Mercado or to interfere with him, or with me; they simply moved aside when they saw us coming and probably looked after us when we'd passed, a common piece of street theatre with some curiosity value.