The Mercy of the Night Read online

  “Our plucky little heroine.” Lonnie smiled ruefully. “Her father was in prison—Corcoran or Soledad, I can’t remember which. Her brother—he was thirteen at the time, I think—was already involved in gangs, some norteño clique.”

  “I suppose that explains her pluck.”

  “Yes.” Lonnie scratched her cheek with the back of her glove, leaving a streak of dirt behind. “Fair to say she came pre-equipped for dealing with trouble, especially in the form of men.” She turned the azalea this way and that in its hole, trying to determine which side should face front. “Mother’s no picnic either. Met her just once, but Jesus.”

  “Raised by wolves,” he said.

  “Queen of Mars, more like it.”

  O for a muse of fire. “And the other girl, the angel?”

  Lonnie seemed content with the plant’s orientation now and began backfilling the hole. “Marina was never found.”

  Of course not, Tierney thought, sensing the shape of the story now. The wrong girl came home.

  “So,” he said, “skip ahead ten years. Jacqi starts using, her dealer becomes her boyfriend and then her pimp, something to that effect. And one day she winds up here.”

  “Yes,” Lonnie said, “lucky for her.”

  She reached for the next azalea, took its thin trunk in hand, and knee-marched ahead. Once again: cut the twine, tear away the burlap, pitch it aside. She picked off a few brown, hardened leaves.

  Tierney waited, then said, “There was a problem.”

  She stopped her fussing and just knelt there for a moment, silent, her gaze a thousand miles away.

  “Lonnie?”

  “Yes, sorry.” She tugged at her gloves, tightening the fit. “You’re right, there was a problem. And now it seems our plucky little heroine has disappeared again.”

  2

  Jacqi pressed a washcloth hard against a gaping cut on the big man’s massive brow. He sat on the edge of the bed, spellbound by the minibar.

  His name was Michael Verrazzo but she called him Fireman Mike, the one repeat trick she had so far and, if she played it right, a possible frequent flyer. He’d sprung for a real room tonight, just a Marriott but still, way better than the usual jump joint. Or his car.

  He’d texted ahead, told her to do herself up, look nice, a little catnip for the captain. So she’d put on some black tights and her one good dress, a low-backed slate-gray sheath with a cinched waist, slipped on her one pair of heels. He’d come decked out himself in his dark dress blues, striped epaulettes, gold piping. Fresh from a city council meeting, he’d said, making it sound like a brawl—or a farce—which no doubt explained the drinking.

  Big fella tugging away at a flask as he drove them here, and that just a chaser from earlier. Hey, you’re head of the firefighter’s union, you can get away with crap like that.

  Correction. Ex-head.

  What you can’t get away with is being so tight you miss the curb and swan-dive onto the sidewalk. Head wounds, they bleed like crazy. Made for an interesting check-in.

  “Turn this way,” she said. Every light in the room on. “Stop fidgeting. Christ . . .”

  “Just press, don’t rub.”

  “Don’t be such a baby. It’s still, like, oozing.”

  “Here, gimme it.” He snatched the washcloth, stood up. Like a refrigerator rising to its feet—shoulders and arms like a powerlifter, grip like a slammed door—but Christ, that was what firemen did all day, free weights and machines, strength and cardio, got paid through the nose for the privilege too.

  Snorfing back a throatful of phlegm he shambled to the bathroom, dragging his Frankenstein feet in their shiny black shoes. Bracing himself, one hand on the doorframe, he glanced back over his shoulder. A wolfish smile, not unkind.

  “You look nice, Jackalina.”

  She sighed. “I asked you not to call me that.” She used Volanda when working.

  “Right, yeah.” A wink. “Like I don’t know who you are.”

  Not really the point, Buckwheat. “I have my reasons, okay?”

  Reaching up, he gingerly touched his gash, inspecting the thread of blood his fingertips took away. “You’re a total smokeshow in that dress, know that?” That complicated smile again. “Look like a real lady.”

  Don’t act so surprised, she thought.

  “Could pass for twenty-one easy, older even.”

  Quietly, she said, “Thank you.” Thinking: That’s kinda, like, the point? She didn’t do the sexy little girl bit. For obvious reasons.

  He squinted up at the ceiling. “Kill some of these lights, Jesus.” Turning back toward the bathroom, he gathered himself. “Let me take care of some business,” he said. “Then we’ll, you know, take care of business.”

  Once the door clicked shut she got up, turned off the overhead and two other lamps, then settled in on the bed, slipping her shoes on and off, taking in the décor. Even with mood lighting, it was meh. Bet every room in this place, she thought, every room in every Marriott across the world had the same fake maple TV cabinet, same torture-to-sit-at desk, same watercolor landscapes of nowhere. You could fall asleep in one room, wake up in another, how would you know the difference?

  It gave her the willies, but then Fireman Mike snapped her back by hurling up his last five meals beyond the bathroom door.

  Long-distance call on the big white telephone. Looks like it’s gonna be a while, she thought, snapping open her purse to collect her phone.

  Checking the chat rooms she used for clients—BlueMoon.com, MeetMe.com—she found no hits on either and felt both disappointed and relieved. Glad not to be bothered, needing the money.

  She’d have to go out north of town tomorrow and work the river road, hope for a drive-by, a trucker or two. And the forecast was rain, for once. Lots and lots and lots of it.

  She’d saved a little under two hundred already, not bad for just one week, the benefit of not pissing it all away on wine coolers and crank—God help me, she thought, remembering that night they arrested her in Browner Park, jackhammer heartbeat, head full of snakes, bruised and bloody and screaming.

  Tricking again was degrading enough, but she’d rather set herself on fire than go back to being that strung out. She had no illusions about the undertow. Death by a thousand bumps. And everybody’s got one. Just for you.

  Give Lonnie Bachmann her due. Got me clean—okay, I’m grateful—but the woman had an agenda. “I’m here for you”—such a crock. I Play Favorites, more like it. Well it’s my life, queenie, not yours, not Terrible Tonelle’s, not Momzilla’s, nobody’s.

  How dare you ask me those questions. How dare you let them go at me like that.

  She figured once she had two thousand, she could make her move, put this town behind her forever. If two grand ended up leaving her short, she’d work it out when she got there.

  The point was she had to go, leave here, leave her miserable freakish past, everybody wanting to know all about it, again, forever, thinking they had a right—which prompted a switch from BlueMoon.com to the Lonely Planet web page.

  The place was named the Costa Chica: a long bright stretch of empty white sand starting forty miles south of Acapulco and continuing all the way down to Oaxaca. One spot in particular, Playa Ventura, called to her, and she scrolled through the pictures again.

  A town with just three narrow streets, a few beachfront hotels and restaurants shaded by palms, simple and friendly, nothing to the west but blue water.

  She’d live in a thatched palapa and hustle up work, make herself useful, folding laundry, scrubbing floors, collecting firewood, whatever. Her Spanish was rusty since her abuelita died but she’d get it back, and her English could prove a plus, always useful, even off the major tourist track.

  If that didn’t work out she’d head farther south, Playa La Bocana, where the Rio Marquelia meets the ocean. She’d sleep in a hamm
ock hitched to coconut palms near the food stalls on the beach, find work at the hotel, clean out cabañas along the lagoon.

  She knew what people would say if they knew. Okay, so sue me, I have this thing, this hope—hear that, people?—call it a dream, fine. I need it. Or I think I just might die.

  There’s a place where nobody knows me and nobody asks. A place where I’m just the new girl, the quiet girl. A place where, for the first time in my life, I’m free.

  The screen on her phone went dark. She thumbed it back so she could exit out of the page. Lonely Planet. Got that right. But not forever. Nothing says it has to be.

  The bathroom door blew open and Fireman Mike stood there, tie tugged loose at his mangled collar, face flushed. He offered a slack grin as his big legs steadied beneath him and from somewhere miles inside his gut he dredged up a ripping belch.

  He made way to the bed and dropped like a buffalo on a trampoline, bouncing Jacqi upward.

  “I’m so outta here.” He dug the flask from his pocket, unscrewed the cap, a ravenous lip-lock and chug. Beads of sweat glistened across his meaty face. “Got myself a whole new situation, captain’s post in Visalia, start next week.”

  “Yeah,” she whispered. “You told me in the car coming here.”

  “That’s why I went down to the circus tonight,” he said, “give a fond farewell to the fuckwads. Citizen Pinhead, Angry Joe Blow. Milquetoast the Mayor and the Council of Cunts. You wanna make me the scapegoat for the city going belly-up, hey, have at it. Place you oughta be looking, though, is straight into a goddamn mirror.”

  He wasn’t talking to her so much as some invisible anybody, the stenographer in his head. He went away for a second, behind the invisible curtain, then just like that he snapped back, peered one-eyed into the flask, a little shake to hear how much was left.

  “Time to hit the minibar.”

  Knock yourself out, she thought. “I’m good.”

  “Gonna make me drink alone?”

  Like me and an army could stop you. She shrugged, remembering to smile.

  He studied her for a second, that lurid, friendly grin of his.

  Then he did the strangest thing.

  3

  It was almost ten by the time Tierney returned to Winchinchala House. He stood on the floodlit porch and pressed the bell, listening to the stately gong echo beyond the thick stone walls. Footfalls approached on the slate entry floor, then a shadow darkened the peephole. A scramble of locks, the door swung wide.

  A twentyish black woman stood there. Catlike, muscular. Shaved head.

  “Kinda late to come a-tutorin, ain’t it?”

  Tierney smiled. “Good evening, Tonelle. I’m here to see Lonnie.”

  She eyed him cagily. Schooling’s just racist indoctrination, she’d told him once, keep the niggers under the boot. Diploma’s just a new kinda chain. None of which meant much. Tonelle just liked to argue.

  She waited a beat, just to emphasize she could, then stepped back to let him pass. “Go on through, Tooder. She in her office.”

  The study room hummed with a quiet intensity as the young women suffered over their studies. A few curled up in beanbag chairs and plowed through dog-eared paperbacks with torrid covers. Across the hall a handful of others watched TV, the volume a respectful murmur. Several greeted him with lazy waves as he headed toward the back.

  Reaching Lonnie’s office, he glanced in at the doorway before knocking. She sat at her desk, a massive oak monolith turned caddy-corner at the center of the room, the better to fill the vast, high-ceilinged space. A gooseneck lamp cast a focused glow on a blotter full of paperwork.

  Rapping his knuckles on the doorframe. “Got a minute?”

  She glanced up as though from a miserable dream, then smiled, seeing it was him. The smile faded quickly. “No luck, I take it.”

  She’d been to a function earlier, judging from how she was dressed, navy blazer and gray herringbone skirt, the jacket unbuttoned, revealing a jabot blouse.

  He took a seat. “I haven’t tracked her down as yet, no. But I’ve been busy.”

  Lonnie sat back in her plump chair, outside the cone of light. “Tell me.”

  He took note of the wariness in her voice. “Spent the afternoon at the courthouse, plowing through case files. The Cope thing, in particular. Came to nine volumes, with the trial transcripts.”

  She cocked her head. A small, dispirited sigh. “Don’t take this wrong, but was that really the best use of your time?”

  “You don’t just want me to find her,” he said. “You want me to persuade her to come back, right?”

  “Yes. I told you that.”

  “I don’t want to come off like a simpleton when I talk to her again. And I don’t want to get sandbagged.”

  She reached for a paperweight on her desktop, something to hold, fuss with, then dipped back out of the light again. “I suppose I see your point.”

  “After the courthouse I checked out the library—street kids like to hang there, it’s warm and dry, it’s safe. Spent some time on the computer, waiting to see if she might turn up, got a little more background off the web. When she didn’t show I went to the mother’s house—you’re right, she’s, well, interesting. And unhelpful.” He shrugged. “Then I drove around for a while, circling the usual places in case, you know, Jacqi’s working again.”

  In a small voice: “Thank you.”

  “There’s still a few things I’d like to get a better handle on. You said her dad was in prison when Cope took her.”

  “Still is, I think.”

  “Don’t think. He’s doing twenty-five to life. Felony murder. He was the driver in a jewelry store heist that went sideways, the shop owner and one of the crew got killed.”

  He waited for a response. She shrugged. “I’m not sure—”

  “That’s not just some random fuckup,” he said. “That’s heavy. It tells you something. About the home Jacqi grew up in.”

  “I thought I made that clear—her home life, I mean. If I didn’t, I’m sorry.”

  “I also tried to follow up on the brother, the one you said was with the norteños.”

  “That was the rumor.”

  “There’s hardly anything on him. What’s there is minor, drug stuff, theft. And all of it goes away. He’s never been convicted of anything.”

  She leaned forward, far enough for the light to harshen her features. “Phelan, I’m not sure where you’re going with all this, but the point I was trying to make is that when two girls went missing in just six weeks, it felt like the city was cursed. Then Jacqi escaped, and it was like a miracle. The curse got lifted.”

  “But not for long.”

  “No. This is still a small town in a lot of ways, no matter how big it gets or the kinds of problems it has. It didn’t make headlines, more like a whisper campaign, but the issue of her family just wouldn’t die. People weren’t content with just Jacqi back, they wanted Marina too, they wanted Jacqi to lead the police to her, and when she couldn’t, well . . . There was some resentment. That’s all I was trying to get across by bringing up her dad and her brother.”

  “Okay,” Tierney said, thinking: Let it go. “I also checked out Jacqi’s files. There were four—razor thin, nothing but the complaint inside.”

  “That’s not unusual. She’s a juvenile, the rest is sealed.”

  It’s not all that’s sealed, he thought, not by a long shot. But he was saving that to talk over with Jacqi.

  He said, “She’s been tagged with soliciting and public intoxication—no surprise, since she wound up here—but there’s also two assault charges, one against a teacher, a second against a gentleman named Gerald Anthony Manzello, who just happens to be with the Rio Mirada police.”

  “Are you surprised?”

  “Can you fill in the blanks a little? She’s always been pretty tame w
ith me, but if she’s going to take a swing, I’d like to be prepared.”

  Lonnie sat back in her chair again for a moment, rocking a little, then got up, went to the door and closed it. Sitting back down, she said in a lowered voice, “Jacqi’s something of a unique case, but a lot of the girls here have been abused. Most, actually. None who’ve been abducted, okay, but plenty who’ve been through some pretty awful stuff. You know Tonelle, nice-looking black girl, bald?”

  “She greeted me at the door,” Tierney said. “I use the term ‘greeted’ somewhat loosely.”

  “Tonelle never, ever has nothing to say.”

  “That’s pretty much my experience.”

  “But she’s got a story, too. Break your heart.”

  “I can only imagine.”

  “Anyway, you go through all that, a childhood like that, then hit puberty and the hormones kick in? It’s weird to begin with, for everybody. But abuse means depression, and some girls go inward, others act out—turn mouthy, pick fights.”

  “We’re back to Jacqi now.”

  “Not just her. They all get into drinking or drugs or both. And they get sexually active way too soon—I know, after the abuse it doesn’t make sense, and yet it does.”

  Todestrieb, Tierney thought. Freud’s term, the repetition compulsion, rooted in Thanatos. The death instinct.

  “Odd as it sounds,” she said, “tricking can give you a strange sense of power. It did for me. Anyway, the drugs, the sex, the acting out, all that happened with Jacqi by the time she was sixteen. Became a terror at school, and she was hardly a model student before the Cope thing. Started picking fights, ugly ones, not just with other kids.”

  “The thing with the teacher,” Tierney said. “And Officer Manzello?”

  “I don’t know about that specifically. But she was living on the street for weeks at a stretch, which meant run-ins with the cops. They hate her—I know a bunch of them here, grew up with some, got to know the others through work. I even know Manzello, but I never heard about this. Anyway, they can’t understand. ‘She got her life back, now look at her, throwing it all away.’ One guy told me cuffing her was like trying to put a headlock on an explosion.”