Michael Dibdin - Dark Specter

“Then your belief is misplaced, Mr. Lee, account of there was two of them. You exit. Y’all exeunt.”

Utterly defeated, Lamont Wingate packed up his notebook, returned to the patrol car and called in to find out why the guys from the morgue hadn’t showed up yet. The dispatcher told him that one of the other detectives had gone to look into the drive-by, so Lamont went back to his car and drove off, munching on one of the light bread sandwiches his wife had packed and mentally composing his prelim on the Pittsburgh shooting.

On the face of it, it sounded like a no-brainer. Vernon Kemp and a couple of dudes he was down with see these two suits and go to hit on them. Kemp’d likely been aching to get a body for some time, keep any of the Jams from trashing his rep, prove he had the juice. That side of it he could see. The problem was the other guys. If the drunk was to be credited, they’d fired first, two on three, and staring down the barrel of some major ordnance. That didn’t make no sense. And what the hell were they doing there in the first place, with a suitcase full of restraint equipment and a video camera, passing themselves off as a direct-sales team for the big kahuna?

“A pistol each, handcuffs, roll of tape, video camera,” he said out loud for the benefit of his father, who had died of a stroke two years earlier.

He hung a loose right on Georgia and drifted down to Capitol, past the construction site for the Olympic stadium. To the left, the IBM tower dominated the night sky, its latticework spire illuminated from inside like a Halloween pumpkin. Lamont thought about what the old drunk had said about the northerners moving in. What broke the South wasn’t the war, it was air-conditioning. Before that came along, the Yankees couldn’t take the climate. Lamont smiled and shook his head, recalling one guy he heard of, moved down here from New England, who kept his AC going full blast in the winter so he could have a log fire. Go figure!

“Maybe a burglary?” his father whispered unexpectedly. “Make like they’re peddling religion to get the door open, then pull out the hardware and clean the place out.”

“What’s to clean?” demanded Lamont. “That area, even the cockroaches are on food stamps.”

He went north on Hill, past demolished lots lined with parked cars during the day and under the expressway opposite the grim Stalinist bulk of Grady Memorial Hospital. That’s where they’d have taken the white survivor. He stood a better chance at Grady than most anywhere else in the country. They saw so many gunshot wounds the army sent their surgeons there to gain field experience. Lamont hoped the guy would pull through, or at least hang in long enough to talk.

“A sex crime, maybe?” his father suggested tentatively. Even when he was alive, he’d never cared to discuss this subject. “Like those perverts you read about in the paper. He threatens them with the gun, handcuffs and gags them, then videotapes the whole thing to watch later at home.”

“There were two of them, Pop. Sex offenders work alone, except it’s gang rape or whatever, and then they don’t bother with cuffs, all that shit.”

Rebuffed, his father fell silent. Lamont cruised on up to North Avenue, then swung right under a railroad bridge and into a humpbacked concrete side street ending at the tracks. Looking at the Homicide Task Force headquarters, you would never have guessed that Atlanta had one of the highest murder rates in the country. A small one-story brick block with a mean row of teensy windows, it might have been the workshop for the office stamp outlet next door.

Lamont went inside and called Grady. It took some time for them to track the guy down, since neither Lamont nor the hospital had a name for him. Presently tagged as “Patient #4663981: Identity Unknown,” the individual was said to be recovering from emergency surgery. His condition was described as stable but critical.

“So you didn’t find any ID on him?” Lamont asked the voice on the phone, the fourth he’d been put through to. “Driver’s license, credit cards, nothing?”

“If we did, it’d be on the chit.”

This was getting weirder and weirder. It sounded like these guys had deliberately stripped their pockets before going out, just like a couple of professionals. Except no professional would go up against a trio of armed muggers with a twenty-two.

Lamont popped one of the little breath-freshening mints which were his only vice. He was up to two packs a day, maybe it was time to slow down. He pulled out the phone book. Jehovah’s Witnesses appeared under Business Listings. There were about twenty numbers in all. Lamont called Central Congregation, the downtown branch. He got a recorded voice which explained that the office was closed right now and invited him to leave a message or dial another number if he wished to speak to a counselor.

“This is Detective Wingate, Atlanta Police,” he recited after the tone. “Couple of individuals have been sighted in Carson Street, off McDaniel, claiming to represent your church. Could you let me know if you have anyone out working the houses in that part of town? We suspect they may be impostors.”

He left a number and asked them to call him back. This was just to cover his butt. He knew damn well the guys weren’t Jehovah’s Witnesses. What he didn’t know, what he couldn’t even begin to guess, was what in hell’s name they were. The only person who knew for sure was “stable but critical,” which was the way doctors covered their butts. His father had been stable but critical for almost two weeks before he died. Another few days, they would have had to remortgage the house.

Lamont had spent the time at the bedside, reading his dad the mysteries he loved. Once he’d picked up the wrong one by mistake, read a chapter out of a whole different book. His father hadn’t even noticed. That’s when he realized for the first time that the man lying there beside him, still warm, still breathing, was no longer his father.

He pushed a sheet of paper into the machine and began typing up his notes on the vagrant in the boxcar. As for the other case, its condition was critical but stable. He might be able to track down Vernon Kemp’s accomplices, maybe trace the weapon through a ballistics test on the spent ammunition, tie it in to some other shooting. Even if he didn’t manage that, the result was merely a technical hitch which might be rectified at any time. The file would be left open, and when the perps fucked up in the future-which could only be a matter of time, seeing as they were so raw they’d run off without this seriously fly camcorder which was theirs for the taking-the loose ends would be tied up once and for all.

The white guys were another question. He might be able to figure out the back story on that one, or it might end up being one of those enigmas which infest police files like weevils in rice. There was one thing Lamont felt sure of. If he ever did find out, the truth would prove to be as disappointing as the solutions to those mysteries he had read aloud to his father.

Something stirred in his mind like dead leaves in a wind. Leaves of paper, torn pages, words.

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

He knew the words, the page, the book it had been ripped from, even the chapter and verse. Words ripped from a dying man. He knew the place too, the dull light and medicinal smells of the church hall where Bible Study was held. The rows of kids in their Sunday best, hating it in their different ways. He recalled the teacher trying to explain away that particular sentence, tying it back to some Old Testament reference and suggesting that Jesus was just reading from the script here, dutifully fulfilling all the prophecies about the Messiah. He’d never bought that, not for a moment. Of all the words in the New Testament, those were the ones that rang most true. There was no rhetoric about them, no smart phrasing, just the despairing shriek of a man suffering an atrocious torture as a result of beliefs which, he has just realized, may be absolutely meaningless.

What if he isn’t the Messiah? What if the whole thing was a delusion from day one, a scam of which he has been the principal victim? That’s the terrifying possibility which Jesus had just glimpsed for the first time, the focused beam of darkness which shone down from the cracked heavens and made him cry out.

Russ recalled his parents once discussing someone’s loss of faith in disapproving tones, as though the person had been caught reddicked at some No-Tell Motel. He’d thought they said “loss of face.” That’s what it sounded like, something tacky and socially embarrassing, not as bad as going over to Rome, but in the same general league. No one ever mentioned that first loss of faith, recorded right there in Matthew 27, verse 46.

It was those memories which were the hardest thing to reconcile with the knowledge which had come to him now, stretched on his own cross. This was not an instant of doubt, a brief crisis which made the ultimate victory all the more glorious, but an enduring certainty as barren and intolerable as his pain. If God permitted him to suffer like this, it could only be because his suffering was meaningless. It didn’t really exist. He didn’t really exist.

Everything he had ever been was a sham, a mock-up like the flat exteriors they built for movies, hollow within. A cry broke through his clenched lips. How could he accept that? How could anyone? Those childhood memories brimming with feeling, with a depth and substance his life had long since lost, a sacred authenticity, how could they be anything other than real? What did the word mean, if not that?

He had no problem with the idea that he was a phony now, that his life had become a sham and that the only reason his bluff had never been called was because other people were equally reluctant to play the truth game, having secrets of their own to hide. But he found it impossible to believe that he had always been tainted, from the very beginning. Yet how could it be otherwise? You didn’t become a specter. You either were or you weren’t. If the adult stood convicted, the child was guilty too.

His cry had brought the night nurse over. She checked the schedule hanging from the footrail of the bed, headed Patient #4663981: Identity Unknown. The next dose of medication was not due for another two hours, but an optional top-up of analgesic had been provided for and the patient was evidently in considerable distress, struggling against the bonds designed to protect his wounds and muttering something incomprehensible. The nurse tore open a syringe packet, filled it from the ampoule and slipped it under the bare skin of the man’s arm. Gradually the ravings diminished, fragmented, then ceased altogether.

The girl lay sprawled in the chair, naked under a pink cotton robe, legs splayed out. Her right hand stroked her exposed pubis, her left the channel changer. Even on cable, there wasn’t much to see this time of the morning. She must have been all around the circuit fifty times already in search of something that would hold her interest. She hadn’t found it yet, but anything was better than the idea of giving up and going to bed alone.

The sound of a car outside brought her to her feet. He’d said he would be taking the bus, but they’d stopped running hours ago. She pressed the mute button on the remote and went over to the window. Sure enough, a cab had drawn up outside the motel, its yellow roof bedazzled by the neon sign over the entrance. For a moment her heart lightened. Then a middle-aged couple emerged from the rear and lurched off toward one of the cabins at the far end of the court.

She wrapped the robe around her, shivering slightly despite the heat. She’d put it on for him, for when he got back. He’d given it to her the day before. Told her it was silk, which she didn’t think it was, but it had a nice satiny feel and the color looked good on her. And it was sweet of him to think of her like that when he was out buying a suit to wear to this job interview. She modeled it for him right away, with nothing on underneath, which was maybe kind of slutty. He’d sure liked it, though.

She lay down on the bed, rubbing herself and thinking about how he’d kissed her down there until she couldn’t stand it any more, and her clumsy fumbling with his belt and buttons, and breaking out his cramped cock and pulling him on top of her. They’d done it for almost two hours, first one way, then another, until he saw the time and said he had to get ready for his appointment. He’d wanted her on top then, straddling him and bending low so he could squeeze and suck on her titties as he came.

She rolled over and sat up, looking at the clock radio by the bedside. It was now almost three. He’d been gone over eight hours, and for each of the last five of those she’d had to throw out the story she’d been using to explain why he wasn’t back and dream up a new one. First she’d told herself the appointment had been delayed. Maybe there were a lot of applicants, although it seemed a kind of strange time to go for an interview. But Dale had said it was for the night shift, and you had to see the people on duty then.

Her next version was that he’d got the job, and had gone out to a bar to celebrate. Or he hadn’t got it, and was drowning his sorrows. After that, things started to get darker. The whole thing was a lie. There was no job. He’d gotten dressed up to go out on the town, maybe with another woman he had someplace. Or he was in trouble of some kind. The guy who’d phoned that morning had sounded like real bad news, hanging up in her face like that. Maybe Dale had been kiting checks, or the skip-tracers or the repo men were after him. Maybe that was why he’d come all the way out here from Seattle.

Her darkest hour had been the last, when it occurred to her that he’d just dumped her, period. He’d got what he wanted and walked, probably leaving her to pick up the tab. That would be straight out of the guy manual, she told herself bitterly. Dale had seemed different, but then they always did at first. The fact that he seemed kind of weak, like he needed to be validated the whole time, just made it more likely he’d choose the coward’s way out. Plus this scenario explained the one thing none of the others had, which is why he hadn’t called her.

It was the only possible explanation, she thought miserably, getting up and returning to her chair. He knew she had no way of getting in touch with him. He hadn’t told her where he was going, or even what kind of work it was. Said there was no point discussing it when he probably wouldn’t even get the job. The only thing she knew was that it was somewhere down in the south end of the city. That was why he might be late getting back, he’d said, because it was a long bus ride.

She reached for the remote, unblocked the volume and started to surf through the channels, lingering a few moments on each. You kid yourself that you’re tough, she thought, but really you’re just a fool. You scoop this cutesie of a guy, put the moves on him and then act surprised when he gets bored of it and ditches you. She mashed the remote some more until she found a local station with a news roundup, and stuck with it to find out what the weather would be like that day. She’d need to get out there and start looking for work before they caught up with the stolen credit card she’d been using till now It was time to get real.