Emily Kimelman - Sydney Rye 02 - Death in the Dark (2 page)

I headed back to my RV. I’d kept it all these months, living in her for what seemed like a lifetime. The small shell was a safe haven for me. Inside was dark and cooler but still very warm. I plugged in a fan and laid down on my bed.

The fan clicked from one side to the other pushing around the still hot air. Blue panted in the other room and I felt like his breaths matched my heartbeats. I closed my eyes and let my mind wander until I drifted off to sleep.

In my dream I was standing in the front of the RV, in the kitchen area. The door burst open and a man with the head of a shark wearing an expensive grey suit stormed toward me. He had a gun and when he reached me I let him slap me so hard that I fell to the ground, landing on my stomach.

Turning over I looked up at him. His shark face morphed into a human face and then back to a shark. His gills pumped on his neck, red and glistening. The intruder had a gun pointed at my face. I turned and crawled away. He laughed behind me and kicked me sideways. That’s when I saw a gun down the hall. I pulled myself toward it.

The shark man saw it too and tried to pull me back but I grabbed the weapon, relief swelling in my heart. I rolled onto my back and brought my arms up, the gun extended toward the hideous creature. He smiled at me, his mouth gigantic and filled with sharp teeth, his eyes human and filled with malicious joy.

I pulled the trigger, my heart pumping, my brain buzzing, relief crashing. But it just clicked against an empty chamber. The shark man’s gills flared one last time before he shot me in the face and everything went black.

I woke with the sickening truth that sometimes your best isn’t good enough. No matter how hard you try and how much you gain, sometimes the chamber is empty. I lay twisted in my sheets for a moment adjusting to the dark room. I could hear Blue snoring softly nearby. “Blue,” I called. His head rose with a jingle from his collar and I heard large paws pad into the bedroom. Blue’s silhouette filled the doorway, ears perked and head cocked. “Wanna go for a walk?” I asked sitting up.

He came around the bed and sat on the floor by my side. Blue leaned his long neck forward and rested his big head on my lap. Blue looked up at me and then sighing, closed his eyes. I rubbed his ear and ran my hand down his strong back. Blue wouldn’t let a shark man shoot me in the face, I thought.

But it wasn’t good enough. I got out of bed and walked into the kitchen. My gun, the one I’d bought in New York, sat in a drawer. I got it out and checked that it was loaded. Then I put it in my bag, making sure the safety was on. Finding a pair of flip flops I headed out the door. The horizon was still a dark blue and the night sky was just starting to show off its stuff. I walked toward town, through the dunes on a sandy road, itching for trouble.

There was a little secret I was keeping in my heart. A fact that I was afraid to think about but that haunted every moment of my day… even my sleep it seemed. When my brother was murdered I wanted revenge. And I went after it. I stole the man’s treasure which had made me rich, a great thing if you want to waste your life away on a beach drinking.

The thing is I didn’t just want that man’s money. I wanted his life. It was mine. But I was too late. When I showed up he was already dead. Mulberry thought I killed him, the police said I killed him, the media was convinced I killed him, everyone thought I got my revenge but I didn’t. Someone stole it from me. This left me with a sick urge, a need, an unyielding yearning to kill someone.

Blue and I made it through the dunes and stepped onto the paved road that ran into town. Cars drove by us, their headlights illuminating our way, showing off the dusty edges of the road. Large billboards loomed over us every quarter mile or so advertising new apartment complexes with names lik
e
Sparkle
s
an
d
Golden Sand
s
.

A pack of stray dogs trotted out of the dunes. When they saw us they stopped and contemplated. Blue and I kept moving. There was nothing in them that would satisfy my needs. I didn’t want to kill an animal, I wanted to kill an evil man.

When we reached the town I headed for the bar section. I knew it was dangerous walking around at night but I was hoping something would happen. I was begging for some schmuck to be dumb enough to fuck with me.

A couple of guys wearing plaid shorts and collared shirts, their hats on backwards, spotted me as they spilled out of a bar, blind drunk, and perpetually stupid. But before their verbal appeals for blow jobs could turn into something more sinister, their girlfriends, in minuscule skirts and teetering on high heels, tumbled out of the bar and pulled them away.

Past where the tourists drank I walked up into the crooked streets of the ghetto. Sand and broken bottles lined the road, sure signs that trouble lurked in the shadows. Maybe it was Blue or maybe I was so obviously dangerous that no one approached us, I spent hours wandering through the town but nothing touched me.

Eventually Blue and I went to a bar and I proceeded to get hammered. Shots of tequila chased by cool, crisp beers soothed me and made sleep seem possible. We left the bar and headed for home. I was humming the last song they’d played on the stereo. I was off key but there was no one around to care. The night was warm, the stars bright, and I was headed home. The yearning was, for the moment, subdued. We left the lights of the town and started down the paved road toward the oyster farm.

I found my oyster farm soon after coming to Mexico while driving just to take a drive. Mulberry’s guy had come for our gold and was to return with our money in a couple of days. Both of us were anxious and sick of each other and drinking. It was early and we’d had a spat, something about frying eggs in the RV being too stinky. I can’t remember which side which of us was on but he’d gotten pissed and peeled out in the Jeep leaving me alone with the egg mess. Not to be outdone I decided to take a drive too. But I would be driving the Javelina.

As I bounced down the dirt road away from the RV camp, the stuffed javelina hanging from my rearview mirror swayed back and forth. The javelina is a pig-like creature that lives in the deserts of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. As we crossed through their habitat parking in a different RV camp each night we heard tell of people spotting the small packs darting through the cacti at sunset. Their image was on mugs and T-shirts that read
‘
don’t call me a pi
g
.’ Stuffed animals in their shape were sold at every truck stop we passed. It didn’t take long for us to start calling the RV ‘the Javelina’ and it took only a day or two more for our journey to become the ‘Javelina Trail.’

Maybe that is why we were fighting, I thought, as I moved through the crowded streets of Puerto passing women in tight clothing and men fanning themselves in the shade. Maybe because the Javelina Trail was coming to an end.

After leaving the city I drove parallel to the ocean in what looked like a desert. That’s the thing about Puerto Penasco, it’s ocean front but you’d never know it unless you were looking right at the sea. The sand stretches back to the U.S border and beyond. I could see how a person wandering in those never-ending dunes could stumble onto the shores of the Sea of Cortez and think it was a mirage. The sparkling turquoise water does not belong in the middle of a land so parched.

The sign for my oyster farm was hand painted and featured a topless mermaid pointing with a mollusk down a sand road into the dunes. The next sign was for condos name
d
Sparkle
s
. There was something about the oyster farm’s sign that was utterly appealing when compared t
o
Sparkle
s
’ grand dream of a tall building with Jacuzzi tubs and granite countertops. All the ostiones farm was offering was oysters and topless mermaids. And if you don’t like those two things then we are probably not going to get along.

I turned down the road and hit the gas to keep the Javelina from sinking. Soon the paved road was gone from my mirrors. All I saw was the beige sand rising and falling where the wind last left it. I didn’t see the small piece of wood with the word ‘Ostiones’ and an arrow painted on it until I was almost past it. It was a tight turn and I had to back up a dune to make it. I hit her into reverse and sped up the side of the sand mound and then knocked it quickly into drive. I could feel the back wheels sinking and I saw sand spitting up behind me as we rolled down the dune and onto the path leading to oysters.

There was nothing in all directions as I bumped along; just me, my old RV, sand and the big blue sky. I hit a bump and heard the unmistakable sound of egg shells cracking. Looking back into the kitchen/living room I saw the remaining half dozen eggs broken on the floor. Blue wobbled back and forth with the jerky movements of the RV while trying to lick up the spilled yolks. When I turned forward the Sea of Cortez was sparkling before me.

I braked hard, coming to a stop next to a very basic structure fronted by seven plastic tables and chairs that were open to the air but shaded by a palm frond roof. A breeze blowing off the sea played with the straw and made the place look deserted. The sound of Blue licking at the eggs and the gentle hum of the engine filled the Javelina.

A man stepped out of the simple concrete structure squinting against the sun. He was of medium build, but clearly strong. His skin was brown and looked like it had spent more than its fair share of time in the sun. He looked over at the RV sitting in his driveway. I waved and he waved back. Climbing out of the Javelina, I smiled and called, “Hola.”

He walked toward me gesturing to one of the tables. Blue followed behind me. The man did not flinch. He just nodded to Blue as though another human was with me.

I took my seat and Blue crawled under the table. “Ostiones?” I asked. The man nodded and moved back to the shack. The beach curved around forming a small inlet filled with bright blue water. Directly across from me the beach rose up into a sand dune. The wind played with its tip sending sand cascading down the dune’s side.

The man returned with a dozen oysters on a tray and a Corona. I smiled at him and pointing to myself said, “Joy.”

“Ramon,” he answered. Ramon left me and I ate my oysters and drank my beer while staring into the Sea of Cortez.

I hadn’t left and Ramon never questioned that. It was as if he was expecting Blue and me. He lived with his mother in the cement house and we lived in our RV. I started paying rent after a week, though no one ever asked. I just started leaving a couple of hundred bucks as a tip. I liked it there.

But I knew it would not last. You can’t spend your life on the beach eating oysters and feeling bad. Sometimes you have to make a change. And that night, when I flopped drunk and exhausted onto my pathetic mattress, I knew something was going to give.

WAKE UP!

I woke up with my hands over my head, the joints at my shoulder aching. It was hot in the small space and I tried to scratch an itch on my nose but couldn’t move my arm. I blinked my eyes open.

There was a man sitting on the end of my bed. Instantly I was awake and nauseous with fear. I yanked at my arms but instead of moving them down to me, I moved myself up to them. Sitting on the bed, my feet underneath me I could see that my hands were tied and stuck to the headboard with what looked like a giant nail. My ankles were bound with a thick rope that itched once I saw its rough fibers rubbing my skin red.

The man was small in stature, thin, with black hair that curled in tight ringlets almost to his waist. His skin was tan and his eyes deep brown. His eye lashes curled up, long and thick, like a cows. He watched me without comment.

“Who are you?” I asked, my voice rough.

He smiled, a wide grin that showed off big teeth with even, thick spaces between them. “I’m Merl.”

“What are you doing in my bed?”

He reached out a hand and that’s when I saw the dogs. There were three Doberman pinchers patiently panting. Two on his left and one on his right. Blue sat next to the last, his pant in sync with theirs. Merl reached into his belt and pulled out a knife.

I breathed deeply, trying to slow my heart which was in the process of filling me with so much adrenaline that my teeth began to chatter uncontrollably. I clenched my jaw to shut them up and felt my stomach threatening to empty.

“Cat got your tongue?” Merl asked and then laughed, showing off his wide-set teeth again. The knife glinted in his hand. Merl reached toward me with the knife. When his head was close enough, I reared back mine and tried to slam it into his skull. But Merl was much too quick for me and I threw myself through the air, flipping off the bed.

Getting my bound feet underneath me I faced him, my teeth grinding and my heart about to explode.

“You’re even better than Mulberry said,” Merl told me from the end of the bed. How did he get all the way down there?

“What?” I asked.

“Mulberry sent me,” he said.

“Mulberry sent you to tie me to my bed and threaten me with a knife?”

He shook his head.

“You’re the trainer?” I asked, the fact dawning on me.

Merl nodded. “And I brought help.” He pointed to the three dogs. “Thunder, the oldest and most faithful of my companions.” The first dog stood and barked. His slick black coat shone in the dull light that filtered through the RV’s small windows. There was a sprinkle of grey on his formidable muzzle. “Michael, the largest of my friends.” The middle dog stood and barked a welcome, his tongue lolling out of his head. He was a giant, not as tall or thick as Blue, but it looked like he was carved from pure black granite. “And Lucy, the smartest dog that ever crossed my path.” Lucy stood and wagged a small nubbins, the remainder of her cropped tail. She was not as big as Michael or as wise as Thunder but there was something in the dog’s eyes that made me think she might be the most dangerous of the three.

“I see you’ve met Blue,” I said, still standing in my underwear and torn T-shirt with my wrists and ankles bound.

“If I let you free do you promise not to try to headbutt me?” Merl said, his eyes all smiles.

“Ok, but I think you should realize that was a pretty normal reaction.” Merl laughed as he came around the bed. He leaned across my pillows and cut the rope on my wrists. There were soft red lines but nothing permanent. “I think there were a couple of factors that made me think you were here to hurt me. Like the binding and the knife.”

Merl leaned over the bed and cut the rope around my ankles. I stepped away quickly and pulled a pair of pants out of my closet. I slipped into the oversized jeans and pulled the belt tight.

“You know you kind of dress like a hobo?” Merl said and cocked his head. I looked over at the four dogs and their heads were all cocked too.

“That’s a compliment coming from a guy dressed like one of the Columbine shooters.”

Merl laughed heartily at that. He was wearing a black T-shirt tucked into black jeans and I just bet there was a matching trench coat somewhere in his car or tossed over the couch in my living room.

Now that I was no longer in mortal danger I could feel that I was hungover. My head was banging and the nausea I’d experienced was not subsiding. “I need a glass of water,” I said pushing past all the fucking dogs into my living room. The place was a mess. I hadn’t done any dishes since Mulberry’s arrival and he hadn’t done any either. Another reason the two of us living in an RV together didn’t worked out.

I pulled out a bottle of water from the fridge and took a long slug. The small space smelled like dogs panting. I pushed open the door and stepped out into a cloud-covered day. A cool breeze was blowing off the sea and I walked toward it. Blue leapt out after me and ran toward the beach. He jumped into the small surf and turned to me, his ears and tail high with anticipation.

The other three dogs followed Merl out. They flanked him like tigers in a circus show. “Free,” Merl said, and the dogs took off, black streaks of speed against the beige sand. They barreled toward Blue and soon it was a just a mess of dogs in the surf, rearing up against each other, teeth to neck fun time.

“You like to play like your dogs,” I said then took another sip of the cold water.

“What do you mean?”

“Playing at killing each other.”

Merl laughed. “Very well put, Sydney. Very well.”

He was the first person to call me Sydney without ever calling me Joy.

“Let’s get some food,” Merl suggested. “Do they serve breakfast here?”

I nodded and we walked over and sat down at one of the plastic tables. Ramon came out and waved to me. “Huevos, por favor,” I called. He held up two fingers, I nodded. Ramon went back in the house.

“Interesting set up you have here,” Merl said.

“It’s been working.”

“But not anymore?”

I took another sip of my water. “Maybe.”

Ramon’s mother, Abedella, came out with a pot of coffee and a big smile. She placed mugs in front of each of us and poured the first steaming cup. We thanked her and she headed back into the house.

“You do that often? Tie women to their beds?” I slurped my coffee hoping it would revive me.

“I wanted to see what you were like. We reveal a lot about ourselves when surprised.”

I put down my coffee cup. “Not the best way to build trust, is it?”

Merl leaned back in his chair. “Maybe.” A smiled played on his lips.

“Is this the kind of behavior I should expect from you?” I asked.

Merl laughed. “You shouldn’t ever expect anything. Let that be the first thing I teach you.”

“Teach me,” I grumbled.

“Yes, Sydney, teach you.” His voice softened. “I’m not just here to teach you how to throw a punch or have an effective partnership with Blue. I’m here to show you how to think.” He tapped his temple. “It all starts up here.”

“Well, up here,” I touched my temple, “I’m pretty pissed you tied me to my bed!” I didn’t mean to shout but that’s how it came out.

Blue paused in his play and came to my side. Merl leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. “Impressive,” he said. “You can yell.” His words dripped with sarcasm and I wanted to fly across the table and yank his ridiculous long hair. His eyebrows jumped. “Any other skills?”

“Fuck you,” I stood up, Blue’s hackles raised.

Merl didn’t say anything until I’d turned toward the RV. “Why do you think you’re here?” I looked over my shoulder at him. He gestured around to the Oyster Farm: the Port-a-Potties on their raised platforms, the aged RV sunk into the sand from lack of use, the two-room shack Ramon and his mother shared.

“What do you mean?”

“What happened? In your mind, why are you here?”

“I made a big mistake,” I said. He nodded. “If I’d just done my job and ignored the dead body in the alley, I would still be living in my rent-controlled apartment hanging out with my brother.” My voice broke on brother. I stared into the sea with its gentle persistent waves and reflective surface, watching the sunlight crest with each swell. Blue leaned against me, pushing his muzzle against one of my hands.

“One of the biggest mistakes we can make is spending too much time thinking about our mistakes. Just acknowledge what you did wrong and move on,” Merl said to my back.

“I should just mind my own business” I said.

“Is that where you made the mistake?”

“Yes.”

“Really? I thought it was your ego. I think you underestimated who you were up against.”

“I didn’t know who I was up against.”

“Another mistake, not figuring it out quicker. You should have killed him in the basement when he laid on the ground at your mercy.”

I was still looking out at the sea and his logic struck me with the power of a blow. Of course, that’s where my mistake was. It wasn’t that I let him get away in my apartment, or that I went looking for him in the first place. I had the chance to end him as soon as I knew he was a monster and I didn’t.

I turned to Merl. “You see?” he asked. “You can ask as many questions as you like, as long as you’re ready to make decisions once you get your answers.”

“Merl, who are you?”

He laughed. “That’s an awfully broad question. Please sit down.”

I hesitated for a moment but the steam coming off my cup of coffee convinced me to start again. “Okay, I’ll ask a better question,” I said as I slid back into my chair. “Were you in the army?” Merl nodded but didn’t elaborate. I looked at him for a moment and then asked, “What was your poison?”

He smiled and with a teasing twinkle in his eye said, “What do you mean?”

“Your hair’s too long for someone without an addictive past.”

He laughed softly. “Not sure about that, but yeah, heroin. It held me pretty tight at one time. Couldn’t get free of it until the dogs.”

We both turned to look at where his dogs played in the surf. Blue followed our glance and sprinted off to join the fun. “The dogs. Did you learn that in the army?”

“No, I was a basic training kind of guy. Pretty strong for my size, fast in a fight.” He smiled and mimed a quick one-two punch. “But no, I was unemployed after the army kicked me out for my addiction. But you know, they didn’t call it that or they would have had to give me some treatment. They called it exhaustion and gave me a ticket home.”

“Really?”

He shrugged. “Sometimes that’s what happens.”

“But so how did you get involved with dogs?”

“After I left the army I was all strung out. I’d been posted in Japan and a friend of mine, an ex-addict himself, pushed me to get treatment. He sent me to China to this place in the middle of nowhere. There were these crazy mountains,” he sat up tall and spread his hands like he was showing me the size of a big fish. “They were the kind that look like one half of a giant narrow oval. You know what I’m talking about?”

“I think so.”

“And they were all covered in vegetation. ‘How is that possible?’ I thought when I first got there. How can something grow there?” He shook his head. “To get there we drove on this rutted dirt road for hours. I thought I would die. I mean I was going cold turkey. You should not be bumping along a dirt road in an old van that lost its shocks years ago when you are going cold turkey.” He laughed. “It will fucking kill you. By the time I got there I must have been half dead. I thought I’d died and that it was heaven.” He laughed again. “It’s funny that I thought I would go to heaven, a junky with no loyalty.”

Merl shook his head and played with the edge of his coffee cup. “It was this big white building that just kind of rose out of the river bank. The road was a slick, muddy mess but somehow this white building was totally clean. There was a large wooden deck that stuck out over the water and there were all these people in silk pajamas practicing Tai Chi. Of course, at the time I didn’t know that’s what it was called. I thought it was some kind of dance. I was so fucked up that when I got out of the van I immediately threw up.” Merl shook his head. “I was a mess,” a sheepish smile crossed his face before he continued. “The most beautiful woman helped me up to my room. It was narrow with a small window that looked out over the river and a single bed that felt like it was made of nails. I was delirious. Absolutely delirious. I thought that maybe the mountains were filled with heroine and that if I climbed out the window I could go to them. But,” he bit his lip and shrugged his shoulders, “she was always there to stop me. This woman had incredible strength. I remember thinking that she was much stronger than me and that it must be the dancing. Or the fighting. Whatever that thing was that they were doing. I thought that was why she could move me around.”

He laughed again. “And maybe it was that but it also could have been that I was little more than a bag of bones. The bathroom and my room were the only places I went for the first week. Once the fever broke, that woman, whose name was Mei-Ping, took me outside. I remember not wanting to go but she just smiled at me. It smelled so sweet, the air out there. My room was putrid and stifling, I realized, once I stepped out to the river bank. Mei-Ping mimed that I should wash myself in the river, which, by the way, was like this big muddy spill. I mean it was hardly better than the road. But I did it. At this point Mei Ping was my guiding light. She had control over me and not just because she was so strong.” He laughed deeply at that one. “No, she was so soft, you know? She really taught me about the different aspects of strength. It’s not about how much you can lift but about how calm you can be.