Fever City (30 page)

A reluctant smile slides its way across Wayne's face as he shakes his head, giving up on further communication. I catch a glimpse of a weather-worn plaque as we pass. The car glides to a stop and Granston kills the ignition.

We sit there, the dog bevelling the silence with its pant. Wayne nods to my door. I get out, look around the luxury estate. The air is humid and pressurized. I feel like I've just stepped into a crowded elevator. Something touches my ankle. I look down at the beagle. Was it a warning; or a territorial challenge? Granston jingles some keys in my face. ‘Let's get this over with!' Like an impatient hit man.

I stay by the car, making sure my phone is on. ‘Get what over with?' Granston looks at me, shakes his head, and then palms the air away between us, as if getting rid of a noxious smell.

Wayne pats me on the shoulder. ‘The Truth . . . ' Capitalized.

The Truth was replaced by the Real years ago, and no one has ever been able to tell the difference. ‘And what is the Truth?'

‘You're safe now. You're protected by Howard Hughes.'

H
astings knew all about interrogation.

He remembered pulling the flap open on the captain's tent and finding the Japanese officer groaning senselessly in a chair, his trousers pulled down to his ankles. It was February 1945 and Susan was still alive. Tommy Alston, Marine sergeant and designated rifle company sadist, had hooked up a field radio to the officer's privates. ‘This is useless,' Captain Harper had said in his Ivy League baritone, prodding the half-conscious prisoner, the skin between his waist and knees charred black like overcooked spare ribs. ‘He'll never talk . . . '

‘Sure he'll talk,' Tommy said. ‘Otherwise he gets more of the same.'

‘You gave him too much,' the captain said with a mixture of pride and reproach. ‘He's too far gone, he can't feel a thing anymore. But the other fellow . . . ' The captain nodded to where the other prisoner sat, staring at him through strangely opened eyes. Captain Harold Harper III—rifle company commander, USILA All-American, scion of the Philadelphia Harpers—had snipped off the prisoner's eyelids with silver toenail scissors engraved with the initials H.H. ‘The other fellow's seen everything. Now all we have to do is strap the wires on. We won't even have to juice him. He'll tell us where they're dug in.' Harper suddenly turned, staring at Hastings standing at the entrance to the tent with an SCR-300 strapped to his back, the antenna scrapping the top of the tent. ‘Who gave you permission to enter?' Hastings handed the captain a field radio. ‘It's the major, sir. He's raising hell.'

Harper snatched the handset from Hastings. ‘Yes, sir?'

Hastings looked from the staring Japanese prisoner to the one dying of his third degree burns then back up to the sergeant. Tommy stared defiantly back at him. ‘So help me God, Hastings, if you ever breathe a word!' Hastings looked away. The captain handed him the handset, unholstered his service revolver and shot both prisoners right there. Blood lashed the canvas. ‘The goddamn major will be here any second.' He turned to Hastings. ‘Don't just stand there, help the sergeant with these bodies. Get a burial duty together, pronto.'

That night they went through the last of the lower, southern tunnels, torching them with flamethrowers. Fire licked the night, sending shadows leaping across the rock. Savage screams echoed like lost souls from the lower depths. By the next morning Suribachi had fallen and everyone thought that meant the island was theirs. They were in for a surprise. Another month of fire, thirst and blood. No one understood why the brass wanted the island. All this suffering; all these casualties—for what? A dead volcano without a harbour? It was the airfield. The world's biggest gravestone sitting there in the Pacific, just three hours' flight-time from Hiroshima.

It was someone in 3rd Platoon who found Captain Harper at sunrise the next day. If he noticed Harper's eyelids were missing, he never mentioned it. The captain was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star. A couple of the men griped it should have been silver but the truth was that the major never liked Harper; and neither did the men for that matter. Hastings would have nailed Tommy Alston too on the island, but a sniper hit him in the shoulder on March 1st, and bought Hastings a ticket out of the theatre of war and into the house of horror that was waiting to ensnare him back home in Adelsberg.

In the years after, his dreams were plagued by the penetrating, lidless gaze of the Japanese prisoner. Staring not just in horror, but in helpless agony. Hastings had seen detainees blinded under barbaric interrogation but never the reverse—someone inflicted with unlimited sight: ultravision. Captain Harper and Sergeant Tommy Alston had created a new, terrifying order of existence, denying their victim the last resort: the shelter of not seeing; of being able to turn away when confronted with true evil. And having witnessed this appalling new condition firsthand, Hastings had become infected by it. He too was cursed with unfiltered perception, his eyes always aware, always riveted on that which must never be witnessed.

A decade later, Hastings was walking through Beverly Hills late one night when he heard a woman's scream and then the sudden hush of a hand across a mouth. It was a new moon; a perfect Kill Night. He followed the noise up a long pebble driveway, passing the parked squad car, seeing through the shadows what others would have missed; the drag lines, mute and accusatory. He tracked them into the estate, finding one shoe, his footsteps silent as he walked the soft, betraying lawn that rode the centre of the driveway—nature his accomplice. He silently turned a corner. Two men. Their uniforms almost indistinguishable in the dark. One was wrestling with a woman's wrists, the other with her ankles, both struggling to hold her down. Evil acts. It could have been Susan. It could have been any woman: any woman foolish or audacious enough to dare to cross a slim space of private grass at night on her own. To dare to think she was safe even for a moment from the brutality of men.

The cop who held the legs tore off the woman's underwear and tossed it into the night, where it fell like a wounded bird.

Hastings stepped forward, rage and despair in his heart. ‘Stop.'

Both men froze. The one who had the legs let go and slowly stood and turned, facing Hastings, his badge catching the glint of a shard of light, then falling back into shadow, his hand slowly rising to his hip. ‘Take it easy, buddy, we're making an arrest.'

‘That's not what it looks like.'

Tommy's head inclined in consideration. He knew that voice. ‘Hastings . . . ?' He stepped towards him, his hand dropping. That was when Hastings saw it. The insult of Tommy Alston smiling. And the smile said to both his partner and to Hastings: he's one of us. ‘Relax . . . She's just a coloured maid.'

Hastings almost broke his own fist, he hit Tommy so hard. He felt the pucker and snap of Tommy's jaw breaking. Tommy's partner sprang to his feet, drawing his weapon. Hastings hefted the limp body of Tommy towards him, using it as a shield, unholstering Tommy's service revolver at the same time. Mexican standoff. Almost. Hastings had Tommy as his very own bulletproof vest. ‘Put the gun down . . . '

‘Fuck you.'

‘You heard the man, put it down.'

Tommy's partner turned to the girl. A victim only seconds ago, she was now a witness. A threat. Something to be taken care of. After Hastings.

‘Drop it, or you're dead.' The cop stared hard at Hastings; recognizing his killer's soul. He dropped the gun. ‘Turn around . . . '

The cop started to turn to mush. The girl had held on. She had fought them off; both of them. Tommy's partner had lost his gun and then he had lost his fight. His snivelling filled the rushing quiet of the mastered night. Hastings spoke directly to the woman for the first time. ‘Look away, please.' The sobbing of the policeman surged. Hastings unfolded his
navaja sevillana
. It travelled across skin with a silver hiss, unfolding internal mysteries. Hastings dropped the dead bundle to the ground. Sergeant Tommy ‘Frankenstein' Alston lay motionless, only his newly-freed blood still moving, slowly snaking out of his opened throat and finding refuge in the damming pebbles of the driveway. Hastings looked up at the other cop. So riveted in his fear, he hadn't even sensed the execution of his partner. He turned back to the woman. She watched until the swarming eddy calmed into mirrored stillness, the very last bubbles puncturing; forlorn. A universe without oxygen. Without hope. She looked up at Hastings, her eyes brilliant, as she mouthed two words: ‘Thank you.'

There was a groan of horror—the other cop had finally worked up the courage to turn, perhaps convincing himself of salvation after all. When he saw Tommy's voided body, he bolted; fast feet fleeing back to the universe of the squad car. Back inside the car, everything would revert to normal. He would become a cop again, not a rapist. He would become the Law. The cop reached under the dash for the shotgun. But it was already too late, a bullet had passed effortless through the windshield, spiked a passage through his skull, and hubbed its way out with a significant section of his brains—his memories; his hates. His broken promises and youthful aspirations twisted too easily by greed and the lazy solutions of bribery and corruption. It all showered out behind him; an afterthought, already drying on the trunk of the car.

Hastings turned back to the woman. ‘What's your name?'

She hesitated, for a second. Enough to let him know she was smart enough to be careful, and honest enough to be trusting. ‘Greta Simmons.'

‘Greta, do you have a car?' She nodded. He wiped his prints off Tommy's revolver. ‘Can you give me a lift?'

She considered for a long moment, then nodded again, walking ahead of him, stopping to pick up her underwear and her shoe.

They drove in silence through the turbulent darkness. ‘Where do you want me to drop you off?'

‘Chinatown.' He looked at her, the headlights of the approaching traffic illuminating her injuries. ‘You need to see a doctor.'

‘You got there just in time.'

He looked at her wrists. ‘You need to put something on them.' She looked away. The motor struggled with the silence. ‘You live back there?'

‘Do I look like I live in that neighbourhood . . . ?'

‘So you work there?'

She turned to him, sharply. ‘I'm not a domestic.' She muttered something he couldn't quite catch.

A wail rose out of the night. Greta reached over and turned on the radio. Bird with strings.
Laura
. The police car passed them at speed, hitting their faces with the slap-flash of red light. Hastings turned, watching the colour dissolving into the darkness behind them. He turned back to Greta. ‘Where you from?'

She was about to answer but then stopped herself with an angry shrug of her shoulders. ‘Somewhere else.'

‘So what were you doing in Brentwood?'

‘What are you, a cop?' Hastings looked away. She waited a moment, then sighed. ‘I was . . . seeing someone.'

‘Maybe you should start seeing someone else. Why didn't he come to help you?'

There was the simmer of consideration in the car. Of truth-sharing. Greta made her choice. ‘It was a she. And those cops have been shaking her down.'

Hastings offered her a cigarette. The interior of the car flared with the nostalgic flicker of a campfire, then dissolved into an intense, heightened darkness. ‘Who's their mark . . . ? I mean, who's your—'

‘Companion will do nicely. Elaine Bourdonnais.' She glances sideways at him. ‘Know her?'

‘Should I?'

‘Depends what crowd you run with . . . '

He fills the car with the white glaze of smoke. ‘I don't run with any crowd.'

'I believe it. Otherwise I'd know you. What's your name anyway?'

‘Hastings.'

‘That's it—like a city?'

‘Philip.'

‘What do you do, Phil?'

‘Stay out of trouble.'

She smiles. ‘Well then, you've rescued the wrong person.'

‘There's no such thing as the wrong person when you're rescuing someone.'

‘Is that a fact . . . ?' Greta pulled up in front of the pagoda then turned, gazing at him with intense interest, as though suddenly discovering immense possibilities. The stutter of firecrackers made her start. They both glanced over to where some teenagers were gathered on the sidewalk, dancing away from the tiny explosions. She turned back to him, her eyes reflecting the dappled colours of the Chinese lanterns. ‘I saw what you did back there . . . '

‘And I saw that you hardly blinked.'

‘I spent some time with Madame St. Clair in Harlem. I got to see a thing or two with her . . . '

Hastings flicked his cigarette out the window, its golden ash pushing fire through a piece of night, a poor man's comet, already extinguished. ‘It's the seeing that does it.'

‘Does what?'

‘Makes it seem normal.' Hastings got out, walked around the front of the car, than leant in towards the driver's window. ‘Thanks for the lift.'

'If I ever need to find you?'

He shrugged. ‘On any given night, I could be anywhere.'

‘I get it.'

‘It's not that. I just set off in one direction and then keep walking.' As if to demonstrate the technique, he took a few paces down the street but then stopped and turned. ‘Although . . . there's the Casablanca. It's a jazz club on South Kenmore. Hal Singer and Steve Potts are in residence this month. I plan to spend some time down there.'

She called out to thank him but it was already too late.

 

* * *

 

Foam flooded his mind; sucked air out of his lungs. Hastings came to in the surf. He raised his wounded head, the wind moaning into his consciousness as he clawed his way onto dry sand overlooked by the cliffs of Point Dume. He stared up at the rock face, loose sand needling his face with the sting of the wind. He had no memory of what happened from the moment they cut him down until he woke in the seething sea. They might have gotten careless. They might have been disturbed by witnesses. They must have thrown him off the edge and figured he was gone for good.