The Garden of Last Days Read online

  He walked around to the front of his truck. She was still out, her face pointing up at the ceiling, her mouth half-open. He could see the tiny soles of her feet, his T-shirt covering her legs. He shook his head and sipped his coffee. Fucking Spring. That chilly smile of hers and the way she walked through the club like everybody was beneath her. The way the child was crying when he found her, standing there all alone in the kitchen, lost and afraid of the bugs outside and the man inside. And that sonofabitch better not’ve done anything to her.

  It was getting closer to three now. Three and a half hours till he could start up the CAT and climb down into the ditch. For all the fuck-off that Cap Jr. was, he was punctual about showing up when AJ’s shift started at six-thirty. Maybe he should get there fifteen or twenty minutes early in case Junior showed up first. There was no way to hide his hand otherwise. He had to get there first. And who knew how long it would take to get this girl someplace safe.

  Safe. Where the hell was that? Maybe a church wasn’t the place. There were all those stories in the news about priests fucking kids. Maybe a Jewish temple would be better. He’d seen one out on Lido Key. Some kind of synagogue. It had an arched entryway and if she stayed asleep he could lay her down in the dark inside corner where nobody’d see her from the road. Across it was the lot of the marina and that’s where he’d park till a cruiser pulled up to the temple and he’d drive slowly away and out to Lido Key. But even if it all went like that, even if she did stay asleep and he could drive off without getting stopped, where would the little girl go? Back to her fucking mother who loved her so well? Back to the Puma?

  He drank the last of the coffee and went inside. He wanted his driving cup Deena had given him, a Nissan Stainless she always made him go back out to his truck for so she could wash and dry it for him. That’s where it was now. Back at his house clean and upside down in the cabinet over the sink. So much of what he wanted and needed at home. He never should’ve gone back to the Puma tonight. He should’ve come here and tried to get some sleep. Now he had a whore’s child in his truck and if he got caught with her they’d arrest him for sure.

  Why not lie, though? Why not drive to the county sheriff’s and tell them he found this little girl walking alone on 301? That’d get Spring into even deeper shit and he’d be a good Samaritan. It might even help his situation with Deena and Cole. The judge would see what kind of man he really was. That was the only way to go, wasn’t it?

  Except the girl could talk.

  She could talk just fine and she’d tell them how and where she really got in his truck, wouldn’t she? In fact, what was to keep her from talking about him and his truck once they picked her up at the synagogue?

  His heart was knocking inside his chest. He picked up the ice bag and squeezed it between his hurt arm and his ribs and twisted off the cap. He reached into the freezer, the cold air hitting his face. He couldn’t hear Mama anymore so she was probably still awake, lying there listening to him out here in the kitchen as he dropped in nine or ten cubes, shut the freezer, and screwed the cap back on the bag. No, he was scaring himself for no reason. The girl couldn’t talk that well. She wouldn’t be able to describe him much and there were only four million pickups on the Gulf Coast. Still, it’d be better if he could leave the girl inside somewhere. When he was a kid, the Nazarene church on Briar Road was never locked. Sometimes he’d walk in late at night and just sit on one of those empty pews. It’d be dark except for a night-light up near the altar the minister always left on. AJ never did pray or anything but it was nice just sitting on the smooth wood in the quiet building made for people to come to. This was before Mama’d met Eddie, when she had a string of boyfriends, two or three a year it seemed like, and their fucking was hard to hear, the way Mama moaned like she was hurt. AJ’d slide out of bed and let himself out the front door and walk to the church or else just go walking. Maybe the synagogue was unlocked too. It’d be better if it were.

  TWO PATROL CARS swung swiftly and quietly into the lot, their blue lights spinning, their antennae swaying. April had checked every truck, car, and van there, her eyes burning, her throat sore, the bottoms of her feet cut and scratched, her heart somewhere above her head as she ran over to the first cruiser and put both hands to the glass, though she knew this was a crazy desperate stupid hope because Franny never would’ve walked off in the dark by herself to be found by them anyway. But she looked, saw yet another empty seat, the interior light coming on above the cage between the front and back.

  The first cop was saying something to Lonnie and Louis. Some men called out they wanted to press charges for being held up. April ran to the second car, its blue lights whipping across her eyes, the driver’s door opening. She tried to go around it. A hand stopped her. “Whoa, whoa, where you going?”

  The policeman’s grip was firm, his voice neutral—how could he be neutral? How could anything be the same old nothing right now? “Did you find her? Do you have her?”

  “We’ve got nobody. Are you the boy’s mother?”

  “Boy? I can’t find my daughter. She’s three and somebody’s—” She was crying again. The cop walked her around his cruiser, some of the men watching from their cars and trucks, standing around, smoking, talking low to each other, looking right at her like it was her fault they had to stand here and deal with the police and not go on their way. The foreigner from the Champagne was apart from them all, leaning against the trunk of a new white car. He was lighting a cigarette, his eyes on hers.

  The cop opened the front passenger door for her. Through a wet blur she saw a clipboard on the seat, a computer monitor and radio set in the dash. In the cup holder was a black mug with gold letters: #1 Granddad. April couldn’t stop crying. She wiped at her eyes and watched him standing in the shifting blue light talking to the other cop and Louis. Lonnie had walked over to where Paco and Little Andy stood near some men in a truck cab. More men were spread out in the darkness, one of them calling out something to the police, and April’s eyes burned and Franny was out there somewhere and it was so wrong for her to be sitting inside this car doing nothing.

  The granddad cop lifted a long flashlight and swept it over the customers. He yelled something. Truck and car doors began to open and men climbed out and other men just standing around started walking back to the club. Lonnie and some of the floor hosts stood and watched them go. She’d asked him to check in on Franny, hadn’t she? And did he? Did he even once? The older cop climbed in behind the wheel, reached for the radio, and called in to the dispatcher. He waited a second. He glanced over at her like she was a problem he had to solve quickly. The dispatcher’s voice came over the radio. A woman’s. He talked to it, said he needed another patrol car if there was one and be on standby for a possible Amber.

  April knew what that was. Every mother knew what that was. April cried harder now, her whole body shaking with it. She tried to stay quiet so he could hear and do his job and she covered her nose and mouth and there was Tina coming around the corner from the back lot, the headlights on her, the blue lights on her, her face set all scared and worried and April was out of the cruiser yelling over her open door. “You fucking bitch! What have you done to my baby? Where is she?! Where’s my baby!?!”

  Then April was on top of Tina, who was somehow on her back on the ground, the cop lifting April, threatening to handcuff her, saying he’d arrest her if she wanted that. She was breathing hard, a clump of Tina’s hair in her fist. She felt better and worse and now he made her sit in the backseat, the door slammed behind her. No handles to get back out when she wanted to. In front of her was wire mesh, and she watched the #1 Granddad get back behind the wheel and reach for his clipboard and it was through this cage he told her to calm down and he asked her to describe her daughter, it was through this she had to tell him all about Franny.

  IT WAS HARD not to be even more curious about her now. More cops had pulled up and she was out back with them, answering their questions. The house lights were flat and bright. Under them
sat twenty-three customers at tables that needed clearing and wiping down. A few talked quietly with each other, a couple others laughed over a joke or told story, but most were quiet, looking down, then around, then down again like any kid ever held in detention in a room he thought he’d have left far behind by now.

  At the Amazon Bar Lonnie waited his turn with the rest of the floor hosts. They were each getting interviewed by a young cop in the pink light of the entrance hall. He’d already let the DJ go home and now it looked like Big Skaggs and Larry T were heading out too. Skaggs stuck his head through the front curtain and called to Louis he’d call him later, but Louis, Retro, and Wendy were busy serving coffee to any customer who cared for some. Most declined but they seemed to like seeing Louis go around with a pot of coffee and a bowl of sugar packets, creamers, and plastic stirrers. By now in the shift he’d have bought the boys a round before locking up, and Lonnie missed his Maker’s on the rocks, his Heineken chaser, the way they smoothed out the adrenaline barbs lodged in his muscles and brain. Little Andy sat on the stool beside him. He kept turning his college ring over and over round his finger. It was hard to believe he’d ever gone to school at all. On the other side of him Paco chewed gum and checked the messages on his cell phone, looked out at the detainees on the floor like they were furniture somebody should’ve put away by now. One of them touched Retro’s hip as she leaned over the table with a cup and saucer, but it didn’t open up any pocket for Lonnie: it was just a sunburned tourist asking her a simple question, his eyes respectful, and anyway Lonnie’s shift was done and he couldn’t give a shit—let Louis take care of it or one of the sadists sitting beside him. What he really wanted to do was go out back, get Spring, and help her find her daughter. He still felt as if he’d let her down, and he kept hearing her scream for him to stop the traffic from leaving the lot, how he pulled his Tacoma across the entry, her lovely face contorted in dark-eyed desperation and panic. She could’ve asked any of them to do it, but again, she’d turned to him.

  But why did she have to bring her kid here in the first place? She might be married, but he doubted it. Sadie was the only one here with a husband, a bodybuilder who stripped at a gay club up in Tampa. He’d come in once to see his wife’s act. He sat at one of the front tables in his designer’s tank top, his tanned and shaved muscles on display for free as he smiled at his naked wife and whistled and clapped as she bent over and flashed him and others her ass. It was like seeing a boxer ringside at another’s fight, appraising his style and skill and choice of combinations. It was, Lonnie guessed, the only way to be married in this business.

  But most of these girls weren’t married and half didn’t even have boyfriends; how could they? You work till two, hang around and have a drink till three, then go home and try to sleep but you’re too wired and on edge so you flick on the TV and drink. You’ve got cable and two hundred stations but there’s never anything that holds your interest: a lion eating the cubs of the lioness he intends to mount; a set of kitchen knives that’ll cut through Sheetrock before slicing your tomatoes with one stroke; music videos of black kids up in the cities with their goofy loose clothes and gaudy chains, their shiny cars and sun-washed mansions; a nun smiling serenely into the camera, quoting from the Bible—a book Lonnie meant to get on tape but kept forgetting to order; there was a cop show from when he was a kid that his old man watched because he liked the big-muscled wisecracking lead; there were shows dedicated to reducing the size of your waist and ass; shows on how to become rich without ever putting down one of your own dollars; there were cable news stations of executions in the Mideast somewhere, bearded men shooting people where they knelt in the soft ground of stadiums where on another day athletes would kick a soccer ball over the blood; there were sports channels, dozens of them, all those bright uniforms and flying balls and over-excited fans; and there was history: world history, United States history, even the history of torture devices—an Egyptian designed a hollow brass lion under which would be prepared a raging fire and it was built so that the condemned inside the lion, the one who screamed his last screams, would sound like the lion, its brass mouth open, and into this device the Egyptian torturer was confined by his king, eager to see how it worked.

  It was all enough to make Lonnie drink more than he probably would have, flick off the TV and walk out to his small, coarse lawn. He’d watch the sun rise over the marine supply store across the street. Go back inside and cook eggs and sleep till two or three, then wake to drink coffee and watch more TV till it was time to get back to the club at five.

  But this was just his claustrophobic routine; he knew the girls had it far worse. After a night of hustling for cash, moving all the time, pulling off the same clothes over and over, shaking their tits and spreading their legs over and over, acting like they wanted to be nowhere but here over and over, after all that they drank too much at the VIP bar, Louis giving them only one round, then happy to take their money on top of what he already charged them to work here. Soon they’d leave in twos and threes and go find a place to party, but a lot of them had been high most of the night on lines or Oxy anyway and a few smoked dope out back just before their act. Some would take the business cards pushed into their garters and call the cell phones of the men back at their hotels in Sarasota or Tampa Bay, the ones who promised a lucrative time in a suite overlooking the Gulf. And that’s where a handful always went and later woke and sobered up or got high again just in time to come back to the club by sundown. And after months or years of this their judgment worsened and the rich men didn’t spend so freely anymore and they didn’t bring them to suites but inland to motels where they promised free drinks and free drugs if the girls would just let them take a few pictures, just a few shots of what you show all night anyway and c’mon, why not a little video? Just one blow job for my private collection? Or maybe two. And why not do it for me the way I like? It’s all for fun and I’ll keep you high for weeks, honey. Weeks.

  Tina stepped through the curtains from the kitchen. She stood on those new rubber mats, squinting at the houselights, her hair all messed up on one side. Lonnie liked her. Her years of turning men’s needs into cash for herself were over and she seemed content taking care of girls who could be her daughters now. It was why she looked close to tears, standing there waving her arm at Louis to come out back; she’d failed at the one thing she was here to do: take care of the girls.

  THESE KUFAR, LOOK at them. They sit at the dirty tables in this dirty hole wearing the short pants that show themselves. They smoke and laugh and some of them seem frightened of their own police as they are asked one at a time into the front area to be questioned. Soon Bassam will be as well. Twice he has checked his pockets and three times he has inspected his license to make certain it is the one from Florida. Not Virginia. Though his part will be activated in Massachusetts, a word he cannot say. Only Boston. This he can say.

  Most of these policemen are young like him. They believe they are strong but it would be easy to kill them. He has learned so many ways to do it—hand to hand, knife to gun, gun to bomb. At the camp for training he was best with small weapons and there is the feeling he has been given a gift he will never use. Beside his table two men laugh. On their fingers are the rings of wives. One of them wears a tie and shirt, his sleeves folded back to reveal a gold watch, and he smiles briefly at Bassam, who does not return it. But he nods so as not to incite an argument, so as not to draw attention.

  A young policeman curls his finger to the businessman, who jokes with the other and rises. Bassam must be permitted to leave soon. There is the drive back to the east. He should be there before sunrise for the first prayer. Amir is in the north now but each dawn for days the Egyptian has kicked his mattress and Tariq’s mattress and the mattress of Imad. “The time of living like the kufar is over. Get up and perform your ablutions, my brothers. We must pray for strength. As-salaatu khayrun min’n-nawm. Prayer is better than sleep. Rise!”

  The Jew owner moves among the tables gr
asping his pot of coffee. He sees to the comfort of these people he wishes to come back again and again. One of the whores, the white one with the red hair, follows with cream and sugar, and Bassam allows the Jew to pour his coffee though he will no longer touch the cup touched by the Jew.

  This hatred gives him strength.

  The hatred that was so pure and clear in the disciplined months in camp, the hatred that began to weaken in Dubai and has weakened further here in this Florida with its heat and all the women who each day show so much of themselves.

  Amir has moved them to many places. Del Ray Beach, Boynton Beach, Hollywood, Deerfield, the small rooms smelling of men and incense and the pizza they often eat, the empty boxes stacked upon the floor near the kitchen sink where they would perform their ablutions.

  But moving so much has kept them united. Bassam and Imad and Tariq like one man now, a shahid with three heads but one heart.

  One heart.

  With Amir they had enrolled at gymnasiums in each town, places where the kufar go to keep their bodies as well maintained as the Grand Am and Le Mans and Duster Bassam and his brothers had driven in their old nothingness. At the first one in Venice, because they knew nothing of lifting weights, the gym manager assigned them a trainer Amir ignored. He did not change into exercise clothing as the others did but remained dressed in a collared shirt and pressed pants and leather shoes from Germany. He moved from machine to machine, pushing or pulling on whatever handles or bars there were to hold, sweating lightly, not speaking to or even looking at the woman trainer named Kelly who tried to correct him.

  She was young. The age of Bassam, Tariq, and Imad. Tariq, that habit of never closing his lips fully which makes him look stupid though he is not, he stared at her body you could see so easily in its tight gym clothing, her uncovered arms and legs, centimeters of her flat belly too. And Imad, tall, heavy Imad who back home had told jokes and laughed which made everyone else laugh, since the camps he has grown quiet, his laughter turned to stone, and he listened to the young trainer talk as if deciding the most efficient way to kill her.