City Dark(2)

“Joey, come back,” Robbie called, catching up to him. “It was an accident!” Darkness threatened to swallow them completely in between the wash of headlights.

“Get back here!” their mother called.

“Help me find it—” Joe started. Another terrible minute or two passed, and then Joe’s heart leaped. There it was, lying flat among some debris and cigarette butts. He held the card up, waving it triumphantly. His sense of relief was palpable, but then he caught sight of his mother. In her face, even from that distance, he saw worry and something like gnawing fear. Traffic was light, but cars were slowing down as the fact of the darkness set in, headlights glowing eerily down the highway like they were purposely moving in slow motion. Like for a funeral procession.

“Move it, you two!” Lois shouted. “Something’s going on with the power. Get back here!”

“Mom, I found it!” Joe said as they reached the car. He waved the card in one hand, and Robbie made a swipe for it.

“Give me that thing,” Lois said. She glared at Robbie. “You stand still.” Then to Joe she said, “Give it here. I’ll hang on to it until you two can get along. Give it, Joe. Now.” With an air of defeat, Joe handed over the treasured card, and Lois stuffed it into the back pocket of her blue jeans. From inside the car, the radio was no longer playing “I Just Want to Be Your Everything.” Gibb’s high whine had been replaced by static.

“What’s up with the lights?” Robbie asked. Joe looked toward the city through some trees. Some distance away, where the buildings were, he could see headlights shooting through the darkness, illuminating people on the street.

“I don’t know,” Lois said. But to Joe she looked like she definitely did know, and he felt dread spreading through him as he studied her face. They had driven through frightening electrical storms about an hour earlier in Westchester. Now there was darkness around them, and dead static on the radio. It was like a scary movie.

Lois looked down at the two of them. “Get back in the car.”





CHAPTER 1


Thursday, July 13, 2017

Riegelmann Boardwalk, Coney Island Brooklyn

11:50 p.m.

Seagulls were picking at something on the beach. Wilomena, pushing a noisy shopping cart along the boardwalk in the moonlight, strained to see what it was. Wilomena had a great eye for abandoned things. Where there were gulls, flocking and diving over a pile on the sand, there might be the remains of an interrupted picnic or party. It had been the perfect night for one, velvety and warm. That meant bottles for deposit. Maybe cigarettes. Maybe something better.

Her shopping cart had a dozen knotted plastic bags hanging from it. Some held useful things. Some, dirt. Some, water. She stilled the screeching wheels and went down the concrete steps. The tide was higher because of the full moon, and the surf was washing up close.

Gulls, all right. A dozen of them. There might not be much more than chicken bones and french fries, but it was worth checking out. She took awkward, dragging steps in the sand toward whatever they were cawing at and pulling apart.

She stopped when she saw two shoe-clad feet. She recognized the shoes. They were like new: soft-pink tennis shoes with nice white edges and beige soles. They had been way too small for Wilomena’s feet. Lois, though, one of the newer people Wilomena had seen around the Coney Island strip since the beach opened, had lit up like Cinderella when she slipped them on, back at the Lighthouse Mission near the park. They gave out shoes every few days.

Passed out on the sand, Wilomena thought. Lois, damn, you could drown out here. She was about to kick at the feet to wake Lois up but then froze as the rest of the body drew her attention. Lois was wearing sweatpants, but they were pulled down and bunched just above the knees, exposing mottled thighs and the old woman’s crotch. The skin seemed transparent in the wedding-white glow of the moon. She had a gray T-shirt on, the collar torn open, exposing one of her shoulders. Just below her face was a bra, skin colored for a white woman, wrapped around her neck. The eyes were nearly closed, but the mouth stood open, the chapped lips parted. Wilomena’s heart started to thump. If a crab crawled out of that mouth, she was going to scream. That didn’t happen. Instead, a gull landed on Lois’s stomach, strutted across the T-shirt, and thrust its white head into the gray mound of her pubic hair.

Wilomena screamed.





CHAPTER 2


Friday, July 14, 2017

12:32 a.m.

“Lousy catch for you,” Sedrick, the night-watch detective, said. “I hate these freak-show cases. Haven’t seen one like this in the Six-Oh for a while.” He was referring to the Sixtieth Precinct, the one that included Coney Island. Sedrick was thin and hunched over, his voice raspy and low. He was a silhouette in the dark, a streetlight corona behind him.

“My fault for answering the phone that late into a tour,” Detective Xochitl Hernandez said, rooting around until she found a box of evidence gloves in a battered gym bag. She stuffed a few into the pocket of her khakis, then breathed in the salt air and glanced over toward the crowds, lights, and sounds of Coney Island. The heart of it was maybe a half mile down the boardwalk.

“Ha, yeah, right?” Sedrick said, gasping on the initial guffaw and coughing through the rest. “You’re Zochi, right? From the squad?”

“I am,” she said. Xochitl Hernandez had been given a first name impossible for most Americans to spell or sound out, and she had long ago started referring to herself, in spelling and speech, as “Zochi.” Barely five foot two, she was compact with short black hair, aqueous eyes of a similar color, and lovely dark skin. “MLI been called?”