Bad Night Is Falling

Bad Night Is Falling

Gary Phillips

A
MysteriousPress.com

Open Road Integrated Media ebook

For my wife, Gilda, the coolest.

The idea that those who are most happily at home in the modern world … may be the most vulnerable to the demons that haunt it; the idea that the daily routine of playgrounds, and bicycles, of coping, eating and cleaning up, of ordinary hugs and kisses, may be not only infinitely joyous and beautiful but also infinitely precarious and fragile, that it may take desperate and heroic struggles to sustain this life, and sometimes we lose.

—Marshall Berman,                    
All That Is Solid Melts into Air

Prolo
ǵ
ue

BURNING THE DARKNESS DOWN

E
fraín Cruzado's first sensations were of opening his eyes and coughing roughly. He awoke next to Rosanna with a vicious dry hack ratcheting from his body. Damn, he reflected sleepily, maybe he should get over to the all-night Sav-on over on Alvarado. Suddenly Rosanna too was coughing, and Cruzado realized their bedroom was far stuffier than usual.

“What's happening? Put on the lights,” his wife said groggily, rousing herself from her slumber.

It came to him in the same moment he got to his feet. “Fire, Rosanna, there's a fire in our place.” He tried to sound calm, he didn't want her getting panicked as he clawed along the wall for the light switch through the invading soot. His eyes began to cloud from fear and smoke.

The light from the fixture in the ceiling had a weird, otherworldly effect, illuminating the moist, oily fog rolling through their bedroom. Cruzado was already out the door heading for the girls' room. Behind him, he could hear Rosanna loudly coughing and stumbling about, her idea the same as his.

In the hall he bumped into a hurtling body and Cruzado crazily imagined that it was one of those
mayate
bastards, one of those blacks, who'd surely set the fire. Or, goddamn him, maybe it wasn't them. Maybe it was the others. Damn this hopeless city, and goddamn these Rancho Tajuata Housing Projects.

“Efraín, Efraín,” his sister, Karla, exclaimed, latching onto his arm, “I can't see anything. Where are the children?”

He grabbed her shoulder and gently but forcefully pushed her to the right. “Stay still. Rosanna is coming this way, and I want you to hold onto her,” he said in Spanish, moving to his left. The door to the girls' bedroom was hot and he knew what that meant, but what could he do? A father can't ignore his responsibilities.

He got the door open, the heat from the room literally sucking the breath out of him. He rocked back, sagging down against the far wall as the fire's fury overpowered him. A blur loomed before him and Cruzado, an agnostic, knew it was an archangel come to collect his children.

But the time for sweet music was not just yet. He could hear their wails. The girls, the girls had to be saved.

“Karla, please,” he heard Rosanna plead.

He found some air but it hurt to take it in. His lungs were singed like meat on an open spit but he had to get up, he had to do something.

One side of the girls' room was a dance of glowing saffron and Cruzado could hear Olga screaming in that particular wail of hers. Normally the sound got on his nerves, but now it was a beacon guiding him in a savage terrain.

“I'm coming,
mija
. Daddy's coming,” Cruzado promised. He was up, shuffling forward, his chest feeling as if an electric blanket were wrapped around his insides. He got to the girls' doorway, dazed, tired. Rosanna emerged from the burning whiteness eating away at their home and encroaching on their bodies. Olga was in her mother's arms, Lola had her arms wrapped around the woman's legs.

“Take them out, I'll get Marisa,” Cruzado blared.

Her dead stare cut him off. “There's no need to go back in,” she said gravely.

Cold iron poured over his knees and it was all Cruzado could do not to faint. He watched the tears silently travel the length of his wife's face, and he put his hand on her shoulder. “Mother,” he said with a sick realization.

“I'll get the girls out.” Rosanna clutched Olga tightly.

A whoosh of flame shot at them as if driven by a jet engine. The girls screamed and Cruzado beat at his arm, which was now on fire. “Yes, out, get them out into the yard,” he desperately repeated. “I've got to see about Mama.”

Karla had stumbled over. “I'll go with you.”

“No.” He pushed her and his wife toward the front. “You two must take care of the girls.”

Smoke undulated behind the father. He'd stopped the fire on his arm, but the limb radiated a tremendous pain that intensified as he tried to moved it. “Mother,” he called out, turning around and moving off. He was swallowed up by the mass of grey. “Mother,” he called out as he found his way toward the small room off the service porch.

He could hear nothing as he got to the room. The door was closed and cool to me touch. Cruzado nervously twisted the knob and snatched the door open. More smoke, grey and glistening with malicious intent, came at him. He didn't bother to call her name as he bent down to her bed. She was warm, but she wouldn't be going anywhere in this world any longer.

The virulent pall congealed around him, gagging him and gorging into his watery eyes. Then it ebbed and parted to briefly reveal the carved rosemary wood cross he'd tacked over her bed. The cross for Christina.

Cruzado got up. The room was suddenly lit by a jagged flame that was billowing across the worn linoleum. A flame eating its way to where he stood. From somewhere he could hear the neighbors' voices and hoped that meant the rest of his family was safe. He removed one of his mother's blankets and wrapped it around himself. Since he wasn't sure what he believed in after this life, he assumed God would find it awfully hypocritical for him to start praying for deliverance now. He got the blanket about him as best he could, took a last look at his mother, and plunged into the fire.

One

A
ntar Absalla was not one who enjoyed having a finger poking at him. And he was particularly not fond of Mrs. Reyisa Limón, twice widowed. He was therefore hard-pressed to hold his tongue as the older woman hooked her talon at his face as she reprimanded him.

“Where were your security people, Mr. Absalla?” she demanded for the fourth time since the meeting had begun a long hour ago.

Absalla mentally centered himself before speaking. “At those hours of the morning,” he began with a forced calm, “there is a thinner crew than during peak time. This was a financial decision that your tenants' association made, Mrs. Limón. As you'd be aware if you'd reread the minutes from past board meetings.” He managed not to smirk.

“You don't need to remind me of the procedures of Robert's Rules, Mr. Absalla,” she leveled. “It's your performance that's in question here.”

“I don't think that's quite the case, Reyisa,” Henry Cady, the president of the tenants' association, responded. The aging black man did that little self-effacing clearing of his throat and adjusted his black horn-rimmed glasses. “We've convened this emergency meeting to see what we need to do to make sure something like this horrible thing doesn't happen again.”

Several heads around the square conference table indicated agreement.

Mrs. Limón leaned back in her seat, the chair creaking under her commanding size. The woman made a slight gesture, a slice of her palm like the drop of an axe. “I'm not saying we aren't. I am saying we hired a twenty-four-hour security force who are supposed to be ensuring the safety of our residents.”

“And the Ra-Falcons were on the scene in less than three minutes,” Absalla pointed out. “My team was helping put out the fire before the fire department got here. And two of them were taken to the hospital for smoke inhalation after trying to enter the premises to get free Mr. Cruzado.” Indignation made his face warm but Absalla was determined not to lose his temper, and thus play into the scheme of this tormentor who sat across from him.

“You do have a point,” Juan Carlos Higuerra said. “I think if we can discuss this so we can better the patrols, we can get something accomplished.”

Limón fixed a gaze to seize hearts on Higuerra, silently damning him for his usual conciliatory approach. “We must also talk about how we're going to deal with this vicious gang element.”

“The Ra-Falcons security are not the police,” Cady asserted.

“But”—the long finger went to work again—“Absalla does employ those he admits are ex-gang members. They can find out who killed the Cruzados. If they don't know already.”

“I've asked my people what they've heard, and no one knew about any rumor to harm the Cruzados. And of course we will continue to ask around to see if we can find out anything.” Then he used his index finger on Limón.

“Yes, some of the Ra-Falcons used to be gang members,” Absalla continued. “They come from these impoverished neighborhoods. They are also young men and women who have decided to turn their lives around, and give something back. This is not so-called, it is a fact. None of my crew are criminals. They wouldn't be on the patrol if they weren't disciplined and dedicated.”

“Some of them used to be Scalp Hunters though, right?” Mrs. Graves, who'd been quiet until now, asked.

“Yes,” Absalla answered. “Just as some of them used to be members of one or more of the Rolling Daltons set or the Del Nines.”

Mrs. Limón leaned forward again, her heavy breasts expanding against the edge of the table. “What's important is that everybody around the Rancho says it was the Scalp Hunters who firebombed the Cruzados' apartment. The little bastards set the fire off in the girls' room. They broke the window and shoved their …”—she paused, searching for the word—“Molotov right in there between the bars.” Her sunken face testified to the cruelty of the crime.

“How do you know that?” Cady inquired.

“It's common knowledge,” she barked.

“I don't mean the rumor about who set the fire,” Cady clarified. “I mean how do you know where the device went off less than two days after the incident.”

“I have friends on the fire commission,” she said proudly.

She bestowed on Absalla a sidelong glance, which seemed to imply she also had friends on other commissions—like the one that oversaw the police department. He felt like backhanding her.

“I've already sat down with my sergeants to figure out how we can change our patrols to best cover the complex during the off-hours. But I'm afraid it's difficult without putting more people on staff.”

Limón snickered but didn't say anything.

Cady said, “We're under the knife on this, Mr. Absalla. As you know, the owners of this property will soon be allowed by the Housing and Urban Development Department to place the Rancho on the private market. To counter that, we have to have a two-thirds majority of the families organized to agree to buy the property for themselves. If the residents vote to incorporate as a limited-equity cooperative, we can qualify for federal grants and loans to do so.”