Try Darkness Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2008 by James Scott Bell

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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  First eBook Edition: July 2008

  ISBN: 978-1-59995-142-3

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Chapter 111

  Chapter 112

  Chapter 113

  Chapter 114

  Chapter 115

  Chapter 116

  Chapter 117

  Chapter 118

  Chapter 119

  Chapter 120

  Chapter 121

  Chapter 122

  Chapter 123

  Chapter 124

  Chapter 125

  Chapter 126

  Chapter 127

  Chapter 128

  Chapter 129

  Chapter 130

  Chapter 131

  Chapter 132

  Chapter 133

  Chapter 134

  Chapter 135

  Chapter 136

  Chapter 137

  Chapter 138

  Chapter 139

  Chapter 140

  Chapter 141

  Chapter 142

  Chapter 143

  Chapter 144

  Chapter 145

  Chapter 146

  Chapter 147

  Chapter 148

  Chapter 149

  Chapter 150

  Chapter 151

  Chapter 152

  Chapter 153

  Chapter 154

  Chapter 155

  Chapter 156

  Chapter 157

  Chapter 158

  Chapter 159

  Chapter 160

  Chapter 161

  Chapter 162

  Chapter 163

  Chapter 164

  Chapter 165

  Chapter 166

  Chapter 167

  Chapter 168

  Chapter 169

  Chapter 170

  Chapter 171

  Chapter 172

  Chapter 173

  Chapter 174

  Chapter 175

  Chapter 176

  Chapter 177

  Chapter 178

  Chapter 179

  Chapter 180

  Chapter 181

  Chapter 182

  Chapter 183

  Chapter 184

  Chapter 185

  Chapter 186

  Chapter 187

  Chapter 188

  Chapter 189

  Chapter 190

  Chapter 191

  Also by James Scott Bell

  Try Dying

  TO THE MEMORY OF JOHN D. MACDONALD

  1

  THE NUN HIT me in the mouth and said, “Get out of my house.”

  Jaw throbbing, I said, “I can’t believe you just did that.”

  “This is my house,” she said. “You want more? Come on back in.”

  Sister Mary Veritas is a shade over five and a half feet. She was playing in gray sweats, of course. Most of the time she wears the full habit. Her pixie face is usually a picture of innocence. She has short chestnut hair and blue eyes. I had just discovered those eyes hid an animal ruthlessness.

  It was the first Friday in April, and we were playing what I thought was some friendly one-on-one on the basketball court of St. Monica’s, a Benedictine community in the Santa Susana mountains. The morning was bright, the sky clear. Should have meant peace like a river.

  Not a nun like a mugger.

  Backing into the key for a spin hook, I was surprised to find not just the basket but a holy Catholic elbow waiting for my face. I’m six-three, so it took some effort for her to pop me.

  “That’s a foul,” I said.

  “So take it out,” she said.

  “I thought the Benedictines were known for their hospitality.”

  “For the hungry pilgrim,” Sister Mary said. “Not for a guy looking for an easy bucket.”

  “What would the pope say to you?”

  “Probably, Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”

  “For a smash to the chops?”

  “You’re
a pagan. It probably did you some good.”

  “A trash-talking sister.” I shook my head. “So this is organized religion in the twenty-first century.”

  “Play.”

  Okay, she wanted my outside game? She’d get it. True, I hadn’t played a whole lot of ball since college. A couple of stints on a lawyer league team. But I could still shoot. I was deadly from twenty feet in.

  Not this morning. I clanked one from the free throw line and Sister Mary got the rebound.

  Before becoming a nun, she played high school ball in Oklahoma. On a championship team, no less. Knew her way around a court.

  But I also had the size advantage and gave her a cushion on defense. She took it and shot over me from fifteen feet.

  Swish.

  Pride is a sin, so Sister Mary tells me. But it’s a good motivator when a little nun is schooling you. I kicked up the aggression factor a notch.

  She tried a fadeaway next. I got a little bit of her wrist as she shot.

  Air ball.

  Sister Mary waited for me to call a foul.

  “Nice try,” I said.

  “Where’d you learn to play,” she said. “County jail?”

  “You talking or playing?”

  She got the animal look again. I hoped that wouldn’t interfere with her morning prayers. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour we talk smack.

  I took the ball to the top of the key. Did a beautiful crossover dribble. Sister Mary swiped at the ball. Got my arm instead with a loud thwack. I stopped and threw up a jumper.

  It hit the side of the rim and bounced left.

  I thought I’d surprise her by hustling for the rebound.

  She had the same idea.

  We were side by side going for the ball. I could feel her body language. There was no way she was going to let me get it.

  There was no way I was going to let her get it.

  I was going to body a nun into the weeds.

  2

  WE WENT DOWN. The brown grasses at the edge of the blacktop padded our fall.

  I had both hands on the ball. So did Sister Mary.

  She grunted and pulled. By this time we were out of bounds.

  I started to laugh. The absurdity of a frantic postulant and a macho lawyer in a death grip over a basketball was hilarious.

  Sister Mary didn’t laugh. She wanted the ball.

  I had to admire her doggedness. She’s the type who’d go to the mat with the devil himself if she had to.

  But I still wouldn’t let her get the ball.

  Then I was on my back, holding the ball to my chest. Sister Mary was on top of me, refusing to let her hands slip off the ball.

  Her body was firm and fit and I looked at her face thinking thoughts one should not think of a woman pledged to a life of chastity.

  I stopped laughing and let her have the ball.

  She took it and rolled off me.

  Neither of us said anything.

  Then a voice said, “Now, isn’t that a pretty picture?”

  Father Bob stood at the other end of the court, hands on hips.

  One displeased priest.

  I shot up, helped Sister Mary to her feet. “Nothing to see here,” I said. “Just a little hustle and flow.”

  “Or grab and go,” Father Bob said.

  Sister Mary said nothing. Her face was flushed and she was breathing hard.

  “A friendly game of one-on,” I said. “You see? I’m doing my part to help the community stay in shape. You want a piece of me next?”

  Father Bob, who looks like Morgan Freeman’s stand-in, said, “I know a few tricks even Sister Mary hasn’t learned yet.”

  “I have to go now,” she said. Without her characteristic smile, she dropped the ball in the grass and jogged toward her quarters.

  Father Bob motioned me over. “Tread carefully,” he said.

  “I know,” I said.

  “Do you?”

  “What’s not to know?”

  He picked up the ball and spun it on his finger. Like a Globetrotter.

  “Not bad,” I said.

  “God created the world to spin on its axis,” he said. “Perfectly. And he created man to be in perfect communion with him. Only man messed up. He messed up the way things are supposed to spin.” He grabbed the ball with both hands. “In the garden, you know the story.”

  “A snake got Eve to eat an apple.”

  “Don’t know if it was an apple,” Father Bob said. “It just says ‘the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil.’”

  “Was that such a bad thing to want?”

  “If a serpent’s offering it to you, it is. Now, we’ve come a long way trying to get things to spin right again. That’s the reason for the church. That’s the reason for people taking holy vows. And that’s the reason you have to tread carefully around here.”

  I took the ball from him and tried to spin it on my finger. It fell to the ground and bounced.

  “See?” Father Bob said.

  “Fine.”

  “Then are you ready to earn your daily bread?”

  3

  THE WOMAN CAME in holding hands with a little girl. The girl was maybe six years old. They were both dressed in thrift store casual. The woman had shoulder-length brown hair and a face that would have been nice if you could take the pain out of it. Her expression was grim and resolute, as if she’d been hit a few times and knew she’d get hit some more.

  She was about thirty-five but carried an extra decade around like a peasant with a load of bricks.

  The little girl had dirty-blond hair worn in a ponytail fastened with a green rubber band. The rubber band matched her eyes. She held a small backpack with a pink unicorn on it.

  Father Bob got up and greeted them, showed them to our table.

  We were at the Ultimate Sip, a coffee bar in a strip mall on Rinaldi. The Sip is an inspiration in our Starbucks-saturated world. A wholly owned independent subsidiary of the mind of one Barton C. McNitt. He’s a Vietnam vet, a little older than Father Bob. Father Bob affectionately refers to Barton C. McNitt as “Pick.”

  “Because if there’s a nit, McNitt will pick it,” Father Bob told me. “He likes to argue.”

  Pick McNitt had been a philosophy professor at Cal State Northridge until he went crazy. He spent some time in a sanitarium, where Father Bob met him by walking into the wrong room.

  They argued then and have been friends ever since.

  I pay McNitt a little chunk each month for the use of the Sip as an office. And for a p.o. box in the franchise McNitt owns next door.

  “This is Reatta,” Father Bob said, introducing the woman. She nodded at me. “And this is Kylie.”

  The girl looked at me, then put her head behind her mother.

  “Garçon,” I called out to Pick McNitt. “How about three specials and a hot chocolate with lots of whipped cream for the girl?”

  McNitt was behind the bar. He wore a billowing red Hawaiian shirt to cover his substantial girth. With his white beard and bald head, he was a perfect department store Santa, but for one thing—he’d scare the kids.

  “All glory is fleeting,” McNitt called back.

  “Can I color?” the girl asked Reatta. Reatta nodded. The girl plopped her unicorn bag on the table and took out some paper and crayons.

  “Reatta came to me when I was doing some rounds downtown,” Father Bob said. “She’s just gotten a room at the Lindbrook Hotel on Sixth. But she’s facing life on the street again.”

  “They won’t take my rent for next month,” Reatta said.

  “What are they charging?” I asked.

  “Four hundred a month. For a hundred and fifty square feet.” Her brown eyes scanned my face. They were searching, maybe for somebody to trust.

  “And they’ve told you that you have to move out?”

  She nodded.

  “Why don’t they just take the rent money?” Father Bob asked me.

  “It’s called the twen
ty-eight-day shuffle,” I said.

  “Sounds like a dance.”

  “It’s a dance around the law, is what it is. Here’s how it works. Downtown hotel owners shuffle their people in and out, to try to establish that they’re a commercial tourist hotel, not a residential hotel. That way tenant protection laws don’t kick in. So they say to people like Reatta here that she has to move out, stay out for a week, and then she can come back.”

  “So this is better financially for them?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “So why do it?” Father Bob asked.

  “Because, my mass-saying friend, a commercial hotel property can be sold to a developer with very little red tape. Said developer can then turn said hotel into fancy lofts for sale to downtown professionals. That way, everyone makes money. Except the people who used to live there. They end up on Skid Row.”

  “Very nice. And you say this is illegal?”

  “If you can get somebody to do something about it.”

  “What about the DA or the city attorney?”

  “They’ve sued a couple of owners. But that’s it. The downtown developers have a lot of power. So it’s left to public interest law firms to try to take up the cases. But the hotels have big firms behind them. I know. I used to work for one of those firms.”

  “Is there anything you can do for her?” Father Bob asked.

  I looked at the girl who was busy coloring her paper. To Reatta I said, “Do you have anyplace to go if they don’t accept your rent?”

  She shook her head. “A shelter is all. I hate those places.”

  She had good reason to.

  “How many more days do you have?”

  “Seven.”

  McNitt delivered the drinks. The little girl perked up at the sight of a cup with a mound of whipped cream on it, a Pike’s Peak of delight.

  The other three coffees were McNitt specials. He called them Gandhi lattes. Said they promoted nonviolent resistance.

  Kylie took a lick and got a little whipped cream on her chin.

  “Tell you what,” I said. “I’ll take a trip down there later this afternoon and talk to the manager. See what I can find out. But if I do this, I’ll need a retainer.”

  Reatta frowned.

  “I’d like to have that picture Kylie’s been drawing,” I said.

  The girl looked at me and smiled. “Okay,” she said. “But it’s a secret.”

  “I can keep secrets,” I said.

  She pushed the paper across the table to me. It showed two stick figures, one big and one small, holding hands in the upper part of the paper. My razor-sharp mind figured that to be Kylie and Reatta. A squiggly line came out from them and snaked all across the page, down to the right hand corner. In this corner Kylie had drawn several items of what I took to be candy.