Half the Day Is Night Read online

  Ah, an “incident” was something reported to the police. Was a shooting an “incident” or was there some sort of scale? Maybe it was an “occurrence”?

  The sergeant looked up. “You’re Jean David Dai?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  In island-accented French she asked. “How do you like Caribe?”

  “It’s all right.” For Mayla’s benefit he added in English, “But cold.”

  “Do you speak French?” the sergeant asked Mayla.

  Mayla shook her head.

  “I was just asking your bodyguard how he liked it here.”

  “Your family is Haitian?” Mayla asked, her voice polite, faintly artificial.

  He looked around the cubicle as they talked, wishing he could sit down. Caribe, it was insane. Except he thought insane was actually a legal description that meant unable to distinguish between right and wrong. It was possible to be quite crazy and still know that what you were doing was wrong. As a diseased society, did Caribe know it was wrong?

  Were they going to do that business of identification, as they had done with the woman? He hoped not, he had not seen anyone. It made him uncomfortable to have reactions he could not control tapped. It was strange, to sit there and watch that face form. A kind of theft. Was it the !Kung, the bushmen of Africa, who had once believed that taking an im would steal the subject’s soul?

  Africa. He wasn’t going to think about Africa. This was not Africa, this was Caribe, and he was going to go home in a few weeks.

  “Can you tell me what happened?” Sergeant Andre-Baptiste asked Mayla.

  “David saw more than I did,” Mayla said. “I cowered.”

  “That’s good, people who cower live longer. I’ll ask Mr. Dai what he remembers but I need your answer, too.”

  She should separate us, David thought. Compare our answers and see how our stories are different: not let us prompt each other, not let me tailor my story to fit Mayla’s. Basic military procedure with disciplinary and criminal matters and prisoners of war.

  “I don’t remember anything, really,” Mayla said. “I got off work and went down to the parking—”

  “What time did you leave work?”

  “A little after six?” She looked at him to confirm. He kept his face blank and waited for the sergeant to say that she wanted Mayla’s estimation, but she didn’t. She just typed two-fingered and they waited for her.

  “Sergeant,” he said, “are you going to send someone to the parking?”

  The sergeant shrugged. “They’re gone now, I’ll send someone down but they won’t find anything.”

  “Someone tried to shoot Ms. Ling,” David said.

  “Probably La Mano de Diós,” she said conversationally. Of course, it’s just a terrorist organization, he thought. These people! “So,” she continued, “you finished work at a little after six, is that the time that you usually leave?”

  “Sometimes, sometimes earlier, sometimes I work late. I don’t really work an eight-to-five job, and you, I mean the police told me to vary my schedule so I have been.”

  “Wait,” David said. “What are you going to do? I should not be here while you have her, what do you call it, deposition.”

  “You’re not being accused of anything,” the sergeant said.

  “But it will not be clean,” David said. “I will hear her story.”

  Sergeant Andre-Baptiste frowned. “I’m aware of procedure. I don’t think that kind of formality is necessary under the circumstances.”

  “You are not sending anyone down there. These are terrorists.”

  “Mr. Dai,” the sergeant said, “I know these are terrorists, and you are frightened but this day the Deputy Minister of Finance’s home was blown up and eleven people died. This department is strained trying to deal with that. You were not hurt so they intend to frighten you, not to kill, or you would both be dead. If I made a fuss every time some group decided to harass an executive I would tie up this entire police force and that would be doing exactly what these people want.”

  “So you treat this as if it were adolescents drinking, or a skid stopping traffic?” David asked. He would start to shake. He always did this, after he got angry would come the shakes.

  “We will check it out and make a note in the file,” she said, coolly. “If you are contacted by this group, please, you tell us.”

  “Third-world country, third-world police force,” he said in French.

  The sergeant looked at him for a moment. “Mr Dai,” she said in English, “if you want to get a cup of coffee, or use the restroom, they are that way,” she nodded her head towards the hall. “You take a little walk and come back when you feel better. Now, Ms. Ling, how many ways are there to get from your office to the parking?”

  David stalked down the hall until he found a machine that dispensed lukewarm Caribe coffee.

  * * *

  In the morning David had a vague sense of being hung over, a metallic taste in his mouth, a fatigue almost like an ache in all his joints.

  “Are you still quitting?” Tim asked. He was at the end of the hall, filling up the opening to the living room.

  It was early in the morning, too early to deal with Tim. David shrugged. “Why?”

  “Well,” Tim said, “someone ought to, you know, be taking care of things, since I’m leaving and you’re quitting.”

  “Maybe a professional,” David said. “Excuse me, I need a coffee mug.”

  “I was thinking,” Tim said, “you sounded pretty professional back there. Why don’t you stay for awhile?”

  “I am not the person for this job,” David said. “Excuse me.”

  Tim stepped back but followed him into the kitchen. Coffee was made, that meant Mayla was up. He wondered if she wanted to go to work at the regular time.

  “Don’t you feel bad about leaving her like this?” Tim asked. “What if something happens?”

  “Something has already happened,” David said.

  “Yeah,” Tim said, “something has happened. And you and I are running out on it.”

  David shook his head, poured his coffee.

  “Don’t you feel any obligation?”

  “I cannot stay here,” David said. “Do you understand? I have done what I could do, in Africa. I have already paid.”

  He would have to buy a coffee mug, even if he was only going to be here for a few more weeks. Maybe he could just forget to bring this one back.

  Tim was standing there still, watching. Or thinking, David wasn’t sure which. Obligation. There was no obligation.

  “You shot at the car,” Tim said.

  Shot at the car? Ah, in the parking. “Yes?”

  “What were you trying to do?” Tim said. “I mean, were you trying to shoot the people or disable the car?”

  What was he trying to do? He had to stop, think a minute. When he shot at the car, what had he been aiming at? Just the car. So why shoot at the car? If he had somehow stopped it, then he might have had to worry about the people in the car getting out and shooting at him. And he hadn’t really thought about the people in the car.

  “I was just shooting,” David said. “They shoot at me. I shoot back so they will leave so we can escape.” To be honest, he had not thought anything. He had just shot, because he was being shot at and he had a gun. He had not even thought about firing in a concrete parking, about ricochets or wild shots or how crazy this all was.

  “I’ve never shot a gun,” Tim said. “Except on a range.”

  Tim was still watching him. Like he was crazy? No, maybe with a funny kind of respect. Stupid, just because he had shot a gun at some people. People did not understand. Tim did not understand. Any thickheaded idiot can walk into a liquor store and shoot at someone. “That’s good,” David said. “I hope you never do shoot one. I wish I never had.”

  * * *

  There was no one in the parking that morning. Or the next morning.

  Saturday he wondered how he was going to fill the day. Maybe Mayl
a would need errands done or would want to go see her grandfather. He wondered what her grandfather thought of the shooting. Old man in his chair, sitting there like a relic of colonialism.

  The cat got out when he opened the door to go get his coffee. Getting out was the reason for Meph’s existence. He chased the kitten down the hall and it went under the couch in the living room. Mayla was looking up as David came by the kitchen. “I am sorry,” he said. “He is like a child, you know?”

  She laughed. “Let him roam around a bit, he won’t hurt anything.”

  “I can get his food, he always will come for food.”

  “Get your coffee first,” Mayla said.

  Saturday morning, she was in a sweater and tights. The casual Mayla. Easier to be around, not so serious as when she was a banker. At the bank, Mr. Morel’s driver Luis called her “Princess Ling.”

  He poured coffee. “Did you get the paper?” he asked.

  “The Journal,” she said. She got two papers, a financial paper from New York and a local paper.

  “I’ll see if the other is in,” he said.

  “Don’t bother, it’s all fiction,” she said. She didn’t like the Julian paper, she always said it was third rate.

  “I would miss my serials,” David said.

  She shook her head. “How can you read those things?”

  “They are easy, even for someone with my English.”

  “Written for people with the reading skills of ten-year-olds.”

  David nodded. “Yes, like me.”

  She laughed.

  The paper came with the mail, in the living room near the garage door. Meph followed him. Julian mail was delivered by forced air. There were a couple of letter cans and a cylinder and the paper. David picked up the paper. Trouble in the Colombian Republic (underneath the headline in smaller print, “American Support Insufficient to Buoy Unpopular Regime”). He stopped, looking at the headline rather than the cylinder, ready to scoop it up, and glanced down at the address. The address read Ms. M. K. Ling. He stopped, hand still out.

  He stood someplace else in his experience, looking at the cylinder. It was about the length of his hand from the tip of his longest finger to the heel. The front was dirty translucent plastic, filled with oily liquid. The base was a pressure trigger for explosives, a dull beige disc that was sensitive to vibration. There was a bomb in Mayla’s house.

  The bomb must have been dropped nose first into a mailing chute so the pressure-sensitive trigger would be spared the slight stresses of acceleration and friction. That could have been done anywhere; on the mall, in the mail-chute at the end of the street. The air in the chute would catch it and cushion it; maybe it was tampered with so it would not be so sensitive, to insure that the steady acceleration would not disturb the trigger and that was why it had not gone off when it landed in Mayla’s living room. Or maybe it had just managed to land in the way that would not set it off. Maybe it was dead, a dud, or meant to scare. Maybe it wasn’t. If it wasn’t, and it went off, besides killing whoever was standing close by, it would breach the integrity of the dome. The dome would implode around them. They would be dead before they knew it.

  Except of course, himself, he would be dead but he knew it already.

  He couldn’t do anything about the bomb, he didn’t know if the trigger was working or not and if it was and he touched it he could set it off. If it was unstable from tampering it might just go off by itself. So he must do something about his people.

  Time was moving so slow, blue time they called it during the war. He thought all these things in the time it took him to read the cylinder, then straighten, unconsciously hiking his shoulder to keep a nonexistent rifle strap from sliding.

  “Tim, Mayla,” he called.

  “What?” Tim called down from the loft.

  “Listen to me. There is a bomb in the mail.” He didn’t know any other way to say it.

  “What?” Tim said, “What the hell?”

  “Did you call?” Mayla asked from the kitchen. She came to the door with a cup in her hand.

  “I said,” he was talking to his people, he must impress them, move them with his voice, “there is a bomb in the mail. Now you must leave.”

  “David—” she said.

  “Now!” he snapped.

  “Did you say a bomb?” Tim said.

  “Wait on the street, walk softly. Go on.” He was standing as still as he could.

  “Can you do something,” Tim asked, “can someone defuse it?”

  “I am doing something. This is not the vid. Go on. Walk softly, it may have sensitive.”

  Mayla did not believe, he could see. It was not doubt, she just did not comprehend. She stood in the kitchen entrance, still holding her coffee cup. “My things,” she said.

  He shook his head. “Come on, Mayla,” he coaxed. “We must leave or perhaps we will all die.”

  She looked at the cylinder, then came towards him, putting her feet down carefully, as if they were sore. She was wearing sandals. She had long feet. Gingerly, she opened the door to the garage. For a moment she looked at the button to open the big, outer garage door and he knew what she was thinking, it might set the bomb off. She looked at him. Tim, standing and waiting for Mayla to go first, looked at him. He shrugged, it was the way out. So she tapped it and the door went up smoothly.

  “Son of a bitch,” Tim breathed.

  “Okay,” he said, and she went down the curving steps.

  Tim walked with his eyes on the floor as if walking a line. Like a drunk walking for a policeman. He stopped and looked at the cylinder for a moment. Then back at David. He did not believe, David thought. Not really. In his head he understood, but he did not believe.

  “Go on,” David said.

  Tim shook his head.

  David followed him onto the steps. He looked back at Mayla’s pretty house. The kitten was at the mail, sniffing the edge of a capsule.

  “Mephisto, non!”

  The kitten looked up and his tail twitched.

  “Venite! Maintenant!” he called the kitten.

  “What are you doing?” Tim looked up the curve of the stairs down into the garage. Blue eyes.

  “Calling the cat,” David said, “go on.”

  “Fuck the cat,” Tim said.

  He should, he knew. Mephisto decided to go back towards his rooms. Little cat, he would never see the sun.

  “Mephistofeles! Venite,” he called. Insolent, the kitten walked to the hall. He could go to the kitchen and get out a food packet. Sifting through the rubble of the dome, he thought, police find his remains clutching a cat-food packet. He followed the kitten back across the living room, walking carefully, feet falling smoothly, rolling to minimize his weight although it probably didn’t make any difference. The big orange and yellow sun beamed benevolently, oblivious to the black water. It was a tiny warmth; it, Mephisto, himself, they would be smothered, extinguished in an instant. If the trigger was still active. If the bomb would still go off. The cat disappeared into his bedroom. He remembered when he had first been in Afrique, a corporal had carried a dead shell as a good luck piece. They’d all been told not to pick up anything, but they did. One time, the corporal had taken it out of his pocket and left it sitting on the tailgate of a transport and it had rolled off and exploded. All the time the corporal had carried it in his pocket nothing had happened and then, at that moment, it fell and went off. Or maybe it did not, maybe the corporal had carried his all through the war and that was a story he had heard and gotten confused. He’d seen a shell go off but he couldn’t remember when.

  The shoulder patch of an American Air Force Observer had a sword through a heart and emblazoned underneath it the word “DILLIGAFF.” He said it meant “Do I Look Like I Give a Flying Fuck?” Funny thing to think of.

  Half crouched, David stalked the cat down the hallway.

  In the bedroom the kitten watched over its shoulder and when it saw David it flattened its ears and went under the bed. He crouched b
y the edge and it slunk out of reach. David clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. The kitten hissed, back against the bottom of the bed.

  Don’t be stupid. Leave him.

  “David!” Tim must be standing at the top of the stairs.

  He lay down, chest against the rug, and reached under the bed. His hand fell short. “Mephisto, Mephistofeles, venite.” The bomb was going to go off, the water was going to come in and the cat was going to get them both killed. He reached again, Meph lashed out and scratched the back of his hand. The cat was panicked. He should go now. He reached again, palm up. Meph lashed again and he caught the cat’s paw. Meph reflexively sank his claws into the meaty base of David’s thumb. David hauled on the kitten who squalled in terror and anger and tried to dig claws into the rug. He yanked the kitten out, Meph grabbed his shoulder, still screaming.

  “Jesus fucking Christ!” Tim said, watching him come down the hall. In the living room he thought it felt colder. Of course that was crazy, the room wouldn’t be colder until the water came in and then it would be very cold.

  He limped down the steps, counting them, the cat craning around to see the garage. At the base of the steps he palmed the door latch and the big safety door creaked and closed off Mayla’s house as he watched. It would have to be opened by the security company now that it had been manually closed. It probably wouldn’t stop the water from coming into the garage. He looked at the Skate. There was a lot of money in that car. He wondered if it should be moved, but hell, the insurance would pay for it. He shifted Meph to one arm and sprinted the last distance. Tim palmed the big watertight garage doors and they slammed into place, powered by the water force they were built to withstand. David winced, expecting explosion.

  But there was nothing.

  He looked at Mayla and Tim and grinned. Adrenaline made him suddenly, furiously happy.

  “What the bloody hell were you doing?” Tim asked.

  “He wanted to play with it. I thought maybe he would explode it before we were outside. We should call the police.” He put his arm around Mayla’s shoulders and squeezed. She was still holding her coffee cup.

  “What kind of bomb is it?” she asked.

  “Not a very good one,” he said. “We should go and call the police. I can explain to everyone once.”