Fear Nothing

the graveyard shift is less desirable than daytime duty, the pay is higher. More important, he is able to spend afternoons and evenings with his son, Toby, whom he cherishes. Sixteen years ago, Manuel’s wife, Carmelita, died minutes after bringing Toby into the world. The boy is gentle, charming — and a victim of Down’s syndrome. Manuel’s mother moved into his house immediately after Carmelita’s death and still helps to look after Toby. Manuel Ramirez knows about limitations. He feels the hand of fate every day of his life, in an age when most people no longer believe in purpose or destiny. We have much in common, Manuel Ramirez and I.

“Beer and Jackie Chan sound great,” I agreed. “But who makes the tamales — you or your mother?”

“Oh, not mi madre, I promise.”

Manuel is an exceptional cook, and his mother thinks that she is an exceptional cook. A comparison of their cooking provides a fearsomely illuminating example of the difference between a good deed and a good intention.

A car passed in the street behind me, and when I looked down, I saw my shadow pull at my unmoving feet, stretching from my left side around to my right, growing not merely longer but blacker on the concrete sidewalk, straining to tear loose of me and flee — but then snapping back to the left when the car passed.

“Manuel, there’s something you can do for me, something more than tamales.”

“You name it, Chris.”

After a long hesitation, I said, “It involves my dad…his body.”

Manuel matched my hesitation. His thoughtful silence was the equivalent of a cat’s ears pricking with interest.

He heard more in my words than they appeared to convey. His tone was different when he spoke this time, still the voice of a friend but also the harder voice of a cop. “What’s happened, Chris?”

“It’s pretty weird.”

“Weird?” he said, savoring the word as though it were an unexpected taste.

“I’d really rather not talk about it on the phone. If I come over to the station, can you meet me in the parking lot?”

I couldn’t expect the police to switch off all their office lights and take my statement by the glow of candles.

Manuel said, “We’re talking something criminal?”

“Deeply. And weird.”

“Chief Stevenson’s been working late today. He’s still here but not for much longer. You think maybe I should ask him to wait?”

In my mind rose the eyeless face of the dead hitchhiker.

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, Stevenson should hear this.”

“Can you be here in ten minutes?”

“See you then.”

I racked the telephone handset, snatched my cap off the light cage, turned to the street, and shielded my eyes with one hand as two more cars drove past. One was a late-model Saturn. The other was a Chevy pickup.

No white van. No hearse. No black Hummer.

I didn’t actually fear that the search for me was still on. By now the hitchhiker would be charring in the furnace. With the evidence reduced to ashes, no obvious proof existed to support my bizarre story. Sandy Kirk, the orderlies, and all the nameless others would feel safe.

Indeed, any attempt to kill or abduct me would risk witnesses to that crime, who would then have to be dealt with, increasing the likelihood of still more witnesses. These mysterious conspirators were best served now by discretion rather than aggression — especially when their sole accuser was the town freak, who came out of his heavily curtained house only between dusk and dawn, who feared the sun, who lived by the grace of cloaks and veils and hoods and masks of lotion, who crawled even the night town under a carapace of cloth and chemicals.

Considering the outrageous nature of my accusations, few would find my story credible, but I was sure that Manuel would know I was telling the truth. I hoped the chief would believe me, too.

I stepped away from the telephone outside the post office and headed for the police station. It was only a couple of blocks away.

As I hurried through the night, I rehearsed what I would tell Manuel and his boss, Lewis Stevenson, who was a formidable figure for whom I wanted to be well prepared. Tall, broad-shouldered, athletic, Stevenson had a face noble enough to be stamped in profile on ancient Roman coins. Sometimes he seemed to be but an actor playing the role of dedicated police chief, although if it was a performance, then it was of award caliber. At fifty-two, he gave the impression — without appearing to try — that he was far wiser than his years, easily commanding respect and trust. There was something of the psychologist and something of the priest in him — qualities everyone in his position needed but few possessed. He was that rare person who enjoyed having power but did not abuse it, who exercised authority with good judgment and compassion, and he’d been chief of police for fourteen years without a hint of scandal, ineptitude, or inefficiency in his department.

Thus I came through lampless alleys lit by a moon riding higher in the sky than it had been earlier, came past fences and footpaths, past gardens and garbage cans, came mentally murmuring the words with which I hoped to tell a convincing story, came in two minutes instead of the ten that Manuel had suggested, came to the parking lot behind the municipal building and saw Chief Stevenson in a conspiratorial moment that stripped away all the fine qualities I’d projected onto him. Revealed now was a man who, regardless of his noble face, did not deserve to be honored by coins or by monuments or even by having his photograph hung in the station house next to those of the mayor, the governor, and the President of the United States.

Stevenson stood at the far end of the municipal building, near the back entrance to the police station, in a cascade of bluish light from a hooded security lamp above the door. The man with whom he conferred stood a few feet away, only half revealed in blue shadows.

I crossed the parking lot, heading toward them. They didn’t see me coming because they were deeply engrossed in conversation. Furthermore, I was mostly screened from them as I passed among the street- department trucks and squad cars and water-department trucks and personal vehicles, while also staying as much as possible out of the direct light from the three tall pole lamps.

Just before I would have stepped into the open, Stevenson’s visitor moved closer to the chief, shedding the shadows, and I halted in shock. I saw his shaved head, his hard face. Red-plaid flannel shirt, blue jeans, work shoes.

At this distance, I wasn’t able to see his pearl earring.

I was flanked by two large vehicles, and I quickly retreated a few steps to shelter more completely in the oily darkness between them. One of the engines was still hot; it pinged and ticked as it cooled.

Although I could hear the voices of the two men, I could not make out their words. An onshore breeze still romanced the trees and quarreled against all the works of man, and this ceaseless whisper and hiss screened the conversation from me.

I realized that the vehicle to my right, the one with the hot engine, was the white Ford van in which the bald man had driven away from Mercy Hospital earlier in the night. With my father’s mortal remains.

I wondered if the keys might be in the ignition. I pressed my face to the window in the driver’s door, but I couldn’t see much of the interior.

If I could steal the van, I would most likely have possession of crucial proof that my story was true. Even if my father’s body had been taken elsewhere and was no longer in this van, forensic evidence might remain — not least, some of the hitchhiker’s blood.

I had no idea how to hot-wire an engine.

Hell, I didn’t know how to drive.

And even if I discovered that I possessed a natural talent for the operation of motor vehicles that was the equivalent of Mozart’s brilliance at musical composition, I wouldn’t be able to drive twenty miles south along the coast or thirty miles north to another police jurisdiction. Not in the glare of oncoming headlights. Not without my precious sunglasses, which lay broken far away in the hills to the east.

Besides, if I opened the van door, the cab lights would wink on. The two men would notice.

They would come for me.