Heavy on the Dead

by G. M. Ford

  Lamar hurried over to the edge. The big guy displayed the nimble dexterity of a mountain goat as he descended the cliff face in a series of precise hops and lunges.

  With a prayer on his lips, Lamar poked a toe over the edge, made sure it was in the groove, and stepped off into space. And then another step and another. He was doing fine until he was only about ten feet above the beach, at which point he missed a step, lost traction, then plopped down onto his ass and slid the rest of the way, coming to a stop when his shoes banged against a Subaru-size rock. Lamar pushed himself upright, leaned back against the nearest boulder, and looked around. Sometime in the past, this section of coast had been filled with large black boulders in an attempt to prevent further erosion of the cliff face.

  Chub was twenty yards away, taking off his jacket. Lamar started picking his way over, moving carefully so he wouldn’t bust an ankle on the slimy rocks. When he looked up again, Chub was winding the jacket around the woman’s left leg.

  Lamar didn’t have to wonder if her leg was broken because her shin bone was sticking out through her skin. Looked like her left arm might be broken too, and a thin trickle of blood rolled down her chin. She groaned piteously. Lamar swallowed hard.

  “Shoulda picked something a bit higher, honey,” he mumbled to himself as he picked his way around a final glistening boulder to Chub’s side.

  Chub looked over. “Don’t think we ought to move her,” he said, slowly turning a piece of driftwood to tighten the makeshift tourniquet he’d put together. “We need a real medic here.”

  Out in the ocean, the surfers had picked up on what was going on and were paddling like hell for the beach. “Go back up,” Chub said. “Get somebody up there to call 911.”

  Lamar looked around. “Maybe we shouldn’t get involved with the heat,” he said. “Those surfers can probably handle it,” he said.

  “We don’t get her help, she’s gonna bleed out,” Chub growled.

  Lamar hurried back the way he’d come, moving faster now, taking more chances on his footing as he scrambled up the cliff face.

  Two minutes later he was at the top of the cliff. He pulled the burner phone from his pocket and dialed 911. Almost instantly, sirens began to wail from the north end of town. Lamar reached around to the small of his back, nervously fingering the Browning wedged against his spine, making damn sure his shirt was all the way down.

  We called Sergeant Saunders from the downtown parking lot where we’d left the car this morning. She wasn’t in, but after a bit of wheedling from me, they patched me through.

  “It’s your private pistolero patrol,” I said when she picked up. “We’ve got something.”

  Short silence. Somebody else said something I couldn’t make out. Another silence before a car door opened and closed.

  “How long will it take you to get to the west precinct?” she whispered.

  “Maybe twenty minutes,” I said.

  “Make it half an hour and I’ll meet you out front,” she said and broke the connection.

  “Half an hour,” I said to Gabe. “I think maybe she needs to ditch the partner.”

  Gabe nodded and buckled up. “Take the 5 to the 8 . . . then over the bridge into Mission Bay.”

  “Ooooh . . . don’t we sound like Californians now,” I joked.

  “When in Poway,” Gabe said.

  I headed downhill toward the freeway, found the 5 North ramp, goosed it up to eighty so’s I could at least keep up with the geriatric traffic, and followed the BEACHES signs onto the 8 West. From there it was just a few miles till the freeway up and ended in Ocean Beach, except we didn’t go quite that far. Instead, I took the bridge over the river into Mission Bay, running along Sea World Drive, through the water wonderland that was Mission Bay Park, past hotels and marinas over to Gaines Street and the SDPD west precinct.

  I found a place to park on the west side of Napa Street, turned up the AC, and waited. Gabe was playing some sort of game on the phone. I just sat there and stared out the window, wondering if the dump woman had been right. Wondering whether anyone, if pushed hard enough, would do whatever it took to survive. Supposedly, survival is the first instinct of human nature, but something deep inside me didn’t like the sound of that at all. At least not as it applied to me. No matter how many times I went through it, a voice in my head could not be silenced. But not me, it shouted inside my skull. Yeah, maybe for other, weaker people, but it couldn’t possibly be true about me. No friggin’ way. Not with all this moral fiber. No sir.

  Saunders was ten minutes late. It was nearly noon before she pulled the unmarked car into the SDPD parking lot and got out. I popped open the door and put one foot in the street. She caught the movement, made eye contact, and started walking our way.

  By the time she caught a break in the traffic, Gabe and I were waiting for her on the sidewalk. We walked up Gaines Street a ways, found a bench in the shade, and sat down. First I handed over the phone number. Then I gave her the Reader’s Digest version of how our Mexican morning had gone.

  “I’ll make a few calls to the Mexican police,” she said.

  Gabe leaned forward on the bench. “No.”

  Saunders seemed startled. “Whatta you mean no? The woman’s selling her babies. I’m going to notify the human trafficking division about this.”

  “No . . . don’t,” Gabe said.

  Saunders frowned.

  “She’s got all she can handle,” I said. “Let’s see if we can’t unravel it from this end.”

  “What? We’re all of a sudden having a pity party for a human trafficker?”

  “I know it sounds weird, but yeah, something like that,” I said.

  An uneasy silence settled on us like coastal fog. A slow minute passed. Another.

  Saunders got to her feet. “Okay,” she said. “You two aren’t exactly the little sisters of the poor. You think her plate’s already full, I’ll take your word for it.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “So let’s go see who this number belongs to.”

  The fire department guys had done this kind of rescue before . . . lots of times. Lamar could tell. In no time at all, they’d hooked the jumper up to an IV, stabilized her compound fracture with a blow-up bandage thing, and patched up a bunch of scrapes, before they strapped her to an orange plastic sled and hauled her ass back up on top of the cliff. By that time whatever pain juice they’d given her had come on strong. Her eyes were shut, and, as far as Lamar could see, she was all the way out in dreamland.

  That’s when the cops showed up. Two of them. One a short little guy. Wiry hair. Olive skin. Looked like he might be Italian. The thick tuft of hair sticking out from his shirt collar suggested he might be haired all over like a gibbon.

  The other one looked more like a romance novel cover model. Slicked-back surfer boy hair and that air of confident superiority Lamar always had the urge to stab a few times.

  “You the guys called it in?” the smaller cop asked.

  “Yeah,” Lamar said.

  “We’ll need you to come down to the station and give us a statement,” the big kahuna said.

  “We didn’t see her jump, man. One minute she was standing there. Next minute she wasn’t. That’s all we seen,” Lamar said. “Ain’t nothin’ other than that to make no statement about.”

  “We’ll still need you to give us a statement,” the short guy said.

  Lamar’s voice rose. “Okay . . . we didn’t see nothin’. There’s your statement.”

  He swiveled and began to stalk off. The big cop blocked his way.

  When Lamar looked over, Chub was slowly shaking his head.

  “You guys have a car?” the cop asked.

  Chub nodded.

  “I’ll drive you back to your car and then you can follow me over to the west precinct. That way you won’t have to wait around until I find somebody to drive you back after you give us a statement. Save you a lot of time that way.”

  Sergeant Saunders waved a well-manicure
d hand at the screen and then pushed back from the desk. “It’s a restricted number,” she said through clenched teeth.

  “What’s that mean?” I asked.

  “The mayor’s got a restricted number. The DA’s got one. Anybody who needs to keep their private lives private no matter what, people in public positions—they have restricted numbers.”

  “But you can find out who it belongs to . . . right?” Gabe added.

  She made a disgusted face. “If it was still my case and I had a warrant and about six months to take the cell provider to court . . . ’cause that’s what it takes these days. Lately everybody’s so paranoid about security that cell providers take you to court if you want records. Strictly legal CYA as far as they’re concerned.” She leaned in and lowered her voice. “At which point you two would probably have to tell your story to a judge.”

  “Ain’t gonna happen,” Gabe said quickly.

  Saunders help up a take it easy hand. “Not to worry. Like I been telling you guys, this is not my case anymore, and all the phone number adds to the equation is that whoever we’re looking for is probably somebody with a whole lot of powerful friends. Which, if anything, makes things even worse.”

  Voices from the uniform squad room filtered in. Out in the parking lot somebody’s car alarm started chirping like an urban cricket.

  “I’ll make a few calls,” she said finally. “See if maybe I can’t call in a couple favors.” Her face said she wasn’t holding out a hell of a lot of hope.

  Gabe stood up.

  “Come on,” Saunders said, “I’ll walk you out.”

  Saunders pushed open the station house door. Flicked her eyes up at the CC cameras mounted in the doorway and another on the wall outside.

  “Thanks for your help,” she said for the benefit of closed circuit posterity.

  “I’m tellin’ ya . . . That’s them. That tall fella right there. He’s the one. He’s Waterman.”

  “Come on, man. You said it yourself. It’s a lousy picture.”

  “No. The other one.”

  “What other one?”

  Chub lifted one cheek off the seat and pulled the folded photo out of his back pocket. He snapped the CC photo from the bank open in front of Lamar’s face and pointed to the person in line behind the guy in question.

  “Same one who’s with Waterman here right now.”

  Lamar would have put up more of an argument, but at that moment, the west precinct front door swung open and the two of them stepped out onto the sidewalk. He snapped his eyes back and forth between the picture and the two bruisers walking up the sidewalk.

  Lamar watched as they crossed the street, panicked for a second when the pair kept walking directly at them, and then relaxed as they veered to the right and climbed into a rice burner SUV three or four cars in front of them.

  Chub grinned and started the engine.

  Traffic on the bridge back to Ocean Beach was lousy. Mostly Gabe and I made it a point not to drive around during the rush hour, so the ride home served as a vivid reminder of why. Around here, other than a couple of hours in the early morning and a couple more at the other end of the day, everything was twenty minutes away by freeway. Odd-numbered highways ran north and south, even numbers east and west. Easy as pie and a far cry from the constant paraplegic gridlock of my old Pacific Northwest stomping grounds.

  “Long as we’re up at this end of town, what say we see if old Creamed Spinach ain’t home,” Gabe said as I eased the car around a soft right turn onto Sunset Cliffs Boulevard and began to roll along the east side of Robb Field.

  I turned right on Voltaire, drove down to Bacon, got lucky and found a parking spot in front of Te Mana, from whence we walked around the corner to the car entrance to the Robb Field complex. Some sort of kite-flying confab was going on up at the far end. The sky was filled with a flock of shapes and colors, whirling and diving, some long tailed and languid, nearly still in the sky, others veering around like angry hornets.

  As we walked up the drive working our way over to the river, Gabe got all philosophical. “Funny, ain’t it . . . how much everything depends.”

  “Whatcha mean?”

  “Well, you know . . . the other day when we went through this place asking around about ol’ Bar Code . . . I had a big case of there but for fortune . . . you know, like I was feeling like I ought to give thanks for my life and wondering how an affluent society like ours . . . how they can allow our fellow citizens to live outdoors like animals. It was like feeling real sad and real fortunate at the same time.”

  I knew where this story was going because I’d felt the same way myself. “But after our visit to the Tijuana dump . . .”

  “No shit,” Gabe said. “This place is like the friggin’ Ritz compared to that.”

  “But people don’t want to hear that shit either,” I said. “It’s like the lady in the dump said. How bad would it have to get before you sold a child? It’s like that with subjective and objective too. Educated people recognize—you know, on an intellectual level anyway—they know the world is subjective, that everybody sees something different from everybody else, but somewhere deep inside they’ve got a voice whispering except for me, of course. I’m the exception to the rule. I see it like it really is.”

  “That’s what keeps us going, ain’t it?” Gabe asked. “The idea that we can forge order out of chaos.”

  “Some people think so,” I admitted.

  We labored up to the top of the berm. Bar Code’s campsite was down the bike path maybe four hundred yards east of where we stood. To the left, Dog Beach was packed with pooches dashing after balls, running in circles, bowling one another over in insane spurts of doggy joy.

  The river looked as if somebody’d pounded white stakes into the sandy shallows at random intervals . . . until suddenly a stake moved, and then another, and I realized I was looking at a stick-legged squadron of snowy egrets picking among the reeds and shallows, one staccato step at a time.

  Out at the end of the sandbar, some bald drunk was wading in the water. From here it was hard to tell whether he was just trying to cool down or maybe he thought he was fishing. The fact that he was wearing nothing but a full-length tweed topcoat gave me an inkling he may have started the self-merriment a tad early today.

  “Shall we?” I said.

  “Long as you don’t ask me how I’m feeling.”

  “Okay.”

  Behind us the sun burned low on the horizon, and the shadows were getting long. Maybe another hour or so of daylight, I figured.

  “I’ll go down the near side and run him out in your direction,” I said as we hiked up the bike path. Another fifty yards and we started to hear it. The guitar. And the singing. He was singing.

  “What’s that he’s warbling?” Gabe asked as we got closer.

  “The Guess Who—‘American Woman,’” I said.

  “But . . .”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I hear it.”

  We stopped at the near end of the thicket. I started down the well-worn path.

  “Bump stock woman, honey let me be. Bump stock woman, baby set me free. Don’t come knocking round my door. Don’t want to see you anymore. I say woman . . .” I eased down the path toward the river. The guitar was way out of tune, but apparently that minor sonic imperfection didn’t much matter to him. He was lettin’ it all hang out, wailing on the thing. “Now woman, I said stay away. Bump stock woman, listen what I say, bump stock woman, listen what I say. Bump stock woman, mama let me be . . .”

  I grabbed the handhold, swung around the corner, and damn near ended up in his lap. The kid was quick, I’ll say that. I guess speed’s an asset when you’re living in the streets. He pulled the same stunt as the last time, scooting out the other end like a prairie dog, only this time Gabe was ready, blocking the other exit like a boulder.

  The kid started to back up. “Hey . . . hey . . . ,” he was yelling as he backed out into the river, balls deep, holding the guitar high over his head to keep it
dry. Gabe walked to my side. The kid pointed with his free hand.

  “You fuckers was here the other day.”

  “Careful with that guitar,” I said. “Those things don’t like getting wet.”

  “That bar code on your forehead there,” Gabe pointed. “That thing really read out as creamed spinach?”

  “Who tole you that?” he demanded.

  “A little birdie,” Gabe said.

  “You a man or a woman?” Bar Code asked Gabe.

  “Does it matter?” Gabe countered.

  “Probably not,” the kid said.

  “What’s the bar code for?” Gabe pressed.

  “Succotash,” the kid said.

  “Come on in, man,” I said to him. “We need to talk with you about something. We’re not here to bust your balls or roust you out or nothing like that. I just need you to help me with something.”

  “Like what?”

  “You remember the other day when the cops chased you up the Santa Cruz stairs?”

  He frowned, wrinkling the bar code. “What about it?”

  “You bit me, man.” I pointed at the dental decoration on my neck. “Right here.”

  He started waving his free hand in my direction. Like he was wiping off a blackboard. “No . . . no . . . no, man . . . I didn’t mean to . . . things was . . . fuckin’ cops . . . that fat bastard up on the cliff . . . always . . .”

  I cut him off. “Look, man . . . here’s how it is . . . either I’ve got to wait for the rest of my life to find out whether or not I’ve contracted some kind of infectious disease from you, or you’ve got to go get a blood test so’s I can know for sure one way or the other—you know, and then maybe get on with my life.”

  “Huh?”

  “Come on, man. I can’t have this shit hanging over my head forever. Help me out with this. I’ll make it worth your while.”

  He was indignant. “I got no damn diseases. Who said I got diseases?”

  “I gotta make sure.”

  The kid’s feet slipped on the muddy bottom. He wobbled, waving the guitar above his head like a torch. Gabe stepped up to the water’s edge and offered him a helping hand. He hesitated, swaying in the current like a reed, and then took it. Gabe hauled him ashore like he was lighter than air.