Easy Street

by Elizabeth Sims

  He said, "This person is a suspect in the identity theft and the property destruction, all right. I'll grant that, but—"

  "But," I interjected, "if she broke into those walls, she stole money from Porrocks's house."

  "You don't know whether she found anything in those walls. They might've been empty."

  "But I showed you the patches. Somebody stowed something in there, and Jimmy Donovan was a drug dealer who handled a lot of money."

  "And he might just as easily have unstashed it, using the same holes."

  That hadn't occurred to me.

  Stonehauser said, "The boathouse might've been the only place with money in it."

  "Yeah."

  "So as far as anybody knows, there's nothing missing from Ms. Porrocks's house!"

  I admitted, "It's not missing if you didn't know it was there."

  "All right?" said the detective.

  I took a deep breath. "What if I told you I've got another clue about the fugitive formerly known as Audrey Knox?"

  "What is it?"

  I told him about the shoes and the photograph. He cleared his throat and said, with the hard-edged politeness of sarcasm, "That's a clue as to her name and whereabouts, right?"

  "Right!" I exulted.

  "But not a clue that points to anybody's guilt in anything."

  "Uh, right."

  "So don't bother me with it now. This is not the O.J. Simpson case. I mean, OK, I shouldn't have said don't bother me with information, but come on. A picture of a pair of shoes? What would you do, show it to shoemakers in Idaho?"

  "Well, yes."

  "She probably bought them in a store, anyway. Sounds like bullshit, frankly."

  "Lieutenant, I sense you're running out of good will toward me here."

  "I gotta concentrate on first things first."

  "But these shoes really could be the—"

  "I understand! Look. You know my resources are limited. Right? And so are the resources of every cop in Idaho or any other damn state. Now, if this was a murder investigation, I'd be all over that shoe picture. But I have to concentrate on police practices that fifteen years of experience have taught me will bear the most fruit—like sending Bill over to look at that car, like interviewing people in the neighborhood where Ms Porrocks was hit to see if anybody saw anything, like talking to some of the lowlifes Toretti hung out with, people who might have known him or the suspect."

  ----

  Had I been a real detective, I'd have thrown myself into all kinds of workmanlike activities just like Stonehauser described to find my erstwhile lover. As we know so well by now, however, I wasn't.

  I hunkered on the floor with Todd and my mandolin. As I played "Tom Billy's Jig" and "Banks of Red Roses," he laid his head on my thigh. When I played "Wildwood Flower," he got very calm, as he always did when listening to that song. I thought about Audrey.

  I kept calling her Audrey in my mind; I had to call her something, and all the other names I could think of were ever so vulgar. So Vic Toretti was dead. I pictured him getting out of prison, breathing the muggy grassy air of central Michigan, and running into the waiting arms of his faithful sexpot girlfriend. They would have lived it up, partied heavily—McDonald's hamburgers, beer, all the Snickers bars he could hold. And then he overdosed. How easily that could have happened.

  Had he told Audrey to rent the apartment before he got out without telling her why? Maybe. He would have hinted to her about loot, though, to keep her interested in him, to get her to agree to help him get it, and let him screw her while they plotted. All she needed was one half of a breath of a mention of hidden money, and she'd have been all over him. I could just see her, a silky boa constrictor, squeezing the information out of him an ounce at a time.

  Then as soon as she knew why she'd rented an apartment overlooking that house, what good was Toretti to her? Just a guy to fuck and argue with.

  Me: Now, don't get carried away.

  Me: But it would've been so easy for her to kill Toretti with an overdose. Get him good and drunk, then offer some special Mary-pure smack you got and saved for just such an important occasion. Stick it in him before he knew what was happening.

  Me: OK, fine. Now pick up the phone and find out when the next bus to Boise's leaving.

  Me: Oh God, should I?

  Me: Of course you shouldn't. What difference has that ever made to you?

  Me: Right.

  Me: The point is, she took you for the biggest sucker in three counties. She killed Drooly Rick, she tried to kill Porrocks, and she'd made up her mind to kill you—if you hadn't handed her the goddamn keys to Porrocks's house!

  Me: I just cannot believe my error in judgment. I just cannot believe she really used me! Used me and cast me aside like a Kotex—from the very beginning! I've got to believe maybe she did really care for me, really truly. Maybe she cared for me at least a little bit and regrets hurting me. Maybe she wishes she could apologize.

  Me: Listen to yourself. Now you're saying you hope a murderer found you appealing? You're hoping a murderer felt true deep affection for you, loved you? Are you insane?

  Me: I have to meet up with that bitch. I loved her, OK? I fell for her and I loved her! I thought she was the universe's gift to me, to make up for all the shit I've had to deal with in my life. I thought it was finally my turn! I can't let that go without a fight. If I can just have a—

  Me: A heart-to-heart talk with her?

  Me: Even I'm not that naïve. An honest confrontation with her, at least. Then I'll feel better when she goes to jail for her crimes.

  Me: She has no heart, you know.

  Me: How can I be sure?

  Chapter 22

  You have perhaps taken a long bus trip across this magnificent continent. If so, you know that such a trip has its heavens and its hells. For some people I've met, heaven is sitting next to a quiet stranger and speaking every thought that has ever come into your head, plus all the new ones the trip stimulates. For others, needless to say, hell is being the quiet stranger.

  While I generally like listening to people, smart and dumb alike, I've not been able to figure out how to shut up another human being at will. Therefore when I'm a captive of public transportation, heaven is an empty seat next to me. I love watching the scenery, which is considerable even from the limits of the interstates. You can't beat a prairie thunderstorm, the purple horizon sweeping toward you flashing and growling; likewise, a flock of meadowlarks taking turns streaking upward yellow-breasted, then coasting down to join their brethren invisible in the prairie. Or your first glimpse of the Rockies sternly and astonishingly welcoming you West.

  On the Greyhound one must reconcile oneself to missing all the quaintness of the back roads. The people who live on those back roads, however, tend to be the ones who ride the bus.

  If I have to sit next to someone, I like sitting next to servicemen and servicewomen who tell me about their military adventures, be they getting burned by the hot cartridge casings spewed by machine guns, or learning that knuckle pushups are easier in the long run because they save stress on your wrists, or standing on the deck of the destroyer after the locked-on alarm has sounded and wondering whether the technology that's supposed to confuse the enemy missile will work this time.

  I like sitting next to people who read silently. I like sitting next to people who own their own small businesses, because they are generally agile-minded.

  I do not like sitting next to people who must orally justify the choices they have made in life over and over again. I do not like people who play pocket video games that emit toothpick-like beeping sounds. How does that poem go, be patient with jackasses and the insane, for they too have their stories? That's great, but just try sitting next to one of them across two or three state lines.

  I like people who use deodorant. I like people who have taken the time and trouble to teach their small children basic manners.

  The first twenty-four hours of my trip to Boise more or less constit
uted Great Plains hell, but then a little boy in a cardigan sweater walked up the aisle and paused at my seat. He stooped and picked up something.

  "Miss, is this your nickel?" he asked quietly, holding it out to me.

  I nearly scooped him up in a hug. "No, young man. You're five cents richer."

  That little boy sustained me for the next twenty-seven hours.

  On an overnight bus trip you work at cleanliness at the comfort stops; you try to find fresh fruit before the doughnuts and fried chicken take their toll; you sit and think a lot as the bus plows through twilight into black night. The driver dims the interior lights, and the blackness weighs on your eyes: the hard blackness of the bus window, reflecting back your own ghostly face, makes you uneasy when you know you ought to sleep.

  You sit and you stare and you think. You hunch down in your coat, and you listen to other people's breathing. You think about the creases on the back of the driver's neck, and you wonder whether there's a more relentlessly nauseating smell than diesel fumes mixed with chemical toilet fumes, and you think about life and death and love and cancer and electric blankets and sitcoms and prom dates and bounced checks. You worry. You worry about your sick old pet rabbit back at Billie's, and you worry about meeting up with someone who might try to do you harm. At long last you realize that shapes are coalescing on the other side of the cold glass and dawn is coming and then the world returns, and you figure what the hell, everybody dies.

  As the bus rolled the last 150 miles through the Snake River Plains, buffered by blocky mountains to the north, I saw why Audrey loved Idaho. I looked up from the potato fields and hay fields and ached to smell the cleanliness of the forests as they reached up to the snowline on those mountains.

  A cold thunderstorm had just passed through, and there was a feeling of relief about the town of Boise as the sun came out and the wind blew the still-heavy clouds off to the east. I saw that Boise featured the usual retail strips and noisy little airport, but the downtown part looked fairly interesting, with parks and clean streets and camping equipment stores and restaurants that looked as if they might serve olive oil and salt with their bread instead of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter.

  When the bus pulled into the Boise depot and shut its motor off, I staggered slightly on the way to the women's room but got my land legs back quickly. I'd done a little research, bought a map, and made two telephone calls before boarding the bus in Detroit. Which is to say I had a plan. It was Tuesday morning.

  Wearing my pea coat, blue jeans, and my Chuck Taylors and carrying only my gym bag, I hiked three-quarters of a mile to a storefront shop run by a guy who called himself a cobbler in the Yellow Pages but whose dusty, stinky shop offered only such minor footwear surgery as resoling and seam stitching.

  The other establishment I'd targeted occupied a loft above a health food store. Suddenly hungry, I stopped and consumed a tart organically grown Pink Lady apple, a falafel sandwich, and a bottle of ginger drink. I don't usually go in for such stuff, but I guess my body was craving unprocessed food.

  The shoemaker upstairs remembered my call and introduced himself as Sajeed. I continued to use the name Roberta Klotzak for simplicity's sake. Judging by the decorations in his shop Sajeed was of Egyptian descent, which was sort of surprising since Egyptians aren't exactly known for their shoemaking folkways. Nevertheless, he kept a very nice shop, with framed Egyptian blessings and woven things on the walls. You expect cobblers to be old, with Geppetto-style whiskers and so on, but this one was young, with bright black eyes and satiny nut-pod skin.

  His main business was making bulky custom footwear for people with diabetes, plus he dyed shoes for bridesmaids and so on. I saw these things as he showed me around his shop. "But what feeds my soul," he told me, unconscious of his pun, "is making exquisite shoes of calfskin and kidskin for people who want something different." His voice was good-humored and spicy with the offbeat cadence of his accent.

  He pointed to his photo wall. "These are examples of what I can do."

  The shoes were beautiful—sleek lines and interesting patterns of leathers, lethal high heels—a lot of them—and low slip-ons. I didn't see Audrey's shoes among them, but it didn't matter; Sajeed's style was unmistakable. My heart began to pound. I forced myself to remain casual.

  "The women in this town sure have big feet," I commented.

  "Would you guess that transvestites make up a large portion of my clientele?"

  I looked at him.

  He said, "For men, it is hard to be comfortable in even the largest sizes made for women."

  Mr. Sajeed's shop smelled wonderfully of new leather and shoe wax. Hundreds of wooden lasts hung on rails over his work bench, where perhaps a dozen shoes, some half done, others almost done, lay among worn tools of steel and wood.

  Steel, wood, leather—all good materials to work with one's hands, I thought.

  He glanced at my ragged Chuck Taylors, then met my eyes with a look of solemn sympathy.

  "Well," I said, "I bet you get to know quite a few people in this town."

  "Oh, yes, I do. It is a very friendly place. Would you like to sit? What may I do for you today, Miss Klotzak?"

  "Call me Roberta, please." He smiled resignedly, and I realized he was a man accustomed to civilized forms of address. I sat on a little carved chair and he took a low stool, resting his hands on his thighs. I took out the photograph.

  For an instant he was baffled—A rabbit? You want shoes for your rabbit, lady?—then he saw Audrey's shoes and coughed softly. "Oh, yes. I made that pair."

  "They're very pretty."

  "Pretty but sturdy," he said proudly. "You could walk over a hundred roads in my shoes. Why are you showing me this picture?"

  "Well, Mr. Sajeed, I'm trying to find their owner."

  He looked at me with a little smile. "It would be for a personal reason?"

  "It would, yes. It's a long story, and you're a busy man. Can you help me?"

  His face lifted in remembering. Then he shot me an exceedingly sharp look, which I met with my standard open earnest expression, and I saw that he had an opinion about Audrey Knox.

  He decided to give me her name, his thumbs curling back deliberately. "Miss Beverly Austin. Yes, I made a pair for her and one for her sister. A little different pattern for the sister—the decoration was a thunderbird on each vamp."

  "Sister?" I leaned forward.

  His face clouded. "Not that she has much use for them anymore."

  "What do you mean?"

  He shook his head.

  "Mr. Sajeed, does Beverly Austin owe you money?"

  "How do you know this?" he exclaimed. "I am very impressed."

  "I too have had some dealings with Miss Beverly Austin."

  "Now I understand. Well, I do not know where she is. For a time I tried to find her myself, but"—he spread his hands—"I didn't try very hard. You see, I am no detective."

  "Me neither." For once I didn't laugh nervously when I said it. "So her shoes aren't paid for."

  "Not fully."

  "Have you ever heard the saying, 'New shoes will squeak until they're paid for'?"

  Sajeed burst out laughing. "No! I must put up that saying. Oh, I like that saying."

  "Bad debts," I said. "Cost of doing business."

  "Yes. It was not very much money, anyway."

  "I see." The windows of the shop were clean. A starling lighted on the ledge and preened as if admiring its reflection.

  "Others in this city have wished to find Miss Beverly Austin. I let them keep trying."

  "Others?"

  "It seems always to have to do with money."

  "Always small amounts?"

  "Oh, no! There is a man who—foolishly, I am sorry to say—permitted Miss Beverly Austin to load a truck with many televisions and drive away promising to pay him. He said the shipment was worth $50,000. I will make tea now. If a person sits with me long enough, I must make tea." He went over to his little tea shrine in a corner and carefully
fussed with kettle, hot plate, and canister as we continued to talk.

  I said, "You're very kind, Mr. Sajeed. I'd like a cup very much. What did the police do about the stolen televisions?"

  "Nothing, I'm afraid. They could not find her either."

  "Well," I muttered, "I could've told them where to look until a few days ago."

  "With a truck she would go to Mexico or one of the large cities far from here."

  "Why is that?"

  He shrugged at my ignorance. "That is where one goes with stolen goods. One goes to Mexico if one has a way to cross the border without questions. Or to a large city with many dangerous areas. There such property changes hands easily."

  "Yes." I thought of Detroit. "Well, what about this sister of hers?"

  "I know where you can find her sister, Miss Amanda Austin. Everyone here knows Miss Amanda Austin."

  "Yes?"

  "She is a brave lady, a spiritual lady of good reputation."

  "Spiritual? You mentioned she asked for thunderbird decorations on her shoes. That's a symbol, uh—"

  "A symbol of the American Indians."

  "Right, it's a power symbol, I guess."

  "Do you like sugar in your tea? I like sugar in my tea. Miss Amanda Austin is known to have a special interest in the culture of the native people of this land. Some say she has learned their magic."

  "Really?" How potentially useful.

  The cobbler handed me tea in a red mug with SKI PROVO on it in white letters. His mug featured a sea otter holding an urchin on its stomach. The tea smelled and tasted good. "However, Miss Klotzak, she will surely not help you find her sister."

  "How do you know that?"

  "She did not help me. She does not help anyone who searches for her sister."

  We drank our tea. I said, "She's protective, then."

  "They are two very different sisters."

  "Not twins?"

  "No, Miss Beverly Austin is younger. The young bad one!" He laughed. "Here, I'll get Miss Amanda's address for you, I do not know it by heart. I'm sure she will not mind me doing so."

  He went behind his counter. "My filing system is primitive but useful." And he brought out—what else?—a shoebox, his card catalogue. He flipped through the cards, then pulled out one. "Yes, here," he said, turning it so I could read it. I copied the address and phone number into my pocket notebook.