I push onward. I’ve been to the loading docks multiple times a day but I have to try it again, like I have Tourette’s for it.
Under the Morrison Bridge a guy comes flying around the corner looking for me. It’s Amy’s buddy, Deuce, the screw-eyed joneser who adores sharing his paper bag.
“Where is she?” I shout.
“Come on,” Deuce says, his voice wanting to break in two.
He leads me to a fenced-in junkyard block of car carcasses, engines, scrap metal and oily puddle-choked gravel. Deuce has a hole in the fence. Inside, my tent stands in a far corner.
I rip open the tent flap as Deuce stands back. “Ah, fuckin’ reeks man,” he says.
I fumble for the flashlight, click it on. Amy lies on her back, her face pale. Vomit is everywhere. Syringes and huffing chemicals lie around. I should impale Deuce on something sharp but there’s no time.
I take their grocery cart, haul Amy into it and, panting and limping, push the thing along and out and of course it has a bad wheel that rattles. Down the street, I see a pay phone but no receiver.
A car rolls up and I wave at it. It speeds away and who can blame it? I feel Amy’s pulse. I kiss her on the head. Another car comes. I heave the cart out to block the street and wave my arms shouting, “Stop! Help! Stop, you!”
The car honks, keeps going. I push the cart onward, my lungs burning, right down the middle of the street. Headlights find us, light us up.
A cab stops. The driver jumps out. He’s black and has an accent. “Get her in, mon,” he says.
“I got no money.”
“I don either, my brother.”
We drop her off at Emergency. I don’t go inside. I take a long look back at all the lights and warmth inside the hospital and I shuffle away, suddenly exhausted.
*
The next morning at dawn, I’m sitting in a doorway next to train tracks up north of the Broadway Bridge. I have all my stuff, one duffel bag full. This is it. Freight trains stop here a lot. The next one that does, I find a car with an open door and I hop and I go. I only hope it goes somewhere warm, because I’m shaking.
I keep telling myself: I can and I will start over, and I don’t need Oscar now. I don’t need any of them.
An unmarked police car pulls up. I look around for a way out, but it’s too late to run and I’m too damn tired. The car stops. Matt is driving. The passenger front window rolls down—it’s Jack. “We gave you twenty bucks,” she says.
“Yeah, well, you want a guy to get a job done ...”
“Don’t give him the money upfront—I know, I know.”
“Get in,” Matt says.
I climb in back. Someone else is there. It’s Gerald Tappen. He’s slumped down wearing sunglasses and has Jack’s Timbers hat on pulled down low. He has a scraggly beard, a cheap raincoat. Hell, like this, we could almost be twins.
“Lookee who we found,” Jack says grinning like it’s Amy’s puppy.
Then I see the gauze bandage covering the other side of Tappen’s face, and the way he’s sitting stiffly like maybe he took some in the ribs.
Before I can comment Jack adds, “He hit the door frame getting in.”
Tappen just shakes his head.
“What about Burly Man?” I say to all.
“Who?” Matt says, and gives Jack a stare.
“I tried that,” Tappen mutters into his lap. “I’m the only one they want.”
“A man has to work,” I say, in the words of Manny.
Matt and Jack just stare at me.
“I’m going to turn myself in,” Tappen says, keeping his eyes forward.
Go ahead and look at me, I want to say—that’s what the sunglasses are for. “It looks like you done it already,” I say.
From the front seat Jack says, “It was Gerald here’s idea to come find you. We figured you were long gone—jumped a train or whatever you guys do.”
“Sure, just like some hobo in a comic strip.”
“I’m going to tell them everything I know,” Tappen says.
“Which is what?” I say.
Tappen pauses. Jack nods for him to go on, like a lawyer does. Tappen says, “Oscar, he fell. At my job site. I decided to cover it up.”
I wait for more, but nothing else gives. Tappen sobs. Jack reaches over the seat back, pats him on the knee.
“I never should’ve left him there at work that day,” I say. “He wasn’t in the best mood to begin with.”
Tappen turns to me. We share a long glance, but I can’t see through those dark glasses.
“Well, what now? You taking me in too?” I say to Matt and Jack.
“Why? You weren’t there,” Jack says.
“Or, were you?” Matt adds.
“No.”
“So. Anything else you want to tell us?” Jack says.
I look them both in the eye, first Jack facing me, then Matt in the rear view mirror. “No. Thanks, but, no.” I open the door, then pause. “Anyone spare any change?”
Matt and Jack shake their heads. “We fell for that one already.”
“All right.”
“Wait,” Matt says. “Seriously? We do want to help.”
“Then say it—say why you want to help. It’s not ‘cause I’m on the street. Look at all these people on the street. It’s got to be in your records: I tried to kill myself. Three times. The first time I almost drowned. You’d think that woulda cured me.”
This gets Tappen staring.
“Touché,” Jack says. “Listen. Just say the word. The offer stands, if you know what I mean.”
Meaning: you tell us what you really found out. “I think I’m good,” I say. “Really. But, thanks.”
*
I don’t hop a train now. Why the hell should I? Not in a world where Eva Tappen did not run. She didn’t confess either. She went ahead and let Tappen confess, knowing he would take the rap for her too and, unknowingly, for Oscar. Knowing a thing or two about a guy who’s about to crack. Eva is hoping I’ll go along. And I just might yet. Because I’m learning the truth I needed. Because Tappen must have developed his own version of the truth if he’s so willing to own up. That and the fact that he is surely hoping for protection from the people he owes a whole ton of money, they who are about to yank a string and let him fall a long way down. Because, Matt and Jack must know that the whole truth is never cut and dried.
Still, I’m going to have to test out my theories if I ever am to move on.
Two days later, I try Niki’s at 3:15. Matt and Jack aren’t there but I ask a waitress if she’s seen them. She says no but I could wait. So I take a booth. She pours me a coffee. I’m in the corner, facing the entrance of this Greek diner like the guy in the movie with all the exits covered.
It takes an hour, but they come and sit on either side of me, Matt to my right and Jack to my left. “Long time,” Matt says.
“And good timing, too,” Jack tells me. “We were just going to come find you. Turns out, we need to know what you know. Our head honchos want to know.”
“You never been tortured,” Matt says, “till you get summoned to my lieutenant’s office and have to smell his patchouli.”
Jack grimaces at that.
“Are you guys running me in?”
“What? No. You were our informant, for a day at least. So let’s wrap this thing up.”
I might never have been much of a better or gambler, but I got nothing to lose either. I hold up my hands, then let them flop on the booth vinyl. “What can I say? I tried Eva Tappen. She took me to her condo. She was sad, maybe a little distraught. Is that the word?”
“Distraught how?”
“She just wanted things resolved. She wasn’t talking to her husband, apparently.”
“But, she didn’t tell you anything new? Nothing at all?”
“Me? No. She did offer to put me up at her place. Between you and me? I think she might have a kink for homeless guys ...”
Jack nods along, smiling, eyes all wide.
“Guess where we were this morning?” Matt says.
“Voodoo Doughnuts.”
“Funny guy. No. We were talking to Eva Tappen.”
In a flash I imagine cop cars pulling up, uniform officers blocking all exits. But it’s just us and the regulars.
“Aka Eva Alvarez,” Jack adds. “Oscar being her brother and all.”
“She’s still there?”
“She was, as of this morning.”
If they were going to arrest me, I realize, they would have already done it by now. I feel a sensation new to me, warm in my belly and frisky in my brain, and it’s not the coffee—I’m feeling cocky. I slap at the booth vinyl. Hell, I even grin. “Well, there you go. If there was anything fishy, she woulda flown the coop.”
“Vamoosed,” Matt says. “She still could.”
“Can’t say I’d blame her,” I say. “I’m guessing having her hubby in jail doesn’t really help the lifestyle. She’d do fine back home with what she’s made of herself.”
“Now there’s a switch,” Jack says. “Ole Mexico’s a more promised land than we got right here.”
“She’s from Guatemala,” I say. “People always make that mistake. Drove Oscar nuts.”
Matt and Jack are sharing one of their glances across me, like they’re the parents and I’m the black sheep kid in the middle.
I add, “Look, you guys, I’m sorry I didn’t check in. It’s just that, there was nothing new to learn. Nothing good anyway. You know how it is.”
“Sure,” Matt says.
“So, why come here?” Jack says to me.
“I guess I just wanted to say I’m sorry. Tie things up like you say. You did tell me to ‘just say the word’ after all.”
Matt and Jack share that parental glance of theirs again.
“Here’s the deal,” I tell them, “I don’t need Oscar. If anything, he probably needed me. It took all this crap to tell me that. What I really should do is thank you guys.”
Matt raises his eyebrows. Jack nods.
“What is it now? Well, what is it?”
Jack pulls out an envelope, places it on the tabletop, and slides it over to me with fingertips. “Eva wanted you to have this. I guess Oscar did too, in his way. She was keeping it for Oscar. She gave it to us when we were there. She was very clear about it. After you left she was looking for you but couldn’t find you, the way you, uh, move around.”
“She said you would know how much it means,” Matt says.
I stare at the envelope. If it’s some kind of confession or goodbye letter, then I still might be screwed. “What happened at her place?” I say, stalling. “She didn’t tell you nothing new?”
“Us? Nope. Just more wrapping things up. Checking Gerald Tappen’s story against hers.” For a moment longer than I think normal, Jack seems to eye me like poker players do looking for a tell. “You really have nothing else to add? Nothing at all?”
“I guess not,” I say.
“Well, that’s it then.”
“It’s a lot of money,” Matt adds.
“Money?”
“Close to eight thousand dollars,” Jack says before I can get a word out.
I snort, and shake my head, and force out a smile.
“Do you have a bank account?” Matt says.
“I do but it’s not like there’s anything in it.” I’ve been saying that same sentence for so many years, I shake my head at that too. “So that’s it? I just take the big check?”
“It’s cash. Don’t worry, the notes are legit. Verified by yours truly.”
“We could go with you to the bank in case they don’t believe you,” Jack adds.
“That’s okay. I don’t want to put you guys out.”
We sit there a moment. I sip my coffee. It’s cold now, but inside me things are practically nice and toasty. I wonder if the money was Oscar’s he was saving or a fund she was saving for him. I’m not going to fight it this time, and I’m not about to go ask her. Eva doesn’t like questions.
“Wow, that Eva must really love Gerald Tappen,” I say after a while.
“Yeah. And he her,” Jack says.
*
I saw Amy once. I was on the bus, riding home after studying up at the Central Library like I’d been doing. It was the end of that following winter. Amy was standing at an intersection on NE Broadway, about as close to an I-5 onramp as you can get and still find a ride—and, I realized, not too far from my old hideaway. Her cardboard sign read: Recovering Addict, Need Ticket Home to Idaho, PLZ.
I had never gone to the hospital to see her or wherever they surely sent her to detox. It wouldn’t have been good for her, or for me. We push each other’s buttons, even though we were such a good team on the street. Sometimes you can’t have one without the other.
She looked cleaned up, her hair combed. She had the puppy. It had grown into its long ears and thick paws. I smiled as my bus moved on, but I didn’t wave. I don’t know if she saw me. I swear I saw her little chin quivering as she stared straight ahead, hoping for the next car to spare a dollar.
I looked for her there every time my bus passed. I still tell myself that she was able to make her way back home and start over.
Gerald Tappen died in custody awaiting trial. Knifed in the gut. It was the old “mysterious circumstances.” The paranoid in me wondered if Eva had her own brand of a Manny do the deed, her self-preservation kicking in over the guilt, but then I woke in the middle of the night with the horrid thought that it could easily have been the men he owed money to. Men like that had an army of far-worse Mannys—safeguarding forever what was already untouchable.
I can’t believe it’s been over a year, almost spring again. I have an apartment now. It’s a one-room job in a low-income building and it will do just fine, thank you. Just having my own bathroom is like going on vacation for a guy like me. I even have a basic cell phone, pay as you go. The smart phone can wait.
I head out and down the front steps. It’s morning. The clouds are high and sheer and it’s almost sunny. I ride my new bicycle—old but new to me, a grown-up-sized cruiser. Two young guys with mustaches on fixed-gear bikes pass me. Type-A professionals in spandex zip by. Let them. I got no rush.
I coast past the four corners, eyeing the scene. The corners are empty except for a few wandering jonesers. The new posters in English and Spanish there read: Better Work, A Better Life: Don’t Let the Job Kill You, with our location and hours listed in smaller print.
Our location is only a few blocks away. We got a small vacant lot with a fence to make day laborers feel safe and plenty more posters and notices and news.
Outside the fence there’s already a long line of day laborers and the sometimes homeless—gringo and Latino, male and female. Some look hopeful, smiling and chatting. Some aren’t looking too good.
I slip through the gate and lock up my bicycle outside our office, a salvaged mobile home. Once inside, I take another look from the window. The line runs down the block now. Some see me and nudge others to pay attention. So I head outside to get things rolling. Burly Manny follows me out with a clipboard—he’s my assistant now. We pay him next to nothing, but he takes it. I open the gate, and I speak right up. “Everybody! Good morning. Buenos días. My name, is Travis ...”
Thank you for reading.
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My latest novel is The Preserve
The US Territory of Hawaii, 1948:
A WWII veteran turned deserter seeks a cure
to his combat fatigue (PTSD) at a mysterious facility called the Preserve, but his handlers aim to turn him into a vile assassin for a deadly plot that runs all the way to General MacArthur.
The Preserve is based on true events such as the Yamashita gold conspiracy, includes real-life characters like nefarious US intelligence operative Ed Lansdale, and offers a sobering take on the dark side of American hegemony in the postwar era.

Find out more about The Preserve
The Preserve on Amazon
About the Author
Steve Anderson is the author of the Kaspar Brothers novels (The Losing Role, Liberated, Lost Kin) and other books. Under False Flags is the prequel to his latest novel, The Preserve. Anderson was a Fulbright Fellow in Germany and is a literary translator of bestselling German fiction as well as a freelance editor. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Novels by Steve Anderson:
The Losing Role (Kaspar Brothers #1)
Liberated: A Novel of Germany, 1945 (Kaspar Brothers #2)
Lost Kin: A Novel (Kaspar Brothers #3)
The Other Oregon: A Thriller
Under False Flags: A Novel (Wendell Lett)
The Preserve: A Novel (Wendell Lett)
Steve Anderson on Amazon
www.stephenfanderson.com
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