Though the A/C was rattling away under the hood, the air in the cab was tepid, as if the Freon charge was totally depleted. Feeling the sweat beads forming on his brow, he dropped the transmission into Reverse and pulled the oversized truck around and marveled at the growing queue of cars funneling into the Bi-Mart parking lot. The steel roller doors were in the up position and people with colorful membership cards held high were jostling against each other to get to the single door servicing the bunker-type building.
Trunk lids and hatches were open and people were stuffing cases of food and water into the backs of their cars, vans, and SUVs. A man with two carts parked against a truck similar to Duncan’s was hoisting the items from them into the load bed. He was a frenzy of motion as if a civilization-ending earthquake or asteroid strike was imminent.
So with the idea of bulling through the sea of vehicles and fighting a crowd of bluehairs for the last can of peaches on the shelf riding just a smidge higher on his bucket list than volunteering for a proper waterboarding session, Duncan nosed the Dodge into the next break in eastbound traffic. He wheeled through the Woodstock neighborhood on the boulevard sharing its name. Home to nearly twenty different neighborhoods, most filled with eclectic shops, eateries, and one- and two-story bungalows, Southeast Portland stretched east from the banks of the Willamette River on a gentle upslope for sixty tree-dotted-blocks before finally leveling off and becoming the blight colloquially known by locals as Felony Flats—where Duncan currently lived.
A dozen blocks east of Mickey Finn’s he was forced to the curb by a trio of cop cars screaming by. Same light show as before, but with sirens blaring that sent endorphins flooding into his bloodstream, instantly dulling the Jack- and Bud-induced buzz. While watching a laggard close the gap with the other patrol cars, Duncan plucked his phone from his pocket and scrutinized the tiny screen. Nothing. There was no indication of a missed call from his brother, however, the signal strength meter was blipping left-to-right between one bar and three as if keeping time with the Travis Tritt tune coming low and slow through the door-mounted speakers.
Once the police were out of sight, he pulled back onto Woodstock and continued east to where it crossed 82nd Avenue. Instead of continuing on, he turned right onto 82nd and drove a few blocks south to Flavel, where a hooker in a modified School Girl’s uniform—plaid skirt and white shirt, tails tied in a loose knot over her pudgy midriff—tried to get his attention.
Not one to ever pay directly for extracurricular activities—not even when he was on leave in Saigon—he ignored the streetwalker and, while waiting for the light to turn, cast his gaze over the rough-and-tumble neighborhood.
On the east side of 82nd, for blocks and blocks, garishly painted establishments crowded the sidewalk. Signs of all types offering Private Lap Dances, Authentic Tamales and Burritos, Liquor, and everything in between beckoned. On the corner opposite a Chinese Take-Out place was a windowless pawn shop with an armed guard standing sentinel underneath a splash of neon promising Cash for Guns, Gold and Jewelry. A few blocks south on 82nd Avenue was the financial district and its grimy storefronts with hand-lettered signs offering No I.D. Check Cashing, Western Union Wire Transfers and Ninety-Nine-Cent Money Orders.
Just beyond the storefronts, colorful banners and flags fluttered lazily. Below the eye-catching heraldry, sunlight flared from windshields of newly washed vehicles parked on a stretch of used-car-lots backing up to a sprawling neighborhood consisting of multi-unit apartment complexes, double-wide trailers, and rundown one- and two-story homes rented out by opportunist slumlords. Save for pockets in Boring and Gresham, both far removed from inner Portland, this miles-long enclave east of 82nd was the last bastion for the multitudes of folks pushed out by the recent gentrification of inner Portland that sent prices for thousand-square-foot two-bedroom homes skyrocketing into the realms of the like-sized condos in the steel and glass South Waterfront Towers.
The left turn arrow turned green.
The hooker flashed some thigh.
Shaking his head “No,” Duncan steered the Dodge onto Southeast Flavel and slowed halfway up the block to wave at a hunched-over old woman pushing an upright wire-basket on wheels ahead of her. She lived on the dead-end street opposite his and was very self-sufficient for her advanced years. And if she saw him just now, or anything else going on around her, she didn’t let on. Those white-spoked wheels kept spinning as she trudged toward 82nd at a glacial pace.
The drive to Charlie’s little cottage was gravel and rutted. There were no sidewalks and both sides were overgrown to the point of resembling a fauna tunnel. Gnarled blackberry bushes dominated at ground level, while the long, hanging tendrils of a weeping willow cut off daylight from above.
Like driving out from the finishing end of a carwash, wiry branches and sun-shocked leaves brushed the truck’s roof and thorny brambles raked its flanks, producing a fingernails-on-chalkboard keen that always sent a cold shiver down Duncan’s spine.
Still chilled from the sound, he pulled the Dodge up close to the tiny garage, leaving it skewed diagonally. Turning the bastard on the car-sized circle of dirt and gravel here was akin to spinning a battleship around in a duck pond. But beggars couldn’t be choosers, he supposed. The couch in Charlie’s living room was just long enough so that his feet didn’t hang off the end. Much better than having to find a dead-end street and cramming his carcass on the bench seat of his truck night after night until a job materialized so that he could afford rent for a room in an 82nd Avenue roach motel or an efficiency apartment downtown.
The V8 suffered vapor lock and ran on for a second even after Duncan switched it off and yanked the key. A dying steed, he thought glumly. First the A/C and now the engine’s going. Just what I don’t need. He grabbed his phone and elbowed the door open.
Boots on the ground, he was greeted by a low-throated growl from beyond the brambles—a far sight more tolerable than the all-out bark-fest that had been the norm. Lately, it seemed as if the neighbor’s dog was getting used to the sound of his truck coming and going. However, the big-boned Rottweiler had been bred and trained to keep the local riff-raff away, and the short time Duncan’s scent had been present at Casa Charlie wasn’t nearly enough conditioning to fully endear him to the nameless guard dog.
The animal’s growl rose and fell in volume, and in one of the valleys Duncan heard the wail of sirens and whoosh of hard-working high-performance engines speeding left-to-right up Flavel towards 92nd Avenue.
As Duncan separated the door key from the tangle on the ring, the stench of something burning was back, heavier on the air than before. Though the flat land beyond 92nd was not quite rural by definition, it was still feasible that somebody was thumbing their nose at the authorities and illegally burning brush, trash, or a combination thereof.
Giving the heightened state first responders seemed to be on, Duncan doubted the scofflaws would be given a second glance, even if a neighbor or passerby ratted them out.
He worked the key in the chest-level lock and listened for the throw of the bolt before pushing in. Once inside, he halfheartedly nudged the door closed with the back of his boot, and made a beeline for the fridge. After snatching a frosty Bud off the lower shelf, he thumbed his phone open and punched in a number from memory, completely oblivious to the sliver of light spilling around the edges of the compromised front door.
Sitting down hard on the sofa’s sagging cushions earned him a lapful of suds and bounced his keys onto the floor. Cursing under his breath, he hinged forward and snatched up the furry purple fob and tossed the keys on the table. After the second ring a feminine voice answered with a warm, albeit rehearsed greeting.
Wiping the beer off his crotch, Duncan said warmly, “Hi, Hillary. How are you today, young lady?”
Hillary gushed for a second over his kind words. Then, sparing no detail, she went into National Enquirer mode, spilling several months’ worth of gossip in seemingly one long sentence.
As Duncan listened to
her lengthy reply, he took a long pull on the beer and put his booted feet up on the table. Eager to get to the meat of the call, he bobbed his head side-to-side and made a pretend mouth with his free hand, opening and closing in perfect time to the cadence of Hillary’s droning voice.
“That’s nice,” was his canned response once she’d finished detailing an entire summer’s worth of office happenings as well as all six day camps attended by her three grade-school-aged kids. “You’ve been a busy little beaver. Is Darren in today?”
“Nope. He’s in up in British Columbia—”
“Valhalla?”
“Yeah,” Hillary replied, divulging this only because she had a little bit of a crush on the older man. “He flew out yesterday to go look at a pair of Bell 429s they’re trying to sell him.”
Duncan smiled. “That’ll make eight Bells and the two slicks … I mean Hueys. Where’s he going to hangar all of them? Who’s going to pilot them?”
Hearing the hope in Duncan’s voice, without thinking of the hurt she was about to inflict, Hillary said, “I thought the FAA indicated they will never reinstate you because of the medical?”
In a low voice, Duncan replied, “That’s old news. Twenty years old now. I’ve conceded to the fact that my wings are clipped. I just want my old job back.” He went quiet. Just the electronic hiss over the line.
After a few seconds, Hillary said, “I’m sorry, Duncan. I heard the excitement in your voice, that’s all. I like you. But, I’m not supposed to be talking to you. Darren thinks you’re a liability. He’s not going to take you back until you first agree to his only demand. And you have to agree to do at least that to get your driver’s license back.”
Duncan grunted. “Eff that,” he said. “I’m no quitter. You can tell Darren I’m not going to AA. I’m not getting an SR-22 to drive to Hillsboro and continue on as his glorified shop boy.”
“He cares about you, Duncan. Don’t burn a twenty-plus-year bridge.”
Seeing red, Duncan said, “Tell Darren he can take his shiny new Huey wannabes and stuff ‘em up his keister sideways.”
He heard Hillary chuckle at that. He imagined the thirty-six-year-old executive secretary looking over both shoulders first, though.
“Rotors spinning or static?” she asked and then burst out in laughter that made Duncan smile. Getting a grip on herself, Hillary’s voice took on a serious tone. “Please tell me you’re going to get help.”
Duncan said nothing. He flopped his head over the sofa back and ran a hand through his gray hair.
“You drank yourself out of the right seat, Duncan. And now your drinking has gotten you slapped with two new DUIs. Your problem with the drink is real. At least admit that to yourself.”
Still, Duncan made no reply.
She countered the silence by saying, “That’s the first step, you know. Admitting—”
Duncan mumbled, “I can do it on my own. Besides … I was done with Stump Town Aviation a long time ago.” He thumbed the Call End button, flipped the phone closed and chucked it unceremoniously on the table by his keys. Surrounded by a heavy silence, he drained his beer in one long gulp, belched into his shoulder and wiped his silver mustache on his shirt sleeve.
“I ain’t no quitter,” he muttered. Grabbing the remote off the side table, he pointed the sleek device at the television a dozen feet to his fore, and powered it on.
As the big flat screen came to life, he stood and walked the dead soldier to the kitchen, hoping to find the willpower to return empty-handed.
Chapter 8
Cursing quietly at the snarl of honking cars clogging the street and wanting to be true to his word that he’d get his fare to Mickey Finn’s on time and under budget—the promised tip and cold beverage figuring heavily into the decision—Nate threw the transmission into Reverse and made a quick J-turn. Before the line of cars could hem them in, he nosed the retired cruiser through a nearly empty parking lot, looped behind the Laughing Planet restaurant, and emerged on a cross street still three blocks west of his fare’s intended destination.
With the meter at $17.00 and climbing, Nate swung a left and sped east down a side street paralleling Woodstock. At this point the challenge seemed personal. Charlie gripped the grab bar as the three blocks went by in a blur of front stoops, parked cars, and mature trees.
Finally, with the meter creeping toward $17.50, the cabbie hooked another hard left and came to a screeching halt in front of Mickey Finn’s east-facing windows.
“Seventeen dollars and seventy-six cents,” crowed Nate in a deep baritone, as he punched a grimy button on the meter, halting the red numeral’s steady crawl. “Told you I could do it in under twenty.”
“And I didn’t doubt you for a second,” Charlie said as he stared at the cab’s reflection in the bar’s windows. The sun was nearly overhead and beating down, throwing a glare off the vertical glass. He squinted and shielded his eyes with a hand, trying to see inside. There was some movement. Just shadow-like blobs at the bar tipping back pint glasses, but seeing as how the parking lot where Duncan would have parked his pick-up was on the building’s opposite side, there was no way Charlie could discern if one of the vague shapes was him or not. So he handed Nate a twenty with a five folded inside and said, “You coming in for a drink?”
After a moment’s hesitation, Nate shook his head. “I better not. They’re bound to lift the no-fly if I do. Can’t afford to miss out on those fares.”
“I might need a lift to 87th and Flavel. Can you wait for just a second while I poke my head inside?”
Nate nodded and swept a hand at the cars vying for entry to the Bi-Mart lot. “I’ve got to backtrack the way we came no matter what I do. Go on inside. I’ll turn around and give you a couple of minutes. Least I can do … not many good tippers left.”
“If my friend isn’t inside,” said Charlie, “I’ll be right out.”
The driver nodded and slipped the cash into his shirt pocket.
Unico Building Downtown
Don was just getting into his routine. His stress level from sitting in the city bus in the midst of so much negative energy was no longer sky high. The side-effects from whatever ingredients were in the tear gas shells the police had used on the anarchist occupiers were no more aggravating to him now than a mild case of hay fever. Though his eyes itched, he figured he’d survive the small dose of pepper extract and that had started him thinking about lunch. Subliminally steered his thoughts to the food cart down the block, whose pepper-and-cheese-slathered tamales were the best he’d ever had. And he had sampled tamales in nearly every city host to an NBA team prior to the expansion into Orlando and Minnesota. Twenty-two years out of the league, he thought. And broke as a joke. But damn, he could justify sending out for some eats from La Carreta de Rosa.
A sleek Audi four-door rolled up silently. If it wasn’t for the sedan’s glowing daytime running lights and the subtle squeak of high-performance rubber on the smooth garage floor, he would have been dialing his friend Javier and ordering up his lunch. But the food could wait. The look parked on the face of the octogenarian philanthropist driving the car caused him to start. Last time he’d seen one like it, was on the face of a man in blue, hunched behind a Plexiglas shield and brandishing a collapsible whip baton. And stranger still, he had only seen the look—an amalgam of terror, incredulity, and astonishment all in one—twice in his life. And almost too much a coincidence to believe, both instances were a mere hour apart.
Concerned, Don asked, “Mr. Childress … is everything okay?”
The bald man said nothing. Eyes never leaving Don’s, he whirred his window down a few inches, reached through the narrow gap, and waved his passkey in front of the reader. The older man’s body language made Don wonder if the eccentric saw his puffy eyes and assumed he was carrying a bug deadly to someone pushing ninety.
Childress’s icy gaze didn’t leave Don until the barrier arm was in the full-up position. Then, shooting Don’s supposition out of the water, the man
turned his head and focused on the rectangle of daylight. In the next beat, as if flung off an aircraft carrier’s deck, the low-slung sports car accelerated rapidly, scraping its undercarriage where the garage floor transitioned to ramp. It picked up speed on the incline and rocketed across the sidewalk, missing by inches a pair of pedestrians seemingly oblivious to the warning buzzer and flashing lights positioned above the garage entrance at street level.
Don slid the door into the pocket and hinged his upper body out the opening. “Would have been your fault, Childress,” he said, his voice bereft of any conviction. Truth be told, the old man had just avoided a huge lawsuit that he would have been able to easily afford, but furious at having wrought. And Don had narrowly avoided having to choose whether to lie for the man in order to keep his job, or tell the truth and live on his meager pension.
With the warning chime still echoing about the garage, he watched the silhouetted pair stop mid-stride to swipe drunkenly at the airspace just vacated by the speeding car. Then, as Don reached for the phone, the lucky pedestrians conducted near-identical pirouettes and started down the ramp in his direction.
Seeing nearly the same thing that Charlie had at shift change, the difference: two backlit silhouettes instead of a single giant-sized one, Don strained to make eye contact. Last thing he wanted to do was fill out paperwork for a non-event.
“You didn’t heed the warnings,” Don said. A half-truth.
Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 10): Drawl (Duncan's Story) Page 4
