The Wolf in Winter

by Connolly, John

  Shaky well knew that a hundred and twenty dollars was a lot of money for someone who struggled by on a couple of bucks a day. The instinct would be to celebrate: booze, or perhaps something stronger; and fast food—bought, not scavenged. Alcohol and narcotics made people careless. Rumors would start to circulate that one of their own had enjoyed a windfall.

  By the time he returned to his tent at Back Cove Park, Shaky had a name.

  Brightboy.

  CHAPTER

  XVIII

  The next morning, Shaky didn’t join the line for breakfast at the shelter. He kept his distance, and fingered the note in his pocket. It had been pinned to the bulletin board at Preble Street. The detective wanted to talk. Shaky had memorized the number, but he kept the note, just in case. He knew that the years on the streets had addled his brain. He would sometimes look at a clock face, and see the hands pointing at the numbers, and be unable to tell the time. He could be in a store, the price of a six-pack or a bottle of liquor clear to read on the sign, his change laid out in his hand ready to pay, and fail to make the connection between the cost of the booze and the money in his possession.

  Now, as he stood in the shelter of a doorway on Cumberland Avenue, he repeated the cell phone number over and over to himself. He had considered calling the detective and telling him what he knew, but he wanted to be sure. He wanted to present the detective with hard evidence. He wanted to prove himself, both for his own sake and for Jude’s, so he stood in the shadows and watched his fellow homeless gather for breakfast.

  IT DIDN’T TAKE HIM long to spot Brightboy. He arrived shortly before eight, his pack on his back. Shaky’s keen eyes were drawn to Brightboy’s boots. They were tan Timberlands, better than what Brighboy usually wore. It was possible that he’d found them, but, equally, they were the kind of Goodwill purchase that even a moron like Brightboy might have the sense to make while he had money in his pocket. A good pair of boots would keep your feet warm and dry, and make days spent walking the streets a little easier. He watched Brightboy exchange greetings with those whom he knew, but for the most part he kept to himself. Brightboy had always been a loner, partly out of choice, but also because he couldn’t be trusted. There were those with whom one could leave a pack and know that it would be safely looked after, that its contents would not be searched and its valuables—socks, underwear, a candy bar, a can opener, a permanent water bottle—looted. Brightboy was not such a man, and he had taken beatings in the past for his thievery.

  Shaky had learned that Brightboy had been on a drunken tear these past few days, and a serious one too: Mohawk Grain Alcohol 190 and Old Crow bourbon, bottle after bottle of it. As was his way, Brightboy had declined to share the contents of his portable liquor cabinet. Had he done so, there might not have been quite so many whispers of discontent.

  Shaky didn’t follow Brightboy into the shelter, but instead waited on the street and nibbled on a bagel from the previous day. Shaky was known in most of the city’s bakeries and coffee shops, and rarely left them without having something to eat pressed upon him. He was careful to spread his lack of custom evenly, and by now he had his weekly routine down: this place on Monday morning, this one Tuesday, this one Wednesday . . . They had grown to expect him, and if he missed a visit questions would be asked of him when he returned. What happened? Were you ill? You doing okay? Shaky always answered honestly. He never played sick when he wasn’t, and he never lied. He didn’t have very much, which made retaining some semblance of dignity and honor all the more important.

  Brightboy emerged an hour later. Shaky knew that he’d have eaten, and used the bathroom. He would probably have half a bagel, or a piece of toast, wrapped in a napkin in his pocket for later. Shaky let Brightboy get some distance ahead of him, then followed. When Brightboy stopped to talk to a woman known as Frannie at Congress Square Park, Shaky slipped into the Starbucks across the street and took a seat at the window. With his damaged arm, and the slight stoop that came with it, he felt like the unlikeliest spy in the world. Undercover Elephant would have been less conspicuous. Fortunately, it was Brightboy he was following. Brightboy was dumb, and self-absorbed. He was nearly as bad as the regular folk in his failure to notice what was going on around him.

  Portland was changing. The old Eastland Hotel was being renovated by a big chain—Shaky had lost count of the number of new hotels and restaurants the city had added in recent years—and it looked as if part of Congress Park, the old plaza at Congress and High, would be sold to the hotel’s new owners. A Dunkin’ Donuts had once stood at the corner of Congress Park, and it became a gathering spot for the city’s homeless, but it was long gone now. The businesses that had occupied the space over the years sometimes seemed to Shaky as transient as some of those who frequented its environs. It had been a laundry, a Walgreens, the Congress Square Hotel, and, way back, a wooden row house. Now it was a brick-and-concrete space with a sunken center and a few planting beds, where people like Brightboy and Frannie could conduct their business.

  Brightboy’s encounter with Frannie ended with the woman screaming abuse at him, and Brightboy threatening to punch her lights out. Shaky wished him luck. Frannie had been on the streets for a decade or more, and Shaky didn’t even want to think about the kind of treatment she’d endured and survived in that time. The story was that she’d once bitten off the nose of a man who tried to rape her. This was subsequently described as an exaggeration: she hadn’t bitten off all of his nose, said those who knew of such matters, just the cartilage below the nasal bone. Shaky figured that it must have taken Frannie a while, because she didn’t have more than half a dozen teeth in her head worth talking about. He had a vision of her holding on to the guy by his ears, gnawing away at him with her jagged shards. It gave him the shivers.

  He kept after Brightboy for two hours, watching him search for coins in pay phones and around parking meters, and halfheartedly rummaging through garbage cans. At the intersection of Congress and Deering Avenue, Brightboy took a detour on Deering past Skip Murphy’s sober house. He lingered outside for a time, although Shaky didn’t know why. Skip’s accepted only those who were in full-time employment, or students with some form of income. More to the point, it took in only those who actually wanted to improve themselves, and Brightboy’s best chance of improving himself lay in dying. Maybe he knew someone in there, in which case the poor bastard in question would be well advised to give Brightboy a wide berth, because Shaky wouldn’t have put it past Brightboy to try and drag someone who had embarked on a twelve-step back down to his own level. It was the only reason Brightboy might offer for sharing a drink. Misery loved company, but damnation needed it.

  Brightboy moved on, Shaky trailing him, and at last they came to Brightboy’s stash, where he kept the stuff that he couldn’t, or didn’t want to, carry. There were some who used a shopping cart to haul their possessions, but they were mostly the ones who tried to make a bit extra by scavenging. Brightboy didn’t have that kind of resolve. He had hidden whatever was worth keeping behind a warehouse on St. John Street, stashing it in the bushes beside a Dumpster that looked as if it hadn’t been emptied since plastic was invented. He was crouched over the bushes when Shaky turned the corner, so intent on whatever he was doing that he didn’t hear Shaky approach.

  “Hey,” said Shaky.

  Brightboy was squatting with his back to Shaky. He looked over his shoulder, but didn’t try to get up. Shaky could see his right hand moving in the bushes.

  “Hey,” said Brightboy in reply. His hand kept searching. Shaky knew that it had found what it was seeking when he saw Brightboy smile. Glass flashed in the sunlight as Brightboy withdrew his hand. He started to rise, but Shaky was too quick for him. Some might have called him a cripple behind his back, but he was far from it. His left foot was forward, his right moving in a strong arc to join and then pass it. The toe of his boot caught Brightboy in the side of the head. Brightboy gave a single yelp and fell sideway
s. The empty bottle of Old Crow fell from his hand and rolled across the ground. Shaky aimed a second kick at Brightboy, just to be sure, and because he wanted to. He had never liked Brightboy. Jude hadn’t cared much for him either, even if his personal code of ethics forbade him to turn his back on him. Jude’s attitude toward Brightboy was proof positive to Shaky that his late friend had not been without flaw.

  This time, Shaky landed a glancing blow to Brightboy’s chin. Brightboy started to crawl away, and Shaky finished him off with a toe to the groin from behind. Brightboy stopped moving and lay on the ground, cupping himself with his hands as he moaned softly.

  The previous night’s breeze was no more, and the day was still. Shaky began to search Brightboy’s possessions. It took him only a minute to find Jude’s old canvas bag. Jude had used it to transport what he called his “essentials”: wipes, toothbrush, comb, and whatever book he happened to be reading at the time. It was small enough to carry easily, and big enough to take any treasures he might scavenge along the way, while he left his main pack in a locker at Amistad. Brightboy must have swept Jude’s valuables into it before he left the basement.

  Shaky sank down against the Dumpster. The sight of the bag, the feel of it in his hands, brought home to him with renewed clarity that Jude was gone. Shaky started to cry. Brightboy looked up at him from the ground. His eyes were glazed, and he was bleeding from the mouth.

  “You took this from him,” said Shaky. “You took it from him while his body was still warm.”

  “His body weren’t warm,” said Brightboy. “It was cold as shit.”

  He tried to sit up, but his balls still hurt. He lay down again, rocking with pain, but managed to keep talking.

  “Anyway, Jude would have wanted me to have it. He couldn’t take it with him. If he could’ve talked, he’d have told me so.”

  God, Shaky hated Brightboy. He wished that he’d kicked him hard enough to drive his balls up into his throat and choke him.

  “Even if he’d given this to you, you wouldn’t have deserved to have it,” Shaky told him.

  Inside the bag he found the last of Jude’s money—forty-three dollars, still wrapped in the same rubber band—and Jude’s toothpaste and comb. The wipes were gone. Strangely, the book Jude had been reading at the time of his death, an architectural history of early churches in England, was also among the books stolen by Brightboy. Jude had ordered it specially, Shaky remembered. The people at Longfellow Books had found a paperback copy for him, and refused to accept payment for it. Jude had picked it up days before he died, just after returning from his most recent trip north. Shaky had put the selection down to another manifestation of Jude’s magpie intellect, but his friend had been different about this book. He hadn’t wanted to discuss it with Shaky, just as he hadn’t wanted to tell him exactly where he had gone when he left Portland those final two times.

  “Bangor?” Shaky had pressed him.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Your daughter still up there, you think?”

  “No, I believe she went . . . someplace else.”

  “You find her?”

  “Not yet.”

  Jude had begun to mark the pages as he read. Shaky flipped through them, and some bus tickets fell out. He tried to grab them, but at that moment the wind came up again from out of nowhere and snatched the tickets away. It blew them into some briars, and Shaky tore the skin on his right hand trying to retrieve them. He almost gave up, but he hadn’t come this far to let anything slide that might help the detective. He knelt down and reached into the bush, ignoring the pain and the damage to his coat.

  “Damn you,” he whispered. “Damn bushes.”

  “No,” said a voice behind him. “Damn you, you fuck!”

  The sunlight caught the bottle of Old Crow again. This time it didn’t roll away, but shattered against Shaky’s skull.

  SHAKY CAME BACK TO consciousness as the paramedic tended his wounds. Later he would learn that a driver had come into the lot to turn, and spotted him lying on the ground. The driver thought he was dead.

  “We’ll need to get you stitched up,” said the paramedic.

  He and his colleague wore blue plastic gloves that were stained with Shaky’s blood. Shaky tried to rise, but they held him down.

  “You stay there. We got you.”

  Shaky felt something in his right hand. He looked and saw the bus tickets crumpled in his fist. Carefully he put them into the pocket of his coat, and felt his fingers brush against the piece of paper with the detective’s number on it.

  “You got someone we can call?” said the paramedic, and Shaky realized that they didn’t know he was homeless. He had laundered his clothes only a day earlier, and showered and shaved at Amistad while they were drying.

  “Yes,” said Shaky, and despite the blow to the head he recited the detective’s cell phone number from memory before promptly losing consciousness again.

  CHAPTER

  XIX

  By the time I got to Maine Medical, a doctor had picked the shards of glass out of Shaky’s scalp and stitched him up. He was woozy from the mild sedative they’d given him, but he wasn’t going to be kept overnight. X-rays had revealed no sign of skull fracture. He’d just have a hell of a headache, and his scalp looked as if it had been sewn together by Victor Frankenstein.

  He silently pointed me to his possessions, which were contained in a plastic bag. The nurse told me that, before his lights went out behind the warehouse, he insisted that the medics retrieve his book. That was in the bag as well.

  “A history of early English churches?” I said, waving it at Shaky as he lay on the gurney, his eyes heavy. “I have to say that I’m surprised.”

  Shaky swallowed hard and gestured toward the water pitcher nearby. I poured him a glass and held it to his mouth. He only dribbled a little.

  “It was a friend’s,” he said.

  “Jude’s?”

  He nodded, but it clearly made his head hurt, because he winced and didn’t try to do it again.

  “Coat,” he said.

  I went through the pockets of his coat until I found the bus tickets, along with the scrap of paper containing my cell phone number. The tickets were for two Portland–Bangor round-trips with Concord, and then two further onward round-trips on the Cyr Bus Line that connected Bangor to Aroostook and points between, this time from Bangor to Medway, in Penobscot County.

  “Where did he get the money for these tickets?” I asked Shaky. “From earlier loans he called in?”

  “Guess so,” said Shaky. “And bottles and cans.”

  Portland’s homeless, like most people in their position, made a little money by scouring the trash for drink containers. Tuesday evenings were particularly profitable, since Wednesday was pickup day for recycling.

  “Did he say why he wanted to go to Medway?”

  “No.”

  “But it must have been something to do with his daughter?”

  “Yeah. Everything had to do with his daughter these last few weeks.”

  I looked again at the tickets. The main reasons to go to Medway were hunting, fishing, snowmobiling, and skiing, and I couldn’t see Jude doing any of those, whether they were in season or not. Perhaps his daughter had ended up there, but at this time of year there wasn’t a whole lot happening. Eventually the snow would melt, but a lull would follow before the summer tourists began arriving.

  I flicked through the book. There was something there, something that I couldn’t quite grasp. It danced at the edge of my awareness. Maine and English churches.

  Then it came to me: a town with an ancient church, an English church.

  “Prosperous,” I said aloud, and a nurse gave me a curious glance. “But what the hell would Jude be doing in Prosperous?”

  IT DIDN’T TAKE LONG for the police to find Brightboy. He’d bought himself a half
gallon of Caldwell Gin and found a quiet spot in Baxter Woods in which to drink it. He hadn’t even bothered to ditch the items that he’d taken from Jude’s basement. After they cuffed him and put him in the back of the car, Brightboy told them, without prompting, that he wasn’t sorry for hitting Shaky with the empty Old Crow bottle.

  “I’d have hit him with a full one,” he said, “if’n I could have afforded to.”

  When he was questioned at Portland PD headquarters, once he’d sobered up some, Brightboy could add little to the sum of knowledge about Jude’s death, and Shaky didn’t want to press charges over the assault, arguing that “Jude wouldn’t have wanted me to.” Then again, Jude was dead, and he wasn’t the one who’d been smacked over the head with the Old Crow.

  A bed was reserved for Shaky at one of the shelters, and the staff had agreed to keep an eye on him for any signs of concussion. He looked comfortable when I spoke to him about Brightboy, but an emergency shelter didn’t seem the best place in which to try to recover from a head injury. As good fortune had it, Terrill Nix was one of the respondents to the initial assault, and between us we agreed to see if something could be done to move Shaky up the housing-placement list in return for his efforts in tracking down Brightboy.

  The police continued to question Brightboy about Jude, and what he might or might not have seen in the basement. Brightboy didn’t prove too helpful on that count—not out of unwillingness but because he had seen nothing beyond Jude’s corpse and the consequent open season on his possessions. The cops could have charged Brightboy with both petty theft, for the total value of the cash and other items taken from the basement was less than five hundred dollars, and with interfering with a possible crime scene, but in the end they decided just to put him back on the streets. The court and the prison systems were overburdened as it was, and a spell behind bars was unlikely to have much of an impact on Brightboy one way or another.