“We’ll be by tomorrow to see you,” I said. “Rest up, show those pictures to the other kids here. Tomorrow I’ll put you to work.”
“Thank you, sir,” Ryan said.
“Yes,” Sarah said. “Thank you.”
“All right then,” I said. I watched them shoulder their packs and go into the hostel. “You figure they’ll be all right?”
Marcos found that funny. “They’ll be just fine, Dad.”
I turned the car around and got back on Hennepin, went back to Uptown, then headed east to Powderhorn Park. Marcos directed me till we pulled up in front of a battered two story home with a big sign in front that said sunshine gardens. The house was sagging and worn out, like the other homes here. This neighborhood had housed mill factory workers in the fifties, but those people were gone or shuttered into their homes surrounded by low income and welfare families. Powderhorn Park was a thriving drug marketplace, and gang activity was rife in the area. But this house, while it had a slight lean of decay, showed signs that people cared for it. The yard was picked up, the grass carefully mown, and flowers bordered the concrete walk up to the small porch where several rocking chairs sat vacant.
Marcos led the way up the walk. He knocked on the door, and looked up at the small video camera discreetly positioned to cover the entrance. He smiled and raised his hand in greeting to the camera. We waited for several minutes.
“Good security,” I said.
“They need it,” Marcos said. “This is a rough neighborhood. And sometimes these kids got people after them.”
The entrance buzzer sounded, and then the heavy metal reinforced door opened. A tall blond woman in her late thirties, her long hair carefully braided and slung over one shoulder of a lilac patterned summer dress, held the door.
“Hello, Marcos,” she said.
“Hey, Elena,” Marcos said. “This is my friend Frank.”
Elena smiled, dimples in each cheek and an array of crow’s feet around her eyes. She held out a slim hand and shook my hand firmly. “I’m glad to meet you, Frank. Marcos tells me good things about you. Please come in.”
She led us down a short hallway, the floor polished and clean, to a small sitting room with two couches and an armchair. She waved us to a couch and sat down in the armchair.
“Now,” she said. “What can I do for you?”
“I’ve told Frank about what you do here, Elena,” Marcos said. “He’s looking for a girl that might have been here a few months ago.”
“Do you have a name or a picture?” Elena said.
I handed her a flyer. “Luella Pound.”
Elena studied the photograph carefully. “No. I don’t remember her. In the last few months you said?”
“That’s right,” I said.
“I’d remember her if I’d seen her,” Elena said.
“Do you get a lot of kids in and out of here?” I said. “How long to they stay with you?”
Elena settled back in her chair and smoothed a crease in her dress. Her legs were bare and very tan, and she wore brown leather huaraches sandals.
“I get some for as long as six months,” she said. “Most of the time it’s ninety days or less. I have some emancipated minors who are getting situated with a place to live and a job, I have some who are in court ordered protection till we can get them placed in a foster home, I have some runaways who show up and need a place to stay.”
“What do you do with the runaways?” I said.
“I offer them a safe place to stay while they work out their options,” she said.
“Like what?” I said.
“Sometimes they have a good reason for running,” Elena said. “The teen years are hard years under the best of circumstances. Some of these kids come from hellish situations. Some might return home, or seek help from social services, or find a job or go back to school…lots of things. I’m here to help them. I provide liaison with the appropriate social services, at the city, county or state levels, whatever it takes. Sometimes they go into foster homes, or maybe they can work things out at home and go back.”
“How many kids do you keep here?” I said.
“I have beds for sixteen. Sometimes I stretch that, but sixteen is what I’m set up for.”
“Do you have any kids that have been here for the last three months?”
“Yes. Six. I’ve got thirteen in house right now.”
“You could put a couple more up?”
“Yes,” she said.
“We met two kids from Fargo, they’re in the youth hostel. Could you talk to them?” I said.
“Sure,” Elena said. “I got a lot of kids from North Dakota.”
“I’ll bring them by later on,” I said. “If I leave you some flyers, would you show them to your kids, see if any of them recognize her? Maybe they saw her on the street or ran into her when they first hit town.”
“I’d be glad to,” she said. “There’s another house like this in St. Paul. I’ll fax them a flyer and ask them to do the same. How’s that?”
“That’s great, Elena,” I said. I stood up, and Marcos unfolded himself from his catlike sprawl. “Thanks for your time. I appreciate it.”
She showed us to the door. She smelt of lilacs. “It’s a hard life out there. It’s good that you’re looking for her. Marcos said she was the daughter of a friend?”
“Friend of a friend,” I said.
She gazed at me. Her eyes were hazel with green highlights that shimmered in the sunlight. “I would think you’d be a good friend. You have a good one in Marcos.”
I laughed, a little embarrassed. “I don’t know about all that.”
“Yes on both counts,” she said. “Marcos is a good hearted man, and he would only be friends with a man of good heart.”
“You’re too kind, Elena,” Marcos said.
She kissed him on the cheek and shook my hand. “Let me know if there’s anything else I can help you with. And bring those two from North Dakota by.”
“I’ll do that, Elena,” I said.
She watched us till we reached our car, then she shut the door. In the car, I said, “Nice lady. What’s her history?”
Marcos looked out his window at the house till we pulled away. “She was with the county as a social worker for awhile. Got a grant, went out and got matching money, bought this place and fixed it up. Everybody likes her, all the way up the chain. She goes out, just like we’re doing, looking for strays. They know her out on the street.”
“Dangerous for a pretty lady.”
“She got hurt once,” Marcos said, his mouth twisted in distaste. “Couple of bangers beat her and robbed her. She came back from that. Took Diana’s self defense class down at the Kali Group. Elena, she don’t let anybody scare her. Those bangers, a couple of cops, Joe Spenser was one of them, caught their asses and put them away. They were sporting a few bruises, too.”
“That Joe Spenser gets around.”
“Yes, he surely do. So what now?”
“Let’s hand out flyers,” I said. “Then we can cruise a little before we call it a night.”
v.
We worked the corners up and down Lake Street and over on Franklin. As the evening grew, more of the city’s night creatures came out. A gap toothed black man in designer jeans with his blue bandanna knotted in the elaborate display of gang sign studied the flyer.
“They a reward?” he said.
“Might be, we find her,” I said.
“How much?”
“Depends. You seen her or not?”
“Might have. Don’t remember for sure.”
“When you remember, call,” I said. “If it leads to something, Santa might come early.”
“The fuck is that? Santa come early?”
“You’ll get paid,” Marcos said patiently. “But only if we find her.”
“How much?”
And so it went. Finally I said, “You want to stop at Gigi’s for a drink?”
“I got to get up tomorrow,” Marcos
said. “My one morning class.”
“What’s that?”
“Varieties of the Epic in English Literature.”
“That’s heavy for a morning class.”
“Tell me about it. Let’s call it a night, Frank.”
We went back to the car, plucked a parking ticket off the windshield. We drove down Franklin towards Hennepin and as we went through the intersection of Franklin and Nicollet, I saw a big olive green Hummer parked in the liquor store lot.
“Wonder how many of those are out here?” I said.
“What?” Marcos said.
“The Hummer.”
I slowed down and Marcos craned his head for a look. “Not too many of those in this neighborhood. You think the Terminator lives around here?”
“I got a funny feeling. Let’s stop and take a look.”
“You’re driving.”
I turned around at the first place I could make a U-turn, then drove back and pulled into the lot, beside the green Hummer. My hunch paid off. The angry black man from the terminal and the Terminator look alike sat inside the Hummer, both of them looking at me with undisguised anger. I rolled down the window.
“How you doing?” I said.
The black man glared at me and never said a word. The big blond driver leaned forward and gave me a long cold stare, memorizing my face.
I held up a flyer and said, “Seen this girl?”
The black man opened his mouth as though to say something. The Terminator beat him to it, in a voice surprisingly small for such a big man. “Let me see that.”
I handed it over to the black man, who snatched it from me, then gave it to the driver. He took his time looking.
“What is your interest in this girl?” he said.
“Friend of the family,” I said.
“That’s your only interest?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Why did you take those two, today, from the bus station?”
“Why do you ask?”
“It seems unusual that our paths would keep crossing.”
“What’s your deal with these kids?” I said.
“I have no business with them. I saw you and them and I was curious.”
“So you’ve never seen this girl?” I said.
“Oh, I didn’t say that,” the Terminator said. He started his Hummer, the throaty rumble of the engine loud between the cars. “Have a nice night.”
He pulled out. I memorized the plate: 978 LVE. Marcos opened his door and got out and leaned on the roof of my Camry. He watched the Hummer power slowly across the parking lot. Both men stared at us. Then the driver waved at us as he pulled into the traffic and drove away.
“The fuck was that?” Marcos said.
“Will Spenser do favors for you?” I said.
“Depends on the favor.”
I took a slip of paper from the glove box and wrote the license number down. “See if he’ll run this plate number. I’d like to know more about Mr. Hummer.”
“He’s just playing with you, Frank. ‘I didn’t say that.’ The fuck is that?”
“Maybe he’s just playing with us. But he’s into something with these kids.”
“Maybe he thinks you’re horning in on his thing. Maybe he was going to make a play for Ryan and Sarah and you messed him up.”
“Maybe he’s a freak who needs killing,” I said. There was more heat there than I intended.
“Whoa, there, paratrooper,” Marcos said, holding both hands up in surrender. “Get a grip on your temper. This isn’t a free fire zone.”
“Maybe it should be,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”
vi.
I didn’t take my Zyprexa till I got home, well after midnight. It took two hours of tossing and turning in bed before the soporific effect of the Zyprexa dragged me down into a deep sleep.
I dreamt savage dreams.
I saw myself taking the big blond man, a knife in my hand, slicing through his arms as I cut through his defensive guard, angling for the thick neck and the ropy veins pulsing there. Then I saw the teenage girl, Sarah, her sweet face and soft voice and her woman’s body, and my body betrayed me with an erection. I was disgusted with myself for wanting her, but I dreamed of taking her, her white body laid open like a flower beneath me. We lay together in a bed in a small whitewashed room, and the head of the blond man was mounted on a shelf above the bed, his eyes open and watching us, his mouth twisted in a leer as he watched the young girl move beneath me.
I dreamt of Marcos, on foot, facing down a small army of large boxes the size of an old style telephone booth, and each one opened to disgorge the angry man from the bus station, dozens of them with all the same face. Marcos fought them all, skillfully, his hands and feet whirling in the intricate traps and parries of kali, a blade in one hand, a stick in the other, the stick whistling in a series of blows to open their guards so he could enter with the knife, but they kept coming, more and more of them, till he was finally taken down by the dark tide of men.
The blond man’s face spread across the sky like the angry visage of God, watching Marcos go down. Clouds swirled around his face and his evil leer darkened the sky, and then he laughed as the men swarmed over Marcos, and it was like a distant thunder. I struggled to reach Marcos, but my limbs were slow and sluggish, as though I were fighting my way through oil, and I couldn’t get there in time to help him. My friend fought to his feet and then long daggers flew from the eyes of the blond man and struck Marcos down.
I woke with a start, my heart pounding, and looked at the clock. It was four a.m. I’d only been asleep for two hours. I went to the bathroom and used the toilet, then went back to bed, groggy and not quite able to fall asleep. I lingered in that half twilight between sleep and waking, with bits of dream dancing just out of reach of my logical mind, until the dark began to lighten outside my windows.
CHAPTER FIVE
i.
I slept till noon. Even after a shower, and then several cups of black coffee at the Diner, I still felt sluggish and sleepy. The medication does that. It runs in cycles along the body’s circadian rhythms. Sometimes I’m just fine, other times I’m sluggish. The coffee helped me get clear most of the time, though Doctor Marks didn’t want me drinking caffeine, as it pulls the medication out of the blood stream too quickly.
After I read the paper, I went home. The lunchtime crowd in the Diner annoyed me. There were two messages on my answering machine. I sat down with a pen and pad and punched the play button. The first message was silence. There was background street noise, and the distinctive crackle of a poor cellular connection. Then a hang up. The time stamp on the message was six a.m. I’d slept through it, which was easy to do since I turned the ringer down as low as it could go. The second message was from Wayne Goddard, a part-time hunting guide in Heron, Montana. His full time job was team leader of the Super Cell I worked with.
He had a distinctive Boston accent. “Hey Frank. Wayne here. Just checking in. We’ve got some things brewing that may come to a head soon. I’ll call you back around eighteen hundred your time. Stand by for the call, all right? Talk to you then.”
That was five hours from now. I felt too sluggish to go out again with the flyers. It was a good time to stay home and mind the phone and catch up on my reading. I slouched in my recliner, a stack of books beside me, and stared into space as I sorted out the muddled impressions my dreams had left. After a while, time seemed to spin past faster and faster. I would look away from the clock, and then back, and a half hour would have passed. I kept looking at the phone as though it were about to ring.
Strange.
That’s how I felt today. Strange. The blond man and his partner from the bus station had set me on edge. The violence I lived with and kept carefully banked away had boiled up for a moment, and in that moment I had seriously considering killing the two men.
How easy that would be.
I had to be careful with that. Marcos had seen it, commented on it, and h
e would remember it. I wondered why I hadn’t heard from him.
Time passed in a fluid reverie. I flipped through my books, lingered over a chilling short story by Joyce Carol Oates in the Best American Short Stories collection, then set the book down.
The phone rang.
I picked it up and said, “Hello?”
There were street sounds and the crackle of a poor connection.
“Hello?” I said again.
The phone disconnected.
I spun my Caller ID unit around so I could see it. private caller. They’d blocked the number. I didn’t like that. I waited. They didn’t call back.
After a while, the mail came, and I killed time flipping through the bills, the ads, an Outside Magazine. I looked at the clock and it was almost five. I hadn’t eaten all day. I went into the kitchen to make a sandwich, but the bread had gone stale. I went across the street and got an eggplant sandwich on sourdough to go, brought it back to the house and ate it in my chair. Then I sat there, my fingers drumming on the overstuffed arms, till six o’clock.
The phone rang.
“Hey Frank,” Wayne Goddard said. “How you doing?”
“I’m good, brother.”
“Living the good life?”
“You bet.”
“You should come to Montana. I’ll show you what the good life is all about.”
“We should do that,” I said. “I’ve always wanted to go to Glacier National Park.”
“Glacier is good. My part of the country is just as good.”
“So what’s on?”
“Old Frank. Always to business.”
“It’s a character flaw I’ve grown to accept.”
“We may have a little job over in the Sandbox. There’s a someone in Saudi giving our boss some worries. It’s a small gig, calls for your expertise.”
“When is that going to happen?”
“Timing is still up in the air. You know how it is.”
“Let me know as soon as you can. I’ve got some personal things I need to clear.”
“What does she look like?”
I laughed. “I’ll never tell.”
“I’ll let you know as soon as I know. Consider this a warning order.”
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