by Jack Kerley
I pocketed the Post-it. “Miz Scaler mentioned Richard going out late at night, returning hours later. Ever see that?”
“Three weeks ago. I came in the morning before going to my office. Richard pulled in behind me in one of those huge white cars. He looked half crazy and his clothes were rumpled, his, uh, zipper down. His pants were stained.”
“What happened?”
“All I wanted was out of there. I asked him if he’d kindly take a bag of fruits and veggies and a couple of prepared dinners into Patricia.”
“And?”
“He asked me if I was having a relationship with her – not using those terms. My mouth fell open and I told him no, of course not.”
“What happened from there, Mr Fossie?”
“He started laughing, a filthy, dirty sound, and said he could understand, because it was like…like fucking cold grits.”
I thanked Fossie and dropped him back on the corner. “Keep looking, Mr Fossie,” I said. “It’s what we need.”
“It makes me feel like a creep. A spy or something.”
“You’re working for the good guys. And by the way, I’m sleeping again.”
He smiled for the first time, flicked a wave, hustled back toward the Scaler edifice.
I got into the office to find Harry at the coffee urn and studying doughnuts. Though it was Sunday, half of the detective’s desks were occupied, the price of a murderous season.
“You should eat more oatmeal,” I advised. “A healthy mind and body and all that.”
Harry leaned low over the pastries to scrutinize a danish. “I’m sure these sprinkles are organic.”
“I just got some info from Fossie,” I said, digging in my pocket for the Post-it. “Probably nothing, but worth a try. I put him on scoping out the Scalers’ place, an inside man.”
Harry gave me a frown, like he did after I mentioned my little scam at the prison.
“How’d you pull that one off, Carson?”
“Fossie’s been giving me a little advice on a healthy diet. He prescribed some herbs to help me sleep. It’s working.”
Harry nodded. “My aunt takes that herbal stuff and it did miracles for her. What’s Fossie think this number means?”
“He’s got no idea, but he found it –”
“Harry! Carson!”
We turned to see Tom Mason leaning out his office door with phone in hand. “Got a body at 513 Broad Street,” he called. “The Hoople Hotel.”
I jammed the Post-it back in my pocket. “Ah, the Heroin Hilton. Let’s go dance with the roaches.”
We were at the Hoople five minutes later, Harry wheeling the big blue Crown Vic half on to the sidewalk and shutting down the screamer. Two radio cars were on scene, and a crowd was gathering, vacant-eyed homeless types shambling beside gum-chewing hookers dressed like Whore Barbie. Streetwise studs with white tees and sideslung caps watched from a distance, afraid of getting nailed on outstanding warrants. When I stepped from the car a crack vial crunched under my heel. The air smelled of stale beer from the bar across the street.
We ducked past a uniform and into the Hoople. It was a resident hotel mainly occupied by old-line junkies who worked sporadic, low-pay jobs and needed a place to crib and fix and stay out of the way of normal people.
I saw a young uniformed officer at the desk counter, keeping the clerk from bolting. The clerk was Hispanic, in his thirties, maybe four-foot-ten and ninety pounds. His anxious eyes told me his immigration status was nebulous. Harry asked for directions and the uniform turned to point at the rickety steps leading upstairs.
“Third floor, Detective, room 321, about midway down the ha—”
That was all the clerk needed. He dropped low and bolted, trying to squeeze past us and out the front door. Harry’s hand flashed out and grabbed the guy by the back of his collar. When Harry lifted, the clerk was suddenly in the air, feet still running as Harry whirled around and set him down in the opposite direction, where he ran into a wall, just like a cartoon.
Helping the guy up, dusting off his shoulder, Harry said a few words in Spanish, telling Mr Jaime Critizia we were not going to inform La Migre – Immigration – unless he repeated his attempt at running.
The guy nodded acceptance and collapsed into a metal chair. We headed upstairs to the third floor, saw an open door midway down a hall less than two shoulders wide, a uniformed cop leaning against the wall, Officer Jerry Gilmore. He looked up, shook his head.
“Add another one to the year’s growing list of corpses, guys. Someone called it in anonymously just a few minutes ago. Me and Ryan were down the street, ran over. Found the guy inside, still warm.”
We peeked into a linoleum-floored room scarcely larger than a parking space. Surprisingly, the room was clean and tidy and recently painted. Two large philodendrons perched atop a table by a window, probably the only window in the place that had ever been washed. I saw a painting on the wall, an inexpensive copy of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. The place resembled the digs of a fastidious college student, not a room at a low-rent sleeper.
Across the room the view wasn’t so pleasant: a body on a single bed, a bronze-skinned male in his early forties or thereabouts, jeans, no shirt. His head was shaved. His eyes were open and so was his mouth, a strand of dried vomit tracing down his cheek and throat to the sheet. I figured he’d been a good-looking man in life, his body lean, his features strong and chiseled and exotic.
At the head of the bed, beside a grated window streaked with grime, Sergeant Orville Ryan stared down at the corpse while scribbling notes in a spiral-bound pad almost lost in his plate-sized paw. Somewhere in the room I discerned the dank scent of the sea.
“What is it, Orv?” Harry strode over and looked down at the corpse, said, “Oh,” like things were self-explanatory. I wandered in and saw the cheap plastic syringe on the floor beside the bed, the blackened spoon used to heat the drug, melt it into water or spit that would liquefy it for sucking it up the needle. I snapped on latex gloves as I crouched, lifted the body’s arm and looked at the inner section from bicep to wrist, saw a webworm of scabs and collapsed veins, the stigmata of a veteran junkie.
“Looks like a classic OD,” I said, trying to hide the hopeful note in my voice. If the death was accidental, it wouldn’t fall under our aegis.
“Dead on,” Ryan said, looking up over the reading glasses perched on the tip of a bulbous nose. “He was aimed this direction, just a matter of time.”
“You knew the guy, Orv?” Harry asked.
“Name’s LaPierre O’Fong, officially.”
“O’Fong?”
“To hear Red tell it, years back someone on the Irish side of his family married the Chinese side and somehow – as a joke or maybe meaning it for real – the family changed its name to O’Fong. It got into official records and stuck.”
“That’s some kind of family story,” Harry said.
“He came from some kind of family, to hear him tell it. He went by Chinese Red, or just Red. He’d been on and off smack for twenty-plus years; on, mainly, starting in his late teens.”
I studied the guy’s features closer, saw Asian genes in the delicate nose, almond eyes. He wasn’t Caucasian or African or Hispanic or Asian, but somehow he was all of them and more. His open eyes were staring at the ceiling, like watching a movie in a theater where only the dead got tickets.
“Chinese makes sense,” I said, looking at the face. “Where’s the Red come from?”
“Red’s natural hair was the color of rust. He’d started shaving his head because of me,” Ryan said. “When I’d see that red rug ducking down an alley I’d pull over and roust his junkie ass.”
“You didn’t like him, Orv?” Harry asked.
“I liked Red plenty, Harry. Smart guy, sharp. I wanted him to clean up full time, maybe do something right for the next forty years. Every time I’d roust him I’d give him the speech, pass over a list of detox centers. He’d climb free of the shit, fall down two months later. I’d hear
d through the grapevine that he’d cleaned up again. Guess it didn’t last.”
“How’d he make his living?” I asked.
“Car detailer, when he was clean.”
“And when he wasn’t clean?”
“He hustled. It was another thing I’d roust his ass for; leaning a wall by the docks, winking at rich white guys in Lexuses. He was a good-looking guy. It made scoring off horny old guys pretty easy.”
“Bust him lately?”
“Not in three–four months. I hoped he’d seen the light.”
“He hustle down here by the docks?” Harry asked.
Ryan nodded. “Red preferred being where he could walk to the water. He liked to watch the ships come and go, said the water felt like home.”
“He had fish genes, too?”
“Red called himself a breed of the world, Harry. Said his daddy’s side of the family was Australian Aborigine-Irish-Italian and his mama was Thai and Chi and Russian and French. He said the ocean touched all those places so the ocean was as close as he could get to home.”
“A genetic smorgasbord,” I said. Chinese Red’s multilateral heritage was nothing new in a port city like Mobile; I figured the world’s ports were the planet’s most efficient melting pots.
“The ocean was home?” Harry said. “That’s kind of poetic.”
“There was poetry in Red’s soul, Harry,” Ryan continued. “Like he’d made peace with his life, and just wanted to enjoy it, the dope notwith-standing. A shitty end to a life that might have had some promise.”
Ryan pushed up from his crouch. He nodded to the cop at the door. “Tell the bus drivers they can have the body, Jerry. Chinese Red has sailed for home.”
The bus attendants came for the body. They grunted the dead weight from the bed toward the gurney.
With Harry looking between the body and Ryan, I saw a blue denim pant leg sticking from the shadows beneath the bed, a dark spot on a rolled-up cuff. I tweezed the pants out with my fingertips. When I saw the familiar stain I pulled latex gloves from my pocket and snapped them on.
“What is it?” Harry said.
“Blood,” I said. “A decent amount on the pants. Dried, but I’m sure it’s blood.”
I got down on my hands and knees. Pulled a white wad from beneath the bed.
“Got a T-shirt, too. Same stains.”
Harry looked between the deceased and the clothes. “I don’t see any wounds on the body. Let’s get the clothes to forensics. Have them verify the blood’s his when they get the chance.”
When I stood I felt dampness in my knees. Looking down I saw wet splotches.
“The carpet’s soaked,” I said.
“Piss, I expect,” Ryan said. “Red’s bladder let loose before he fell on the bed.”
I leaned my nose close to my wet knees. Sniffed. I expected to smell urine, but didn’t.
“It smells like sea water,” I said, befuddled.
“What was that?” Harry said.
“I said it smells like –”
“No. From outside.” Harry canted his head toward the open window.
“Dead guy! Dead guy!” A woman screamed for a second time. “There’s a dead guy in the street!”
We ran down the stairs, followed the woman’s screams around the corner. We saw a body face-down in an alley, hands splayed like the guy was hugging the pavement and kissing its surface. I slid up beside him like a ballplayer sliding to home plate. I pressed the back of my fingers to his neck, felt nothing. Harry had his phone out to call for assistance.
“They’s a man dead over here!” a male voice howled. I saw a head sticking from the vestibule of a ragged building, waving at me, at Harry, at anyone watching to please come help. Ryan and the uniformed officer came from the Hoople, looked our way with confused faces. I did a palms-up gesture of helplessness.
Another shriek of despair from across the street. A woman came running from an apartment. “My boyfriend won’t get up. I don’t think he’s breathing. Help me!”
“What the hell is going on?” Harry whispered, watching a brace of radio cruisers screaming on to the far end of the block.
“I don’t know,” I said, my heart thumping just under my chin. A little girl wandered up, not over eight years old. She tugged at the back of my pants.
“Mister? Mister?”
I turned and looked down, tried to affect a smile. “We’re pretty busy here, dear. What is it?”
She pointed toward the next block over. “They’s a man laying on the steps in front of my house. He look like he sleeping, but he won’t wake up. Why he doin’ like that?”
Chapter 28
The block had been cordoned off. Scared people stood in tenement doorways or huddled on corners as lights flashed from over a dozen official vehicles. Bodies were being loaded into ambulances, evidence was being gathered. I saw Orville Ryan accompanying one gurney to an ambulance, seeing O’Fong off to the next world. I felt sorry for Ryan; he’d believed in Chinese Red.
Clair Peltier had arrived a few minutes into the mayhem, alerted that something major was going down. I’d nodded her way when she arrived and let her work. Now, with the hubbub dying away, Harry and I wandered over. I studied my shoes while Harry spoke.
“Any ideas, Doc?” he asked. “Is it what it appears?”
She nodded. “I get the feeling someone forgot to cut a batch of heroin. Those poor folks got into some smack so pure it shut them down.”
Mobile wasn’t known for the quality of its heroin, usually brown scag, Mexican tar, and other bottom-level crap so stepped on by greedy local dealers that ten per cent heroin to ninety filler was a general rule. Pure heroin would have been like slamming nine extra bags into a vein at once, almost instantly depressing the machinery to the Off setting.
As part of the response, news organizations and social agencies with contacts in junkie-land were being alerted, soon to issue warnings about the deaths and potential for more problems. If you don’t know it, don’t shoot it, was the mantra being prepared. Hopefully, what we had were a few isolated cases, a mistake along the pipeline.
“How about an adulterant?” Harry suggested. “A toxin in the junk.”
“I’d lean that way,” Clair said, “except the reactions suggest OD from all directions. But I’m going to no-comment the media until I get a forsure verdict.”
I looked across the street and saw reporters bunched up like runners at the start of the Boston Marathon, held back by uniformed cops. When the scene was released they’d run rampant.
“Carson?” Clair called to my retreating back.
I looked over my shoulder. “You’re looking better,” she said quietly, and hustled off to consult with her crew. I turned back to Harry. “If it’s all accidental OD’s, we’re off the hook. Clair seems to think that’s the way it’ll fry up. What next?”
“Back to our regular grind,” he said. “And that means Scaler. You were saying Fossie found some kind of number in Scaler’s office?”
“Stuck on the underside of his monitor.”
“Why not give the number a ring; see who answers? Probably best to use the clean phone.”
Our clean phone was a pre-paid cell we used when we wanted a call to be anonymous, not tipping off the recipient who was on our end. We mainly used it with skittish snitches. I pulled the phone from the cruiser, dialed. Four rings and pickup.
“Hello?” said a voice sounding both hesitant and oddly familiar.
“Who’s this?” I asked pleasantly.
“Who’s this?” the familiar voice on the other line responded.
I said, “I got this number from a friend who said I probably needed to call it.”
A beat. “What was the friend’s name?”
“He’s well known and doesn’t like his name used,” I said.
“Hmmmm,” the voice said. “Who were you wanting to speak to?”
We were both being cagey. I looked around while my mind raced for the next line. Across the street I saw
Orville Ryan standing beside Chinese Red’s body with a cellphone at his ear. Ryan was frowning, like he was stymied.
“Ryan?” I ventured. “Is that you?”
I watched his mouth drop open. His eyes scanned the street until finding me. We stared at one another over sixty feet of concrete. I watched Ryan’s lips move as the phone spoke.
“Hi, Carson. Fancy talking to you.”
“Did I just call your number, Orv?”
“You called Chinese Red’s cell, Carson. It started ringing in his pocket.”
I was putting in my fourteenth nervous pace lap around the forensics lab when Glenn Watkins rushed in with the test results. The implications made the test supersede all others that would occur today.
“No mistake,” Glenn said, snicking the results with a fingernail. “It’s a match. The blood on O’Fong’s shirt and pants is Scaler’s.”
“Scaler paid a black junkie prostitute to work him over?” Harry said.
“Blood doesn’t lie,” Glenn said. “These clothes must have been what O’Fong wore when whipping the Reverend.”
“Lawd, this case is a muthafucker.” Harry budgeted himself two spoken MFs annually and he’d just spent half his budget on Richard Scaler.
“There’s more,” Glenn said. “You know the water found in O’Fong’s digs in the Hoople?”
Harry nodded.
“Sea water. The same composition of sea water found on the floor at Scaler’s death scene. A second indication they were together.”
“But what’s the water mean?” Harry said. “You got any idea, Carson?”
But my mind was elsewhere. Scaler preaching as a child, bible in hand, mouth wide. The adult Scaler charging to and fro on the stage ranting about sin. A model-handsome black prostitute slapping Scaler’s fat ass with leather while the preacher twirled upside-down in red panties.
I started laughing: tears running, gut-lurching, red-faced laughter. Glenn watched open-mouthed.
“What’s wrong, Carson?” Harry asked.
“Scaler beat mousy Mama and it got his engine revved. He called his sex buddy, Chinese Red, and headed to Camp Sonshine for some butt-pluggin’ and whip lovin’. Muhhhh-muh-muuuh,” I moaned orgasmically, spinning in circles, pretending I had a gag in my mouth. “Muuuuh-Muuuuuuh. Muhhhhnnnnnnnnnn.”
