At The City's Edge

by Marcus Sakey

  "Is…" He hesitated, afraid to ask the only question that mattered, terror slopping like water against a weakening dam. "Is Michael okay?"

  She stared, her eyes soft and sad, and he knew the answer. The levees inside him broke. He heard a faint whimper and was surprised to realize he had made it.

  His brother was dead.

  Michael had needed help, Jason hadn't been there, and now his brother was dead.

  The world tilted. He felt dizzy, put one hand against the doorframe. An iron voice sounded inside of him, a voice he hadn't heard in months. Telling him straighten up, soldier. Telling him this wasn't the time. He took a deep breath, and wiped at his eyes with the back of one hand. "Will you… can you watch Billy for a little while?"

  She gave him a look that made him wish he were five again, could hug himself to her dress and feel safe. "Of course."

  He knelt beside the couch, his face level with Billy's. The boy was obviously still in shock, but his pupils seemed a little less dilated, the tension in his shoulders a bit looser. Familiar surroundings.

  "Buddy, I'm going to go out for a minute. But Lauretta's going to sit with you. Is that okay?"

  Billy looked at him, then up at Lauretta. He nodded. Jason squeezed his shoulder, stood up and stepped through the curtains.

  "Jason." She fiddled with the belt of her dress, then raised her eyes to meet his. "Your brother, he was a good man, and careful. It don't seem right that he'd have fallen down drunk in his own bar, let it burn around him."

  A chill ran down his spine. Again he heard the words in his mind.

  I met with the cops.

  You mean you informed on a gang?

  "No ma'am," he said, his hands clenching to fists. "It doesn't."

  CHAPTER 8

  Dark Spots

  She hated when the good guys died.

  Cruz had driven over cop-style, stopping at red lights only long enough to check oncoming traffic before rolling through. Parked the unmarked across the street, behind an ambulance where bored EMTs sipped coffee. A couple of beat cops were interviewing bystanders. It was just past noon, the air still and sticky. Blast-furnace heat.

  On the ride down, her main emotion had been concern for a guy she knew, a real person in a neighborhood of assholes. Now, nostrils burning with the stink of ash, the anger was starting to come as well. Michael Palmer had been a good man.

  She rearranged her cuffs so they didn't dig into her back and crossed the street. The responding units had taped off the sidewalk, and she ducked under it. Men in bunker pants and jackets sorted through the rubble with shovels. The reflective stripes on their clothing shone bright. One held what looked like a portable radio with a wand that he ran above the wreckage, eliciting clicks like a Geiger counter. A tall guy held a hand to his mouth, shouted. "Behind the tape, lady."

  She pulled aside her suit jacket to show the star on her waist.

  He nodded, gave her a one-second gesture, and started threading his way through the blackened rubble. Each step kicked up a puff of smoky dust that hung in the still air.

  "You the fire investigator?"

  He nodded, pulled off white latex gloves with a snap of soot, held out a hand. "Tom Huff. You?"

  She introduced herself, told him she was with Gang Intelligence, that she knew the owner. "What's the story?"

  "It was set last night, late, maybe three or four. Took us a long time to get the flames knocked down."

  "Somebody set it? You're sure?"

  He pointed to a patch where rubble had been pushed aside to reveal flooring scarred by a large spot that was darker even than the charcoal around it. "You see?"

  "Pour pattern?"

  He nodded. "When it's that precise, it always means accelerant. Lab'll say for certain, but I'd bet gasoline. Wrong color for butane or charcoal fluid."

  Accelerant. Which made this arson. At least. "You find a body?"

  He nodded. "One adult male, well-done. On the way to the Medical Examiner now."

  Which made it homicide. And the victim had to be Michael Palmer. Who else would be in his bar when it burned down?

  Damn it, she thought, remembering his handshake, firm but not out to prove anything. And damn it again for his son. And one last hearty damn it for the neighborhood. Somebody tried to do some good, this was what happened. No wonder the police were always short of witnesses.

  "Just called it homicide, so a detective should be here soon." Huff paused, looked to her right, gestured with his chin. "That one with you?"

  Cruz turned, saw a man walking down the sidewalk. "No." She moved to intercept him. "Sir, you see the tape?"

  He stopped, met her eyes without cruising her body first. Blonde surfer hair. Nicely built. Good-looking in a white sort of way. There was something in his face that was very familiar, and she figured it out just as he said it.

  "I'm Jason Palmer. This was my brother's bar."

  He'd started in with a bunch of questions, but she'd told him to hold on. Asked him to wait on the other side of the tape, and then gone back to Huff and given him a card. "Can you give me a call, let me know if you find anything else?"

  "It'll all be in my report."

  "This guy was a friend of mine." She smiled at him. "Do me the favor?"

  He shrugged. "Sure." Tucked the card away, pulled a pair of clean latex gloves from his pocket, and went back to work.

  She turned to find Jason Palmer at her elbow. "I thought I asked you to wait outside the tape."

  He stared at her. "My brother. Is he… was he…" He looked at the wasted bar, back at her.

  She opened her mouth, ready to go into her all-business rap – sorry for your loss, but I need to ask you a few questions – and instead found herself saying, in a soft voice, "I don't know for sure. I'm afraid so."

  He seemed to droop, something giving way in his shoulders and neck. "They killed him." His voice thin. "Mikey, they killed you."

  Cruz looked at him sharply. "Who killed him, Mr. Palmer?"

  He put the back of his hand to his mouth like he was trying to keep from vomiting. "Those gangsters."

  "Who?"

  "I don't know. Soul Patch. The guy from… oh, Jesus. Michael." His face was pale. "I should have been there." He had the faraway look of a man seeing ghosts.

  "Mr. Palmer." She put a hand on his arm. "I need you to focus."

  He looked at her. Blinked a couple of times, shook his head. "Yeah. Okay." Blew out a breath, took another one in. "You were a friend of my brother's?"

  She thought of sitting in Michael Palmer's bar with Galway, she and her partner listening as Palmer said that there were things going on in the neighborhood that were worse than anybody guessed, that the gangs were the tip of the iceberg. Saying that he would have proof soon. Calm and logical, with a polite kid and a history of community service. Not seeming even a little crazy.

  But what she said to Jason was, "I knew him."

  "So then you know about him and the gangs. That he was fighting them."

  "Yeah."

  "Good." His jaw set and posture grew rigid as he came into himself. "Good."

  A thought occurred to her. In the mathematics of a crime scene, if spots equaled accelerant, and accelerant equaled arson, then accelerant with a body equaled homicide. Which meant she had no place here. Technically, her job was just to baby-sit Palmer until the detectives arrived, at which point they'd tell her to head back to the station and work on her damn database.

  On the other hand, if this was a gang matter, no one could say it wasn't her case.

  "You mentioned gangbangers." She jerked a thumb at a JJ Fish across the street. "Why don't you let me buy you lunch, tell me about them?"

  "I…" He paused, looked back toward a storefront extensions place. "No, I can't. My nephew is here, and I'm worried."

  She said, "You know how I made it sound like a choice?"

  He said, "Yeah?"

  She said, "It's not."

  "This is the name of a doctor at UC Hospital,
the ER." Cruz wrote on the back of her business card. "Tell him I sent you, he'll make time for your nephew today."

  Jason reached across the table for it. "Thanks."

  "No problem. You mentioned someone named 'Soul Patch'?"

  "That's not his name. I mean, I don't know his name. That's just what I called him."

  "Who is he?"

  "I don't know. Some sort of gang member. Gangbanger, I guess you call them."

  "How do you know him?"

  "Yesterday he tried to kidnap me."

  She sat quiet as he told the story, how he was jogging when a banger came at him with a gun, had tried to force Palmer into the car. How he'd gotten clear, and then come to make sure his big brother was okay. "You a martial-arts guy, take a lot of self-defense classes, that kind of thing?"

  "Huh?"

  "Well, I mean, you scuffle with two men, both of them armed, you get away…"

  "I'm a soldier." His voice steady and maybe a little proud.

  "What did these guys look like?"

  "Black," he said, not African-American, and she liked that he didn't try to put on a show of how racially sensitive he was to impress the Latina. "One was maybe five and a half, stocky, weighed one-eighty or so. Wore a lot of gold. The one I called Soul Patch was about two inches shorter than me, and thin. He had tattoos on his arms and, well, a soul patch," holding his thumb and forefinger up to pinch his chin.

  Which, between the two, described about half the boys in the Gang Intelligence files. "Anything notable about the tattoos?"

  "I didn't get that good a look. A star with letters inside, maybe 'GD'?"

  Gangster Disciples. She felt a quickening in her stomach. She had pictures of a lot of them. If he could ID the men who came for him, she could shut this thing fast, maybe earn her way off the database and back on the street. Plus get a little justice for Michael Palmer, with his good kid and his good handshake. "Would you recognize them?"

  He nodded, looked out the window at the fire investigators picking through the ruins of the bar, lawnmowering back and forth like they were searching for a lost contact lens. "I never expected to see this again." His voice low and soft, like he didn't realize he was speaking.

  "Again?" She looked up.

  "I was in Afghanistan, and then Iraq." He picked up a fry, swirled it in ketchup like he was mixing paint on a palette. "When I first got there, I couldn't believe the destruction. Whole blocks of apartment complexes where the walls had been knocked out, you could see right into people's homes, their kitchens. A lot of the Humvees have mounted Mark-19s, that's a grenade launcher, and they just demo the shit out of a building. And these beautiful mosques. Once the insurgents figured out we were trying not to damage mosques, they started sniping at us from the towers. So we had to light them up too." He shook his head. Dropped the fry, picked up another, poked listlessly at the pile. "Everywhere you went there were these piles of rock and ash. Something was always burning. Always. IEDs, insurgent mortars, trash fires." His eyes seemed clouded. "I expected everyone would just, I don't know, drop to their knees. Stare. But they didn't. They went about their business while the world burned around them." He shrugged. "Get used to anything, I guess."

  "You mind if I ask where you were last night?"

  Palmer looked up, and she saw surprise in his eyes at the change of subject, but no flash of fear, no game face. "I was with someone."

  "Girlfriend?"

  "Just someone I met."

  "You have a phone number?"

  He shook his head. "Her name was Jackie. She said she was a hostess at Spring. You know the restaurant, North and Milwaukee?"

  "Out of my price range." She sipped her godawful excuse for coffee. "Your brother have life insurance?"

  "I don't know."

  "You know it doesn't pay out on homicide?"

  Palmer set down the fry he had been playing with, wiped grease on a napkin. Stared at her, unblinking. "I understand why you're asking. But I didn't kill my brother."

  He wasn't the bad guy. Half her job was instinct, and she knew. Of course, it would be worth running down the girl to be certain. First thing you learned was that everybody lied. But he wasn't the bad guy.

  Which left her with the gangbangers. "I need you to come to the station with me, look at some pictures. See if you can identify Soul Patch."

  "Okay."

  She nodded. "You drive, or you want to ride with me?"

  "You mean now?"

  She cocked an eyebrow.

  "I can't." He leaned back. "My nephew. I told you, I want to get him out of here."

  "Perfect. I want to talk to him, too."

  "No way. He's in shock. No way."

  "Mr. Palmer, I'm trying to solve your brother's murder. You can help. Don't you think Michael would want you to?"

  He stared at her, jaw clenched. A long moment passed. Then he said, "You know what my brother would want, lady? He'd want to know his son was okay."

  She leaned back, feeling like a bitch.

  "Look." He set his napkin atop the uneaten fries. "I loved my brother. I'll do anything to get the fuckers that killed him. I just want to take care of Billy first. Please."

  She could compel him, but that didn't make for the best witnesses. Besides, she liked his insistence on taking care of the kid. Too rare in the people she dealt with. "Tell you what. How about you come see me first thing tomorrow morning?"

  "Thank you." He started to scoot out of the booth.

  "Meantime, if you or your nephew remember anything else, call me right away."

  "Yeah." He stood. "Can I go?"

  Cruz took a sip of coffee. "Sure." Watched him turn and push through the door, back ramrod as he strode broken sidewalks. Good-looking guy, seemed smart, cared about the kid. There was definitely something off about him – the way his eyes had gone all thousand-yard when he was talking about Iraq – but she still didn't like him for the murder. He was hurting too much. Tough to lose someone like that. One day there, the next, poof, gone forever.

  She thought again about the afternoon last week, when she and Galway had sat down with Michael Palmer. Things were bigger than anyone realized, he had said, and worse. And she'd humored him. Said if he had proof, she'd act on it. She'd said it the way she said a lot of things on this job, a voice aimed at calming people, at mollifying the crazies. Not really believing.

  And then someone had killed him.

  She sipped her coffee and gazed out the window, wondering if that counted as proof.

  CHAPTER 9

  Dog Days

  In the dream, Washington Matthews was back in his cell. Bare concrete floors and the scarred metal of the open toilet. History books from the prison library stacked neatly on his desk. Pharaoh snoring in the rack above, that wet choking gargle bouncing off lonely midnight walls. Washington thought of getting out of bed, and then in the way of dreams, he suddenly was, just standing barefoot in the dim light of lockdown. The air was thick and humid. He stretched his body, prison muscles and bruised knuckles, and in his chest that old cold feeling, the song of twisting metal.

  Pharaoh snored louder, and Washington went to bump his cellie, tell him to roll his ass over. Only as he got closer, he realized Pharaoh wasn't alone. He had his arm around a thin figure, a slender black boy with a cauliflower ear spooned up against him. The boy was eight, and the thick wet gurgling was coming from the bloody ruin where his throat used to be.

  Washington tried to run. His limbs were bound with sticky ropes.

  Then he woke to find himself bound with sticky ropes.

  It took a moment to realize that it was his sheets that tied him, sweat-soaked from the heat. August. The dog days of summer. He'd read somewhere that the phrase came from Sirius, the Dog Star, whose conjunction with the sun used to mark the hottest months of the year. In modern times the conjunction is slowly coming earlier each year, something to do with the Earth wobbling. He struggled free of the bedding, wobbly himself. His hand hit something heavy and smooth, and in
the sharp sunlight he just had time to recognize the highball glass before it dropped to the hardwood floor.

  "Shit." He stopped thrashing, gently worked his arms loose, and patted around until he found the Beefeater. Empty. He set the bottle on the nightstand, then extricated his legs. Sallust Crispus's "The Conspiracy of Catiline" lay open on the bed, the pages wet. The book was ruined, but at least he hadn't finished the whole bottle this time.

  Washington swung his feet over the edge of the bed. The dream muscles were gone, replaced with droopy man-breasts and a forty-three-year-old paunch. His temples were sore and his eyes spiked. A vision of the boy with the cauliflower ear was painted on the inside of his mind.

  In the shower he danced as the water flickered hot-cold-hot. Trimmed his mustache in the mirror, thinking how his days of looking like Richard Roundtree were over. Now it was more like James Earl Jones, and that on a good day, which today wasn't.

  There was a racket through the floor. Something metal gonged. A pause, and then the sound of yelling in two languages. Washington grimaced, yanked his pants on and ran for the door, struggling with his shirt as he went. Took the stairs in a rumbling plunge.

  In the kitchen, Oscar and the new boy – Diego? – were screaming at each other and bucking against the arms holding them back. Silverware gleamed on the counter, and a bag of groceries had been knocked over, spilling oranges across the hardwood floor. Two boys had a solid grip on Diego, while Ronald's monstrous arms wrapped around Oscar from behind, nearly lifting him off the ground.

  "Let me go, putas!" Diego's face burned scarlet as he tried to shake free.

  Washington stepped into the kitchen. "Gentlemen." He didn't yell, but everyone's head cut sideways. A guilty look crept into Oscar's eyes. "This dude," he started, "came at me outta nowhere."

  "That's a fucking lie, you piece of-" Diego bucked and struggled.

  Washington sighed. His head hurt too much for this right now. He took a saucepan from the drying rack and stepped in front of Diego. The boy saw the heavy pan and threw himself harder against the arms holding him, fear flashing in his eyes. Washington drew his arm back and grit his teeth, feeling that old cold song of twisting metal.