Grace to the Finish

by Julie Hyzy

  He sucked in his lips in a way that made me believe he had few or no teeth. Everything about him screamed no health care and minimal nourishment. Yet his eyes were clear. And clearly filled with terror. Like a trapped animal, he glanced back and forth and up and down as though desperate to escape.

  If we let him go, we may not ever see him again.

  “Twenty dollars,” I repeated. “Plus dinner.”

  He snapped to face me.

  “And there could be more in it for you,” I said. “If only you’ll talk with us a little bit. Answer a few questions. That’s all we want. That isn’t too difficult, is it?”

  He worked his flexible lips again, clearly considering the offer.

  “Think of it this way,” I said. “If we wanted to call the police, we would have done so already. But it’s just us. The three of us.” I pointed toward Bruce and Scott again. “We’re partners and this is our building now.”

  His wild eyes took in everything I had to say in a way that let me know he understood.

  After a moment, he held out a filthy hand. “Money first, then talk.” His deep, rich voice was surprisingly steady.

  Right. And the minute he had my twenty, he’d be gone.

  “Nice try.” I smiled to take the sting out of my words. “Food first,” I said. “Then talk. Then money. What do you want for dinner?”

  He narrowed his eyes, one brow arched as though surprised to find out I wasn’t a pushover. “If I got to wait, then you better make it fifty.”

  Chapter 11

  Scott offered to do a food run. “What should I get?” he asked me.

  I turned to the scruffy stranger. “What would you like?”

  He seemed bewildered by the question. “Can’t remember last time I got to pick what I wanted to eat. I don’t even remember what I like.” As Scott walked away, the man rallied. “Hot, though. Gotta be something hot or no deal.”

  Scott shot me a look that asked if I knew what I was doing. I shrugged. Not really. A moment later, he was off.

  Bruce led the way inside through the squeaky back door. The bearded man followed and I brought up the rear. We made our way into the high-ceilinged brick-walled space, toward a small, better lit area where Bruce and Scott had set up an ersatz command post. Three chairs around a folding table. Paperwork and boxes and dust. Lots of dust.

  “Let me get another chair,” Bruce said.

  I nodded, keeping a tight hold on my breath. I’d encountered many homeless people in my life, but I’d never spent this much time in one’s wake. The hot, sour tang of body odor made me want to turn away. I blew out a breath as I pulled my chair farther out of the circle, hoping to keep my eyes from watering.

  I introduced myself and Bruce. “Scott will be back shortly, I’m sure,” I said. “What’s your name?”

  He sucked in his lips again. I was wrong. He did have teeth. Few, though. Widely spaced, and dark yellow. “Let me see the fifty bucks first.”

  I dug into my purse, pulled out two twenties and a ten, and laid them in my lap. “All yours as long as you answer us truthfully.”

  His eyes narrowed at that, but he bobbed his head. A tiny leaf dislodged from the back of his hair. It fluttered to the floor. “Oscar.”

  “Oscar, what?” I asked.

  “You don’t need my last name.”

  “Fair enough.” I crossed my hands atop the money. “You’ve lived here for a while, haven’t you? Inside this building, I mean.”

  “On and off,” he said. “Five years maybe.”

  “Whoa,” Bruce said. “How did the inspector miss that bit of information?”

  Oscar shrugged. “People don’t find what they’re not looking for, do they? And that inspector woman can’t tell her”—he glanced at me and coughed—“can’t tell her right hand from her left. She wasn’t never going to notice me. Anyway, even if I thought she might, I got ways of disappearing and making myself scarce.” He sat up a little straighter. “Plus, this here isn’t the only spot I have, you know. I got two more safe places nobody knows about. And I ain’t going to tell you about where they are, so don’t even ask.”

  “We’re not interested in rousting you from your homes,” I said, keeping my tone modulated. “What can you tell us about an elderly woman who used to come here to check on the building from time to time? You’ve seen her, haven’t you?”

  “Virginia,” Oscar said.

  My face no doubt broadcasted my surprise. “You know her name?”

  “Kinda hard not to,” he said reasonably. “She came here all the time.”

  I hesitated, but needed to ask, “You know she died, right?”

  “I didn’t do it. You gotta believe me. I wasn’t even here.”

  “So you’ve heard about it?”

  “Who hasn’t?” he asked. “It’s all what people’s talking about. It’s in the newspaper. That’s why I came back here today, to clear out my stuff before somebody comes sniffing after me, thinking I had something to do with killing her.”

  “She knew you lived here?” Bruce asked.

  “Never said that.” Oscar gave a robust head shake. Another leaf tumbled. “She maybe suspected that vandals broke in from time to time, but I never did no damage. I just stayed in to keep warm and dry and store my stuff, you know.”

  Bruce and I exchanged a puzzled glance. “How did you know Virginia’s name?” I asked. “Did you know her from somewhere else? Were you a customer of the bank?”

  Oscar laughed hard. I got a quick view of his mouth before he brought up a filthy hand to cover it.

  “You crazy?” As though ashamed of his discolored teeth, he continued to hold his hand in front of his face while he chuckled. “Yeah, I’m a real wheeler-dealer.”

  Okay, so the question had been ludicrous, given the man’s appearance. But the moment of levity seemed to cut the tension in the room.

  “Hey,” I said. “You never know. I’ve heard plenty of stories of frugal folks with stashed-away fortunes discovered only after their deaths.”

  “Not me.”

  “Then how did you know Virginia?” Bruce asked, taking the question right out of my mouth.

  “Because that’s what her boyfriend called her.”

  “Boyfriend?” Jolted, Bruce and I both sat up straight. “She brought a boyfriend here?” I asked. This was completely unexpected.

  Oscar waved the space between us, sending a swirl of foul air my way. “Ah, not a boyfriend exactly,” he said. “Her and a guy came here a lot. They didn’t come together, mind you. They met up here, though. All the time.”

  “All the time?” I repeated. “Like, how often?”

  “Two or three times a week at least. Sometimes more than that.”

  “Did they . . .” Bruce blushed. “I mean, were they here for, um, romantic purposes?”

  Oscar wheezed out a laugh, covering his mouth again. He shook his head and rocked forward. “Shouldn’t’a said ‘boyfriend,’ I guess.” He wheezed. “No. Not a chance. He was forty, maybe forty-five. She was, well, old.”

  “Sixty-five isn’t old,” I said.

  Oscar grinned. He bobbed his head again. “I agree. I hope to get to that age myself someday.”

  The front door opened and Scott called out, “I’m back. Could use a little help.”

  Bruce boosted himself to his feet and took off. “Keep talking, I’ll take care of it.”

  Oscar turned toward the sound of Scott’s voice. We were in the back warehouse part of the first floor. Scott had come in through the front. Oscar leaned forward as though ready to bolt. The wary yet eager look on our vagrant guest’s face led me to believe he worried that Scott had returned, not with food, but with the police in tow.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m sure whatever Scott brought will be delicious.”

  Oscar’s gaze flicked ove
r me. He didn’t relax until Scott and Bruce returned, smelling of savory heat and laden with brown bags. Scott carried two by their handles. Bruce held one in his arms. Grease spots dotted one side.

  “I didn’t know what to get, so I got everything that looked good,” Scott said. He set the bags on the table and glanced around, assessing the area. “Whatever I could get fast, that is.”

  “There’s a bigger table in one of the office areas up front, isn’t there?” I asked. “In what used to be one of those waiting rooms.”

  Scott snapped his fingers. “Perfect. And I made sure to get plenty of napkins, tableware, and condiments. We could probably hole up here for a week and still have food left over.”

  Oscar worked his lips as he eyed the bags. “Smells good,” he said, his fear apparently evaporating in the aroma of hot food.

  “Come on.” I stuffed the promised fifty dollars back into my purse and grabbed the two bags of food. “Let’s set ourselves up.”

  As much as I wanted to press for more information about Virginia’s nonromantic liaison, I couldn’t push Oscar while we were eating. It broke my heart to see how eager his expression grew as we unloaded the bags and placed take-out containers atop the conference table.

  “Go ahead,” I said when Oscar poked at a gravy-soaked sandwich wrapped in white.

  He didn’t hesitate. A second later, he’d unrolled the butcher paper and grabbed the French bread in both hands. Before I blinked, he’d shoved one end of it into his mouth.

  “Hot?” I asked.

  He grunted in the affirmative as a sausage chunk surrounded by juicy beef pushed out of the other end of the roll. I wished I could have gotten him to wash his hands before touching his food, but he didn’t seem to care.

  Scott hadn’t been kidding. There was more than enough food. Plenty to choose from. Sandwiches, burgers, hot dogs, and tacos. Plus a mountain of fries and a selection of soft drinks. I picked out a lemonade and cheeseburger and settled myself across from Oscar. He’d finished the sausage and beef sandwich and was studying the feast laid out before him with undisguised glee.

  Just as he reached for one of the bags of French fries, Scott interrupted. “We have a washroom around the other side of this wall.” He pointed for emphasis.

  “I know where it is,” Oscar said. “Only cold water.” He turned to me. “I don’t like the cold.”

  “Hot water is working again,” Scott said. “I know you’re hungry, but if you wanted to wash up or something . . .”

  Before Scott could finish his sentence, Oscar’s grimy face lit up and he took off around the wall. “Be right back,” he mumbled. Then, more clearly. “Don’t finish all the food without me.”

  The facilities were far enough away that we were comfortable talking while Oscar was gone. We brought Scott up to speed on what we’d learned so far.

  Scott: “And you believe him?”

  “I do,” I said. “I don’t think he has any reason to fabricate Virginia’s male friend.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “We hadn’t gotten that far,” I said.

  “Greg or maybe Craig,” Oscar said as he rounded the wall to rejoin us. “I couldn’t help hearing them talk, but her voice was so soft so I couldn’t make out everything she said.”

  I fought to tamp down my surprise, and from the looks of it, my roommates were attempting to do so as well. Our homeless guest wasn’t completely clean—such a feat wouldn’t be possible in such a short time with so few resources—but he’d effected a stunning transformation. He’d scrubbed his face hard enough for bright pink to bloom on his cheeks and forehead. His beard was still braided and his hair still scruffy, but his hands had morphed into flesh-colored from their ashy gray. Still a little damp, in fact. There remained plenty of black crud under his nails and in the creases of his fingers, but he had made an effort and seemed quite pleased with himself.

  “Can you give me one of those napkins?” he asked as he reached for a cheeseburger. “Thanks,” he said when I handed it over. “Don’t want to stain my clothes,” he added with a dry laugh.

  “You’re saying that Virginia and this guy, Greg or Craig, had conversations here,” I prompted, to bring the focus back. “What did they talk about? Why did they meet here in secret?”

  Oscar’s cheeseburger was halfway gone by the time I got my questions out. Watching him eat with such joyful abandon was at once both gratifying and sad. I wondered about getting him some fresh clothes.

  “Pretty sure it’s Craig.” He talked around a cheek full of cheeseburger. “Y’understand, I didn’t hear a whole lot. Most times, when they’d show up, I’d beat a path out of here fast. Once in a while I didn’t move quick enough and I’d hafta sit really quiet until after they left.”

  “I don’t know about this mysterious man, but Virginia was here to check on the building,” Bruce said. “That was one of her responsibilities at the bank.”

  Still chewing, Oscar crooked up one side of his mouth. “That what she told people?”

  Dinner forgotten, I leaned forward. “Why was she here? What do you know?”

  I hadn’t lost sight of the fact that Oscar could be making up a load of lies but I trusted my gut. The man was cagey when it came to his personal information, but given his circumstances, that was hardly unexpected. Once he’d come to understand that all we wanted was information, he’d dropped his guard. His answers, thus far, had been delivered with an openness that surprised me.

  Now he shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said with an emphasis on the word. “There’s no way I could because whenever I was able to make out what they were saying, I couldn’t figure out what they were talking about. I was hiding, and all the stuff they were working on was out in the open where I couldn’t see.”

  “Stuff they were working on?” Scott repeated. “What do you mean?”

  Oscar grabbed a bag of fries and spilled them onto the wrapping that had held his cheeseburger. He pinched a wad of them and levered it into his mouth, all while making a face that said, “Give me a minute.”

  He swallowed. “There’s this closet,” he said, pointing downward, “at the back end of the basement, kinda in the middle. I’d push myself deep in there. I could hear some of what was going on, but I couldn’t see much through the small crack around the door.”

  I tried picturing it, but had no luck. “Near the stairs?” I asked.

  He wrinkled his face as he grabbed more fries. “There’s two sets of stairs. Kinda between them, closer to this one, I guess.” He used the bunch of fries to gesture. “A couple of times when the two of them came in, I was in the basement and didn’t hear them until they were almost all the way down. They woulda seen me if I ran.”

  “Makes sense,” I said. “So you hid. And that’s when you overheard them talking.”

  “Yeah. Didn’t happen but a handful of times. Mostly I’d stay upstairs, where it was usually warmer. I didn’t steal nothing, y’understand. Nothing ever.”

  “I believe you,” I said. And I did. “But I would like to take you downstairs to show you where some items were that are missing now, and ask you if you remember seeing them. But first, why don’t you tell us what you overheard?”

  He’d stopped eating, glancing from me to Bruce to Scott, as though trying to ascertain whether we had any tricks up our sleeves.

  “It’s okay,” I said, hoping to put his mind at ease. “I promise, whatever you tell us, it’s okay.”

  He sat back again, looking a little more relieved.

  Just then, my cell phone rang, startling us all. I fumbled in my purse and looked at the caller ID. Joe Bradley. As much as I wanted to answer, I didn’t have it in me to casually mention seeing him at Myrtille today. More important, I didn’t want to squander a moment of questioning Oscar.

  I hit the button to silence my phone.

  “Back to what y
ou overheard,” I said.

  Chapter 12

  Oscar ran a hand across his mouth. “Like I said, I wasn’t in a good spot to be hearing whole conversations. And I could only see a little bit. I picked up enough, though, to know that the two of them had a thing going.”

  “But not romantic,” I said.

  “Right.”

  “What did Craig look like?”

  “I dunno. Like I said, maybe about forty or fifty years old. That’s how his voice sounded. Middle-aged maybe? I don’t see so good no more.” He shrugged. “He’s a white guy. I think he had dark hair, but I can’t say if he was good looking or ugly. Never got close enough.”

  My shoulders slumped. That description wouldn’t be much help.

  Oscar sat up straight, pressed his fingers to his stomach, then let out an extended belch. “Whoa, that felt good,” he said, covering his mouth again. “Haven’t brought up a power burst like that in who knows how long.”

  Bruce and Scott exchanged a glance.

  “Anyway,” Oscar continued, settling back in, “whatever Virginia and Craig were doing here, it wasn’t something they wanted anyone else to know about.”

  “What makes you say that?” I asked.

  “Well, for one, even though they both had keys to the building, she always came in the front and he always came through the back.”

  “Is there a Craig who works at the bank?” I asked my roommates.

  “Doesn’t sound familiar to me,” Bruce said.

  Scott shook his head. “And it isn’t a very big branch, either. With all the times we’ve been in there, I think we would have run into him by now. I don’t think there’s a Craig or a Greg there.”

  “I’ll have to ask Neal Davenport about him,” I said. I turned to Oscar. “Go on.”

  “Craig always got here first. Virginia came after. She was always nervous and he was always telling her that everything would be all right. She’d bring something to him every time. A bunch of papers.”