Slow Burn

by G. M. Ford

  I struggled to my feet, stepped around the sad little pool, and followed the cracked cement path which led around the right side of the house. Nobody had walked this way in quite a while. I could tell because, two steps in, I took a three-pound spiderweb full in the face. If the thing had been any bigger and stronger, I’d have had whiplash.

  By my reckoning, a good, fresh spiderweb in the mug is one of life’s least endearing experiences. I rank it right up there with getting parking tickets and stepping in dog shit as serious day killers. Imagine how other insects felt about it.

  I squatted and duckwalked the rest of the way, using my hands to hack an imaginary path into the air before me. At that point, I was not prepared to consider how stupid it certainly must have looked. Arrrg.

  I was still rubbing and picking at my face when I emerged onto Eastlake Boulevard, a block north of the white Chevy Blazer. After checking both ways, I dipped across the street and started up the hill, where I leaned back against a storefront and pawed at the imagined maze of filament which my central nervous system insisted was still stuck to my face, but which my fingers could not detect. Nothing short of a shower was going to suffice.

  Resigned, I trudged the two steep blocks up to Boylston and then turned right. The Taurus was just where I thought it would be, straddling the little grass island on the right of the street. I turned up my collar and crossed Lynn a block and a half behind the two cops, taking my time, making sure that if they happened to snatch a rearview look at me, there’d be nothing sufficiently remarkable about my presence to command their attention.

  Three blocks in front of me, Boylston Avenue seems to allow but two choices. You can go straight ahead onto the interstate, or you can duck left under the bridge and run along the face of Capitol Hill and the high-rent homes looking out over Lake Union from the east. Either way, you’re a long way from terra firma. I took the third route.

  Under the overpass, the ground falls off sharply as it works its way in a series of gullies down toward the lake, and for about half a mile, all twelve lanes of the freeway are held aloft by a forest of cement columns and buttresses that stretch forward into the darkness farther than the eye can follow, a woodland excavated and exposed to the air for the first time in centuries.

  What it was mostly, though, was about five acres of roof. A roof that roared, but a roof nonetheless, and a roof in a place where it rains most of the time is a valuable commodity indeed.

  The city and the homeless have been duking it out over this particular section of real estate for as long as I can remember. I’ve formulated a theory that says it’s a question of what year it happens to be. If it’s between elections, city officials wage an unceasing battle to keep the less fortunate from building their shantytowns and hobo jungles under the bridge. As fast as they build them, the city sends in the cops and the bulldozers. As the elections approach, however, the harassment stops. Seattle is a liberal, socially conscious town. While vilifying the poor may be acceptable in the burbs, downtown it will get you voted out of office in a heartbeat. This was an election year.

  I stood on the sidewalk at the top of Boylston. Gray pillars grew in clutches of three, supporting the overhead roadway with enormous pinchers of concrete and steel. The columns seemed to grow downward from the road above like smooth, symmetrical stalactites. The inconsistent rise and fall of the hill skewed the perspective all out of whack, so that I slid down a short embankment even though it looked like I should be moving at a level.

  The ground was a morass of stunted vegetation and metallic debris. Only the blackberry bushes flourished, and it was among these brittle, armored survivors that the well-worn paths wove. Few natural objects could protect your back like a good blackberry thicket. A cozy cul-de-sac with an overhead roof to keep out the insistent rain and two-inch thorns to discourage intruders was to be both cherished and defended. It had been a long time since I’d been down here. Last time I’d walked down to the bottom, where the highway and the hill come together, I’d had to shoot a man to get back out. That probably explained why, permit or no permit, the little .32 auto was strapped to my right calf this morning.

  I knelt, pulled up my pant leg, and removed the gun from its holster. After checking the safety, I slipped it into my jacket pocket and looked around. The area was as I remembered it. A wide central path wound crazily among a labyrinth of thorny mounds, into which had been hacked a veritable jigsaw puzzle of cul-de-sacs and courtyards. At the base, the mottled red vines were nearly as big as my wrist, providing solid support for the twisted arches of thorn. The smooth path glittered with bits of glass and crunched underfoot. I slipped my hand into my pocket, resting it on the little automatic, and started down the path.

  In the distance I could hear yelling. High-pitched yelling and the sound of a hammer hitting something over and over. On my left, a battered piece of cardboard had been drawn across an entrance. The smell of burning trash hung in the air.

  I kept my eyes straight ahead as I wound down the path, past maybe a dozen camps sheltering maybe thirty people in all, some still in the sack, others up and around the fire. Above the tinking of the hammer, I heard the hoarse call which now preceded me down the hill. They thought I was the cops. I kept moving downward, toward the darkness at the far end of the structure and the incessant sound of the hammering, feeling more like Dante with every step, as the roaring of the overhead roadway began to drown out all other ambient noise in a pool of rushing air and falling dust.

  The woman sat way up top on the embankment, with her head no more than a couple of feet below the roof and a boulder between her knees, using the remaining claw of a hammer to batter away at the brown rock. Steadily. In four-four time. One…two…three…four. Despite the abnormally warm weather, she was wearing everything she owned. Under a leaking down vest, I counted three different sweaters. No telling what was under that. She was barefoot, and her rough, clawed feet waved to the beat of the hammer.

  Below the bird feet, nestled back in the farthest reaches of the jungle, was, by bum standards, a high-class hideaway. Five makeshift benches surrounding a rock-lined fire pit, where some small animal was, at this moment, roasting. All nice and dry. Empty too. Only the sounds of the metal chipping away at the rock and the roar of the tires.

  “George,” I hollered. “It’s Leo.”

  “Comin’,” I heard him growl from somewhere on my right.

  I could hear the sound of boots on packed earth before I noticed the movement in the bushes. George came out first. His new suit was in ruins, stained through at the knees and ripped at the cuffs. Then came Piggy and Roscoe Radamacher.

  At one time I might have known Piggy’s real name and maybe even why they called him Piggy, but neither came to mind right now. As bums go, Piggy was generally neat and clean. Comparatively speaking, anyway. And he wasn’t particularly overweight either, just that sort of pasty quality they get from too much junk food.

  George stepped out into the cleared area and took a seat on the nearest plank and bucket bench. His hands were dirty; he looked haggard and drawn.

  “Piggy, you remember Leo, doncha?”

  “I remember,” he said.

  I had no doubt. I’d been part of a phalanx of cops and volunteers who’d swept down through this jungle like locusts about five years ago, searching for Alice Ann Royal, a ten-year-old girl who’d failed to come home from the Seward School that same afternoon.

  About twenty-five yards from this very spot, I’d kicked my way past a piece of plywood just in time to see a mutant named Ferdy Kanzler rising from atop the wide-eyed little girl. He had a bottle in his hand. In my saner moments, I tell myself that he was going to attack me with it. Since I quit drinking, most of my moments are saner, so these days I spend precious little time wondering whether or not that was why I hauled off and shot him in the neck. Didn’t much matter. Three cops who weren’t even there stepped forward to say that was how it happened. Last I heard, Alice Ann Royal had never spoken a word since that
tragic afternoon in October.

  “Stop that goddamn bangin’,” Piggy shouted up at the woman.

  One…two…three…tink tink. Waltz time, now.

  Roscoe Radamacher was a sad story. He was the unwanted offspring of a South Seattle whore who’d taken one look at his deformed face and thrown him in a trash bin down by the airport. Everybody knew the story, because the cops and the Child Protection Service folks had run her down and prosecuted the crap out of her in full view of the evening news.

  From there, things had gotten bad for Roscoe Radamacher. Sad as it is to say, our society has little to offer a severely retarded giant of a boy, born nearly without an upper jaw, with an inoperable hole in the front of his face that he could close only by bringing his lower lip up to nearly cover his nose. Fifteen years of institutions and foster care, and, even in a mind as feeble as Roscoe’s, the streets begin to beckon like the gates of paradise. He was strong as an ox and, from what I’d heard, literally did not feel pain. Piggy used him as a bodyguard, which was why he had the prime camp.

  I reached into my pocket. “Roscoe,” I said. “You remember me?”

  He shook his head. At least he was honest. Although we’d been in each other’s company a couple of times before, I knew he wouldn’t remember. From what I could tell, he had an attention span of about ten seconds. After that were just the next ten seconds.

  “Here, I brought you something,” I said.

  He stopped sniffing the air and scowled at me.

  I held the candy out in front of me like I was at the zoo.

  “It’s for you,” I said.

  Roscoe snapped it up from my hand with the speed of a cobra strike. He held the candy against his chest with one hand and poked at it with the other. “Fanks,” he said.

  One…two…three…tink tink.

  “Goddamn you—” Piggy began.

  Roscoe squelched the utterance by pinching off Piggy’s throat.

  “No yell, Piggy,” he said, waving the little man about.

  Piggy was purple and trying to agree. I slipped my hand into my other pocket and fondled the automatic. Fortunately for both of us, Roscoe lost interest in strangling Piggy and threw him to the ground like a discarded toy. “Fanks,” he said again.

  I sat down next to George. “How you doing?” I asked.

  “How’s it look like I’m doin’?” he countered.

  “Not too good.”

  “I’m too old for this shit, Leo.”

  One…two…three…tink tink.

  “What’s the word?”

  Across the clearing, Roscoe rolled a few M&M’s into Piggy’s upturned palm and then poured the rest of the bag into his face.

  “I talked to everybody except Norman and Hot Shot,” George said. “The cops got those two last night. That’s how come I didn’t want to leave a message. The boys in blue are all over this thing.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Todd was just pourin’ the drinks in the Six-Eleven. Cops came in and took ’em out. Told Todd they was material witnesses. Todd says they rousted every bar and flop in the square. Says they got them little made-up drawings of the whole crew.”

  “Composites?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll have Jed check on ’em.”

  “Normal don’t do good in the joint. Ya gotta get him out.”

  I told him I would. One…two…three…tink tink.

  I leaned in close. “What’s she doing with the hammer?”

  “She thinks there’s somethin’ inside.”

  “The rock?”

  “Yeah. She thinks there’s somethin’ hidden inside everything.”

  “What do you do, sleep when she does?”

  George forced out a short, bitter laugh. “Sleep, hell. I been here a day and a half and I ain’t seen her blink yet.”

  I checked her from the corner of my eye. George was right.

  “Well, tell me what you found out, and maybe we can get you the hell out of here.”

  He pointed over to the fire pit, where Piggy and Roscoe were in the process of turning whatever creature it was they were cooking. “Wouldn’t want to do anything too hasty, Leo,” he said. “Breakfast is about ready.”

  “Wingless squab?” I inquired.

  “Subway rabbit,” he said, pushing himself to his feet.

  “Lemme guess. Tastes just like chicken.”

  One…two…three…tink tink.

  George shuffled over to the entrance to the clearing and pulled a wadded piece of brown paper out from among the thorns.

  “I know you said not to write nothing down, but there was just too much stuff.” He began to straighten the paper out on his leg. “I figured John Law wouldn’t go through the trash.”

  He sat down beside me. “Who first?”

  I pulled out my notebook. “Let’s do Mason Reese.”

  We did them all. It was all times and places. They’d been a busy little group. By the time George was through, I’d filled two full pages in my little notebook and discovered, once again, that truth is often stranger than fiction.

  When he finished, he pulled a pint of Seagrams from his inside pocket, took a long pull, offered me some, and then had another.

  “You sure these times are reliable?” I asked him.

  “Four of ’em, I seen myself. The Meyerson girl, Dixie’s— you know, what’s his name—”

  “Bart?”

  “Yeah, Bart, him and the Del Fuego pair.”

  “Rickey Ray and Candace?”

  “Yeah. All of them arrived in a rush, right about two-thirty or so. The girl, then Bart, and then beauty and the beast. Them two, I ended up in the elevator with.”

  He caught himself. I saw his eyes shift quickly.

  “Where were you going?” I asked.

  He was ready. “To the room. I needed to use the crapper.”

  There were rest rooms in the lobby. He knew that. He also knew that I knew. And I knew that he knew that I knew he knew. He’d gone upstairs to liberate the rest of the booze from the fridge.

  In confirmation, he suddenly became animated. “And it was weird too, Leo. I hustled over, and they was already in there. I pushed nine and, you know, didn’t say nothing. I figured, you know, they were going to fourteen, and guess what—go on, guess…”

  “What?”

  “The thing stops at eight.”

  “How drunk was everybody?” I persisted.

  He paid no attention. “And they get off, but just for a second. One second after they get off, they hustle back in, the door closes, and we’re up, up, and away. Weird, huh?”

  “What’s weird, George, are these times. When I got in Monday night, just before I found the body, everybody looked to me to be seriously hammered. We had most of the crew napping over across the street, for Chrissake. I’m concerned.”

  Where obstruction had failed, he now tried righteous indignation.

  “You sayin’ I didn’t handle it? That what you’re sayin?”

  I let it go. “No. I just need to be sure about the numbers.”

  “Well, then, feel free to be sure.”

  “Well, then, my friend, you’re not going to like this.”

  “Why’s that?”

  I gave him the news. “You’re gonna have to stay lost.”

  “You’re shittin’ me.”

  “’Fraid not,” I said. “You’re the only one who knows it all. They can get the rest of it piecemeal from the crew, but by then it’ll be too late. The only thing that can’t happen is the heat can’t get you. If that happens, they know what we know.”

  “Shit.”

  “You need money?”

  He shook his head. “I need outta here, is what I need.”

  “A couple of days, at most.” I said. “You come out into polite society and they’re gonna have you in ten minutes.”

  I ran down what Terry had told me about the cops rousting the square.

  “Shit,” George said again.

  Behind me
, Piggy and Roscoe struggled to pull the wooden spit from the crispy critter without burning themselves. I took the brown paper over and dropped it into the fire pit, where it began to twist on the ashes and then burst into bright yellow flame. One…two…three…tink…

  The woman stopped hammering and looked down at me.

  “It’s a tough nut,” she said.

  George lifted the bottle to his lips. “I’ll drink to that.”

  “The hell you say.”

  “We seem to have fallen among thieves.”

  “Liars is what we have fallen among,” Sir Geoffrey said.

  “More like fibbers.”

  “Let me see that,” he said. I walked over to the bed and handed him my notebook. As he snatched the pad from my fingers, his nostrils twitched. Bright yellow was the color du jour.

  “You smell of…what is that, Mr. Waterman?” He sniffed again. “Is that mutton I smell?”

  “Long-tailed teriyaki.”

  “I’m not familiar…”

  “It’s sort of a mixed grill.”

  He didn’t hear. He was scowling at the list of times and places.

  “All of them,” he said. “Every bloody one.”

  “They seem to fall into three categories. Some just lied about the times. Others lied only about where they went. And then there were the people who lied about everything.”

  He pointed at the pad in his hand. “Now, the senior Ms. Meyerson told the police that she was working at the new restaurant all day, but your men say she was only at the restaurant late in the afternoon.”

  “That’s right.”

  “She went first to a television station…”

  “KING-TV.”

  “Why would she be frequenting a television station?”

  I shrugged and said, “I’ll call a friend of mine and see what I can find out.”

  Miles put his nose back into the pad in his palm.

  “And then she went to these other addresses.”

  “Yes.”

  “And then finally to the restaurant.”

  “But she was truthful as far as her times were concerned.”