First Avenue (30 page)

Henry was sitting on the asphalt in the far corner of the parking lot, nearly hidden from view behind parked cars. It was the opposite corner from where
Sam
thought
Henry
would be, but then he had not thought
Henry
would be anywhere. His legs were crossed in a carefree manner, and his head rested against the wall of the Garden of Eden. He held a bottle concealed in a paper bag and paid no attention to
Sam
until
Sam
was almost upon him.

“Say, mister, you got a dime for a cup of coffee?”

“Coffee costs more than that,
Henry
.”

“Jeez, I didn’t see it was you. I didn’t recognize you out of your uniform.”

Henry rose shakily from his sitting position and dropped the bottle onto the asphalt.
Henry
was not drunk, however. At least he didn’t seem drunk.
Sam
picked up the sack and looked inside the wrapper.

“This really 7-Up?”

“It sure is. Like to make me sick. Let’s get out of here. Something weird is going on.”

Henry headed down the alley and left
Sam
holding the bottle. He tossed it to the asphalt beside other bottle-laden sacks and followed.
Henry
kept a few paces ahead until they were two blocks away. During that time,
Sam
didn’t know whether to laugh or call a halt.
Henry
finally stopped at the arching entrance of a building so tall that they wouldn’t have been able to see the top if they had looked. There
Henry
turned to look at
Sam
again.

“I didn’t want to take no chance on that
Perry
fellow seeing us. He tricked me once. He went into that peep-show place where I was sitting, and it was real dark in there. No way you could see anybody. Anyway who’d want to? But I seen the back door open and I figured it was him. So next time I waited up the alley where I was sitting when you came. Walked right by me. I asked him for a dime, just like I did you. He never paid me no mind. You want to know where he went after that?”

Henry paused, the shaking brought under control, eager to part with his information but wanting to be paid some mind in the process.

“I sure do,
Henry
.”

“Right back to the same building where that Donut Shop is. Only he went down to the basement.”

“What are you talking about? What basement?”

“Right there in that building. There’s steps in the back, right off the parking lot.”

Sam tried to picture the steps in his mind, but there was nothing very clear showing up. He had been down that alley a thousand times, too.

“There’s a railing there.”
Henry
tried to be helpful. “Behind the fence. Hell, it would be easy to miss. The steps start up by the alley and kind of work their way down below the parking lot.”

The picture was becoming a little clearer for
Sam
.

“Anyway,”
Henry
said, impatient to move on, “I seen him go down those steps. But that ain’t the funny part. There was a couple of kids, I guess they’re kids, that went there ahead of him. I just happened to see them. They snuck in along the alley, and you don’t hardly notice them.”

“Were they carrying anything? Bags? Something under their clothes?”

“Nothing that I could see. But I didn’t stand there with my head sticking out. They wasn’t in there more than a few minutes.”

“Do you think you could recognize them again?”

“No. I didn’t see that much of them. In fact, the only reason I think they was kids was by the way they walked. Kind of fast like. You know how kids are. They left out the alley to
Pike Street
. I hardly seen them.”

“How many times did that
Perry
guy go down there?”
Sam
liked
Henry
’s version of the name better than
Pierre
’s, and he couldn’t help smiling when he thought how
Perry
would react to his new name.

“Just that once. Of course, I missed him that first time.”
Henry
seemed to notice
Sam
’s smile and lightened up a little himself. “With all those walks he takes, you’d think he’d be a little skinnier.”

Henry’s bad teeth shone in the afternoon sun, but then he looked around and seemed to sense he was out of place. The smile disappeared. They were both out of place. Past them a parade of men and women in expensive suits and equally expensive hair walked with their heads high and looked as though they were in a hurry to get someplace they didn’t want to go. Were they all deal makers,
Sam
wondered, or were they just practicing? Deals were made in every block, he reminded himself. When those men walked down
First Avenue
, they didn’t walk with their heads so high.

“You did a good job,
Henry
,”
Sam
said and patted the little man on the shoulder. If it was condescending,
Henry
didn’t seem to notice. As when he got his new shoes, he stood a little straighter, a man of means, now a man with responsibility.

“You want me to keep on watching? I got time, you know.”

“No. Let’s call it a day. We don’t want them to get suspicious.”

He wanted to go home, and he didn’t want to think about
Henry
watching the back door alone. Besides, he had checked the Second Watch schedule;
McDonald
and Fisher were off. Now he knew where
Pierre
went. That was enough for one day. After he met
Maria
at Silve’s, he was leaving, too.

“What do you think they’re doing,
Officer
Wright
?”

“Call me
Sam
. My name is
Sam
.”

“Yes sir,
Sam
.”

“What do you think they’re doing?”
Sam
asked, returning the question to
Henry
.

“I don’t know. I wouldn’t mind finding out though.”

“I wouldn’t either,”
Sam
said. “You want to watch again tomorrow?”

“Sure. I ain’t never worked for the law before. Maybe I could get me something in the morning first unloading those trucks, like I did today. I don’t want no more money from you.”

“Okay. I’m usually in the Market about that time. Maybe I’ll see you.”

“Sure. Well, guess I better get going then. Got to keep on the move.”

Henry swallowed hard and his Adam’s apple skipped in his skinny neck as though his throat were parched. Like a fast-moving cloud, a look of torment moved across his face that had only a moment before showed renewed possibilities.
Sam
had seen that shadow before. He looked up for the sun, for the offending cloud, but the sun was hidden behind buildings, and the sky overhead was clear.

He stood with
Henry
on the steps of the giant building. He wanted to leave. It was far past the time he should have been away from this hopeless mess.

“Well, I guess we’ll call it a day then,”
Sam
repeated, unable to think of new words for the same thing.

“Yeah, that’s what we’ll do,”
Henry
said.

“Which way you headed?”

“That way,”
Henry
said, pointing south. “To the mission, I guess.”

“I’m heading the other way. See you in the morning.”

“You bet,”
Henry
said with forced enthusiasm.

Sam lingered for one more moment, the familiarity of
Henry
’s face among all the strangers delaying him.

“You got any family around here?”
Sam
asked.

“Them I still got are in
Missouri
. Not many left, though. Didn’t even know about my mother dying until I passed through. They didn’t have no way to reach me. I seen her grave though. She ought to have a bigger stone, but with the likes of me to look after her, it ain’t surprising. How about you? You must have lots of family.”

“Not so many. My mother died a year ago. Let me tell you,
Henry
, none of us do right by our mothers.”

“I bet she was proud of you.”

“You think so?”

“Sure. You in your uniform and all. A mother likes to see her son in some kind of uniform. I was in the army once, and that was the picture she kept on the bureau.”

“I wonder what picture
Perry
’s mother has of him?”

“He didn’t have no mother.”

From
Henry
, there came a sound almost unheard in the rush of afternoon business, but it was there. And from Sam, the same sound—two shadows laughing misfit laughter on the steps of the big important building.
Sam
walked away with
Henry
’s laughter lasting in his memory a block, or maybe two, until he remembered he had to go back to see the basement steps that he had somehow missed and the Indian girl above them.

Since midnight Katherine had been alone.
Mike
had found a way to get off early and still be paid court time—something to do with the next day being their day off. The sergeant gave her the choice of teaming up with someone else or working alone. She chose to work alone.

A heavy fog had settled at the waterfront, and she could see no lights across the Sound. When she flashed the car’s spotlight over the water, the beam revealed nothing. Even close images blurred and faded as though she were nearsighted.

Katherine walked down the stairway to the thick, wood planks of the dock. She heard the rustle of water against them. Radio announced the time—0400 hours.

Evenly spaced and mournful, two foghorns played opposite each other—first one, then the other at a different pitch. The closer, louder horn had the lower tone. Each hummed its single note as though tuning before playing the rest of the music, but there was no more music.

The fog seemed immobile until she looked up to the light mounted at the stairway. She saw the fog waltzing with itself, twirling and circling in irregular turns, ignoring the two notes that played to regular time.

The stiff sleeves of her blue jacket rubbed against her bare arms. It was too early in the year for the down liner that softened it. She crossed her arms and stood where he usually landed.

The ferry horn blasted off to her right and she followed the moving glow from the ferry lights as they dimmed into the fog. The wake from the ferry arrived at the dock and raised and lowered the wood planks before wasting itself on shore. She released sight of the ferry and looked into the vacuum behind it. There was a dim flash of light as though the fog had cracked open for a second; then it was gone. It might never have been there. She saw it again. A flash, darkness, another flash. It moved toward her. She walked to the very end of the dock and pulled out her flashlight. She flashed it twice, then twice again.

“Morning,” came his voice.

“Good morning to you,” she said. He was close by then.

There were low-lying lights on the dock that guided him in, and he changed direction at the last moment so that the kayak slid sideways into the wood. She caught the line he tossed.

“I wasn’t sure you would come,” she said, “with the fog and all.”

“The fog doesn’t bother me much.”

“Cute little light you have there.”

A rubber cord fastened a battery lantern to the top of the kayak.
Sam
reached out, turned it off, and released it from the strap.

“Could you see it?”

“Quite a way out,” she said.

“I always wondered if it did any good.”