Meter Maids Eat Their Young (10 page)

I thanked him and headed back out the yard. I made my own circumnavigation of the lot, noting the rusting razor wire circling the top of the fence. Though there were several large trees bordering the fence in the rear, only two had branches thick enough and close enough to the ground for a grown man to cross over the razor wire. I checked the trees carefully, looking for disturbances in the bark or some other sign that someone had recently climbed them. There was nothing on the first, a broken branch on the second. The break looked fresh. It could have been broken by a climber.

I looked around. I was back in the old industrial part of town, several blocks from the pawnshop. Several more from my old apartment. I saw the old railroad tracks, all but overgrown now, and realized that the DPE was using the south end of the old rail terminal as their central yard. I started walking toward the old railway station. If I were the Mangler, this was the way I would have approached the yard.

The old railway station was a classic of design. Red brick, sloped roof, a long portico facing the tracks; the columns once ornately carved were now chipped and covered in graffiti. The place had been abandoned for years, its sad windows boarded or covered in heavy wire. Back before I left town, I had tried several times to get some historical preservation types to develop an interest in the place. I had a thing for railroads. Especially old railway stations.

Thomas Edison had worked this line in his youth. Rumor had it this was the station where he'd been thrown off the train, the incident which left him deaf in one ear. I could see from the condition of the place that no one had taken me up on the idea.

I walked around the back of the station. Someone years ago had punched a hole in the bricks there. To break in, or just misdirected youthful energy, was hard to know. There was graffiti around the wound, the white paint distressed with the years. “
In here, summer of '52, Walter Kissed Kay.
” I had always found that strangely romantic.

There was an overgrown rock- and glass-strewn parking lot on the far side of the building. I wandered around it for ten minutes but it would take a far better tracker than me to determine if anyone had parked there recently. I kept walking.

Several blocks past the station, and several decades in time, I came to a somewhat newer part of the industrial section. There was an old man pushing a battered metal shopping cart down the broken sidewalk. Other than a delivery van and several workers catching a smoke out back of a small parts factory, I hadn't seen another soul on the street.

There was nothing remotely residential about this area. There weren't even any bars around. It was a pretty safe bet that the people who worked down here didn't stick around once their shift ended. The old guy though – who knew? – he might live around here in one of the many empty buildings. He might even have seen something, though that seemed like a long shot at best. Still, I had nothing else going for me so it was worth the effort to find out.

As I made my way over to him, I could see him eyeing me warily, with little darting motions of his head. He started to walk faster, the wheels of his cart going all wobbly, setting up a clatter of cans and bottles and whatever else he had stashed in it.

“I've done nothing,” he croaked, his voice dry and brittle and cracking, as if it had been a long while since words had last passed his lips in anything other than a soft mutter. He was waving one arm back at me as if to ward me off, beginning now to run in a hunched over, limping sort of lope. With only one hand on the wheel of his cart, it swung sharply to one side and then he and it were tumbling to the hard cement. His leg clipped the cart and he turned, falling on his back with a sharp expulsion of breath. The cart banged hard, slipped over the curb and upended. Cans and bottles and stacks of newspapers flowed into the dirty street like weird booty from a slot machine.

I reached him just as he was trying to sit up, his face puffy and red with the effort of trying to get air into his lungs. I knelt beside him and he began swatting at me with his arms.

“I've done nothing, nothing,” he wheezed, his voice now a squeak. “Please leave me alone. I've done nothing.”

I put my arm around his shoulders and lifted him to a sitting position, looking around to see if anyone had noticed what was happening. A man, standing in a warehouse door, finished a drag on his cigarette, flipped it in my direction and disappeared into the gloom of the building.

“Please,” the old man said.

“I'm not here to hurt you,” I said. “Are you okay?” He didn't sound very good and smelled worse, but his breathing slowed and a more normal color returned to his bearded face. I turned him so he was leaning against a wall and moved to his cart.

“Please,” he said as I set the thing back on its wheels and started gathering up his stash of cans and bottles. “Please. It's all I have.” He leaned forward, both arms outstretched

I turned back to him. “I'm not going to steal it,” I said. “I'm just trying to help you get it back into your cart.” A look of doubt and surprise flashed across his pale-green eyes but he said nothing, just leaned back against the wall taking deep breaths.

I had put all the cans and most of the bottles, the ones that hadn't broken anyway, back in the cart and was scooping up a pile of newspapers when I spotted the corner of something bright, white and shiny sticking out from the pile. I knelt down and pulled it out, a broad smile splitting my face. It was one of the decals the Mangler had used on the carts.

It looked rumpled and creased, as if balled-up and tossed aside. The old man must have smoothed it out. The slick paper backing was in place on one side, but the other side was folded awkwardly, the sticky sides pasted together. I held it up and stared at the lower, right-hand corner: Bluebird Printing, in tiny blue letters, followed by a phone number. I recognized the area code. The city was twenty miles south.

“Where did you find this?” I said, maybe a little too sharply, for the old man jumped and his face took on that frightened look again.

“Please,” he said. “I stole nothing. I—”

“Look,” I said, walking over to him. “I'm not accusing you of anything. I just want to know where you found this.”

He reached out his hand and I handed him the decal. He looked it over, as if it were a rare piece of parchment upon which the word of God was written, and then pointed off in the direction I had come.

“Back by where they keep the little carts?” I said.

The old man nodded.

“When?”

“Early. Morning. I didn't steal it. It was in a trash can.”

“I know you didn't. But do you remember just where you found it?”

He shrugged.

 “Do you remember seeing anyone around? You know, someone who didn't look like they belonged around here?” I persevered.

He shrugged again. I wasn't going to get anything more from him. I reached into my pocket and like the devil, held out a twenty-dollar bill.

“I'm buying this from you,” I said. “Is that okay?”

He stared at the bill fluttering in the breeze, reached out his hand and snatched it from me. I helped him to his feet, put the rest of the newspapers in his cart, bid him good-bye, and watched as he limped off down the street, turning his head now and then to see if I was going to follow, perhaps take the money back.

After he had turned a corner and disappeared, I stared down at the decal in my hand. Ah yes, the journalist's dilemma. Do I turn in this decal to the police, as I no doubt should, it being evidence and all? Or, do I hold on to it, follow up the lead myself?

It took me all of ten seconds to wade through this complex and difficult ethical conundrum.

I called the number on the decal and a raspy voice answered. I asked the voice what hours they were open, the address and whether the owner was around. Raspy Voice emitted a harsh chuckle and informed me that he was the owner, operator, and general slave to the machines. I thanked him and hung up. I checked my watch. If I hurried, I could make it there before the place closed.

Forty minutes later I was speeding south, the decal on the seat beside me. It was a risk making a cold call but I preferred to interview people in person so I could watch their body movements, their eyes. I wasn't sure Raspy Voice would give me answers, but I had little to lose other than time in trying.

I found the shop without much difficulty. It was located in a shabby, rundown part of the city, wedged in the gloom of an overhead freeway, the only working establishment on an otherwise boarded-up and burned-out block. I parked the Altima in front of the place, keying the lock as I walked to the door. The air was heavy with the smell of exhaust, the buzz of moving traffic.

A bell tinkled as I entered and the smell of printer's ink replaced that of car exhaust. I felt dizzy from it as I crossed the gloomy, small room and wondered how anyone could breathe that air every day. And, how many years whatever was making that smell might be subtracting from their lives.

A gnarly-looking man wearing a red plaid shirt and blue work pants stepped out from behind a curtain. He looked to be in his seventies; with the chemicals that had to be floating around this room he could have been thirty. Balding, Grecian-formula black hair in a comb-over, he had the face of a hard drinker, or maybe it was just the chemicals, and red-rimmed, muciferous eyes the color of charcoal.

“Hep ya?” he said, the same raspy voice I had heard on the phone.

“Yeah,” I said, flipping open my wallet and showing him my news credentials.

“Reporter?” He cackled. “I did some reporting work, I did. Years ago that was. Mostly, though, just ran the presses. It gets in yer blood, printer's ink does. Yes, sir.”

“I'm sure it does,” I said, thinking it probably melted your brain as well. I pulled out the decal and set it on the counter. He looked down at it and back up at me, a sly smile on his face.

“I had me a feelin' I might see one of them there again,” he said, a hint of mirth in his raspy voice.

“Oh,” I said. “Why?”

“Kinda obvious, don't ya think?” He chuckled. “A big ol' decal like that, special sticky glue … extra money for that there glue, by the way. And jus' that one ol' word sitting there all big'n bold. Extortion. Don't get many folks looking to have decals with a word like that printed on ‘em.”

“How many of these did you make?”

“What's it worth t'ya t'know?”

It was my turn to smile. I had figured it might come to this and had run by the ATM on the way down. What had we done before there were holes in walls that traded hard cash for the swipe of plastic and a handful of digits? People with information rarely take checks for what they know. I slid a twenty across the counter. He looked down at it and back up at me, saying nothing.

 I slid a second over the first.

“That cover it?”

“It's a good start.”

He swiped the bills off the counter and stuffed them in his pocket. “Two hunert and seventeen,” he said.

“Decals?”

“That size one, yep. Don't usually print up orders like that fer less than five hunert, but the customer insisted that was all they wanted. Paid the price for five hunert, too, they did.”

“You said you printed up two hundred this size.”

“Two hunert and seventeen, yessir.”

“Was there another part to the order?” I said.

He stared at me. Silent. Until I set another twenty down on the counter.

“Five hunert smaller decals,” he said, again swiping the bill from the counter. “Same special glue.”

“And these read?”

He laughed. “Well, son, you being a reporter'n all, an' a fairly smart lookin' one at that, I imagine you must already know what them decals said, so I'll just give that'n to ya free a charge. Department of Parking Extortion, they read. You from up north? I heered they been havin' problems up thataway.”

“Yeah, north. I don't suppose there was any paperwork involved with this little transaction?”

He stared at me again until another twenty disappeared into the pocket of his work pants.

“Some folks is allergic to paperwork,” he said. “I like to run a cash business here. Paperwork makes the guvment's job easier, makes 'em soft around the middle. I like ta think I'm heppin' them keep fit.” He laughed until the laugh turned into a wet cough. He wiped his mouth with an ink-stained cloth he pulled from his back pocket and then leaned against the counter until the cough subsided. “No paperwork,” he said, wheezing a bit now.

“And I don't suppose you could describe this customer?” I didn't wait for the stare but laid two twenties on the counter. He didn't even look down, just peered into my eyes. I laid another bill down and then another after that and still he didn't look down. Finally, I pulled the last four I had in my pocket and laid them on the counter.