Slow Burn (24 page)

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 allto 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 Arm 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 hp up to nearly cover his nose. Fifteen years of
institutions and roster 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.

T 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 . . . rink rink.

"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."