The Wolf in Winter (11 page)

CHAPTER

XVI

I
got to the Preble Street Soup Kitchen just as the dinner service was coming to an end. A woman named Evadne Bryan-Perkins, who worked at the Portland Help Center, a mental health and community support facility off Congress, had directed me to the kitchen. Shaky had given me her name as a contact person, but she told me that she hadn’t seen him in a day or two, and suggested that he might drop by Preble Street for a bite to eat.

Preble Street served three meals per day not only to the city’s homeless but to seniors and families who were struggling to get by on welfare. That added up to almost five hundred thousand meals per year, but the meals were just a starting point. By getting people in the door, the staff was in a position to help them with housing advice, employment, and health care. At the very least, they could give them some clean, warm socks, and that meant a lot during winter in Maine.

One of the volunteers, a young woman named Karyn, told me that Shaky had been through earlier in the evening, but had finished his meal and headed back out almost immediately after. This was unlike him, she said. He was more sociable than some, and he usually appreciated the company and warmth of the shelter.

“He hasn’t been the same since his friend Jude died,” she said. “They
had a bond between them, and they looked out for each other. Shaky’s talked to us a little about it, but most of it he’s kept inside.”

“Do you have any idea where he might have gone?”

Karyn called over another volunteer, a kid of about college age.

“This is Stephen,” she said. “He was one of the coordinators of this year’s homeless survey. He might be able to help you.”

She went back to cleaning tables, leaving me with Stephen. He was a tall young man. I pretty much had to lean back just to look him in the eye. He wasn’t as open as Karyn had been. He had his arms crossed as he spoke to me.

“Can I ask why a private detective is looking for Shaky?” he said.

“He came to talk to me about Jude’s death. I think he set tumblers falling in my mind. If I’m to take it any further, there are some questions that he might be able to help me answer. He’s in no trouble. I give you my word on that.”

I watched him consider what I’d told him before he decided that I wasn’t about to make Shaky’s existence any more difficult, and he loosened up enough to offer me coffee. Between the beer I’d had at Ruski’s and the coffee at Rosie’s, I was carrying more liquid than a camel, but one of the first things I learned when I started out as a cop was always to accept if someone you were trying to talk with offered you a coffee or a soda. It made them relax, and if they were relaxed they’d be more willing to help you.

“Karyn mentioned something about a survey,” I said, as we sipped coffee from plastic cups.

“We’re required by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to do a census of the homeless each year,” said Stephen. “If we don’t know how many folk need help, we can’t work out budgets, staffing, even how much food we’re likely to require over the months to come. But it’s also a chance to make contact with the ones who’ve avoided us so far, and try to bring them into the fold.”

I must have looked puzzled.

“You’re wondering why anyone who’s hungry would pass up the chance of a hot meal, right?” said Stephen.

“I guess it doesn’t make much sense to me.”

“Some people who take to the streets don’t want to be found,” he said. “A lot of them have mental health issues, and if you’re a paranoid schizophrenic who believes that the government is trying to kill you the last thing you’re going to want to do is turn up at a shelter where someone might start prying into your business. Then there are others who are just plain scared. Maybe they’ve gotten into a fight with someone in the past, and they know that there’s a knife out there looking to sink itself into them, or they’ve had a bad experience with the authorities and prefer to keep their heads down. So, for one night of the year we go out in force, looking under bleachers and behind Dumpsters, and we try to reach them all. I mean, we’re out there at other times of the year, too, but the sustained focus of survey night, and the sheer weight of volunteers on the streets, means that we get a hell of a lot done in a few hours.”

“So where does Shaky hang out?”

“Shaky likes to come into the shelter, if there’s a mat available to sleep on. He hasn’t been in so much since Jude died, which means that he’s either set up camp somewhere off the interstate, probably around Back Cove Park, or he’s sleeping at the rear of one of the businesses on Danforth or Pleasant, where the cops can’t see him. That’s where I’d look.”

He toyed with his coffee cup. He wanted to say more. I didn’t hurry him.

“Did you know Mr. Jude?” he eventually asked.

I’d never heard anyone call Jude “Mister” before. He was always just Jude. It made me warm more to the kid.

“A little,” I said. “I’d sometimes put money his way if I needed someone to watch a car or an address for a while. He never let me down.”

“He was a smart man, and a good one too,” said Stephen. “I could never quite figure out how he ended up in the situation he was in. Some of the men and women here, I can see it. There’s a trajectory you can reconstruct. But not in Mr. Jude’s case. The best I can tell, there was a weak bolt in the machinery, and when it broke the whole mechanism ground to a halt.”

“You’re not an engineering student by any chance, are you?”

He grinned for the first time. “Know a man by his metaphors.”

“You sound as though you liked Jude,” I said.

“Uh-huh, I did. Even in the midst of his own troubles, he still had time for others. I tried to follow his lead by helping him in turn.”

“You’re talking about his daughter?”

“Yeah, Annie. I was kind of keeping an eye on her for him.”

“Really?”

“Because of my work with the shelter here, I was in a position to talk to others in the same business. I made an occasional call to the Tender House in Bangor, where Annie was staying, just so I could reassure Mr. Jude that she was doing okay. When she disappeared, I—”

He stopped.

“You felt responsible?”

He nodded, but didn’t speak.

“Did Jude say anything to make you believe he felt the same way?”

“No, never. It wasn’t in his nature. It didn’t help, though. It didn’t make me feel any less guilty.”

Stephen was clearly a good kid, but he had the egotism of youth. The world revolved around him, and consequently he believed that he had the power to change how it worked. And, in the way of the young, he had made another’s pain about himself, even if he did so for what seemed the best of reasons. Time and age would change him; if they didn’t, he wouldn’t be working in soup kitchens and shelters much longer. His frustrations would get the better of him and force him out. He’d blame others for it, but it would be his own fault.

I thanked him and left my cell phone number, just in case I couldn’t find Shaky, or he chose to come into the shelter for the night after all. Stephen promised to leave a note for the breakfast and lunch volunteers as well, so that if Shaky arrived to eat the next day they could let me know. I used the men’s room before I left, just to ensure that my bladder didn’t burst somewhere between the shelter and Back Cove. An old man was standing at one of the sinks, stripped to the waist. His white hair hung past his shoulders, and his body reminded me of the images I’d seen of Jude’s poor, scarred torso, like some medieval depiction of Christ after he’d been taken down from the cross.

“How you doing?” I said.

“Livin’ the dream,” the old man replied.

He was shaving with a disposable razor. He removed the last of the foam from his cheek, splashed water on his face, and rubbed his skin to check that it was smooth.

“You got any aftershave?” he asked.

“Not with me,” I said. “Why, you got a date?”

“I haven’t been on a date since Nixon was president.”

“Another thing to blame him for—ruining your love life.”

“He was a son of a bitch, but I didn’t need no help on that front.”

I washed my hands and dried them with a paper towel. I had money in my pocket, but I didn’t want to offend the old man. Then I thought that it was better to risk hurting his feelings. I left a ten on the sink beside him. He looked at it as though Alexander Hamilton might bite him if he tried to pick it up; that, or I might ask him to bite me
as part of some bizarre sexual fetish.

“What’s that for?” he said.

“Aftershave.”

He reached out and took the ten.

“I always liked Old Spice,” he said.

“My father wore Old Spice.”

“Something stays around that long, it has to be good.”

“Amen,” I said. “Look after yourself.”

“I will,” he said. “And, hey?”

I looked back.

“Thanks.”

CHAPTER

XVII

It’s a full-time job being homeless. It’s a full-time job being poor. That’s what those who bitch about the underprivileged not going out there and finding work fail to understand. They have a job already, and that job is surviving. You have to get in line early for food, and earlier still for a place to sleep. You carry your possessions on your back, and when they wear out you spend time scavenging for replacements. You have only so much energy to expend, because you have only so much food to fuel your body. Most of the time you’re tired, and sore, and your clothes are damp. If the cops find you sleeping on the street, they move you on. If you’re lucky, they’ll give you a ride to a shelter, but if there are no beds free, or no mats available on the floor, you’ll have to sleep sitting upright in a plastic chair in an outer office, and the lights will be on full, because that’s what the fire code regulations require, so you go back out on the streets again, because at least there you can lie down in the dark, and with luck you’ll sleep. Each day is the same, and each day you get a little older, and a little more tired.

And sometimes you remember who you once were. You were a kid who played with other kids. You had a mother and a father. You wanted to be a fireman, or an astronaut, or a railroad engineer. You had a husband. You had a wife. You were loved. You could never have imagined that you would end up this way.

You curl up in the darkness, and you wait for death to kiss you a final, blissful good night.

SHAKY WAS BACK ON
the streets. He’d been tempted to stay at one of the shelters and find a mat on which to sleep. His arm ached. It always pained him in winter, leaving him with months of discomfort, but it had been hurting more since Jude died. It was probably—what was the word? He thought and thought—
psychosomatic
, that was it. It had taken him a good minute to recall it, but Jude would have known the word instantly. Jude knew about history, and science, and geography. He could tell you the plot of every great novel he’d ever read, and recite whole passages from memory. Shaky had once tested him on a couple, and had jokingly remarked that, for all he knew, Jude could have been making up all those quotations off the top of his head. Jude had responded by claiming that Shaky had impugned his honor—that was the word he’d used,
impugned
—and there had been nothing for it but for the two of them to head down to the Portland Public Library on Congress, where Shaky had pulled
The Great Gatsby
from the shelves, along with
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
,
Lolita
,
The Grapes of Wrath
,
As I Lay Dying
,
Ulysses
, and the poems of Longfellow and Cummings and Yeats. Jude had been able to quote chunks of them without getting a word wrong, without a single stumble, and even some of the librarians had come over to listen. By the time he got on to Shakespeare, it was like being in the presence of one of those old stage actors, the kind who used to wash up in small towns when there were still theaters in which to perform, their costumes and props in one truck, the cast in another, and put on revues, and comedies, and social dramas, or maybe a condensed Shakespeare with all the dull parts removed, leaving only the great moments of drama: ghosts, and bloodied daggers, and dying kings.

And there was Jude in his old checked suit and two-tone shoes,
the heels worn smooth and cardboard masking the holes in the soles, surrounded by curious readers and amused librarians. He was lost in words, lost in roles, someone other than himself for just a little while, and Shaky had loved him then, loved him as he basked in the glow of pleasure that emanated from Jude’s face, loved him as his eyes closed in reverie, and he said a prayer of gratitude for the presence of Jude in his life even as he wondered how one so clever and so gifted could have ended up scavenging in Dumpsters and sleeping on the streets of a city forever shadowed by winter, and what weakness in Jude’s being had caused him to turn away from his family and his home and throw himself to the winds like a leaf at the coming of fall.

Shaky’s pack weighed heavily on him. He thought again about the shelter. He could have left his belongings there—even if there was no bed for him, someone might have been willing to look after them—and returned to pick them up later, but increasingly he found the presence of others distressing. He would look at the familiar faces, but the one he sought was no longer there, and the presence of the rest only reminded him of Jude’s absence. How long had they been friends? Shaky couldn’t remember. He had lost track of the years a long time ago. Dates were of no consequence. He was not marking wedding anniversaries, or the birthdays of children. He left the years behind him, discarded without a thought, like old shoes that could no longer fulfill even his modest needs.

He was near Deering Oaks. He kept returning there, back to the place in which Jude had breathed his last. He was a mourner, and a pilgrim. He stopped outside the house, its windows boarded. Someone had placed a new lock and bolt on the basement door since Jude’s death: the police, maybe, or the owner, assuming it was still owned by a person and not a bank. Crime scene tape had been placed across the door, but it was torn now. It drifted in the night’s breeze.

Shaky felt no sense of Jude at the house. That was how he knew that Jude had not taken his own life. Shaky didn’t believe in ghosts.
He didn’t even believe in God, and if he turned out to be wrong, well, he and God would have some words about the dog-shit hand that Shaky had been dealt. But Shaky did have a certain sense about people and places. Jude had it too. You needed it if you wanted to survive on the streets. Shaky knew instinctively whom to trust, and whom to avoid. He knew the places in which it was safe to sleep and the places, though empty and apparently innocuous, in which it was best not to rest. Men and women left their marks as they moved through life, and you could read them if you had a mind to. Jude had left his mark in that basement, his final mark, but it didn’t read to Shaky like the mark of a man who had given in to despair. It read to Shaky like the mark of one who would have fought if he’d had the strength, and if the odds had not been against him.

He walked down to the basement door and took the Swiss Army knife from his pocket. It was one of his most valuable possessions, and he maintained it well. There was one blade that he kept particularly sharp, and he used it now to make two signs on the stonework beside the door. The first was a rectangle with a dot in the center, the old hobo-alphabet symbol for “danger.” The second was a diagonal line joined halfway by a smaller, almost perpendicular line. It was the warning to keep away.

He spent the rest of the night asking questions. He did it carefully, and discreetly, and he approached only those whom he trusted, those he knew would not lie to him or betray him. It had taken him a while to figure out what he should do. Talking to the detective had crystallized things for him. Someone had taken Jude’s money, and the contents of his pack. It might have been those responsible for his death, but it didn’t seem likely that they’d then call in his hanging corpse to the cops. Neither would they have taken the money if they wanted his death to appear as a suicide. Anyway, from what Shaky had learned, Jude had been dead for a day or more before his body was found.

All this suggested to Shaky that the person who had called in the
killing, and the person who had taken the money and rifled Jude’s belongings, were one and the same, and it seemed to Shaky that it might well be one of their own, a street person. One of the city’s homeless had either stumbled across Jude’s sleeping place by accident or, more likely, had gone looking for Jude to begin with. The word was out: Jude was calling in his loans. He needed money. The unknown person could have been seeking Jude out in order to pay his debts, but, equally, there were those on the street who would not be above hunting Jude down in order to steal whatever cash he had managed to accumulate. It didn’t matter; either way someone had found Jude hanging in that basement and looted his belongings in the shadow of his corpse.

Shaky well knew that a hundred and twenty dollars was a lot of money for someone who struggled by on a couple of bucks a day. The instinct would be to celebrate: booze, or perhaps something stronger; and fast food—bought, not scavenged. Alcohol and narcotics made people careless. Rumors would start to circulate that one of their own had enjoyed a windfall.

By the time he returned to his tent at Back Cove Park, Shaky had a name.

Brightboy.