Cast in Stone

by G. M. Ford

  He covered the distance in six quick strides; four feet from me, he cast a porcine sneer up at the deck of the Haida Queen, making sure his audience was in place for the main event. I chose that moment to bounce the wrench off Buster's wide forehead. The loose parts of the heavy wrench gave a muted clank. The shock waves of the blow rocketed down my arm, numbing my elbow. He staggered back, clutching his head. Before he could recover, I roundhoused the wrench, catching him full in the temple with the flat side. He rocked once, reached out to me, and fell gracefully onto his side, unmoving.

  "Damn," breathed Shiner.

  I reached down and checked the pulse in Buster's thick throat. Strong and steady. His eyelids fluttered like fallen leaves, then were still.

  Bandanna had bumped himself off the rail and now, cigarette gone, ashes clinging to his shirt, stared openmouthed. His gaze went from the wrench at my side to Shiner, who was now brandishing the other wrench, and back to the tool in my hand.

  "You better get your stuff," I said to the kid.

  Bandanna settled back against the gunnel, mouth set, arms akimbo.

  "Nobody ever whupped old Buster before. Least not that I seen."

  "Nobody has yet," I said. "Buster just got careless. I couldn't whip him with a baseball bat."

  Bandanna seemed to agree.

  The kid was traveling light. A long olive-green duffle bag and black ghetto blaster were all he hit the dock with. I tossed the pipe wrench in the water. Buster moaned, fluttering his eyelids constantly now, his extremities beginning to twitch as he came around.

  Grabbing a double handful of Buster's coveralls, I rolled him, one revolution at a time, over the edge and then toed him over the side. As I'd hoped, the freezing water instantly revived him. He emerged from the darkness sputtering and coughing, frantically clawing at the smooth hull of the Haida Queen for a purchase.

  "He can't swim," blurted Bandanna.

  "Even better," I said.

  I watched as Buster slapped the green water into foam. Wedged in between the hulls of two boats, he had no choice but to wallow over toward the dock. He thrashed his way toward me, his eyes now wide with fear. The second his sausage-like fingers managed a grip on the dock, I stomped them hard. He involuntarily let go, and quickly slipped beneath the oily surface, leaving only a striated ripple expanding on the surface. Instinctively, I stepped back to the middle of the dock.

  After what seemed like minutes he breached like an orca, blasting up and out of the water, getting both forearms up on the dock, whooshing great gulps of air, reaching blind for where he thought I should be. The wrench had put a jagged split in his forehead. A thin solution of blood and seawater rolled down

  between his eyes, dripping off the tip of his nose onto the timbers. He used one hand to wipe the hair and water from his eyes. His sodden coveralls were floating away behind him, leaving him naked but for a yellowed T-shirt that had floated up around his neck.

  I drew back one foot. "No. No swim," he gasped. "The girl."

  "What girl?" he wheezed.

  I kicked him in the head. He lost his purchase and slid back toward the water. Only by the immense power of his hands did he maintain a grip. I walked to the edge, resting the sole of my shoe on the fingers of his right hand.

  "Norma," I said quietly.

  "All I did was—" I put some weight on my foot.

  "Don't even start with me, Buster. I'm afraid of what I'll do. Just answer my questions. When you drove her home, where did you take her?"

  His eyes were open again. His lips were beginning to turn blue. His teeth chattered like discolored

  "I'm not flfffrom here. I dddddon't—" I increased the pressure of my foot. "Try harder."

  "Bbbby the market," he stuttered. "Which market?" "The fffffamous one." "Where by the market?"

  "Rrrright accross the street. I llllllet her out right under that LUllllive Girls sign. She said she could wwwwwalk from there."

  I put all my weight on his fingers. He began to shake.

  "You sure?"

  "Swear tttttttto GGGGGGod," He ratcheted out. As the kid and I started down the dock, Buster began yelling at the net menders for help. His luck was no better than mine. They turned a deaf ear to his cries for help, mending ever faster as he flailed his arms.

  "Try Latvian," I yelled back.

  I nudged the kid toward the north. The smell of fried foods drifted out over the pavement, mixing with the seawater and diesel fumes that swirled about us as we walked along the face of the Chinook's Restaurant.

  "How's your English?" I asked.

  "I'm from Hoboken," he said.

  "Then I'm pretty sure I know where you can find a job."

  6

  Since they inherited the house and became slumlords, the Boys were seldom hard to find. In the old days I'd have started in the alleys down by Pioneer Square, kicking appliance boxes, waking drunks under the Viaduct, passing out promises and dollar bills until I got a line on one of them. These days, there were only two real choices. If it was early in the month and they were flush, they were at their favorite watering hole, the Zoo, playing snooker and bending their elbows. If not, they were back at the house, playing cribbage and pouring their own. The only real differences were the price of the liquor and the distance to bed.

  I doubled-parked on Eastlake for long enough to poke my head into the Zoo and ascertain that the Boys were presently not holding down their deeded stools. I backtracked up Lynn and then turned left onto Franklin.

  Like most downtown middle-class neighborhoods, the Eastlake area had found that the dramatic rise in property values was having a profound effect on the composition of the area. The widening gyre of yuppies that spread relentlessly outward was being shadowed by an equally insistent wave of faceless bistros, bakeries, and fern bars, which now nipped hard at the old neighborhood's heels like a pack of wild spaniels.

  Franklin, between Lynn and Louisa, was a block in transition. What in a less pretentious era had once been simply called two-family houses had been gutted and resurrected as trendy condos. Most of the single-family dwellings showed the typical outward signs of recent cash infusion: restored gingerbread railings and facings, colorful stained glass door panels, and pastel two-tone paint jobs, all designed to recreate a revisionist sense of a nonexistent past.

  Here and there the block was dotted with the actual remnants of the past, standing in mute rebuttal. Unembellished, overgrown, views blocked by their taller, newer neighbors, they persevered as insistent reminders of the street's humble origins. What new and old alike shared was an abysmal lack of parking. A combination of gridlock, astronomical parking rates, and the gnawing fear that they might never find an open parking space again had forced most of the residents onto public transportation, relegating their cars to occasional weekend use. This left the two curb lanes perpetually packed. What remained in between was a clogged little capillary barely wide enough for a single vehicle.

  I gunned it down the narrow lane, sprinting for the Boys' driveway about two-thirds of the way down. Since none of the Boys had been permitted a driver's license in recent decades, parking was not generally a problem. To my surprise, two cars were parked in the driveway—a green Explorer and a gunmetal-gray Accord. I slipped the Fiat against the curb, blocking the driveway.

  Twenty-seven-oh-four was a psoriatic three-story neocolonial, its white weathered facade in a constant moult, shedding old paint like unwanted skin. Just outside the front door, the Speaker's omnipresent sandwich board leaned crookedly against the wall.

  Today's missive read "Ozone-Schmozone." I vowed not to ask.

  The sound of the opening door had no visible effect on the three guys staring blankly at a black-and-white TV in the front parlor. Each flicked a glance my way, then unconsciously tightened his embrace on the bag-shrouded bottle he guarded like a Doberman.

  I continued down the long central hall toward the kitchen in the back. I got about halfway down before George looked up from his cards, forced a foc
us, and broke out in a wide grin. Slapping his cards on the table, he rocked to his feet.

  "Leo!" he shouted.

  I'd interrupted the evening cribbage marathon among George, Ralph, Harold, and Nearly Normal Norman. I was, as usual, greeted like a visiting dignitary. It was hugs and handshakes all around.

  "Whose cars are those in the driveway?" I asked.

  "They belong to the kids across the street," said George.

  George Paris had to be the better part of seventy. A former banker, he'd drunk himself out of half a dozen jobs, two marriages, and eventually into the streets, without ever looking any worse for wear. His thick mane of slicked-back white hair always reminded me of a boxing announcer. Since Buddy's death, he'd become the de facto leader of this little band.

  "We rent 'em the space," said Harold Green, his softball-size Adam's apple bobbing furiously as he spoke. Year by year, Harold was in the process of disappearing right before our very eyes. His gaunt frame lost a few more pounds every year. A former shoe salesman, he looked to be made of old, distressed leather.

  "Seventy bucks," blurted Ralph. "Each," amended George. "Seventy bucks," Ralph said again.

  "We got it, Ralph," sighed George.

  Ralph Bastista had, years before, been a minor official with the Port of Seattle. Ralph was, as George liked to point out in moments of extreme unpleasantness, perhaps the only guy in history to drink himself out of a civil service job. Twenty years of uninterrupted debauchery had exacted a terrible toll on Ralph, unlike George. His round pleasant face and agreeable manner belied a startling lack of functioning gray matter. Whoever it was said life doesn't take place in a vacuum hadn't spent much time trying to give Ralph instructions. Ralph was, however, renowned as the finest flopper in the Pacific Northwest. Whatever his other failings, Ralph could still spot a tourist in a rental car a block away and be bouncing off the fender in the wink of an eye. Many an out-of-town visitor, visions of exploding insurance premiums numbing his brain, had silently thanked God that the old guy was miraculously unhurt as they slipped him fifty bucks and sent him limping on his way. The Lord provides in mysterious ways.

  Little or nothing was known of Nearly Normal Norman's background. Different days produced different stories. My inquiries as to his family's state of origin had on successive attempts been met with Rhode Island, Indiana, and Sri Lanka. While his vast store of esoteric knowledge suggested a formal education, Norman was less than forthcoming with any usable facts. A pair of the most seriously unhinged eyes since Rasputin coupled with a heavily muscled six-foot-six frame precluded insistent inquisitiveness from all but the most seriously addled.

  "Nice crowd out in the parlor."

  "They're all right," commented Harold quickly.

  "They got no bugs. They don't steal things or cause no trouble. That's all we ask, Leo. We just give 'em a roof over their heads for a while. No questions asked.

  If they wanted a fucking sermon they'd go to the Mission. If they fuck up, they work it out with Norman," added George with just enough zing to let me know that he didn't want to hear any jokes about the boarders.

  "And pizza," said Ralph.

  "Yeah, we give 'em pizza too," agreed George.

  "We give everybody pizza," Ralph said with obvious pride.

  When I looked confused, they pulled me over to the rear door. The entire back porch was hip deep in empty Domino's boxes.

  "Summer Special," said Harold. "It was Ralph's idea. He found the first handful."

  I looked to George for confirmation. He shrugged.

  "Believe it or not," he confirmed.

  "There's a coupon for a free small pizza in every box they deliver."

  "So you guys buy one and then—" I started.

  "We don't buy squat," said George. "The solid citizens, they don't give a shit; a small pizza ain't worth crap to them. They throw the coupons out with the box when they're done. We just go out after dinner and liberate the coupons from the containers."

  Experience had taught me that liberation meant scrounging, and container meant dumpster.

  This talk of food had touched a nerve in Norman, who exited to the porch and began digging through the collected boxes in search of a snack.

  "How's it going, Norman?" I asked.

  "There used to be a hippopotamus on Madagascar the size of a dog," he said without interrupting his forage.

  George shrugged. "He's into animals lately." "What does Domino's think of this loaves-and-fishes program of yours?" I asked.

  "After a few nights, they wouldn't deliver anymore," said Ralph.

  "That was until we sicced Mr. James on them," added Harold.

  "He said the coupons were an implied contract."

  "And?"

  "And he called the main office and threatened them. Threatened to get the media, involved. You know, discrimination," George continued.

  Out of the corner of my eye I could see that Norman had extracted from one of the lower boxes a fossilized triangle, upon which he was now munching contentedly. I looked away.

  "But by then we were attracting a pretty big crowd," Harold said.

  "We had forty-three for dinner last Friday," Ralph bragged.

  "The neighbors went ballistic," said George with obvious pride.

  "Old lady Tollifer up the street caught Big Harvey taking a dump in her rhodies and called the cops."

  "The jalapenos are murder," said Ralph with a wink.

  "So you gave it up?" I asked.

  "Hell no," said George. "The coupons are good till the end of the month. We started having them delivered directly to the parks."

  "Closer to home for the folks anyway," said Harold.

  "I'll bet Domino's liked that."

  "They lost corporate sphincter control," said George. "Claimed they didn't have to deliver except to an address."

  "Mr. James fixed that too," said Harold.

  "Get this Leo, you'll love it," said George, pulling me closer. "This guy James is a genius. He goes down to regional headquarters the next day with

  a camera crew from one of the local channels. Seems he's been to the movies lately with his grandkids and seen Domino's pizza delivered to a sewer grate in one of those movies about the mutated turtles."

  "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?"

  "Right. Anyway. Right there in front of God and the cameras he asks the regional director how come if he's willing to deliver pizzas to anonymous amphibians in aqueducts, he's not willing to honor his contracts with some of the city's less fortunate citizens. Says if they'll deliver it to a grate, they damn well better deliver it to a park. The skunk about drops his teeth."

  "So?"

  "Coupons are good till the end of the month," said Harold, waving a sheaf of coupons as thick as his wrist.

  "Jesus," I said. "How many of those things have you got?"

  "We been getting about twenty a night just here in the neighborhood. If you count all the other people we got looking in other neighborhoods, we been averaging about sixty a night."

  "Is this what Ralph and the Speaker were doing at my apartment last week? They wanted to tell me about the pizzas," I guessed.

  "We don't go near your—" George started.

  The hangdog look on Ralph's face stopped him cold. He began to scream.

  "What the fuck is the matter with you?" He waved himself off. "Never mind, I know the answer to that. How many times have I told you—"

  Having made my point, I bailed Ralph out.

  "You guys want to make a little cash looking for something other than pizza coupons?" I asked.

  "You got work for us?" asked George enthusiastically.

  "Wadda you need us to find?"

  "A girl," I said. "Maybe not actually find her, but at least find out where she's been living. Maybe find a neighbor or a roommate."

  "We'll find her, Leo," said Ralph. "Where is she?"

  "If he knew where she was, you dumbass, he wouldn't need us to find her," shot George.

  "I know w
here to start," I said.

  "That's what I meant," said Ralph.

  They waited like waifs at a toy-store window.

  "Down by the market. She had somebody let her out across the street from the market. Somewhere you can walk to from the market."

  "Lot of places to stay down by the market," said Harold with considerably less enthusiasm.

  "Terrible neighborhood," muttered George. "Even the cockroaches are perverts. The place even makes me nervous."

  Out on the porch Norman was using his thumbnail, attempting to pry an outsize piece of congealed cheese from the inside of one of the lids.

  "Cockroaches used to be four inches long," he said between bites.

  "We'll find her," said the ever-affable Ralph.

  "I've got a hundred and fifty a day to donate to getting a line on her. You divide it up however you want."

  I fished in my wallet and came out with seventy-

  three bucks. I threw it on the table.

  "We'll find her," they all agreed.

  "Got a picture?" George asked.

  "Nope, just a description."

  "Let me get my notebook and the map," he said.

  While the boys sat at the kitchen table and mapped out a plan of attack, I used the yellow dial phone on the wall to call Rebecca. Rebecca Duvall, in addition to being my lifelong friend and sometime social companion, was also the chief forensic pathologist for

  King County. I tried the office first and was not disappointed. Rebecca lived at home with her aged mother. Having known her mother for all my life, I could understand why Duvall worked late whenever possible.

  "Pathology."

  "Rebecca."

  "Leo," she said. "I can't talk right now. I've got my hands full of something." "Something?" "Someone," she admitted.

  "How's about dinner? I need to pick your brain."

  "You really should try not to use that unfortunate phrase with pathologists."