by Sposs, Mike
"After my accident, the union helped me buy the paper so I could support myself and not be a burden on anyone. Most of my subscribers were fellow members of the union. The BSCP were the ones that helped to make a good solid black middle class in this town back then," he said with pride.
"I know a little about the guy you bought it from, Clarence Washington. Did you know him?" Kevin asked.
"I knew him and his brother. He had come up here from the South. Both them boys worked at the uniform mill during the war. They kept the mill equipment running. After the war, Clarence started the paper. He couldn't really get anything going with other unions cause the white unions didn't want to be joining up with black socialist activists," Mr. Bailey said.
"His brother got fired from his job and the paper couldn't support both of them. So, they sold it to me. I changed direction a little and got away from socialism and race issues. I bet you don't remember Joe McCarthy, do you boy? That sack of shit from Wisconsin had the FBI out spying on every labor union member in the country. I pretty much made it a BSCP sponsored paper. I kept it going until the trains went out of business in the early 60s. By then, I could retire, and that is what I did," Bailey concluded taking a big sip of his morning coffee.
"What did the two brothers do after they sold the paper to you?" asked Kevin.
"They took off to Lumberton, North Carolina. They went to work for a non union mill down there. I sent them checks to an address down there for about five years, paying for the printing press I bought from them. The business wasn't worth any more than the one asset it had, a printing press,” said Mr. Bailey.
"It must have been hard to go back to the South after being up here," said Kevin, probing further.
"Well, I ain't so sure about that. Those two Washington boys, they could make most anything run on baling wire & bubble gum. But after they made people mad up here, they were blackballed by everyone. So, they didn't have much choice. I treated them fair though and paid them off. I don't think they could have done anything about it if I didn't," said Mr. Bailey.
"You know, a man could learn a lot from talking to a guy like you. Is it okay if I drop in occasionally? You must have forgotten more about this neighborhood than I will ever know. Besides, you been places I will never get to see. The empire builder ran from Chicago to Seattle, right?" Kevin asked.
Mr. Bailey looked at Kevin intently before saying, “I suppose I could teach a guy like you a thing or two," with a slight smile. "I was on that route for years through all kinds of weather. I knew some very important people in my day, too," he added.
They talked some more. Kevin eventually edged off the porch back to his car and gave Mr. Bailey a wave. As he headed out, he puzzled to himself about the Washington boys. Maybe, he could locate them if he wanted to. He wasn't sure what he would do if he found Patricia's dad.
Kevin headed over to the far end of the former parking lot for the funeral home on the Avenue. He was ready for a little B & E, breaking & entering, on a couple of former whorehouses on English Avenue. He grabbed his toolbox off the floor of the passenger seat. He flipped open the toolbox and took a quick look inside. He pulled some heavy duty work gloves on. Then, Kevin closed the box with a snap and eased out of the car after taking a quick look around. He quickly headed with the toolbox up the alley to the cutaway in the retaining wall.
Kevin ducked into it and took two steps up so he could look at ground level at the two back yards. The route to the basement window was clear. The frame was completely missing from the window of the first house. Kevin got in a prone position, took a quick look and pushed himself feet first into the basement. He grabbed the tool box and dragged it in with him as his feet dangled into the basement. He let himself drop the last few feet to the basement floor.
He quickly grabbed the tool box, opened it, pulled out a flashlight and placed the work gloves back in the box. It was broad daylight outside but dark in the cool musty basement. He took the .357 S&W out and jammed it in his waistband. Kevin stood there for a few moments getting his bearings and letting his eyes adjust to the dark. He listened carefully and began to look around.
There was nothing in the basement. Someone had already been there and taken the fuse box out completely, leaving some naked wiring exposed from the feed conduit. The big old asbestos covered boiler took up a major chunk of real estate in the basement. In the front of the basement, the place where the water and sewer came in, there were some laundry tubs. The washer, dryer, and water meter were all gone.
Part of the basement cement floor had been busted up and replaced but not repainted at the back of the house, not far from where he had dropped in from the basement window. There was a cut piece of plywood lying on the floor not far from the window. It was lying face up with nails sticking out. Judging from the size, it was the former covering for the window. One good kick from the outside had gotten someone into the basement easily. The stairs going up to the main level were steep and rickety. Kevin knew from his paperboy days that the basement door opened into a short hallway between the kitchen and the parlor. He slowly came up the stairs to find that the basement door had been removed. Those old solid oak doors with big brass knobs had to be worth something.
The main floor was as Kevin remembered it. There was a big parlor feeding into a living room followed by a dining room that had been chopped off and turned into two bedrooms. The parlor had an entrance to the hallway and the stairs going up to the other bedrooms were built over the basement stairs. The banister and stair rails had been removed along with all the built-in china cupboards in the kitchen. Kevin eased up the stairs. He had never been up there before.
As he crept up the stairs sticking to the wall side, he wondered not for the first time since going in there, why the hell he was doing this. He wasn't looking for anything specific. He was just curious. The stairs opened up to a hallway. There looked to be four rooms up here. Again, all the doors were missing from the house. Kevin looked methodically inside each room. They were all bare. There was a big built-in cedar closet in what must have been the master bedroom, in the front of the house. It looked like someone had tried to break it loose from the wall and take it until they must have realized that wasn't going to happen. It was much bigger than any of the exits it would have to come out of. He slowly pulled the enormous drawers of the closet open, one at a time. He half expected to find a body when he pulled open the drawers. They were that big. They were like the drawers in a morgue.
There were no bodies, however. The closet was bare as were the rest of the rooms upstairs. Kevin quickly finished nosing around, made his way back down to the basement and with some difficulty, crawled out the same window he came in. With the second house, he entered in by prying the plywood partially open on the back entrance door, and slipping in. The search of that house didn't turn up anything of note, either. He did notice a raised abandoned vegetable garden in the back that had not been there years ago.
Kevin rounded up his gear, and with a sigh of relief retraced his steps back to his truck. He was quickly on his way and gone, no worse for the wear except for being much dirtier. As he headed home, he questioned what he had just done. There was no reason for it. He just wanted to explore a couple of houses of ill repute. He had always wondered about them a little when he was a kid. Maybe, that's what this was all about, thought Kevin.
When he got home, he lugged his tool box back upstairs, locked it and stowed it with the loaded gun inside. Then he got cleaned up. He expected that he would see Pat tonight. Then, he sat down for a solid afternoon of study. Interrupted only occasionally by errant thoughts. One of the things that he knew he would do the next day was hit the university library. They did have a section of reference materials that contained an extensive collection of State Manufacturers Directories. You could look up just about any company you wanted by geographic location or SIC code. That would be a handy way to see what kinds of companies were located in the Lumberton, North Carolina area.
They also h
ad an extensive collection of white pages for just about every city and small town in America. Some of the info was dated to be sure. This was the kind of work skip tracers did all the time. You could occasionally pick them out of a library lineup by the way they looked and the section of the library they frequented. Kevin had a thing for Libraries. He always made it a habit to visit the local libraries at every port he went to. He had been to Libraries all over the East, and the Gulf Coasts in his travels.
At about 6pm, Pat came in. Kevin looked up from his books to greet her. "I cried for you every night you were gone," he said with a grin.
"I bet you did. You probably were thankful the bitch was gone" said Pat as they embraced.
"Actually, I did need a couple of nights of good sleep. You been working me so hard every night, I was thankful for rest. So, what’s new girl?" Kevin asked as he stroked her backside.
Pat got him caught up on her days without him. She had two pieces of big news: Her dissertation had been accepted and submitted for review. She also had an audition coming up with the Houston Symphony. She was excited. Kevin was delighted for her. "Finally, I am going to be done with school. I've been wanting this for a long time," she said.
Kevin shared her joy and said, "You won't know what to do with your time once you stop going to school.”
"Oh yes, I will! For one thing, I will read a book for pleasure and not feel bad about spending time doing it. I can join a blues band and play sax in my spare time. I can even spend time with my lover and not feel guilty about it," she said.
“Oh yeah! What’ his name? I'll kick his ass!” chimed in Kevin.
"You're going to have to kick your own butt then, because you are him. You'll be busier than the proverbial one legged man," she laughed as she embraced him.
Then, Kevin filled her in on some of what he had been doing. He didn't hold back on anything. He told her about meeting Mr. Bailey, who he was, and what he said. He told her about his experience buying a gun at the old gun shop. He told her about looking in the old abandoned houses on English Avenue. Finally, he had the good news about Matt being eligible for some disability pay for his hearing loss.
"I know I should set my mom down and have a long talk with her. I haven't talked to her about my dad since I was 14. There must be things she could tell me now, that she wouldn't tell me then," she said coming down from her high a little bit.
"Can you believe that I bought a gun from the store the same way I got my first one ten years ago? Those guys really do work on both sides of the street. Nothing has changed for them either. It reminds me of the Russian cadet story I've told you before. We meet in Istanbul, trade information back and forth about what books we study from, look at each of our ships, and even look at what each other is hauling. It turns out we had different math books, and are hauling two different kinds of weapons to two different adjacent countries. One is the counter to the other. One cargo to Haifa, Israel; the other to Tartus, Syria."
"Yeah. It really makes me feel good that you got the counter for a pearl handled .32 caliber. You just can't get some of that stuff out of your system, can you?" asked Pat.
"A stainless steel .357 is a very effective counter for a pearl handled .32. All I can say is that I like being a bad boy and I was curious to explore the two houses of ill repute," Kevin said.
"Well, you have done some good for Matt. You did some good for me too, even though I didn't want you to. Part of my problem with guns is that I am afraid of them. You aren't afraid, you rather like them," she said.
"Maybe I should take you out to a pistol range some time. Learning the basics of shooting would help you get over your fear of guns. You probably would like it, once you got into it. Besides that a Texas girl needs to know her firearms.”
"I'll give it some thought. One thing for sure is that you either got me doing things or almost got me doing things I have never considered before. So far, you haven't steered me wrong. I guess I have to trust your ideas a little more," Pat said.
They talked some more. Kevin told her every detail of what he saw in the houses he explored. The way he told it to her, it was like telling a little kid a scary bedtime story. When it was all done and there was no scary ending, Pat seemed to want to supply several of her own.
There was the "You turned around and there was Sam McCann standing there ending." There was the "You pulled out the drawer and there was a body ending." She even had a "You opened the boiler door and there was a body in the boiler ending." Then she turned silly and did the "You turned around and there was a voluptuous hooker reaching for your private parts ending." Kevin liked the last one best of all.
27. Greek Breakfast
Kevin picked up Matt the next morning and they headed for a little Greek place up in the neighborhood Matt used to live in. Kevin thought of the Saturday Night Live Cheeseburger parody of Greek restaurants as he looked at the menu and ordered Gyros and scrambled eggs. Matt had the same thing. They started talking as soon as the steaming fresh cups of black coffee were set in front of them by the owner's rather pretty daughter.
Matt observed that in all the years he lived in the area, he never ate at this place even though it had been there for years. "I don't even know what gyros is," he said.
"Well Matt, I've never eaten here before either, but I guarantee the food will be good, the portions ample, the coffee fresh, and the toast delicious because this is a Greek joint," Kevin said. Then he proceeded to tell him what gyros was and how good it tasted.
The platters came and they were heaped with eggs, Gyros, Hash Browns, and toast slathered in butter. They dug in and began to eat. After about two bites, Matt raved about how good the food was. They ate steadily. Kevin told Matt he was going up to the old junior high just off the Avenue to give a math demo for the Math club.
"Do you remember Mr. Sharpe from your days there? Well, believe it or not, he is still a teacher there," Kevin told Matt.
Matt smiled at the memory and said that Mr. Sharpe was one of the few teachers he ever had that he really liked. Then, Kevin told him about his deja vu experience with Marcy Greenberg. He didn't tell Matt that Sylvia was dead; only that she was a clone of her mother down to the detail of her voice being pitch perfect with the exact speech cadences of her mom. "I remember Sylvia too. I spent a lot of time around the back of that store. Well, all the stores over there. Do you remember when I told you I knew you carried a gun? I saw you pull it out and show it to Willie after you two beat up the guy with the knife. Know where I was? Inside an empty dumpster behind the TV repair store. I saw a lot of shit from inside dumpsters," Matt said.
"So, that's how you knew I carried back then? I was wondering about that when you asked me to get you a gun," Kevin said.
"That ain't all I know. I know Sylvia had different men visiting her at night. I think she was a prostitute," said Matt.
"As a matter of fact, she was. What else do you know?" asked Kevin.
Matt shrugged, "Well, a lot of the time, I was pretty stoned and don't remember much of anything. Sometimes, I slept in the clean trash dumpster behind the funeral home. I had a sleeping bag and would pull some of the cardboard over me in case someone came by and looked in."
"Jesus! Matt, are you ever going to be ready to give up on living like that?" Kevin asked.
"Everyone thinks it is so bad. I could sleep under the stars or covered depending on the weather. They generally have a side opening you can crack open & look out. When it's dark outside, nobody even notices if you crack things a little and look to see what’s going on. Dumpsters are about as safe and quiet as you could want," Matt said.
Now it was Kevin's turn to shrug, "I suppose I shouldn't knock it if I haven't tried it."
When Matt and Kevin finished eating, they were stuffed, and they both knew the meal was going to stick with them for a while. Kevin left a generous tip and they left feeling pretty good. Then, they drove by Matt's parents’ house. Kevin pulled over and asked Matt if he wanted to go knock on the door. Matt lo
oked the house over carefully and shook his head.
"I don't want to. At least, not today. Nothing against them. I just am not ready to do that right now. Maybe, in another week or so," he said.
"I am not going to pressure you about anything Matt. You are doing great. Small steps are okay. I will take you back downtown," said Kevin. They made plans to eat breakfast at this same place again the next morning, and then Kevin dropped Matt off back at his hotel.
Kevin drove to the downtown library, found a parking spot and went in. He was ready to go into skip tracer mode. Once he got into the reference section, he went to work. The Manufacturers Directories were the easiest to access. He easily found a current one, and then started searching in the Lumberton area for SIC codes that covered knitting mills and related manufacturing. There were 4 or 5 in the area. Kevin copied down notes about each one on some index cards he brought with him. The info included name, address, phone number, how many employees, annual sales volume and that kind of stuff.
Then, Kevin went searching for the White pages that covered the Lumberton area. He did locate some and thumbed through them. There were listings under the name Washington. However, there were no Dwayne, or Clarence listed. There was a C. J. Washington, though. That could be the one Kevin was interested in. He took the whole directory over to a copier and fed coins into the machine to make a copy of all the listings. Just to cover his bets, Kevin got a Wilmington White Pages and made copies of the listings there under the name Washington. This one had several more listings under first initials. It was getting time for him to go back up to the school for his presentation to the Math Club. Kevin turned in the materials he had requested to the reference librarian and got on his way.