Feast of Shadows, #1

by Rick Wayne

  “We’re staffed mostly with volunteers,” she said. “Like Jaime here.” She smiled at a skinny teenager who enthusiastically stuck out her arms for more trays. “We’re luckier than most, though. We have some wealthy benefactors who like to use us as a tax write-off. Keeps the clinic going, at least. Most of the food is donated from area grocers. Stuff that’s about to expire.”

  “That’s nice of them.”

  She made a face. “Whatever. It’s cheaper for them to dump it here than to dispose of it outside the city.” She lifted a stack of trays so large I wasn’t sure she could see around them and turned for the center’s back door.

  “So give me something to do,” I urged.

  “Please! You’re doing enough.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I shifted the bag strapped over my shoulder, grabbed a much smaller stack, and followed.

  “Oh, come on! No one gave a shit about Alonso. The police barely looked.” She waddled carefully around a corner with the too-tall stack balanced carefully in her hands.

  I followed her into a long, carpeted room where a group of volunteers, mostly women, were checking, sorting, and counting the trays. There was a small stack in the corner with pink lids instead of gray. I smelled potpies baking in the commercial kitchen at the far end.

  Opposite the tray-sorting line were two long tables with empty lunch bags—bleached white paper, like I’d seen in the basement of the Chinese grocer.

  “What are those?” I asked.

  “The meals in trays”—she pointed—“get delivered to the elderly and homebound. The bag lunches we hand out from the back of the center to whoever comes. Until we run out.”

  “How long does that take?”

  I walked over and lifted one of the bags. Black circle on the bottom with the letters CE.

  Amber gave some instructions to young Jaime, who scurried off to complete them, and walked over to me.

  “So to what do we owe the pleasure? Is this personal or professional?”

  “Professional,” I said. I paused for dramatic effect. “It’s official.”

  “Really?” She seemed excited, like it was her case as much as mine.

  I nodded again. “As of this morning.”

  “I thought you said the whole thing was DOA. What changed?”

  “You don’t wanna know.”

  “That bad? Should we be scared? Should I be telling people to stay at home and be extra careful about washing their hands?”

  “No, no, nothing like that. It’s not contagious. Not by contact, anyway.”

  “Then how?”

  I shook my head. “I wish I knew.”

  She studied me for a moment. “Look, I know all men are big and strong and they never need help from anyone, but—”

  “I’m alright.” I smiled at the implication. “Really. I’m not being macho. I’m just . . . thoughtful, I guess.” I could see the question on her face. “There was this old woman. Her eyes. They reminded me of something, that’s all, something I hadn’t thought of in a while.”

  “So what’s next?”

  “That’s why I’m here, actually. I was hoping to get Alonso’s medical file.”

  “You already know everything I do.”

  “I know, but it’s not just me. You know how it is. I have to document everything. It’s not real unless it’s on paper.”

  “Of course. Civil bureaucracy. It’s been three years and we’re still waiting on my license to appear in the mail. Five requests. Can you believe it?”

  “I believe it.”

  She looked around a moment. “Umm. Okay, let me see. Where would that be? This way, I think.”

  She led me through the center and around to the clinic side, where a pair of nurses sat before computers and completed federal claims forms, one after the next. She bent over a wide file cabinet. It was open and stuffed tight with color-tabbed files. She had to grunt just to separate them enough to leaf through.

  “Let’s see . . . Alonso, Alonso. Where are you?”

  According to Amber, Alonso White was a clinical counselor by trade but worked as a community organizer in Spanish Harlem, and occasionally the Bronx. He was mid-30s, single, no kids with a healthy, athletic build. Supposed to be rather handsome. Volunteered regularly—not just at the Urban Outreach Center but also at area churches and food banks—and was known to be preparing a bid for office. Dr. Massey noticed he didn’t look well one evening and asked him to stay. Alonso mentioned he’d been feeling nauseated and weak since the day before, and that some of his hair had come out in the shower. His chest and forearms were flushed. Amber urged him to go to the ER.

  “He’s a workaholic,” she had explained at our first encounter, “like a lot of us in the trenches. There’s just never enough hours in the day, even to do the minimum. You always go home to a warm bed having left someone else in the cold.”

  Alonso had thanked her for her concern and left for an appointment and that was it. Shortly thereafter, he was reported missing when he didn’t show up to a vigil.

  I waited as Amber rifled through the bulging cabinet.

  “What have you been doing with yourself?” she asked. “Getting out, I hope.”

  “Oh, you know. The usual.”

  “Ha. In other words, you go to work and go back to your hotel and hope your wife will call?”

  “You make it sound so pathetic. Mostly I just watch porn.”

  A plump nurse with cornrows, late-40s, was sitting at a desk. She smirked and turned to a stack of files.

  “Seems to me I was supposed to take you to dinner,” Amber said, “wasn’t I?”

  I had technically agreed but then never followed up. Just being polite. We were both busy.

  She stopped rifling and scowled.

  I looked at the stacks of files the nurse was alphabetizing. “Shouldn’t all this be on computer?”

  “Of course. But data entry is unfortunately very low on the list of budget priorities,” she said without turning. She was staring at the overstuffed drawer. “This is so odd.”

  “What?”

  She looked around. She lifted a stack of files from the printer and flipped through them.

  “It’s not here.” She stood and rested her hands on her full hips.

  There was a pause. She sighed and ran her hands through her hair. It fell in front of her full lips.

  “I’m so sorry. I—uh . . . I don’t know what to say. There’s no excuse. He mostly worked East Harlem. Maybe they have something over there?”

  Young Jaime appeared in the door and said there was a problem with the tray count, and Amber sighed. She crossed her arms across her chest, which pushed up her cream-colored breasts. I tried not to look.

  “I’ll be right there.” She looked at me apologetically.

  I smiled and nodded.

  “I’ll keep looking,” she said.

  “Thanks, but it’s—”

  “No, it is a big deal. I’ll find it and bring it to dinner, okay?”

  “It’s fine,” I said. “Really. You got your hands full.”

  “Please,” she insisted. It was plaintive and caught me off guard. It seemed then like maybe she needed an excuse to get away for an evening, to do something other than work.

  “Sure. Sounds great.”

  A commotion broke from down the hall. A woman was making a helluva racket in another room. Something about evil eyes. The nurses at the desk barely noticed.

  “I’m afraid you’re not catching us at our best,” Amber said apologetically.

  The yelling increased. Someone fell and by the sound of it took a whole pile of trays with them.

  “I’ll catch you later,” I said.

  “Thank you.” She touched my arm before rushing into battle.

  “Hey, one more thing,” I called. “Do you remember the names of the investigating officers?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said over the noise. “Let’s talk at dinner. I have to go. I’m sorry.”

  The
nurse with the cornrows smiled at me knowingly.

  “Have a nice day,” I told her.

  I showed myself out, fiddling with my wedding ring the whole way. I walked through the front doors and down the wheelchair ramp to the sidewalk. There was already a line forming at the corner of the building. It looked like those old pictures you see from the 1930s—guys queued up for a bowl of soup, or to see if there was any work that day. A police car rolled by. The officers inside scanned the line of people on the sidewalk. Most turned away. It seemed like cheating to me, like hunting for deer at a feed stand.

  Cops did that kind of thing back home, too. When I was a kid, they would routinely speed toward us, sirens blaring. Occasionally, it was to arrest someone. Mostly it was just to see who would run. Running from the police constitutes probable cause, which means you can be searched on the spot. A second car waiting around the block would intercept whoever fled. Of course, attempted evasion justifies the use of armed force. A kid from my school got shot that way. He had a bag of weed and went for his cell phone to call for help. Cop said he thought it was a gun. After that, we avoided the parks and corners and hung in people’s back yards, which only made the cops that much more suspicious.

  “How you fellas doin?” I called to the men in the patrol car.

  The uniform in the passenger’s seat had his window down. He watched me. I watched back, practically daring them to stop. But they didn’t. They rolled slowly around the corner.

  I found Detective Rigdon’s card in my wallet and gave him a call. He answered on the first ring.

  “Southern boy,” he said after I introduced myself. “Ran into one of your guys at the scene earlier. He was cataloging all the food from the shop. Didn’t seem very happy you weren’t around to help.”

  Tucker would get over it. I explained my problem.

  “One missing person? Out of the whole city?” He said it as politely as he could.

  “I’m ambitious.”

  He laughed.

  I told him I didn’t mind doing the legwork. I just needed a place to start. He gave me a name. Officer Stacy Montalvo, Missing Persons.

  “She’s good. Gives a shit, too. Like you. She can give you whatever we have. Just don’t get your hopes up.”

  “Don’t suppose your guys turned up anything at the scene.”

  “Nada. And you were right. Neighborhood canvas was a bust. No one heard or saw anything. Seems several of them were even surprised to learn they had a grocer just down the block, as if they’d never noticed before. Oh, and our good friends from the FBI are involved. Just thought you should know.”

  “Thanks. Let me know if you turn up anything on the symbol.”

  But he had already hung up.

  It took twenty minutes of navigation through the NYPD switchboard before I finally reached the right desk. Officer Montalvo had the competent directness of a woman who knew her job and was happy to help as long as you knew yours and didn’t waste her time. It wasn’t long before I tripped that threshold. She said pretty much the same thing as Rigdon.

  “Can I at least know who worked the case?” I asked.

  “Um . . .” I heard her typing a search. “Ha,” she chuckled. “Figures.”

  “What does?”

  “Manson and Dahmer.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Mansour and Damon,” she said. “We call them Manson and Dahmer. I have to admit, there is an uncanny likeness. Look, you’re not gonna get anything outta those guys. A coupla sandbags would dance more than they do.”

  “I don’t need them to do anything. I just need the case file.”

  I heard her clicking.

  “Is there any way I can get it?”

  Silence.

  “I have the appropriate authority. If you need—”

  “Maybe so, but all requests have to go through Records.”

  “Come on, Detective. That’ll take days. I’m not trying to step on anyone’s toes here. I have at least seven bodies already with every indication of more on the way. How about a little inter-agency cooperation? If anyone asks, I didn’t get it from you.”

  A pause. “Let me see what I can do. But only because I grew up in Spanish Harlem. Your guy was legit. A real saint.”

  I found Ollie exactly where I always did: sitting in his windowless, underground box of an office. The walls were permanently stained nicotine-yellow despite that it had been decades since anyone had been allowed to smoke in the building. His credenza had been there at least as long as him but held nothing but a stack of files and a single framed picture of a kid, a young girl, and a nameplate: O. Waxman, MD. The overly bright fluorescent lighting made his comb-over look moist, like a sheen of butter on a rising loaf, and he kept pressing it flat with his palm. Each time, he’d rub the furrow under his glasses as well.

  He jumped out of his chair to shut the door the moment I appeared.

  “Why you chasing this?” he asked. Ollie had that typical New York brusqueness no one from New York seems to notice. It sounded more like an accusation than a question, and it was the second time in as many days that my motives had been questioned. I’m sure he could see the look on my face.

  “I would hope that would be obvious.”

  “So now it’s seven people,” he scoffed. “I’m sorry to be the asshole who has to say this out loud, but in a city this size, seven is nothing. You’d do more good handing out health citations to the homeless.”

  He sat down and so did I. Apparently we were gonna have another chat.

  “Dr. Chalmers doesn’t think so,” I said.

  “You think that’s why she approved this nonsense? Because she agrees with you?”

  I scowled. I had no idea what he was implying.

  “You know, we talked to your boss the other day. Your real boss. Back in Atlanta. The good Dr. Sowell.”

  “And?”

  “He seems to think you’re a political hire.”

  “The CDC isn’t staffed by appointment.”

  “No. But the people at the top answer to those who are. And Sowell seems to think you were some kind of diversity case left over from the previous administration’s hiring program.”

  “He said that?”

  Oliver smirked. “Not in so many words.”

  “What do you want me to say, Ollie?”

  “I just want to know the angle.” He nodded to the file Chalmers had given me.

  “Angle? Why does everyone automatically assume this isn’t straight?”

  Waxman scowled and dug in his desk for his heartburn chewables. I glanced at the remnant of a meatball sub in crumpled paper. He popped a tablet into his mouth and held the open bottle toward me. I declined.

  “Yes,” I said. “I know what Sowell thinks of me. I’d love to explain why he’s wrong in very precise language, but I have a wife and a child and I can’t work a post-doc forever. And since research positions don’t exactly grow on trees and I’m not gonna get a good letter from him, my only hope is you or Dr. Chalmers. And a solid paper. Not collated stats tables, Ollie. That’s for grad students. Something original. Something that gets my name out there.”

  For the past two weeks, an unfortunately large part of my job had been tabulating statistics on a new kind of food-handling program we were testing. The science was mundane. A well-trained undergraduate could have done it. That wasn’t the purpose of the field program. The field program was there to teach us how things worked in the real world. And in that, it was successful.

  New York City crams a population of nine million—that’s larger than countries like Israel or Switzerland, by the way—into five small boroughs. Those boroughs sit inside a wider metropolitan area, stretching from New Jersey to Connecticut, that holds nine million more. The combined metro GDP approaches that of the entire nation of Canada. Besides the numerous mega-hospitals—each like a small town—there are a few thousand nursing homes, at least as many clinics, and countless doctors’ offices, dentists, and counselors. There’s a hairstylist an
d nail salon on every corner, and of course innumerable restaurants—from the five-star palaces in Midtown to the food trucks lining the parks. There are coffee shops, delis, butchers, bakeries, fishmongers, grocers, creameries, school and hospital cafeterias, packaged food manufacturers, food service suppliers, and the distributors and resellers who move it all around. And then there’s all the stuff people put in their bodies that isn’t food: pharmaceuticals, dietary supplements, “alternative health” devices, prophylactics, and sexual aids, and the pharmacies and sex shops that stock them.

  The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene was responsible for all of it. Which was impossible. It was a feat just to keep up with complaints. They had a whole consumer contact center that handled hundreds of calls and emails—thousands, in a crisis—before lunchtime. They conducted a dozen or so inspections every single day of the week—some scheduled, some by surprise. I got to go on a few. I learned two things: there is very little oversight, and health inspectors, who have roughly the same education as police officers, are at least as corrupt.

  “I thought you had the Africa thing,” he said between chews.

  “I was fourth author. It’s not the same and you know it.”

  “And that’s it? That’s all this is, you being the A student? There’s nothing else?”

  I squinted hard and took off my glasses to rub my eyes. “Can I ask you a question?”

  He nodded.

  “Without being out of line?” I put my glasses back.

  “Spit it.”

  “I just wanna know if you have this talk with the white guys who come through here.”

  He stiffened. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’m just wondering why I’m being asked to defend my desire for employment. I’m just supposed to be happy I got a degree, is that it?”

  “Whoa the fuck down. No one’s asking you to defend anything.”