Floodgate

by Johnny Shaw

  The police reloaded. Shook hands. Slapped backs. They went through the kids’ pockets, swore when they found nothing. One copper lit a cigar, inhaled. An arrow pierced his throat, puncturing his neck like a novelty item. Gray cigar smoke drifted from the wound. Body in spasm, he discharged his weapon, shooting the man next to him in the leg. That man returned fire. Shot the man wounded with the arrow. The other two froze. Looked at each other. Ran in opposite directions. Arrows found their backs, shoulders, chests before they got twenty feet.

  I waited for my arrow. It never came.

  I needed a plan. I could flee. I could hide. Find a corner. Put my back against it. Wait for it to end.

  Sal had said the Turkish baths. Meeting Fat Jimmy. Sal came for me. Asked for my help. I would make my way there. Reunited, I would be told what to do. That’s what I needed. Orders. A task. Survival wasn’t a way to live. I needed purpose.

  I had to get out of the park. Away from the killing. Get to somewhere I knew. Somewhere where fires didn’t burn.

  The air in the sewer tunnel was cool. The water colder. Like a tomb. It was quiet. Dark as night. I could breathe. I didn’t want to waste my matches. Those were for my cigarettes. I used the light from the sewer grates, a hazy glow. Nothing in focus.

  Knee-deep in the water at the center of the passage. Slow but moving forward. The skritch of scurrying rats. Strange life in the water. The real monsters were above.

  Younger, I had played down there on hot days. A dozen boys, a few brave girls, playing muckle under the city. Running wild through the dank maze, splashing through the runoff. Laughing. Screaming. Nobody cared. Until Vito Abatti drowned. Tripped, hit his head, sank in black water, woke up dead. Two hours to find him, floating facedown. I guess he won that game of hide-and-seek. Only the urchins played after that, no parents to forbid them. They had all the fun.

  It hadn’t been so long that I had forgotten my way. Headed toward the baths. Made good time. Thought I might get there before Sal. If Sal was alive. If anyone was.

  A high-pitched scream. A woman or a girl or a child. Straight ahead. Not far. I gripped the cleaver. Inched closer through the water. Heard splashing. Another scream. A grunt. Voices.

  The tunnel opened into a larger chamber where the water collected. Home base when we played. Where seekers counted. Where the flag to capture stood. Multiple tunnels in and out, water pouring from above, draining somewhere below. Slightly deeper. A faster current. A city delta. Faint light made the room churchlike.

  One man watched as another held a girl. One hand around her waist. Another gripping her red hair. Fourteen or fifteen, she was small, but she fought. Nails across a face. Feet kicking, slowed by the water. A bearcat, but she had lost. The fight just hadn’t left her.

  “Shoot her—then screw her,” the watcher said.

  “Screwing dead things is a sin in the eyes of God,” the other replied as he tore at the girl’s clothes.

  Sal told me not to try to save anyone. That no one could be saved.

  This girl didn’t need saving. From nowhere, a knife swung up, slashed her attacker’s arm.

  I helped anyway. Had the ice pick in the man’s spine in seconds. Stuck. He fell in violent spasms, splashing and disappearing in the dark water.

  The other man pulled the girl close, a shield. Not a smart man. She stabbed behind herself. The chunk of the knife as it sank into his leg. He clumsily reached into his coat. Before he could draw his revolver, the girl’s thumb was in the man’s eye socket. Digging behind his eyeball, forcing it forward. He pushed her away.

  My cleaver landed where his neck and shoulder met, six inches deep. His collarbone cracked. The warmth of his blood ran over my hand and arm. I swung the cleaver again.

  It took a lot of swings. Until my shoulder muscles ached. I turned to find the girl. She sat against a wall, the man’s revolver pointed at me.

  “You know how to use that?” I asked.

  “I’m a quick study.”

  “I ain’t going to hurt you.”

  She fired the pistol. Hit the man with the ice pick in his neck. He stood behind me. I hadn’t seen him rise. The man fell back, sank, floated. Eyes open. Chest a bloody hash.

  “I don’t owe you,” she said. “I don’t owe you anything.” Lowered the gun. Pulled her torn clothes to her body.

  I nodded. Took off my wet coat. Held it out to her.

  1986

  CHAPTER 6

  Some fires need to burn themselves out. That damn city is beyond our control. Closest thing to a solution would be to drop a bomb and level the son of a bitch.

  —From his private tape recordings, J. Edgar Hoover discussing organized crime in Auction City with Mark Felt (1958)

  Andy had plenty of limitations, but his knowledge of the city, its history, and its citizens was not among them. As a kid, he had become a sponge. From books in the library or old newspapers, he absorbed every tidbit of city trivia. Not exclusive to book learning, he also walked the neighborhoods, letting the street educate him. Loose talk, sidewalk patter, barbershop bullshitting, Andy listened. He could name every comptroller the city ever had. He could tell you who owned the newsstand on Forty-Sixth and Parker in 1978 (Laszlo Fekete until he sold it to his cousin Zsigmond Farkas). Going back to the reconstruction after the Flood, Andy could name which architect designed which building in downtown, and every pimp operating on Exposition Boulevard. He knew the cops, the criminals, the politicians, and the moneymen. Or thought he did.

  Kate Girard had come up in his files, but all he had was the DA job twenty-odd years ago. Considering the amount of information in his fourteen filing cabinets, this lack of data was data itself. Another clue made important by its omission. Kate Girard was tied to Champ, the Holt Avenue address, and Gray. She was an active participant. There were secrets out there, and people didn’t keep secrets about unimportant things.

  Andy may have left the ACPD, but he had maintained a few contacts. There was a whole subculture of people who traded information as a commodity like pork bellies or gold. People that considered him a friend or owed him a favor or were just flat-out scared of his perceived lunacy.

  Then there were those who thought they could get something in return. The tit-for-tatters. The back-scratchers. The lowest of the low. The dregs. The journalists.

  “How’s Auction City’s most hated ex-cop?” Rebane said, setting his newspaper aside and shoveling a fist-size knot of noodles into his mouth. A man of gigantic proportions, Kurt Rebane had passed three hundred pounds as a teenager and didn’t stop growing. “With all the troubles you got in Auction, why not move somewhere else? California, maybe?”

  “I love this damn city,” Andy said. “Besides, palm trees don’t give shade, I can’t surf, and granola tastes like gravel. Wouldn’t last a day on the West Coast. The people are too beautiful. Too much yogurt.”

  Andy sat next to Rebane at the counter in the Chinatown hole-in-the-wall Fu’s Good Taste. While Chinatown struggled to survive, Fu’s remained. As did the chain-smoking octogenarians who occupied all the tables. In the dozen times he’d been there, Andy had never heard one of them speak. They sat in silence, rhythmically smoking their cigarettes and nodding to themselves. The cloud of smoke that hovered at the ceiling made the paper lamps look magical.

  “I hope you’re not going to bore me with more bullshit about Gray,” Rebane said. “Writing about police corruption in this town is like writing about why water is blue.”

  “Water isn’t blue. It’s clear.”

  “Who gives a damn?” Rebane said. “Nobody’s going to print a bunch of unsubstantiated speculation. And that’s all you ever have. It’s not even salacious or perverted or fun. The guy’s dirty, but where’s the story?”

  “Watergate wasn’t salacious or perverted or fun,” Andy said, defensive.

  “What do you got?” Rebane sounded tired.

  “Nothing,” Andy said. “I need information from you.”

  Rebane laughed, coughing up a spher
ical clump of chewed noodles onto his plate. He picked up the tan foodwad, turned it in his fingers, and tossed it back in his mouth. Andy felt his stomach turn but said nothing. There’s no upside in telling the guy you’re asking a favor that he’s disgusting to the point of near nausea.

  Rebane picked at his teeth with his pinky. “What makes you think I’ll help you with anything?”

  “Old time’s sake? I don’t know,” Andy said. “There may be a story in it. Who knows?”

  “Can I get back to my lunch? I got dumplings coming.”

  “Kate Girard. I need to know what you know about her.”

  Rebane dropped his chopsticks and turned to Andy. His body shook, chins vibrating. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “How do you know that name? Where did you hear it? Forget you ever heard of Kate Girard, unless you want to tear this city down to its roots. And get us both killed in the process.”

  “Christ, Rebane.” Andy glanced over his shoulder. The old men smoked indifferently. They had secrets of their own. “Who is she?”

  Rebane whooped with laughter. “The proverbial fish in the proverbial barrel. You make it too easy for a jerk like me to screw with you.” He pointed at the front page of the Auction City Intelligencer. A photo of President Reagan. The headline: “Mistakes Were Made.”

  Rebane slapped Andy’s back. “You’re always looking for the big conspiracy. That’s what you’re wired to do, but history tells us that real conspiracies never stay secret. Look at this thing with Reagan and Iran and the Nicaraguans. Stuff like this and Watergate happen, sure. But some idiot always says something. It always leaks. Government scandals are about incompetence, not malevolence. Nicest thing I can say about conspiracy nuts like you is that they have an overly optimistic view of man’s guile and cleverness. Realists like me see people for what they are: clumsy, selfish monkeys who try to grab all the bananas.”

  “Are you going to tell me about Kate Girard?” Andy asked.

  “Just because you distrust one group doesn’t mean you have to trust every piece of information that opposes that group. The government is bad, so obviously the moon landing was fake and fluoridation is mind control.”

  “Don’t get me started on NASA,” Andy said. “Kate Girard is someone. Used to work for the DA. I saw her last night, talking to Gray.”

  “Always Al Gray with you. Have something to do with the bruises on your face?”

  “Ran into three Thorntons.”

  Rebane shook his head. “You might be a pariah, Destra, but the Thorntons are pure villainy. Smashed more cameras than I can count. My balls hurt from sense memory. There’s nothing that justifies giving thugs like them badges.”

  “Other than their last name. Generations of Thorntons on the force.”

  “You give as good as you got?” Rebane asked.

  “Pretty sure I broke a Thornton jaw.”

  The cook at the counter took Rebane’s empty plate and put an order of steaming dumplings in front of him. He used his hands, eventually grabbing one of the slippery dumplings and sliding it in his mouth. It was like watching a hippopotamus swallow a seal whole, revolting but impossible to look away.

  “For hurting a Thornton, I’m going to help you,” Rebane said. “Only because I can do it sitting here.”

  “You’ll be the first to get the story.”

  “I’ll hold off cashing that check. You’re also picking up the tab for my feast.” Rebane corralled some more dumplings, racing to put them in his mouth. “You’re going to be disappointed. Kate Girard was a bureaucrat. Maybe twenty, twenty-five years ago, a comer in the DA’s office. Not many lady lawyers back then, and none with her traction. Big cases but always second chair. Hit a ceiling. It wasn’t like she could run for district attorney. She’s a woman, you know.”

  “I noticed.”

  “She quit abruptly. Scuttlebutt suggested she was recruited by another agency. Don’t know which one, but she didn’t leave town. Maybe a private group. Never got the complete record on it, mostly because I didn’t care. What’s the headline? ‘Woman Leaves Job and Takes Different Job.’ Film at ten.”

  “How would she know Champ?”

  Rebane laughed. “I ever tell you the time I saw Champ arm wrestle three swabbies in a row? Shamed them. Made them walk back to their ship without any pants. Hell of a woman.”

  “Never heard that one,” Andy said, having heard that one from Champ at least twenty times.

  “I have no idea how those two broads would know each other. Auction is weird that way. Everyone’s connected. We’re probably cousins.”

  The cook took the empty plate and set down a bill with a fortune cookie. Rebane slid the bill to Andy and cracked the fortune cookie, throwing the pieces in his mouth. He glanced at the fortune, got off the stool, and tossed it on the counter in front of Andy. “Not everything is a big nefarious plot, Destra. Sometimes the world is a boring place with boring people.”

  Andy picked up the fortune. It read, “Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.” Not a fortune at all. More of an observation. And a plagiarized one. In Auction City, crime found its way into everything, even dessert.

  The Japanese kid must have thought that to a round-eye like Andy all Asians looked the same. But Andy had worked Little Nagasaki as a cop. Setting that aside, the kid’s sky-high, spiky mullet kept him from being inconspicuous.

  As Andy walked out of the smoky Chinese restaurant, the kid pretended to look at the chopsticks and back-scratchers in front of a souvenir shop.

  Andy headed south down Tyburn Boulevard. The kid kept pace, across the street and a block back. But Andy knew a thing or two about trailing someone. He looked forward to the chance to show today’s youth that experience still had its place. Andy wasn’t even going to break a sweat.

  Andy walked around the next block. Right turn after right turn. Then he walked around the block again, circling the Fairmont Building. The kid followed from a distance, but with all the turns, he was forced to close the gap. Andy walked around the block again. By the third orbit, the kid knew he’d been made but kept following.

  On his twelfth lap, Andy stopped and bent to tie the laces of his laceless loafers. On one knee, he glanced over his shoulder. The kid turned quickly, looking into the window of a women’s shoe store. He had cut the distance to twenty yards.

  Andy lifted into a sprinter’s crouch, pushed off, and booked down the street away from the kid. At the end of the next block, he turned and waited. When the kid rounded the corner, Andy clotheslined him across the chest, knocking him to the ground.

  A few pedestrians gave the violent moment a glance, but they went about their business. Getting involved wasn’t protocol in Auction City.

  With a foot on the kid’s chest, Andy squatted and shouted, “Who are you? Why are you following me?”

  “No English,” the kid said.

  Closer up, Andy saw that he was probably in his early twenties, not as young as he’d thought.

  Andy coughed up some phlegm and spit on the ground near the kid’s head. “Never going back to Fu’s. Feels like I smoked a bag of briquettes.”

  “No English,” the kid said, shaking his head.

  “Anata wa dare?” Andy said, pretty sure that was close to right.

  The kid looked at Andy as if he had three heads and one of those heads had a penis for a nose.

  “Anata wa dare?” Andy repeated.

  “Damn. Totally busted,” the kid said in a West Auction accent. “You got me. Wasn’t expecting you to know Japanese. That was Japanese, right?”

  “Get up,” Andy said, grabbing the kid’s jacket collar. “Why are you following me?”

  “How is my hair?” the kid said, tapping at the rigid spikes.

  “Still ridiculous. Why are you following me?”

  “Because I’m an asshole,” the kid said.

  “Did Gray put you up to this?”

  “Waste of my afternoon. I canceled a mani-pedi.”

  “Kate Girard?”
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  “Dude, you are so far out of your league, you don’t even know what game you’re playing,” the Japanese kid said. “Seriously, my hair better be okay.”

  “You’re coming with me.”

  “I can still make my appointment.” The kid twisted his body in a quick turn, like a dancer’s pirouette. The result left Andy holding the kid’s satin jacket but not the kid. By the time Andy realized what had happened, the kid was sprinting between the suit-and-ties on their lunch breaks.

  CHAPTER 7

  People keep acting like there’s one truth to a story. Like the truth is a thing. Eventually—if you don’t want to go crazy—you’ll come to the conclusion that the choice is not about the truth, but which lie you prefer to believe.

  —From former Auction City Superior Court Judge Joost Bakker’s autobiography Joostice: Thirty Years on the Bench (1966)

  The nurse at the front desk gave Andy a scolding look when she saw the Frank’s Giant Franks bag in Andy’s hand.

  “Giving the gift of heartburn today, Mr. Destra?” the nurse said.

  “The pleasure far outweighs the pain. Champ loves Frank’s.” Andy reached into the bag. “Does that mean you don’t want the one I brought you? Mustard and relish, right?”

  Andy held out the hot dog wrapped in greasy wax paper. The nurse looked over her shoulder and took the hot dog.

  “How is she today?” Andy asked.

  “Normal day. She told me to send up Tony, the new orderly, to help her with something. Nice kid. Muscles, no brains. He reported that after moving a table six inches, she pinched his butt and gave him a wink, and then pretended she thought he was her late husband, Manny. She’s not a great actor, but it’s a good sign when she’s using her confusion as an excuse to cop a feel. Lucid enough to be grabby, at least.”