Floodgate

by Johnny Shaw

  We both knew we weren’t meant for more than that day. Two refugees who had learned how to survive. Forced together by circumstances. Not by fate.

  But in that moment. In a country dive. The lighting making everyone but her look like a ghoul. Red hair cascading over green satin. She was irresistible.

  The food was horrible. Inedible. But the wine went down smooth. Three hours later, we got a room for the night in a fleabag motor court along the highway.

  The next morning we said good-bye. Meant it. I felt good about it. She said she did, too. Like finding a lost toy from childhood. A prized top. That yo-yo you made yourself. Relieved because you thought it was gone, lost forever. But what do you do with it? What could you do but put it back in a box on a shelf in the closet?

  She contacted me ten months later. We met. She handed me a baby. A four-week-old baby. Put it in my arms. Told me I should meet my son before she took him to the orphanage.

  Can’t describe that moment. My son. Just like that. A boy with my eyes.

  I didn’t know what to do. But I couldn’t send that child to an orphanage. He needed family. Some kind of family. I was almost grown when I lost my ma in the Flood, and it hurts every day. Changed me. My boy wouldn’t grow up an orphan.

  Elizabeth had managed to avoid her husband for the last six months. His overseas job did most of the work for her. The rest taken care of by a fabricated European vacation. There was no way she could keep an illegitimate child.

  And neither could I.

  That’s when I thought of Champ. Her husband, Manny Destra, had died three months earlier. Felt some guilt about it. I had been there when it happened. Not my fault, but maybe I could have stopped it. So many gray areas in the life I now led.

  I had done my best to keep an eye on Champ. She was devastated by the loss. Nothing worse than watching the toughest person you know crumble, quit a fight. Like a boxer tagged with an uppercut, their body no longer doing what they want. Legs giving. Body falling.

  The best way to get a person to do what you want is to tell them to do it. Don’t ask. Tell. If I had said, “Will you take care of this child?” she would have said no.

  “I need you to take care of this child.” That’s all I said to Champ. She said yes.

  I knew it was permanent, but told myself that I would be there on birthdays. Back with me as soon as I settled.

  I never settled. Floodgate became my life. There was always a new threat. A new adventure. The city had Communists and the Benchley Street Wars and the Black Snake cult and university radicals, and soon I was immersed.

  Before I realized it, my son, Andrea, was a full-grown man.

  I could only watch from a distance. Protect him from threats he didn’t know existed. And as I amassed enemies, the thought of any potential danger that I might bring his way kept me from exposing the truth to him. The right time to tell him hadn’t just passed. It had never existed.

  Sometimes it takes a death to bring a family together.

  Now I have a son. Not again, but for the first time. He doesn’t know me. He doesn’t like me. My age and job don’t bode well for a long life. But maybe we have a couple of beers, have a few laughs, and catch some ugly fish in the river under the bridge.

  1986

  CHAPTER 37

  Do the people make the city? Or the city make its people? Just as our bodies generate new cells every seven years, the people that reside in this city aren’t the people that lived here a century ago. Maybe it’s the city that defines itself.

  —From an anonymous man interviewed by the Channel 6 News on a live broadcast in answer to the question, “Who are you voting for in this year’s mayoral race?” He later admitted to inhaling an enormous amount of modeling glue prior to the interview (1969).

  There were very few things sadder than a hurriedly and unenthusiastically decorated grocery store sheet cake. At the same time, there’s nothing more essential to an office going-away party. It was not a component of the party. It was what defined it.

  Candles burned on the unnatural pink-and-teal frosting, topped with the uninspired message, “Well miss you, Kale.” How much effort did it take to drop in an apostrophe or cross a T ?

  Already liquored, Kate held up a plastic cup of champagne. “We don’t get medals, but we do get paid. Here’s to you guys. Some of you are new. A few of you, I’ve fought alongside twenty years. Lost too many friends in that time. But I never lost myself. So screw you guys—here’s to me.”

  They all raised their cups and cheered. Macklin poured a round of refills, spilling as much on the floor as he got in the cups. He drank what remained directly out of the bottle.

  “What are you going to do now?” Hiro asked, his face beet red.

  “Whatever the hell I want,” Kate said. “Florida. The beach. I can still work a two-piece. Work my wiles, while I still got wiles to work. Find some mature gentleman who can still hoist his main. Live the dream.”

  “There are many sea captains in the region,” Agnes said.

  Everyone laughed. Agnes looked confused but joined in.

  “You’ve earned it, Katie,” Macklin said, holding up the bottle and giving her a wink.

  “It’s not going to be the same without you,” Pilar said.

  “You’re going to miss the city, Katie,” Rocco said. “The action.”

  “The only shots coming my way from now on are going to have rum in them.”

  Andy had a sip of the champagne, but he wasn’t drinking. He had plans later that evening.

  Kate was going to be hard to replace, a key member of the team. At least Andy had already seen some action. He would do his best in his new position as the fifth member of Floodgate.

  A few hours later, the going-away party wound down. Rocco helped Kate into the passenger’s seat of the station wagon. Draped over his body, boneless and beaming. Agnes waited behind the wheel.

  “Everyone coming back to my place? Let’s keep this party going!” Kate yelled, probably thinking she said it with a normal volume.

  “That’s not happening,” Rocco said.

  “While you’re out,” she said, “pick me up some Dolly Madisons.”

  “You’re going home, Katie,” Rocco said.

  “That’s what I said.”

  Rocco closed the passenger door and gave the roof two knocks. Agnes backed out of the factory. He watched her go. Andy walked up behind him.

  “Thanks for understanding,” Andy said.

  “You don’t know how many times I’ve thought about going back there myself,” Rocco said. “Didn’t work out for me. I hope it helps you find what you’re looking for.”

  The last time Andy had been to Gallows Terrace, things hadn’t gone according to plan. He had gone to confront a man but ended up killing his archenemy, meeting his long-lost father, and joining a ragtag criminal constabulary. Standing in front of a new set of iron gates, he wondered what could go wrong this time. Maybe he would end up fighting a monkey army and being abducted by Martians, instead of a simple meeting with his birth mother.

  He’d been standing in the same spot for the better part of a half hour. For the tenth time, he read the piece of paper that Rocco had given him. A name and an address.

  Beth McIntyre 138 Pierrepont Lane

  An intercom box sat mounted to the brick wall that surrounded the property. A brass placard next to it read: The McIntyres. Andy pressed the button. A sharp buzzing noise made him jump.

  A voice from the other end said, “Who is it?” Through the static, it sounded like Charlie Brown’s teacher. Andy could tell it was a woman’s voice, but that’s as far as he got.

  He walked away. Away from the house. Turned off Pierrepont Lane. Down the hill. And out of Gallows Terrace.

  Maybe he would come back. He didn’t know. But today was not the day.

  Beth was married to the same man. Their forty-year anniversary made the newspaper. Had a few kids with him. Andy’s presence could do no good other than clearing a ledger, bu
t it could do considerable harm. Thirty-seven years is yesterday when it comes to betrayal. He wasn’t angry at the woman. He understood her decision. His gift to his mother would be to leave her to her life.

  Besides, he knew who his real mother was.

  Champ set the photo album down when Andy came into the room. Her nurse, Russell, was back at work, sitting next to her and looking at the photographs with her. He wore shorts due to the bandage and brace on his leg. He was shirtless, too, displaying muscle groups that Andy didn’t know people had.

  “Why aren’t you wearing a shirt?” Andy asked Russell.

  “I told him to take it off,” Champ said.

  “Why?”

  “Are you kidding me? Look at him,” Champ said. “Make them dance, Russy.”

  Russell smiled and flexed his pectoral muscles individually, the muscles leaping in his chest. Champ clapped and laughed.

  “Good to see you’re recovering,” Andy said.

  Russell stood and went into the back bedroom, leaving them the room. Andy took his spot on the couch.

  “Cardinal Macklin told me to tell you that he might be dropping by later,” Andy said. “See how you’re doing.”

  “Is that so?” Champ said, an eyebrow raised.

  “Why? What?”

  “He got a little handsy in the panic room,” Champ said. “I chalked it up to the adrenaline. Getting shot at. Didn’t know he had notions.”

  “He’s a priest.”

  “I know,” she said. “I like perverts.”

  “Let’s see what’s on TV,” Andy quickly said, fumbling with the TV Guide.

  They watched back-to-back reruns, Switch and McMillan & Wife. During a commercial break, Andy asked, “You got everything you need, Champ?

  Champ put a hand on his forearm. “I do now.”

  Driving the ice cream truck through the city, Andy could still see the aftermath of the Costales Riots. A few burned buildings. Damage to public sculpture. Specific graffiti. However, as Auction City riots went, it didn’t even rank in the top ten. People on the street, but without the police escalating it, a natural calm followed. Broken glass and overturned cars, but no more bodies.

  Ashley had won that fight. Bleeding and bruised, he had dragged a beaten Robinson in front of the line of Thorntons. They looked at their fallen leader, then to Ashley, and saluted. The nature of the new ACPD leadership was yet to be seen, but the Gray/Robinson era had ended. There was hope for the city. And for its criminal element.

  Andy had fed a story to Rebane that explained the events in the way Macklin decided they should be reported. Peppered with truth, verified by proper sources and eyewitness accounts, it was just farfetched enough to become history. As reported, the Auction City Police Department suffered a number of casualties in its efforts to save people from a burning building. Dozens died in the Holt Avenue fire. Rebane didn’t buy any of it, but he knew a front-page byline when he saw one.

  Andy hadn’t absolved himself from the crimes he’d committed. While wrongdoing and crime were clearly different, the act of killing a man wasn’t a thing he wanted to forgive himself for doing. It carried weight. A thing he bore—if not on his back, then in his pocket, as a reminder of the repercussions of his actions.

  He pulled the ice cream truck into the candy factory, knowing how silly that sounded.

  It was close to midnight, but Andy’s new apartment was too clean and organized to feel lived in. He ended up where he felt most at home, in the bowels of Floodgate HQ.

  Andy pulled the next box off the shelf. He noted the numbers on the side and checked it against his inventory. He shook his head, disappointed.

  For all the information they had stored in that basement, it wasn’t any good to anybody if they couldn’t find anything. The system was broken. Like everything else involved in their operation, it looked impressive from the outside, but was slapdash and fraying at the edges.

  The box didn’t just hold the files it was supposed to. It did contain a sandwich circa the Reformation. The artifact had hardened into a fossil but somehow still held the faint smell of bologna.

  The Apple IIe they had finally taken out of the box would help, but it was going to take years to inventory and reorganize their system. The thought of all that organizing made Andy smile broadly. He picked up the sandwich with two fingers and tossed it in the wastebasket with the dead mouse and Ziploc of Funyuns that he’d also unearthed.

  “Thought I’d find you here,” Rocco said. He strolled down the aisle. “How’d it go?”

  “I went to see Champ instead.”

  Rocco nodded.

  Andy kicked the box at his feet. “Going to be down here every day for the next ten years by the look of it.”

  “The whole history of the city in these boxes,” Rocco said. “A walk-in closet worth of skeletons.”

  “Even with all this recorded history, most stories don’t make it onto paper. Most of them, they stay in people’s memories.”

  “You may be right,” Rocco asked. “I got some stories, to be sure.”

  “I’d love to hear them,” Andy said.

  Rocco sat down on the small stool. “Best place to start is the Flood.”

  Pilar poked her head around the corner, interrupting him. “You’re here. Great. I’ve been looking for some backup. Lords of Death are raising some kind of hell in Chinatown. It’s causing a stink between Consolidated and 893.”

  “Sounds like big trouble,” Andy said.

  “Hiro’s in the conference room,” Rocco said. “After seeing the hobo film, he tasked himself to shoot a new intro movie. He’s back there trying to figure out how to work the video camera.”

  “Agnes is already on her way over,” Pilar said. “If we want to avoid bodies, we best get moving.”

  “Load up the station wagon,” Rocco said. “We’ll be right up.”

  Andy closed the box and returned it to the shelf. “I still want to hear those stories.”

  “We got time,” Rocco said.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Enormous thanks to:

  Everyone at Thomas & Mercer. I couldn’t ask for a smarter and more talented team working to find readers for my books. Specifically, editors Anh Schluep and Alan Turkus, who didn’t blink when I told them how different this book was going to be. And, of course, Jacque Ben-Zekry. If a more loyal and stubborn champion for writers exists, I haven’t met them. Every day, I’m glad that little maniac is on my side.

  My developmental editor, David Downing, who has started to get used to my habits and idiosyncrasies after editing three of my books. Despite his insistence that the semicolon is a legitimate form of punctuation, the book always gets sharper and more concise in his care.

  The most underrated and essential part of the process, my first reader. Since I started writing books, I’ve only trusted one person, author Bart Lessard, to read early drafts of my work. The insights that I walk away with from his feedback always give me new energy and great ideas. Auction City would not exist without him.

  My mom, Pinkie, for being my mom.

  My partner in crime, fellow adventurer, and the love of my life, Roxanne. I can’t imagine where I would be without her. She makes me laugh every day and lets me make her laugh. And there ain’t nothing better than that in the whole damn world.

  Floodgate was written at Beulahland and Rocking Frog Cafe in Portland, Oregon.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Illustration © 2012 Roxanne Patruznick

  Johnny Shaw was born and raised on the Calexico/Mexicali border, the setting for his Jimmy Veeder Fiasco series, which includes the novels Dove Season and Plaster City. He is also the author of the Anthony Award–winning adventure novel Big Maria. His shorter work has appeared in Thuglit, Crime Factory, Shotgun Honey, Plots with Guns, and numerous anthologies. He was the creator and editor of the short-lived fiction publication Blood & Tacos. Johnny lives with his wife in Portland, Oregon.

  You can find him online at www.johnnyshawauthor.com.<
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  Follow him on Twitter @BloodAndTacos.