by Jack Lacey
Then, just as the pair was being led away, Blackie kicked out suddenly at one of the arresting officers, shoulder-barged another, and taking his chance, sprinted across the parking lot as if his life depended on it.
‘What the...’ Tug muttered under his breath, as Blackie leapt in the air like a deer and looped the cuffs underneath him.
I sat there admiring the biker’s athleticism as the cops and Tug made chase, then stared at the officer opposite, wondering if he’d fire the gun that he’d just pulled out from his holster.
Oblivious to the danger, Blackie ducked and darted between some parked cars at the far end of the lot, then out of view for a second before resurfacing again in front of another squad car that had just screeched to a halt in front of him, blocking his path.
I watched as the biker’s momentum carry him over the bonnet in slow motion, then winced as he hit the ground hard with what must have been a sickening thud. Seconds later, Tug and the other officers had arrived, hauled him up by his hair, re-cuffed him, then were frog-marching him back towards me regardless of injuries.
I tensed as the group headed straight for Tug’s car then watched in disbelief as they stopped and threw him hard onto the bonnet to loosen him up some more.
Instinctively, I covered my face with my splayed fingers hoping the biker wouldn’t recognize me through his bloodied vision or the tinted glass. Then I felt the car rock again as the biker was lifted up and thrown down once more for good measure by the cop he’d barged out of the way.
Finally, they led Blackie to one of the other cars where his pyro friend was already sat placidly in the back. A few seconds later, Tug swung opened the door and fell heavily into the seat next to me.
‘Sorry about that, Blake. Did you see that chicken-shit? Thought he could get the better of us. Well he was wrong, huh?’ He sighed. ‘I can drop you off at the gutter punks’ house now. I’m sure you don’t wanna tag along to see the burnt out shell of some haulage truck.’
‘I just hope no one was in it at the time,’ I said casually, as if unconcerned, ‘Were they trying to steal some of the load?’
‘Naa, the morons just wanted some fun. It was only carrying construction materials luckily.’ Tug sighed. ‘They just had nothing better to do, so they thought they’d wreck someone else’s livelihood.’
As we finished the journey I stared out of the windscreen deep in thought, while Tug chatted away about his faltering marriage, the Viking’s poor season, and good wheat beer from Wisconsin.
I murmured my continuing interest as I mused how close I’d been to getting cremated, then pondered over why Finch had been so nervous around me back at the gallery and why I’d been tailed from there by some third rate bozo.
As we worked our way through the shape-shifting neighbourhoods I thought about the clothes and possessions I’d lost in the fire too, before another realisation slammed into me like a baseball bat. My wallet had been in the truck as well. I’d shoved it into my hold-all for safe-keeping. All I had now was what was left in my pockets...
I groaned silently and pulled out the rest of the money then counted it slowly in my hands. Seven dollars and fifty-three cents...That wasn’t going to get me very far, and certainly wouldn’t get me any closer to Olivia Deacon, wherever in the hell she was by now. And that was almost certainly going to be further away…
Chapter Ten
‘the activists’
‘Ring me if you need anything, okay?’ Tug said through the open window. ‘Anytime...’
I nodded politely, thinking how unlikely that was going to be and that for a cop, he wasn’t such a bad guy…I watched him drive to the end of the road and turn, then headed off towards the activists’ house, passing a bustling timber-clad café on the way, where some grungy-type had just pulled up on a bicycle two frames high, looking as if he’d escaped from an apocalyptical circus.
I watched him skilfully dismount, then turned my attentions back to the emerald house a few doors down, where I could see a cluster of similar people milling around outside.
‘Alright lads?’ I said chirpily as I neared.
‘Yo man, what’s happening...’ a dreaded guy announced from a faded swing chair to my right, a battered guitar in hand.
‘You know, trying to stay out of trouble...’ I said, clocking the guy with the rigid Mohican, eyeing me suspiciously from the steps.
‘Look, I was wondering if you guys might be able to help me out?’
The guitar man stopped strumming and placed it to one side. His hooded friend sat next to him, drew a hard on his cigarette and continued listening to his MP3 loudly as if uninterested. Two others drifted inside.
‘Fire away bro,’ the guitar man said, enjoying the spring sunshine that was now bathing the frozen porch.
‘I’m looking for a lad called, Ethan. He’s supposed to hang out here sometimes...’
He hesitated for a moment then looked over at the guy on the steps as if requiring his approval.
‘No one here of that name,’ the Mohican man interrupted, tapping some ash from his rollie onto the ground.
I eyed him carefully again. He looked like the sort of guy who would throw the first brick on a protest. I decided to work on him, sensing he was the key to getting any further, especially if Tug had been around already getting on their backs. If they were engaged in direct action or low-level drug dealing too, as Finch had suggested, then they were bound to be cagey with newcomers.
‘Look, I’m not a cop, a private detective, or anything of that sort, okay...I’m a friend of Olivia Deacon’s. You know, the British girl who met Ethan at the Longfellow Gallery in Whittier? All I’m trying to do is find out if she’s okay while I’m in town.’
‘She’s okay...plain and simple. So now you can head back to wherever you came from, mister, and tell that asshole of a father of hers that she’d doing fine without him.’
I liked the punk’s style, almost admired it, but not the lack of helpfulness.
‘Thing is, I need to see her for myself, to know for sure that she’s alright...’
I flashed him a smile that conveyed enough of a tangible threat lying within it to get him to respond again.
‘Look man, Jessica took some photos of them before they all left together, three of four weeks ago. Maybe she could print a copy off for you. Then you’ll have what you’re looking for, right?’ He pointed a thumb in the direction of the house and looked away coolly. ‘She’s inside watching the film. If you’re polite, she might even help you out. She’s the one with the purple streaks in her hair.’
The guy on the swing chair started playing again sensing the atmosphere had eased enough to do so. I eyed the Mohican guy a final time to show him that I hadn’t been intimidated, nodded in gratitude then went inside, feeling the first real spark of optimism since taking the case on.
Inside, the house smelt of cigarettes and exotic incense. I wandered down the narrow hallway between boxes of flyers piled up to the ceiling and plastic crates filled with recycling, scanning the various posters covering the walls outlining strikes and protests of the past and future. I stopped at the first door I came too. It was closed. From behind it I could hear a television blaring out and some low conversation.
Gently, I eased the handle down and fanned it open. On the other side was a mass of grungy denim and skin-tight leather, shaved heads and dreadlocks lying around on beaten up sofas and tattered beanbags, looking like a band of extras from a Mad Max film.
I peered through the clouds of resinous smoke at the twenty or so activists and was greeted by an array of wary glances. I raised a deft hand of apology then sat down at the back next to a tall guy in a poncho with a black ponytail that ran down to his belt.
Slowly, everyone’s attention returned to the film.
‘Is Jessica here?’ I whispered to the poncho man when everything had settled.
He glanced at me as if slightly annoyed then nodded over to a girl sat on the far sofa. I cursed under my breath. A whole
heap of bodies lay between us. I’d have to squeeze through most of them just to speak to her...
I rested my head against the wall and sighed. I was going to have to sit through the whole damned film or otherwise cause a scene, and that was going to get me nowhere fast.
Deciding to play it cool, my attentions drifted back to the television. The film seemed to be about the impact of coal mining in some mountain range somewhere, an army of yellow bulldozers ploughing their way through huge swathes of forest to dramatic music, as men with gargantuan chainsaws felled tree after tree leaving a wasteland behind them.
After a good few minutes the footage finally switched to some lone cabin, where an old guy was sat in a rocking chair on the porch, with an even older gun resting across his lap, talking about how he’d fought off the developers single-handedly as well as the police.
‘I told ‘em, plain and simple,’ the pensioner said loudly, staring directly into the camera like he was telling a story in some backstreet bar. ‘Someone is gunna get shot if they takes a step closer.
“Now you just put the gun down old timer and there won’t be no more trouble,” Sherriff Hawkins said to me through his megaphone.
‘I said back to him. I ain’t a movin, never, so if you want me out the way then you is just gunna have to fire those pistols of yourn.’
The old-timer paused and smiled at the camera revealing an array of crooked teeth, proud defiance etched across his crinkled face, before he became serious again and leaned back in his chair seemingly melancholic.
‘Eventually they all went away. We thought we’d won...until two weeks later, when a massive mudslide took the house, the dawg, and most of the town with it...’ He sucked some air through what was left of his lower teeth and shook his head. ‘Took the whole damned house...ttt,’ he repeated, glassy-eyed.
I looked over at the girl with the purple-streaked hair, desperate to get on with the job in hand, trying to get a better feel for her character. She seemed better nourished than some of the others around her, her thick tresses looking shiny, her cheeks full and flushed with colour, complementing the colourful dragon tattoos that worked their way up her arms.
I watched her dab a tear away with her cuff as the film took a different direction, then stared mindlessly at the television myself, knowing for the moment, that was all I could do.
Now the screen was filled with shots of former mountains taken from the air from a swooping helicopter, their peaks having been removed, making them look like some massive out of scale BMX track.
Then the scene changed again, to some blonde scientist talking about the rate at which the mountains and the pristine forest were disappearing, and how futile the mining companies’ attempts were at re-foresting. ‘How much is enough?’ she said several times. ‘How much is enough?’
The film cut suddenly to a digger-driver leaning against the enormous tracks of his bulldozer giving an alternate version on it all. The guy had a large square face which looked like it had been carved from granite and a paunch that matched the size of his machine.
‘God wouldn’t create all this beauty if there wasn’t enough to go around,’ he announced assuredly, as if his words had been spoken by the very god he followed. ‘We all have to live on this planet and use these resources for the good of man and future generations. Everything will grow back in time. We always re-grass what we take out. I don’t know what peoples’ problems are. Coal creates jobs. Coal sends kids to schools and builds hospitals. We’re lucky to have these precious resources and need to use them. That’s what I think.’
The documentary cut to a map of the Appalachians employing a string of red dots to show every mountain that had been levelled. I wondered who was right and who was wrong as I shuffled uncomfortably on the floor then thought about Olivia again. I was desperate to get on with the case now I felt I was getting somewhere; that of finding an innocent eighteen year old who’d been missing for far too long and whose father was sick with worry.
Eventually, seeing the credits go up, I stood in tandem with a couple of others and squeezed my way through the compacted bodies to where Jessica was still sitting, staring numbly at the screen.
‘The name’s Blake. I’m from England,’ I said extending a hand.
She offered an intrigued smirk, then looked me up and down.
‘Nice to meet you, Blake from England. Did you like the film?’
‘Thought it was very insightful,’ I said, trying to sound interested.
‘How so?’ she asked, as if she knew I wasn’t like the rest.
‘My daughter was all into nature and that. Me, less so, if I’m honest, but it makes you think doesn’t it, the film...’
She laughed softly. I wasn’t sure if she was mocking me or not. She knew I wasn’t there for the documentary as soon as I’d walked in. Maybe she just wanted to play with me for a bit for her own personal amusement before blowing me out.
‘So, how can I help?’
I lifted my gaze from the outline of her nipples, pressing through her tight maroon jumper and got to the point.
‘I’m trying to locate a missing girl. Her name’s Olivia Deacon. She disappeared whilst over here on a work placement. She’s from London like myself. I’m a good friend of hers and her father’s.’
‘Okay…’
I sat down on the arm of the sofa.
‘He’s seriously concerned about her, and just wants to know that she’s safe. I’m not here to give her grief or drag her back home. I just want to check that she’s still got a pulse while I’m passing through Minneapolis on business.
‘The guy with the Mohican told me that you may have taken a photograph of her while she was hanging out here a few weeks ago. I’d be real grateful to have a look at it if you did...’
She eyed me up and down again as if mulling over her response.
‘Well, I didn’t know her that well, having met her only a couple of times. Only knew that she was interested in art, that she’d met Ethan at the gallery, and was trying to escape some tyrannical father who you now claim to be helping out.’
‘He’s a bit protective I know...but he lost his wife recently and is scared of losing the one person left in his life who means something to him. She’s his only daughter, you see...’
‘I didn’t know that,’ she said thoughtfully.
‘Henry’s a good guy really,’ I said, as if I knew him well enough to vouch for his character. ‘He’s just frightened, that’s all. You can understand that can’t you, Jessica?'
‘Look, come up to my room and we’ll see what I can do,’ she said, her defences softening.
I followed her out of the sweat-infused lounge, up a creaking flight of stairs, along the landing to a darkened room that smelt strongly of sandalwood. I waited respectfully at the door as she went in and switched on the light.
‘Please...’ she said, beckoning me in with a smile.
I stepped in and scanned the room carefully. There was an old sofa to my left covered in Moroccan style fabrics and a bed with a throw just as colourful. The walls were busy too, covered in an array of nature photographs that looked artistic and pretty professional. I assumed she’d taken them herself, judging by the expensive digital camera sat on the side.
She bid me sit down at her work desk, then leaned over and opened up an old laptop in front of me, leaving her cleavage hovering dangerously close to my face. I shifted my attentions to the screen as the photographic software loaded up, trying to ignore the flirtation.
If Jessica did indeed have a picture of the girl, I could email it directly to Lenny, and that may be good enough to free up an initial payment from Henry and put the smile back on Baxter’s face too.
Within a few scrolls of Jessica’s alternately painted finger nails we arrived at the photo the Mohican guy had mentioned. It was a shot of Olivia and another guy, who I deduced was Ethan, sat arm in arm on a sofa, next to an older lady whom I presumed was Tug’s wife from the pictures I’d seen back at the cop’s hou
se. The photo was taken in the downstairs living room judging by the furniture and the other activists caught in the background.
I turned to speak and was met with Jessica’s tattooed waist. Now she was stretching her arms backwards as if attempting some erotic yoga position. I wondered if it was solely for my benefit...
‘When was this taken?’ I pushed, wanting to keep focused.
‘Just over four of weeks ago, after we showed the first film,’ she said bending forwards to touch her toes.
‘You’re sure?’ I pressed.
She came back up and raised an eyebrow.
‘Okay, okay...Do you know roughly where they were headed, so that I can give Olivia’s father a rough idea of where she’s hanging out?’
‘Err...no.’
She offered a curt smile, though her body language remained engaging.
‘I’m just doing him a favour that’s all,’ I said, innocently.
She placed both hands on the back of my chair, stretched like a cat, then leaned forward as if to whisper directly into my ear.
‘Sure you are...So now can I ask you a question, Blake?’
‘Go for it,’ I said, feeling the warmth of her rhythmic breath on my neck.
‘Why is there blood on your sleeve and your collar? And why do you look and smell like you’ve been sleeping rough? You sure don’t look like a man who’s just passing through and doing a friend a favour. You look like a man who’s got himself into trouble, and who attracts trouble...’
She bit my earlobe playfully and inched away.
‘Look, I’m not a cop, and I’m certainly not some tiresome investigator. Not my scene...’ I said, enjoying her earthy tones.
‘But you’re hiding something, Blake, aren’t you? You’re not some stiff accountant type, of that I’m sure.’
‘No. I used to be in the army and now work as a mechanic in London. I come over to the U.S occasionally to check out the monster-truck shows.’