by Jan Burke
“How did you know?”
“Well, let’s see. The glass of my favorite scotch? The one you handed me as I walked in the door? That raised suspicions. The dinner you cooked when it was my night to cook? Made me a little more suspicious, but you were smart, you didn’t push it too far — no candlelight, no music playing in the background. Just a nice dinner together. Spaghetti. Not even one of my favorite pasta dishes.”
“Didn’t have time to run to the store,” I admitted.
“Hmm.” He kept rubbing my back and neck.
“So the massage must have been a real tip-off.”
“I knew before then.”
“How?” I said, looking up at him in disbelief.
“You’re upset about something. At first, I thought it was the funeral. Funerals upset you. I understand that; they upset me, too. But you’re not acting like you’ve been to a funeral. You’re hyper — tense. That doesn’t make any sense. You’re distracted.”
“What do you mean?”
“The pasta? Overcooked. The queen of al dente made soft spaghetti tonight. Cody chases Deke and Dunk around the house, you don’t even come to the dogs’ rescue.”
“Oh.”
“Shall I go on?”
“No thanks.”
“What’s on your mind, Irene?”
When I didn’t answer, he said softly, “Why don’t you tell me about your day?”
So I did, only I think the day changed as I talked to him. Feelings I had set aside to concentrate on one problem or another throughout the day took their place in the order of things. The remembered horror of seeing Ben Watterson in that shower; my concern for Claire; my fears for Lucas; my guilt over my nastiness with Roberta.
So by the time I got around to the part about my plan to ask Rachel to help me search for Lucas, I should have felt drained, I suppose. But oddly, I just felt better.
“It’s a good idea,” he said.
“What? Forgive me for saying this, Frank, but I expected a lot of objections.”
“You would go looking for Lucas anyway, right?”
“Yes.”
“See, I’m learning. But maybe you are, too. Taking Rachel with you is a good idea. She’ll provide good protection,” he said, and absently rubbed at his shoulder. I knew he was thinking of a recent hard throw to the mat she had given him in a martial arts workout, but he didn’t say anything. “She’s a hell of a shot,” he added.
He was being generous. She didn’t stand a chance against him on a firing range. She had told me as much herself. They had gone to the firing range the day after the throw to the mat. His idea, I believe.
“She didn’t get to where she was in Phoenix by being careless,” he added. I think he had convinced himself. He paused, then laughed. “Pete is going to have a fit. Let’s get dressed and have them over for a drink.”
“NO WAY,” Pete said, pacing our living room, then stopping to point a finger at me. “No effing way are the two of you going to do this.”
I looked over to Frank, who sat quietly in my grandfather’s old armchair, drinking a glass of merlot, acting as if his partner hadn’t said a word. The dogs lay on the floor in front of the fireplace, watching Pete intently, ready to come to my defense if need be. Cody, my cat, was curled up next to Frank’s dog, Dunk, getting the benefit of fur on one side and fire on the other, and faking sleep — his ears pivoted once in a while, giving him away.
Not long after Pete and Rachel arrived, I told Rachel my plan to enlist her help in finding Lucas. As predicted, Pete had gone nuts.
“Rachel, tell her no,” he pleaded.
“I already told her yes,” Rachel said. “Since people who live in cardboard boxes seldom have private attorneys, I’m down in the skid row district all the time now.”
This was part of my reason for asking Rachel if I could hire her help. She had retired from the Phoenix Police Department after twenty years’ service; at forty-two, she was still young enough to work elsewhere. Elsewhere had turned out to be Las Piernas, where she moved when she married Pete. She got a private investigator’s license, and part of her income now came from doing contract work as an investigator for the public defender’s office. This irritated Pete on two counts: first, because she was “working for the other side,” as he saw it, and second, because Frank had helped her find the job.
“Skid row is no place for a woman to be,” he moaned.
“You’ve got a real problem, you know that?” Rachel said. “What’d you think I was going to do? I told you I was going to keep working.”
“I know! I know! But did you have to go from being a cop to being a — a — Christ! I hate to say it!”
“An investigator for the public defender. Oh, how awful. Better I should be home making raviolis for you, caro?”
Apparently, she would have stuffed them with sarcasm.
“There’s no shame in being a homemaker,” he snapped.
“No. And there’s no shame in what I’m doing, either.”
I noticed Frank’s glass of wine was empty. I reached over to refill it. He smiled his thanks and stroked a finger along my forearm. Newlywed gesture. I had been wrong about that earlier.
“Pete,” Frank said in that quiet way of his, the tone that Pete seems to hear better than a shout.
“What?” Pete said, lowering his own voice.
“You can’t win this one.”
Pete made a face and wrung his hands together, but sat down. The dogs relaxed. We managed to get along peaceably through the rest of the evening.
“See you early tomorrow morning,” Rachel said as they left. “If Lucas is a wino, he’s probably hanging out with other winos. Early in the day, his old friends may be hungover, but probably at least half-sober. We’ll try to get to them before they’ve panhandled enough cash to get too far along in the day’s drinking.”
“WE START THE NEXT ROUND HERE.”
I stared out of Rachel’s car window. Five faces stared back. The faces were weathered and unwashed; most were bearded. Three of them were so bleary-eyed they hardly seemed able to focus. All male. What are you doing here? the faces wanted to know. I was beginning to ask myself the same question.
We had started at the shelter and at the detox program. The most we had learned there was that Lucas wasn’t able to get into the shelter on Thursday night — the night of Allan Moffett’s dinner party. He had tried to get a bed, but had come by too late.
Like all shelters, this one had its rules. He had to show up by a certain time or risk being turned away. It had been especially cold that night, and although his bed was held until the deadline of nine o’clock, it was given away when he failed to show by then. He had arrived at about ten o’clock, when the shelter was already overcrowded for the night, even the floor space gone.
Five degrees colder, and city regulations would have opened up other public buildings for the night. The doors stayed shut.
We had spent the rest of the morning talking to people under railroad bridges, beneath freeway over-passes, on the beach. Some of them were loners, but many huddled together in small groups, some around trash-can fires. “They watch over each other’s stuff,” Rachel explained, “and sometimes each other’s backs.” The groups had different turfs; even spots for panhandling were claimed and defended.
“It’s not so different from Phoenix,” she said. “They’re not all panhandlers. Some of these people work. They have temporary or part-time or low-paying jobs, but they don’t make enough to pay for shelter. Sometimes they spend their money on booze or drugs instead of a place to sleep, but other times, they just fall in a hole and have a hell of a time getting back out. Some are what we used to call hobos — wanderers, don’t want responsibilities. Some are crazy.” She paused, then added, “It makes me angry to see the crazy ones out here, because basically, they’re out here because nobody gives a damn. So they become a problem for the cops. As usual, cops are supposed to solve anything no one else wants to deal with.”
“You’ve only been here a couple of months,” I said, “and yet a lot of these people know you by name.”
“Partly because I come down here trying to help the public defender. But any cop — or investigator — who has any brains gets to know the street people. If I can get them to trust me, then I can learn things from them. People living on the streets watch what goes on. They have to, just to try to stay safe. And if you’re in their territory, you’re walking around in their living room. They can spot an out-of-towner or a newcomer, a young runaway — they’ll know who’s doing what and where.”
“So why hasn’t anyone seen Lucas?”
“He cleaned up, you said. They all agree that he has. If he’s smart, he’s avoiding bad company. You’d be lucky not to find him among these people. It sounds like his favorite old drinking buddy is hanging out with Blue now. If Lucas isn’t with them, then maybe he’s still sober.”
Now, looking at this group of men huddled together outside of a restroom in a small park, I wondered if we had any hope of ever learning where Lucas had gone after being turned away from the shelter.
Rachel got out of the car, the men watching her all the while.
“How’s it going?” she said, pulling out a pack of cigarettes. “Anybody need a smoke?”
“Ah, you’re an angel, Rachel,” one of the men called. He was dressed in several lumpy layers of clothing, the outer layer all blue — sweatshirt, sweatpants, running shoes, and ragged knit cap — and seemed a little more attuned to his surroundings than some of the others. He had the build of a wrestler. He began walking toward her, and the others followed, all glancing nervously in my direction. Rachel was obviously someone familiar to them.
Watching her, I felt a sense of relief. She knew exactly what she was doing. Once again, I was struck by her ability to appear in command of any situation. Part of it was her height, her athletic build. Most of it was something in her attitude. I stepped out of the warm car into weather cold enough to chill my breath. As I closed the car door, the men watched me with open curiosity.
“It’s okay,” Rachel said easily. “She’s a friend of mine.”
The man dressed in blue stepped forward again. “Squeaky send you down here, Rachel?”
“Not today, Blue. And you know Ms. Wentworth doesn’t like to be called Squeaky.”
I had to stifle laughter. Given her high-pitched voice, “Squeaky” was the perfect nickname for Wentworth, one of the public defenders Rachel worked for.
He shrugged. “She ain’t here, so she can’t take no offense. Ain’t here and never will be. She wouldn’t want to soil her little self, right, boys?”
The others nodded.
“Give her a break,” Rachel said. “County isn’t exactly heaven on earth. She’s too busy keeping you guys out of jail to come down here and socialize.”
“This cold, she mightn’t be doin’ anybody a favor,” Blue said. He looked over at me. “Who’s this lady with the great peepers?”
“This is Irene. Irene, meet Blue. No need to tell you why he likes the color of your eyes.”
I extended a hand. He nodded, stayed where he was, but said, “Pleased to make your ’quaintance.”
The others hooted at him.
“You boys got no manners,” he said stiffly. He gestured to the other men. “This here’s Decker,” he said, pointing to a man with fists like hams. Then, as he pointed to a skinny fellow, a short, gray-haired man in a fatigue jacket, and a heavyset man, “Beans, Corky, and Rooster. Not their right names, of course, but they earned them. You want to know how?”
“Sure,” I said, causing Rachel to mutter something under her breath in Italian.
Blue grinned. “Decker ’cause he can flatten anybody, Beans ’cause he smells like that’s all he eats, Corky ’cause — I dunno, he’s always been called Corky, and—” He paused and grinned, waiting.
Before I could ask, Rachel said, “And Rooster, because he can’t keep his pants up. No need to demonstrate, Rooster, I don’t like to laugh too much before noon.”
The men hooted again, Rooster included. “You come up into my coop sometime, Rachel,” he said, hitching up his belt. “I’ll show you that I got something to crow about.”
“That’s all right, Chicken Little.”
“Oooh, she got you good,” Blue said, laughing.
“Give it up, Rooster,” the man in a fatigue jacket said. “The Amazon just might send you on a ride.”
“Amazon, huh?” Rachel said. “Well, you aren’t the first one to think that one up. No, I’m not in the mood to put anyone in an ambulance today. I’m really much daintier than I look.”
This brought another round of laughter.
“You’re Corky?” she asked the man in fatigues.
He nodded.
“Irene is trying to find one of her friends,” Rachel said. “We thought you might know him.”
No laughter. They all looked away from me then.
“Come on, now,” Rachel said. “Nobody is trying to get anybody into trouble. She really is just looking for someone she knows.”
“You know how it is, Rachel,” Blue said. “Somebody don’t want to be found, we ain’t gonna find ’im. It’s the way of things.”
The others all murmured their agreement. Following Rachel’s lead, I let the silence stretch. Corky nudged Blue and whispered something to him.
“Well, Corky, that’s a good point. Corky was saying there was no harm in listening to you say who you was lookin’ for, but — well, first off, you wouldn’t happen to have another one of them cigarettes, would you, Rachel?”
“Sure I do,” Rachel said, but didn’t reach inside her jacket for the pack.
Blue narrowed his eyes. “You don’t smoke, do you?”
“No, I carry them just in case I meet somebody who might like one.”
“Tradin’ on our bad habits, you mean,” Beans said.
“Tell her what she wants to know,” Corky said crankily. “You all knew she was a snoop before she drove up.”
“I’m looking for a man named Lucas Monroe,” I said.
They looked at one another blankly, all except Corky. He was studying us.
“You might know him as the Professor,” I added.
“The Prof,” Corky said.
“The Prof?” Blue said. “You looking for a black dude?”
I nodded. The cigarettes came out of Rachel’s pocket, but she didn’t extend the pack.
“Corky knows the Prof real well,” Blue added.
The pack made the rounds again.
“Now Rachel, don’t get mad at me,” Corky said. “This is the God’s truth. The Prof isn’t around much anymore. He got religion or something. He’s living at that new shelter, going to AA and the whole bit.”
“Hell, Corky, you haven’t told me a thing I didn’t already know,” she said.
“How could I know what you do and don’t know already? What am I, woman, a mind reader?”
She gave him a look that made him bundle up tighter in his worn fatigue jacket.
“He hasn’t been to the shelter for a few days,” I said. “He missed his curfew on Thursday night, and hasn’t been back since. Have you seen him in the last three or four days?”
Corky shook his head. “Any of you seen him?” he asked the others.
Solemn head shaking.
“Before he cleaned up,” I asked, “where did he sleep?”
“Buses, mostly,” Corky said. “Sometimes he stayed in one of the old hotels.”
“Which hotels?” Rachel asked.
“The Hyatt and the Hilton.” It brought out a round of laughter from the others.
When Rachel and I didn’t join in on the joke, he scowled. “How do you know the Prof?” he asked me.
“I was his student once.”
“The Prof was a real prof?” Blue asked.
“He taught at Las Piernas College,” I said. “I ran into him at a bus stop one day. A friend at the shelter told me he might be looking for me
.”
“Wait a minute,” Corky said. “You the reporter?”
“Yes.”
The others stepped back again.
“Aw, relax,” Corky told them. He turned back to me. “You’re not here to do a story on any of us, right?”
“Right. Just want to find Lucas — the Prof. Did he mention me to you?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Saw you when he was sleeping one off on a bus bench. That was before he went on the wagon.” He paused, a distant look coming over his face for a moment. “Twenty.”
“Give me a break,” Rachel said. “I could start an auction right here among your pals and do better than that.”
After some arguing with the others, Corky said, “If you fellows don’t learn to stand your ground, others will continue to take advantage of your misfortune.”
“Cork it, Corky,” Blue said, then turned to Rachel. “The minute he starts talking like that, he knows he’s beat. He’ll tell you for fifteen.”
Rachel looked to Corky, who scowled, then reached out a filthy hand.
“Oh no, let’s hear it first.”
“Prof said he knew some reporter on the Express. Said one day he was going to go see her, tell her his story. Said it would be big news.”
“That’s worth zero to me,” Rachel said, “unless you know what this big story was.”
Corky got a speculative look in his eye.
“Don’t even bother making something up,” Rachel said.
Corky looked resigned. “Nah, he didn’t give away a lot, even when he’d been drinking. Christ, Rachel, give a man a break.”
“We’ve been talking to people all day. They tell us you’re his buddy, the one he hangs out with.”
“Used to. Until he sobered up,” Corky said.
“Tell me where he stayed when he wasn’t sober.”
“Prof likes the Coronet, the Sunset Arms, the Angelus, the Piccadilly,” Corky said. “He likes the tall ones, the upper floors. Used to make me climb all those damned stairs with him.”
“Those hotels are all condemned,” I said.