Done for a Dime

by David Corbett

  Toby straightened his glasses and climbed to his feet, hearing Francis call out, “You heard what I said,” as he glanced up one last time at his great-aunt’s house, checked to be sure she was safe with Nadya, then started to jog downhill.

  Dan tugged Toby’s sleeve. “The car. Get everybody in the car.”

  Miss Carvela stared up at her burning home, emitting a soft, throaty wail. As Toby approached, she spun toward him with faithless eyes. “Francis. He was here, he—” She searched the street, trying to find him.

  “Miss Carvela, we have to get in the car.”

  “But Francis—”

  “He told me to get you away. We’ll find him down the hill. He’s gone. He’s fine. Please.”

  At the top of the block, smoke spilled out of another house now and flames rippled in the dark beyond its windows. Other fires raged downhill. They’d have to drive past the fires to get out. Airborne cinders sailed into the pine trees, the dry needles smoldering till whole branches popped into flame with a sudden glancing wind.

  Toby opened the car door, helped Miss Carvela inside, and Nadya climbed in with her. Toby and Dan got in the front and they were moving, pulling into a makeshift caravan that budged downhill in fits and starts amid a sea of bodies on foot, away from one nest of fire, down toward others.

  Along the edges of the street, boys on bicycles sped as fast as they could, dodging the people on foot. Fright-eyed mothers pushed toddlers in strollers and clung with free hands to other children running alongside. One man rolled a wheelbarrow, his three girls inside, legs dangling over the lip as they reached out their hands for their mother, who struggled to keep pace.

  Dogs ran free, searching out pathways through the yards, knocking people down as they darted in and out of blind pathways. Cats fled, too, sprinting through the crowds and along fence tops, across roofs. Squirrels traveled the power lines, a knotwork of scuttering shapes, while birds soared low overhead, in and out of the dense smoke clouds.

  Two-thirds of the way down, they met a wall of motionless taillights. People were gesturing for them to back up. A dozen cars ahead, they could see the burned boy and his family, fleeing their gridlocked car and continuing on foot, the father clutching his blanket-wrapped son as he ran, the mother with her baby trailing behind in the crowd. In the far distance, the garish swirl of a fire engine’s roof lights spun red and white in the drifting haze of smoke and airborne cinders, its horn bleating helplessly for people to make way.

  “There another way out?” Dan asked Toby, putting the car in reverse.

  “You can try up or down, but everything bottles up at the bottom.”

  Dan backed up crooked to the curb, jammed the transmission into park. “From here on out we walk.”

  Miss Carvela could barely stand, drained and fearful, confused. Toby hunched down. “Climb on, Miss Carvela.” Nadya took the tin box and picture from her as the old woman wrapped her arms around his neck. He hoisted her up, tucked his arms beneath her knees, and jostled her into place. “We’re set.”

  A hundred people flooded past the congested cars that tried to nudge back so the fire crews could pass. The cars couldn’t move for the foot traffic. Finally, police officers shouldered their way through, waving people to the curbs, pushing them sometimes, swinging their batons, waving the cars back. The whole time Toby just kept moving forward, glancing to his side only to be sure Nadya was there. He lost track of Dan, but every now and again he caught sight of him in the corner of his eye, swimming through the crowd.

  Time lost all measure—it could have been an hour, half that, or half that again—but finally they got directed through a dirt track alleyway toward the stonework fence along Magnolia. Farther down, a fire among the pines near the gate still burned. Officers in reflective vests, swinging their flashlights in the haze, gestured them west toward the river. Following others, their backs now the one constant thing in his field of vision, Toby clambered over the stonework with Miss Carvela clinging to him piggyback. Nadya followed after, assisted by Dan, who brought up the rear.

  Lungs aching, Toby eased Miss Carvela to the ground. Dozens of others, dazed and restless and panting, thronged Magnolia. Sawhorse barriers blocked traffic. A rescue wagon sat parked in the street, its red light spinning as people clustered at its rear doors. EMTs handed out wet cloths to wipe away the soot, cups of water to slake thirst and rinse away the gagging taste of smoke. People drank and spat, coughing miserably.

  Sooner or later, everyone stared up at the hillside—in the firelit night, it seemed hardly more than a patchwork of angular shapes engulfed in scattered fires, shrouded in smoke. Here and there in the crowd you heard a wail or muffled sobbing, while in the dark beyond the bodies Toby spotted a loose-knit pack of dogs, clambering over the stonework fence, scurrying across Magnolia for the riverbank beyond.

  The chief set up his control and command in a storefront just inside the Baymont gate, appearing in person to steer the ship. News crews stood ready to film, and no doubt he thought he’d been ready, decked out in his blues and brass. But the youngest man on camera—not to mention new to the force, an outsider—he came across like a spin flack, sweating and vacant-eyed beneath the lights. Murchison almost felt sorry for him. The guy was photogenic, smart, but his inclination toward the grand, mixed with a free-form wordiness, did him in. Shooting from the lip, the older hands on the force called it.

  Baffled by some of his commands, detectives and uniforms conferred in private or devised their own protocols on the fly as they headed up the hill to pound on doors, aid the evacuation, check every house to make sure no stragglers remained behind to burn up and die.

  Murchison and Stluka, pulled off the warehouse fire, joined the others, fighting against the spilling crowd as they pushed uphill on foot. There’d only been time to collect walkie-talkies to communicate with the watch command, none to don vests or windbreakers identifying them as police. They’d have to chance it in just their sport jackets and slacks.

  Stluka, still fuming from his encounter with the burrheaded squatter at the warehouse fire, sank deeper and deeper into a helpless fury as they went house to house. Sometimes you couldn’t tell whether a family had already fled or hid inside in the locked-up dark, waiting for luck they had no reason to hope for. Murchison and Stulka came across both in the first block alone, wasting fifteen minutes each place.

  “Let the damn fools burn,” Stluka muttered as they headed up the next walkway.

  Smoke from fires less than a block away drifted like fog along the rooftops. Stluka covered his mouth, hammered his fist against the front door, calling out, “Police! Open up!” Murchison cupped his hands around his eyes, checked the windows, looking for signs of someone inside. Through the dark interior he spotted a sliver of light eking out beneath a hallway door.

  “I think we got a holdout here, Jerry. Let me try around back.”

  Stluka, coughing, pounded harder, kicked at the door. “Come on! Police! Show your goddamn face! Now!”

  Murchison slid in mud along the side yard. A smell of gas, but no idea from where. Light bled through curtains at a window, and he heard battling voices within as he passed beneath the sill. Uneasy, he drew his piece as Stluka’s shouts and fistfalls continued in front.

  A chain-link fence surrounded the backyard. Fearing a dog—they lurked sometimes beneath the porch, silent till the very last second—Murchison kept the gun ready as he draped one leg over, lifted the second behind, dropping onto the mud and grass beyond the fence. Beef bones and waterlogged mounds of shit littered the yard, confirming his instincts.

  Through trailing smoke he made out a handcrafted staircase of wood slat steps leading up to a plywood landing and a dark back door. Edging closer, gun held out at the ready, he listened hard and heard at last the low simpering growl from deep in the subporch shadows.

  “Jerry, heads up. Got ourselves at least one dog back here!”

  He waited for acknowledgment but heard instead the sudden fast slam of an open
ing door, then a shotgun blast. The ratchet of a pump, a second blast.

  “Jerry!” He kept his gun trained on the shadows beneath the plank steps. “Call out, give me your status! Jerry!”

  From the front of the house he heard only the scramble of footsteps as one, maybe two people fled. He fired twice into the darkness beneath the porch, heard the hidden animal yelp in pain and flee—a Doberman, sleek and huge—dragging its hindquarters. It circled into the far corner of the yard, pitching its head back to emit an open-throat howl.

  Murchison ran up the steps, kicked at the door till the wood gave way. The entrance led through a short dark hallway to a kitchen that reeked of mold and rubbish. “Anybody here, come out. Identify yourself, hands where I can see them.” All he could make out was the glowing blue gas flames of the stove’s pilot lights.

  “Jerry! Call out! Status!”

  The kitchen led to another hallway, this one longer and leading to the front. He saw again the same closed door with the light bleeding out along the floor. He pounded, stood back, called out, “Police!”

  “I am, I don’t—” A woman’s voice, ancient, weak.

  “Answer me—are you alone?”

  “Yes. No.”

  “Who else is in the house?”

  “Who are you?”

  “Who else is in the house?”

  “My grandson. Roderick? I heard noise. Shots, oh my Lord, my grandson—”

  Murchison ran to the front. The door was ajar, slammed open so hard it had bounced back and almost closed again. Pulling it toward him, he found Stluka struggling to lift himself off the porch, his whole chest bloody, his face and neck pocked with small wounds. One in the neck bled bad, an artery. Licking his lips, trying for air, he swatted at his holster, still hoping to draw his piece. The shotgun lay on the porch, discarded. At the bottom of the hill Murchison glimpsed a figure darting through the smoke around the street corner.

  Murchison drew the walkie-talkie from his pocket, thumbing the transmit button and coughing as he shouted into the mouthpiece, “Code Nine Nine Nine, officer down. Respond!”

  He checked the wall for the house number and, when the watch commander confirmed response, gave the location, identified himself, told him Stluka was hit. “It’s bad, he’s losing blood fast.”

  “Sit tight, Murch. I can’t promise you. Sorry. It’s a mess down here. I’ll get someone to you. Hang on.”

  He signed off, pressed his hands against Stluka’s neck, trying to stem the blood, but it kept seeping through his fingers. From behind, the same ancient female voice as before, suddenly close, said, “Away with your noisy songs! Offer me holocausts.…”

  The woman stood just beyond the doorway, well over six feet tall, thin as a rail, toothless, with dried spittle caking her lips. Her matted gray hair tufted and peaked atop her head. She stank of sweat and unwashed skin, barefoot with yellow nails, dressed in a ratty green robe.

  A crack house, Murchison figured. The old woman, delusional, feeble, probably owned the place. Her grandson and his crowd had taken it over. Hands still pressed to Stluka’s throbbing neck wound, he shouted, “Stand back from the door!”

  “Roderick, he knows I’m here to do—listen, he …”

  “Stand back from the door.”

  The woman didn’t move. Her eyes were blank and red, her face an etchwork of deep creases and folds around the eyes, the mouth. “Don’t let nobody in. Nobody.” Her voice was strangely clear and calm and steady. “Two men in a van come around, set the whole hill on fire.”

  Murchison felt a tug on his shirt cuff. Turning back to Stluka, he saw his partner’s eyes swell, hazing in their sockets. He tried to speak. Nothing but a spurt of breath came.

  “Jerry, don’t—”

  Stluka’s hand flailed, he caught Murchison’s jacket, grasped it tight, and pulled. Murchison leaned down, put his ear to Stluka’s lips. He whispered something, too soft. It sounded like, “Macon Bay.” Blood and spittle coated his tongue. He clenched Murchison’s jacket harder, shook. “You—”

  “Jerry, lie still, I’ve got—”

  Stluka swatted at his holster again; the hand caught, he pulled his service piece out. Jerkily he pushed the weapon into Murchison’s free hand. “May … gun …”

  The old woman stepped out from the doorway. Murchison shouted, “Ma’am, stay in the house,” but she heard nothing. Like a sleepwalker, she stepped out to the edge of the porch, reached out her hand beyond the overhang, palm up. Smiling with a childlike innocence, she closed her eyes and lifted her face to the smoke-filled sky, by which time Murchison felt it, too, smelled it, heard the pinging sound on the roof gutters, the soft thump on the roof and the dirt of the yard.

  Rain.

  Part III

  Goin’ Down Slow

  20

  Ferry had hidden the car, a Chevy Caprice, in the same storage facility where Manny had mixed the tubs—different locker, two aisles away. It took him an hour to walk there from the hill, his ankle sprained, his face cut from thistle lashings, but with a little Dex for clarity, plain aspirin for the pain, he felt ready for the all-night drive.

  At a water spigot near the locker, he washed the stickiness of Manny’s blood from his face and hands. He balled up the overalls, stuffed them into a plastic sack, and tossed them in a random Dumpster while en route to the vacant office where he’d bivouacked the past two months. After shoving his gear into a duffel and gathering his collection of mobile phones and his laptop, he hit the freeway and headed south.

  He crossed the border from San Ysidro into Tijuana well before dawn. At the border no one bothered with southbound traffic, but Ferry still checked his mirrors as he passed through the international gateway. Before continuing south on the coastal toll road, he headed into town, toward the Zona Norte, where the brothels were.

  It wasn’t a girl he was after—at least, not one he’d pay for. He headed for the edge of the district, near the colonias where the poorest working families lived. At the end of a dusty thoroughfare, lined with bus stops for transport of the female workers to the maquilas on the Otay Mesa, he parked outside a cantina called El Gallo. The Rooster.

  Monday morning, five o’clock, it was already open for breakfast. Some of the girls ventured in to grab a quick taco or pan dulce before their buses arrived to carry them to their shifts. Ferry liked the factory girls. Even the shy ones flirted.

  He ordered horchata—a sweet rice drink spiced with cinnamon—to soothe the acid in his stomach from the Dexedrine. He drank it slow at the counter, every now and then sneaking a glance at the girls, relishing the sight of so many plump butts packed tight into faded jeans.

  Finishing his horchata, he stepped outside and scanned the dark trashy street. In days past dozens and dozens of women would have been out here, too, waiting at the bus stops, ready for work. A number of factories had closed in the past year, the companies moving their assembly work to Malaysia, where the labor glut was even more desperate.

  He collected his laptop from the trunk of the car, then headed into the Zona Norte. After walking several blocks, he turned into an alley of hard-packed dirt and stepped inside an unmarked cinder block storefront. A bald, gap-toothed cholo, wearing a loose white guayabera to disguise his fat, sat in a torn leather swivel chair behind the counter, leaning into a cone of lamplight to read his comic book.

  There were shelves behind him, scattered with cloned cell phones. Ferry was already equipped in that department; for him, the item of interest was simply a door. He withdrew a twenty from his pocket. The cholo collected the bill in a large, soft hand and gestured with a tug of his head that Ferry could pass through to the back.

  Beyond the door sat four men wearing cremas de seda, their backs to one another as they hunched over laptops linked to phone jacks along the walls. A single bulb in a ceiling socket dimly lit the room, which stank of sweat and cat piss. Ferry chose an open jack, plugged in his laptop, fired up the PGP encryption program, and logged on.

  First,
he checked E-mail. Marisela had written. It hadn’t been easy, Ovidio had been obliged to call in some very old favors and offer in return a few of his own, but yes, a boat would be waiting—Bahía de San Quintín, four hours farther south. He was to meet a man named Rafael at the Old Mill launch ramp. He’d wait till two. His fishing boat was named La Chica de Buenas. Lucky Girl.

  Next, he checked his account with Pennington International Trust, Ltd., a dodge shelter located in the Cook Islands. He got his cash through ATM transactions drawn off the account, which was held in the name of an offshore asset protection trust. The trust had a flight provision, requiring the bank as trustee to move his assets to another offshore jurisdiction if any threat to the trust or its corpus should materialize, and no such threat could arise without ample notice through a local court action. He closed out accounts after every job, so any inquiry into past acts was doomed to come up empty. Another benefit of working narcotics for so many years—you learned a lot about hiding money.

  No new deposits appeared. Bratcher hadn’t come through.

  Ferry logged off, left the storefront, and walked back to his car. Heading south on the toll road, he passed the new liquid natural gas plants serving the American Southwest, built here to avoid EPA guidelines. Farther south, industry gave way to the beaches at Rosarito, the golf courses at Bajamar. This part of the peninsula resembled what Orange and San Diego counties had looked like twenty years ago, gated housing tracts cropping up everywhere to accommodate the latest wave of bourgeois flight.

  Eight miles south of Bajamar, he pulled off the tollway onto a dirt road leading west to Playa Saldamando. The road descended steeply to the beach, which tall bluffs protected from wind. Kayakers camped on the sand, the predawn sea glassy and calm.

  He rummaged through his duffel, pulled out one of the Rohde & Schwartz digital phones he had, the encrypted ones designed for European executives paranoid about American surveillance. He dialed Bratcher, routing the call through a reorigination service that would complicate even further any attempt to triangulate his location. Bratcher picked up on the third ring, a good sign.