First Avenue

by Lowen Clausen

  “Where are you living now?” Sam asked while he waited for Radio to run the name in the computer.

  “I’m staying with some friends. I don’t know the address. Roy Street, I think.”

  Sam nodded. He doubted he would get any closer than that.

  “Do you go to school, do you work? What do you do with your time?”

  “Nothing.”

  “When I came around the corner, I saw you standing in front of the Donut Shop.”

  “So?”

  “Do you hang out there? Are you one of Pierre’s buddies?”

  “Who’s Pierre?” the boy asked insolently.

  “The King of France,” Sam said.

  “David-4,” said the woman’s voice on the radio. Sam knew then that the name was clear. If not, the operator would have addressed him differently, beginning the transmission with a full “Radio to 1-David-4.”

  Sam lifted the radio to his mouth, repeated his call letters, and waited as Radio told him the name was clear. The boy knew he was home free then. Sam could see it in his eyes. He gave the social security card back.

  “Well, Richard, I guess it’s your lucky day. I don’t see any bodies on the street, so you’re free to go.”

  Richard was no longer in a hurry to leave. “Who called you?” he asked. His eyes narrowed into small stones of ice.

  “I’m not real sure. Can’t give out that information anyway. Maybe it was the King of France. You might want to ask him.”

  Richard’s ice eyes moved around the street. Without saying anything else, he swung his heavy, chip-laden shoulders defiantly away. Sam was certain they would meet again.

  The backup patrol car cruised up to him with its lights still off. Jackson, the officer inside, rolled down his window. Sam went over to the car and leaned against the front door.

  “Thanks for dropping by.”

  “No problem,” Jackson said. Jackson was a good neighbor. He never barged into a call, but he was always there to help. “What did the kid do?”

  “He waited for the green light.”

  They spoke the same code, but this was a code that even Jackson did not understand.

  “He was hanging around the front door of the Donut Shop,” Sam explained. “Before he crossed the street, he stood and waited for the light to change. Too upright a citizen to be standing in front of the Donut Shop.”

  “Nothing on him though?” Jackson asked.

  “No, but I imagine there will be. The kid is hard core.”

  “Maybe I’ll just drive past him and take another look.”

  “He’ll like that.”

  Sam moved from the car door and Jackson pulled slowly away from the curb. He turned in the alley before Second Avenue and accelerated north to take a closer look at Richard Jonathan Rutherford.

  Sam stood on the corner a moment longer. The Donut Shop was still dark. Pierre should have been there by now. Where are you today, Mr. King of France? Miraculously the sun began to rise on Pike Street. He felt the rays of sunshine on his face as he squinted into the light. It was hard on his eyes and he turned away from it. He walked back into the Market. Pike Place, where he had parked his car, remained in shadows.

  Chapter 4

  The elevator had no button for the third floor. The girl with long dark braids stood before the control panel, her finger poised to push, but there was no button. There was one for the first floor, then none until the fourth. Other people reached in front of her and punched buttons for the higher floors. The door closed and the elevator carried them up, past the floor she wanted. Did it even exist? She had traveled all this distance from Alaska, and farther in other ways, and now could not even find the floor. It seemed like some kind of joke, but no one was laughing. No one even noticed her.

  She stepped off on the fourth floor behind a stream of people who disappeared through doors on both sides of the elevator lobby. Everyone else knew where to go. Three women hurried toward the elevator but just missed it. Annoyed that it had left without them, one of them punched the button with more force than necessary. All three watched the lighted numbers on top of the elevator mark its ascent. She stood apart and wished she could break into their confidential circle and ask how to find the third floor. But it was 7:30 in the morning, they were in a hurry to go to work, and they wouldn’t have time for ridiculous questions.

  She noticed more elevators on the other side of the lobby. There was a small sign fastened to the wall. “Police Department Elevators.” She walked over to the police elevators and walked into the first one that opened. No one else was in the cab. Her hand trembled as she delicately touched the third-floor button.

  For a moment as the elevator door closed, she considered going all the way down to the first floor again, to escape to the street, to the motel, to the airport, reversing all the steps she had taken. How far back would she have to go? When the door opened, she stepped into the lobby on the third floor.

  Above an opening cut into the opposite wall, there was a small, waist-high wooden counter. Behind it was a room cluttered with shelves. A man in uniform stood behind the counter and looked at her. She walked toward him.

  “Is this the patrol office?” she asked.

  “Down that way.” He pointed with the least possible effort. “End of the hall.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  On the green tile floor a line of yellow tape led to another much larger counter that stretched the entire width of the wide hall. Behind it daylight poured in through a bank of windows. Slowly, with dread and anticipation, she followed the yellow line down the green hallway, past closed doors, past wooden benches, until she came to the counter. There, from a small speaker mounted on the wall, she heard police voices, like on television, with sharp piercing static coming after each voice. There were many voices, one after another—all different.

  Before her was a bell on top of the counter, but she didn’t ring it. A policeman sat at a desk not far from her. She carefully lifted her hands onto the counter and waited for him to see her.

  When the policeman looked up from his paperwork and noticed her, he pushed himself away from the desk. He removed his glasses and carried them in one hand as he walked toward her. He was older than she thought a policeman would be, and his white eyebrows stuck out in all directions. His face was not unkind.

  “What can I do for you, young lady?”

  She cleared her throat and wet her lips with her tongue. “I’m looking for Officer Wright. I called the information office, and they said I should come here.”

  “I’ll check and see if he’s working this morning.”

  The policeman walked into the next office and came out carrying a long clipboard with many pages held in place beneath the clamp.

  “Yes, he’s working. What is it you would like to see him about?”

  “I’m a relative of his.”

  “A relative.”

  She could not tell if he was asking or merely repeating what she had said. She was sure, however, that he was looking at her black hair and her skin that must now be turning red. “A distant niece,” she said.

  “A distant niece. Explain to me now what that means.”

  “I came from Alaska.”

  “Oh, well, that is distant, isn’t it. What is your name?”

  “Maria.”

  He wrote Maria on a piece of scratch paper.

  “Last name?” he asked.

  “He won’t know me.”

  “That’s all right. I always like to know who I’m talking to.”

  “Simonson,” Maria said so that the policeman could finish his line.

  “All right, Maria. Why don’t you sit down there on the bench, and I’ll give Officer Wright a call.”

  She went to the first bench and sat closest to the counter. The policeman returned to his desk and she heard his voice. She thought he was talking on the telephone.

  “Radio, have Officer Wright on David-4 return to the station and see the hole crew as soon as he
can. Right. Thank you.”

  A moment later from the speaker on the wall, she heard the radio operator calling for 1-David-4. She listened intently for the return voice. There was none, and in the silence that followed she smoothed her dress across her lap with one hand while the other remained protectively on top of her purse. She sat straighter on the bench so that her backbone barely touched the wood. Again the voice on the radio called for 1-David-4, and again there was silence. She heard the telephone ring in the office beyond the counter, and the police officer answered it and spoke briefly. She heard his chair scraping on the floor, and he appeared at the counter.

  “Officer Wright is out of the car right now, and we can’t raise him. He probably has his radio turned off. When he clears, I’ll call him again.”

  “Thank you.” She tried to smile.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee?” the policeman asked. “I’ve got some here.”

  “No thank you.”

  “It shouldn’t be too long. He told Radio he was going into the Donut Shop at First and Pike. He seems real fond of that place right now. I hear him logging out there a lot. You sure you wouldn’t like a cup of coffee?”

  “No thanks.”

  “All right. Sit tight, then. I’ll call him as soon as he clears.”

  Maria nodded and the policeman returned to his desk. She could not see him from where she sat. Maria strained to listen to the radio speaker, for the voice of 1-David-4. There was no voice. Nothing had gone right so far.

  Maria removed a book of poems from her purse. She opened it to the back and looked for the hundredth time, for the thousandth time, at the picture of Sam Wright on the worn paper cover. He was standing in his police uniform in front of an old brick building. There was a half-formed, half-gone smile on his face.

  In the book most of the poems had something to do with police work, but three poems were completely different. Those three, first in the book, were about her mother. Because of them, because her mother had read them to her when even her smiles could no longer hide the bad news, Maria had traveled all this way. She sat listening for a voice to come from a tiny box just as she had listened to her mother’s voice reading grown-up words she could not understand. For years the book had been hidden in the bottom drawer of her dresser. It was out now.

  She began to read the first poem, but something was terribly wrong. Something was missing. She looked up from the bench at the green walls on all sides of her. They were like the hospital walls where she waited for her mother to die. They were exactly like the hospital walls. They closed tighter around her, and she realized that she had lost the sound of her mother’s voice. Instead the words came up from the page in a strange voice. It was a voice she had never heard and it frightened her in a way that she had never been frightened before. She closed the book. What if Sam Wright came and she had lost her mother’s voice? She stood abruptly and went to the counter and would have left without a word if the older policeman had not raised his head immediately.

  “I’ll have to come back,” she said.

  “Are you sure?” he asked. “Is everything okay? I can try to raise him again.”

  “No. Please don’t bother. I’ll come back later.”

  “All right. I’ll leave him a message.”

  “No. I’d rather see him. Where was it you said he was? That doughnut place?”

  “First and Pike, but there’s no telling how long he’ll stay there. Not long, probably.”

  “That’s okay. I just need to leave now. Could you tell me how to find it?”

  “Sure, if that’s what you want. You go down the hill two blocks. That’s First Avenue.” The telephone rang and the policeman put on his glasses. He looked toward the telephone and then back at her. “At First Avenue, turn right,” he said over the second peal of the telephone bell. “It’s six or seven blocks to Pike Street.” His hand was already moving toward the telephone.

  “Thank you,” she said. She was moving, too.

  He raised his other hand in a farewell gesture as he placed the telephone to his ear. She saw the green walls again, and her pace increased to the elevator. She pushed the down button twice, although it had lit the first time. It seemed as if she did not, could not, breathe until the elevator stopped for her and she was outside again. She breathed deeply there, inhaling the fumes from the buses that roared and shook and rattled as they left the curb in front of her.

  She walked down the hill from the police station in a daze. She could not go back there, to those walls that reminded her of the hospital. She would have to try something else. Would he still be at the Donut Shop?

  At First Avenue she turned right and began to pay attention to her surroundings. The street seemed to go slower than the others. Some people were not moving at all. She kept a count of the blocks as she walked and looked at each street sign far in advance. She looked for the blue uniform of a policeman and for the familiar face and strange smile.

  Instead she saw other men who looked strangely at her. Far up the sidewalk as they stood at the curb or walked toward her, they would begin looking at her. One time she returned the stare, and the man stopped and waited as though she would stop. She continued walking. What did they want?

  Sunlight crossed First Avenue at each intersection. The rest of the street stood in shadow. The wind felt cold as it circled around buildings and blew into her face.

  She approached a building with one door and no windows. Big signs advertised girls. “Girls, Girls, Girls,” it said. So that was what the men were looking for. Not me, she wanted to shout.

  She looked ahead for a way to escape and saw instead the sign for Pike Street. There was also a sign protruding from a brick building at the corner that said “Donut Shop.” She forgot the men with watching eyes and the building with “Girls, Girls, Girls.” She walked to the corner and looked sideways into the windows like the men who had watched her. She did not see him.

  Maria walked inside and stopped close to the door. There were only a few customers. He wasn’t there. A man behind the counter with greasy black hair waited impatiently for her to decide what she would do. She walked up to him and ordered a doughnut.

  “What kind?” he asked.

  She looked down at the glass counter smudged with fingerprints. She could hardly see through it. She pointed to a tray of doughnuts that had the least amount of topping. She wondered why he liked this place or why he would want to spend time here.

  “One of those,” she said.

  “Do you want anything to drink?”

  “A carton of milk, please.”

  The man nodded and walked slowly back to a refrigerator behind him. As he opened the refrigerator door, he looked beyond it to the kitchen where the doughnut machine stood and a boy was wiping the side of the stainless steel machine.

  “Use more soap,” he said. “You’re just smearing the grease around.”

  The boy looked up from his work. He had no interest in removing grease. Without speaking he walked over to the sink and turned on the faucet. He stuck his finger into the stream of water and watched the water run down the drain. The man shook his head and closed the refrigerator door.

  “Everybody likes to eat, but nobody likes to work.”

  It was the friendliest thing he had said so far.

  “Seventy-two cents,” he said. “The two cents is for me. The rest is for everybody else.” His eyes were bloodshot, and he looked like he had not slept for a long time.

  She gave him the correct change and took her doughnut and milk over to a table beside the front window. She saw the man walk back to the kitchen, heard voices, and heard the water running again. She opened the carton of milk and inspected the rim. She had forgotten to ask for a straw. She took a sip of milk and a small bite of the doughnut and looked out the window. A police car passed slowly on the street. There was a man inside, but she could not see his face. Even so her stomach churned. She watched the car pass from sight, then put the doughnut down on the napkin and pres
sed her fingers to her lips.

  The boy who had been in the kitchen walked to the front door and threw it open. He left without a word, but once outside and beyond the vision of the man behind the counter, he raised his finger in a gesture flung toward her. It was not meant for her, she realized, but toward the doughnut machine or the man who stood at the counter. The man did not move, but his face hardened into an angry mask. Perhaps he had seen the gesture. When she looked toward the street again, she saw that it was not possible.

  An old man came through the door. He bought a cup of coffee at the counter, but his hands shook most of the coffee out of the plastic cup before he reached a table. A woman pushed a shopping cart heaped with bags and boxes past the window where Maria sat and parked it at the front door. She plodded wearily inside, and the odor of her body beneath winter clothes followed her. Maria would have left if the woman had sat close. However, the woman did not even look at a table. Her dull eyes stared straight ahead, but at nothing. She took her two doughnuts outside and ate them beside her cart. Two men wearing hard hats squeezed past the woman at the door and came in together. Their heavy boots echoed from the hard floor. Both wore dusty blue jeans, and their hands were dirty. Their loud voices took up all the space. They gathered their doughnuts and coffee and sat at a table in the center of the room. Maria was glad they had come. They were like people she had seen before. They seemed to know the man at the counter.

  “Hey, Pete, how come you’re working alone?”

  “The boy quit.”

  “No kidding. Maybe you should pay these kids more money.”

  “How can I pay more? If I double the wage, will you pay double the price?”

  “Not unless they taste a lot better than these.” The two workers laughed together. Pete did not laugh.

  “They eat all the doughnuts they want.”

  “Now there’s a benefit we don’t have. We’ll have to talk to the union about that.” The two men took turns talking. They might have been brothers.