First Avenue

by Lowen Clausen

  “You hire that boy, you and your union,” Pete said. “You see if you make him work.”

  “Well, not much of a loss. Didn’t know how to smile.” The other man said, “Find somebody with a pretty smile like that girl who used to be here. A pretty smile, and you don’t mind what the doughnuts taste like.”

  When the construction workers finished their coffee, they left their cups and napkins on the table. They waved to the proprietor and said they would be back tomorrow. The proprietor smiled until they were outside, but he didn’t go to their table to clean it off. He stood behind the counter with his hands on his hips and watched the door.

  The old man got up to leave, wiped the table with his napkin, and dropped his cup into a wastebasket. The man who seemed to be the owner did not acknowledge his departure.

  Maria opened her milk carton and stuffed the doughnut inside. She carried the milk carton back to the counter. The owner looked toward her. She tried to present a pretty smile.

  “I heard you say that the boy quit,” she said. “I’m looking for a job. I could make doughnuts if you showed me how.”

  “I make the doughnuts,” he said. “I need somebody here at the counter.”

  “I could do that, too.”

  “Sure. It’s not hard. Sometimes it’s so easy there is time to help yourself to the money.”

  “Steal, you mean? I wouldn’t do that.”

  “So, you don’t steal. Where are you from that you don’t steal?”

  “I just got here from Alaska.”

  “Are you Indian?”

  “My mother was Indian. Is there something wrong with that?”

  “No. Nothing wrong. I am not from this country either. I am French from Quebec. If you come at six in the morning, I will show you what to do.”

  “Six o’clock?”

  “If that’s too early, there’s no job.”

  “It’s not too early.”

  “Somebody else comes at ten. No break until ten.”

  “I don’t need one.”

  “I pay cash, the minimum wage. Sometimes you make a tip.”

  She stood at the counter and wondered if there was anything else she needed to do. The man had not moved a single step from behind the cash register, nor had he lifted his hands from his broad hips that spread beyond the width of his shoulders. Maybe this was the way people were hired in Seattle. She only knew what it was like working for Mr. Polanski at the drugstore at home. She was sure this would not be the same. Mrs. Polanski brought freshly baked cookies every Saturday morning.

  “My name is Maria,” she said, thinking he should have at least that much information.

  “Yes, all right. I am Pierre. Pierre Bernard.” He spoke his name with more emphasis than anything else he had said.

  Maria stood a moment watching his eyes and tried to think of a way to ask about the policeman, but the question was hopeless. Pierre seemed to have already forgotten she was there. It was better to wait, she decided—better to watch the door like Pierre.

  A boy in an orange cap walked in. Pierre’s face took on a strange, blank expression, and he folded his arms across his chest. The boy didn’t come to the counter. He stood at the window and looked out to the street.

  “I guess I’ll see you in the morning,” she said.

  Pierre turned his blank face toward her. “Knock loud. If I’m in the back, I don’t hear it.” His voice, mechanical and cold, made her feel quite certain there would be no cookies on Saturday morning.

  Outside she walked away from the Donut Shop in no particular direction with the feeling that his narrow eyes would be following her. Until she came to the first corner, she had not thought about where she was going. She would have to start paying attention. Her mother had always been obsessed with knowing her directions. “Which way is north?” she would ask. Maria stood on the corner and looked toward the north.

  She would be able to call her father now. He would not be happy to hear about the job. They had not talked about a job. He would feel better, perhaps, when she told him it was only temporary. Still he would not like it. Had she seen Mr. Wright, he would ask at last. Mr. Wright was the name her father called him. She would not repeat the name because she had no name for him yet. No, she would say, but soon. Then it would end as it had ended every other time. Her father would offer to join her, to call Mr. Wright for her, to send her the ticket to return to Anchorage, and she would say no to each of his offerings. She could see his face in her mind as clearly as if he were with her. She could see the disappointment, then the resentment, and finally, the resignation.

  “No good will come from it,” her father had predicted. “You should forget about him.”

  When the traffic light changed, a swarm of people from both sides of the street surged into it and met halfway.

  Forget about him? No one in her family had ever forgotten.

  Chapter 5

  At eight o’clock, Sam told Radio to log him out to the station. He parked on G deck and took the back stairs up to the fifth floor. He walked past the Chief’s office, an office he had never been inside, and down the hall to Homicide and Robbery.

  The detectives sat behind rows of metal desks in swivel chairs that rocked back easily. There was a slow-starting, easygoing atmosphere in the room—much different than the crisp roll calls that began his day. Maybe he ought to think about working here, put on a white shirt, leave the monkey suit in the locker until it no longer fit, work a decent shift and sleep at four in the morning. Detective Wright? Not likely. He would have to buy a white shirt for that.

  He scanned the big, undivided room and looked for Markowitz. Not finding him, he looked for any familiar face behind newspapers and coffee cups. His business with the detectives was usually on the street, and he seldom ventured into their territory.

  “Hello, Sam. Up here about the Sanchez case?”

  He turned around and saw Markowitz. He was the only detective who was not parked at a desk.

  “Yes.”

  “Come on over.”

  A few detectives nodded to him as he passed. Newspapers came down, followed by a sort of straightening-up that always happened whenever he entered a room of strangers. He thought it was strange that it would happen here. He sat down in the straight-back chair Markowitz pushed over for him while Markowitz flipped through pages of the newly created file.

  “So what about this mother?” Markowitz asked. “How well did you know her?”

  “She started working at the Donut Shop a couple months ago. I saw her there. It was after she had the baby. I don’t remember seeing her before.”

  “Class joint, that place.”

  “One of the best,” Sam said. “She didn’t seem to fit in. Too decent, if you know what I mean?”

  “So how come she was there?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I should have asked her.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I take it you haven’t found Alberta?” Sam asked.

  “No. I got her hospital records from Harborview. She had the baby there. Did you know she’s from Yakima?”

  “No.”

  “I called her parents yesterday. They said she ran away from home when she was sixteen. They hadn’t seen her for a year and a half and didn’t know where she was. They came as soon as I called. They’re pretty broken up about the whole thing. First they lose a daughter, then a grandchild. Tough, huh?”

  Sam nodded and looked at the first page Markowitz gave him. It was a photocopy of her hospital record. He found the line he was looking for.

  “The father’s name was withheld,” Sam said.

  “That’s not unusual. Sometimes they say that instead of unknown.’ Makes it sound better, I guess. Any chance she was a prostitute?”

  “Not from what I saw. It looked like she took good care of the baby.”

  Markowitz’s eyebrows lifted above his glasses. The heavy black frames had once been stylish. His hair was gray at the temples, but his face seemed as young as Sam rem
embered from the time he and Markowitz had worked together on the street. That was a long time ago.

  “Oh sure,” Markowitz said. “That room was a great place to raise a kid.”

  Markowitz was right, of course. Who would choose a place like that? It was not his job to defend her, to excuse her, to make her a saint. What did he know about this girl? Sam looked down at the paper in his hands. It seemed to confuse him rather than clarify. He knew he could let it go and join Markowitz in his harsh appraisal. They had seen it all, had they not—fathers who beat the mothers, mothers who left the children, children who were not children at all, but old and wise and perverse? He was not a rookie who had never seen anything. He could let it fall that way.

  “Can I have a copy of this?” he asked.

  “Sure,” Markowitz said. “You can have anything you want.”

  “Just this.”

  Markowitz took the sheet of paper and walked over to the copy machine in the center of the room. He punched the button, and the machine started to whirl. There was a flash like the last surge of a light bulb before burning out. Markowitz pulled the paper from the rollers as the copy appeared and put it down on the desk beside Sam. Sam looked at it again, folded it into sections, and put it into his shirt pocket.

  “She never went on welfare, I’ll say that for her,” Markowitz said. “The hospital bill was paid in cash. This Pierre guy—he didn’t seem very eager to talk to me yesterday when I dropped by.”

  “He’s not eager to talk to me either. I’ve been going in there quite a bit lately to show the flag. He hasn’t had the Donut Shop too long. A year, maybe a little more. I began noticing him when kids started hanging out there all the time. Street kids, mostly. No curfew anymore, you know. We can’t haul them away like we used to. He claims to be some sort of godfather. Did you see the newspaper article he’s got on the wall?”

  “I missed that.”

  “The Tribune did a story about him. Took his picture in front of the Donut Shop. Said what a swell guy he was to provide a sanctuary for the forgotten kids of Seattle. ‘Sanctuary,’ that’s what they said. Bunch of junk like that. He’s providing a lot more than sanctuary, you can be sure of that, but he’s hard to get to. These kids are afraid to cross him.”

  “They’ll cross him. Find one of them dirty, and then see how loyal the kid is.”

  “Maybe. But he’s got them scared. They’re scared, and you can see it, but they still hang around there. It doesn’t make sense. Did Pierre tell you anything about Alberta?” Sam asked.

  “He said she quit a couple weeks ago. He said he didn’t think anything about it. People quit all the time.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “No, and he had this look as though he knew I didn’t, but he didn’t care. I ran a check on him, but he’s not in the system.”

  “I know,” Sam said.

  “I know one thing,” Markowitz said. “I’d never eat a doughnut that creep made. I wonder how he gets any business.”

  “I wonder what his business is. I have a feeling it’s not doughnuts. I’ll poke around a little and see what I can come up with.”

  “Tell me something,” Markowitz said. “Why all the interest in this case? I know it’s a kid and all that, but that’s life in the big city, isn’t it?”

  There were too many ways to answer, or maybe there was no way. He had held the baby once. Was that it? And he had seen the baby lying alone and helpless and could not forget the drunken woman’s description of the endless crying. Beyond that, however, beyond this child, there was something else. He couldn’t explain it to himself and certainly not to Detective Markowitz sitting at his gray metal desk among the dozens of other gray metal desks.

  “You know how it is, Fred,” he explained to the other cop, his voice dropping to little more than a whisper. “Every so often something yanks your chain. I hope you don’t mind me sticking my nose in this?”

  “That badge you’re wearing says Seattle. You can stick your nose wherever you want. I’m happy for any help I can get.”

  “Appreciate that.”

  “How long have you been back downtown?” Markowitz asked.

  “A couple years.”

  “Better than the hill?”

  Sam sat back in the chair and thought for a moment before answering.

  “It’s all about the same, isn’t it?”

  “Probably. We used to do quite a bit of business together when you were up there.”

  “Quite a bit,” Sam said. “Too much, I guess. That’s why I finally transferred back downtown. Do you remember that guy who killed his mother-in-law with a sewing machine?”

  “Sure,” Markowitz said, shaking his head and laughing softly through disbelief. “He was screwing both the daughter and the mother—he was married to the daughter, I think—and then the mother told the daughter, and all hell broke loose. I forgot you had that.”

  “Radio told us it was a disturbance,” Sam said. “When we show up, this guy is just standing on the porch waiting. Calm as anything. He takes us into the dining room and points out his mother-in-law on the floor with her brains running out of her head. There’s this portable sewing machine beside her all smashed up. The daughter is screaming in the bedroom. He tells us he got mad and hit the mother with the sewing machine. That’s it. He just got mad. These things happen, right?

  “On the way to the station,” Sam continued, “I was sitting in the backseat with him, and do you know what I was thinking about? Not about the dead woman. Not about this murderer next to me. I’m thinking that the shift is almost over, and I have two days off, and I’m going fishing. This guy is sitting beside me, big strong guy, and he had just killed his mother-in-law with a sewing machine, and I’m thinking about fishing. You investigate an accident on Twenty-third Avenue, and when you’re done you go down to Twenty-ninth and see about a family disturbance. Something about a sewing machine. Call number 12. Call number 13. They’ve all become the same.

  “When I was taking him into the holding room, it hit me all of a sudden that the calls weren’t the same. I asked myself, ‘Am I leading this guy or is he leading me?’ Fishing. I was thinking about fishing. That’s when I decided I needed to do something different. So I switched to mornings for a change of scenery if nothing else and ended up back on First Avenue. My life’s story. How about you? You going to rust up here forever?”

  “Probably.”

  “No interest in getting back to the street?”

  “None. You know what they say. Once you get on the gravy train, there’s no getting off.”

  “Is that Jim what’s-his-name your partner on this?” Sam asked. “The guy who just transferred from Auto Theft?”

  “No, it’s Richards, but he’s on vacation for two weeks. Fishing in Canada.”

  They could have laughed then. In each man, there was a rumble in the gut; the mouth moved at the corners; their heads shifted backward. They might have laughed together if only one had begun, but they did not.

  “Have they done the autopsy yet?” Sam asked.

  “It’s set for today. Do you want to go with me?” Markowitz asked, testing just how far Sam wanted to stick his nose.

  “I’ll pass. Thanks.”

  “Maybe you can do something else, then. The girl’s parents are staying in a motel out on Aurora. They might appreciate it if you dropped by.”

  “Me?”

  “You knew her, didn’t you? And the baby? I doubt they can tell us much, but they might need some help getting the baby after the autopsy. Besides, you seem to have a good opinion of the girl. It might be nice if they heard that. They’re going to hear plenty of other stuff later.”

  Markowitz shuffled through his papers again until he found the worksheet on the parents. He copied the motel address on a scrap of paper and gave it to Sam. Sam looked at it for a moment and then got up to leave.

  “If anything turns up around here, I’ll let you know. Do the same for me, will you?” Markowitz asked.

&
nbsp; “Sure,” Sam said, barely thinking about what Markowitz said. “Anything you want me to tell her parents?”

  “We’re sorry.” Markowitz shrugged as though he tried but could think of nothing else. “You can tell them we’re sorry.”

  Sam nodded and began to walk away. He stopped after a few feet and turned around.

  “How many kids do you have now?” he asked Markowitz.

  “Three boys.”

  “Three boys. My God, that’s got to be a handful.”

  He turned away before Markowitz could answer and walked out of the room. His eyes focused on the floor in front of his feet, and he thought about Markowitz’s three boys. He bet Markowitz was the kind of father who played catch at night with them and read them stories before bed and let them dream about growing up and becoming somebody.

  The parents’ motel was north of downtown on Highway 99. Before the freeway was built, 99 was the main north and south highway. It was called several names as it passed through Seattle. North of Denny, it became Aurora. Motels lined both sides of the road, and their large flashing signs competed with each other and with the used car lots that separated them.

  He saw an old Ford pickup parked in front of the room where he expected to find Alberta’s parents. Its license number identified it with Yakima County. He pulled into the stall beside it and noticed a curtain moving inside the room. A man stood in the doorway waiting for him before he could even shut off the car. He didn’t tell Radio where he was. He had not cleared since going into the station.

  “Are you Mr. Sanchez?” Sam asked as he approached.

  The man nodded but did not speak. His face was weathered, and his skin was deeply wrinkled around his eyes, as though it had been witness to years and years of sunshine. More than sunshine marked it now. Lines of sorrow were equally embedded.

  “I have no news of your daughter, but I would like to speak with you and Mrs. Sanchez.”

  Sanchez stepped back from the door, still holding the far side of it as Sam stepped past him into the unlit room. Mrs. Sanchez stood next to the bed with her hands clasped in front of her.

  “Mrs. Sanchez, my name is Sam Wright. I wanted to talk to you and your husband about your daughter.”