Again Sam looked toward Henry, focused, and listened. Henry was pale and his hand trembled as he rested it on the roof of the police car, but there was a new look in his face. Sam was almost sure of that.
“I could do that. Are you trying to get enough together for a bottle?”
“They don’t let you drink at the mission. It’s not a bad place, either. If I can, I’d like to stay there a while.”
Sam was not sure what else to say. He had not expected Henry to confuse him—everyone else, perhaps, but not Henry. Henry’s face twitched nervously as he leaned down to look into the police car.
“Maybe they’re getting you some religion.”
“I guess it wouldn’t hurt.”
“Want to get in for a minute?” Sam indicated the passenger door with a nod of his head. “If you’re interested in a job, maybe I’ve got something for you.”
Henry went around to the other side of the car and Sam reached over and pulled up the lock. Henry opened the door on his own. There was a trace of the childlike pleasure that Henry had shown the first time he opened that door. Sam looked at the man sitting beside him and felt like laughing.
“Do you know anything about the Donut Shop back there?” he asked without laughing at either of them.
Henry’s eyes followed the direction of Sam’s hand to the corner of First and Pike. “Not really,” Henry said.
“Ever heard of the owner, Pierre?”
“Never met the man.”
“He’s got mean, beady little eyes and a fat butt.”
Henry appreciated the description and laughed. Sam found himself chuckling, too.
“Maybe that’s just the way I see him. I’ve heard things, street talk, you understand, but still, I’d like to find out what he’s doing. He opens the store, fiddles around for a while, then takes off down the street. I’d like to know where he goes.”
“You want me to follow him and find out?”
“If you’re interested. I wouldn’t want him to get suspicious or notice you.”
“People don’t notice me much. That won’t be no problem.”
Of course Sam knew that to be true. He need only think of himself to know how true it was. Sam dug into his back pocket for his wallet, took out a five-dollar bill, and handed it to Henry.
“It’s something for your trouble,” Sam said.
“I ain’t done nothing yet.”
As Sam put his wallet away, he expected Henry to put the money into his pocket, but the little man continued to hold it with the same two fingers. They had reached a new level of absurdity as Henry debated with himself what to do with the money.
“Consider it a down payment,” Sam argued absurdly. “Use it to pay the Lutherans for your room.”
“What if I drink it up? I won’t see nothing then.”
Sam had stopped listening. Maria was on Pike Street. She looked toward the police car as she drew close, uncertain who was in it—looking again as she passed. He watched her in his side mirror as she crossed Pike Street behind him and knocked on the door of the Donut Shop. He turned in his seat and saw her walk inside. He saw her silhouette inside the darkened glass. It was time to move.
He looked over at Henry, who still held the bill in his hand.
“Five bucks is no big deal, Henry. If you’re going to drink it up, then you’re going to drink it up. You decide, but I have to get going.”
He reached across Henry and pulled the handle on the passenger door. It opened and Henry got out. The enthusiasm, the delight, with which he had seated himself in the car disappeared as Sam closed the door. Henry bent down and tapped on the window. Sam reached over and rolled it down a few inches.
“Where do you want me to meet you?” Henry asked.
“What?”
“Where you going to be? If I learn something about that fella, where you going to be so I can tell you?”
“In the parking lot behind the Donut Shop. Sometime in the afternoon.”
“Which parking lot?” Henry asked.
“There’s only one,” Sam said slowly and distinctly. “If you’ve got something to tell me, I’ll be there at two o’clock or as close to that as I can. If you’re not there, don’t worry about it.”
“All right,” Henry said, but he was clearly worried.
Henry walked behind the police car to the sidewalk. He stood behind it and did not come up to the window again. As he drove away, Sam saw in his rearview mirror that Henry had not yet put the money away.
With the morning under way, the calls began pouring out over the radio. He was sent to a traffic accident on Denny Way and wrote a ticket to a man who turned left where no left turn was allowed. Then he listened to the ticketed man express a lengthy opinion about the traffic mess that was getting worse every day. Sam could have pointed out that on this particular day the complainer was responsible for the mess, but that would have extended a conversation he was ready to end. For the second time that morning, Sam opened the door for a passenger to hurry the exit. As the man stepped reluctantly out of the car, Sam smiled his best traffic cop smile and told him to drive carefully.
Sam remained logged on the traffic accident when he drove into the station. If nothing appeared on the log sheet and nothing was reported to Radio, then nothing existed. If they wanted nothing, they got nothing.
It was after 9:30, and Markowitz was one of the few detectives in the office. His back was to the door, and he was typing slowly on an electric typewriter. Sam sat down in the chair that was becoming his. Markowitz raised his finger for a moment of silence, and Sam waited while he typed a few final words.
“Not worth a damn anymore,” Markowitz said as he pulled the paper out from the rollers of the machine. “We have typists who do this now. We’re just supposed to talk into little machines.”
“So what are you typing?” Sam asked.
“I’m typing up a visit I had with your neighbor. One of those things we keep in the ‘other’ file. How does a guy like you become neighbors with somebody like her?”
“I was there first,” Sam said. “How did it go?”
“Okay. She met me over at the hotel. I talked to the girl there. Not much new that I can see. She’s sure jumpy, isn’t she?”
“Who?”
“That girl. You wouldn’t want to drop anything loud behind her. The lawyer said she would ask Mrs. Abbott if I could look for prints on some of Ben’s stuff. She doesn’t think that will be a problem. I gather you’ve been in Mrs. Abbott’s house, too?”
“Yes.”
“Anything else I should know—just in case you want me to do my job without sticking my foot in my mouth?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I’ve just been wondering something. How come you trust this lawyer lady when you don’t trust anybody else, and why does she trust you?”
“I’ve known her a long time.”
“Sure. You’ve known McDonald and Fisher a long time, too, but that doesn’t seem to help.”
“I know Georgia a lot better.”
“How much better?”
Sam was not eager to reveal the details.
“Jesus Christ, don’t tell me you’re screwing the lawyer,” Markowitz said for him.
Markowitz made it seem simple. Maybe it was simple. It had been more complicated once. No, it had been simple once. It was complicated now.
“I’m not telling you anything.”
“I thought she was married,” Markowitz said.
“She is—technically.”
“Technically? What the hell does that mean?”
“It means it’s none of your business.”
“Does Murphy know about this?” Markowitz asked.
“No.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“What do you mean by that? Murphy’s like any other cop. We just happened to end up on this thing together.”
“Oh sure. Who are you kidding?”
Sam thought for a moment whom to kid, then simpl
y shrugged his shoulders. Markowitz, who was digging into his folder of papers to find a place for his last sheet, missed the eloquence of his gesture.
“She’s pretty good, though, isn’t she?” Markowitz asked, looking at Sam again.
“Who?”
“Murphy. Knows her stuff, I mean.”
“I guess you could say she brings a new perspective to this business.”
“You could say that,” Markowitz said. “I’ve never worked with a woman cop before.”
“It’s a new day, Fred,” Sam said, using Markowitz’s first name for the first time in a long while. “Nothing is the same anymore. You and I are the dinosaurs.”
“I hope not,” Markowitz said. “They didn’t come out too good.”
Chapter 25
Sam passed the gates of the Garden of Eden, where bold red signs promised an easy trip to paradise, and stopped at the black asphalt void between paradise and the Donut Shop. He was not surprised and barely disappointed that he didn’t see Henry. Henry’s absence was not an inconvenience. He had to wait for the girl anyway. Besides, his stomach was satisfied with Silve’s oxtail. He walked toward the alley on the east side of the parking lot, still looking but certain that Henry wouldn’t be there.
Henry was sitting on the asphalt in the far corner of the parking lot, nearly hidden from view behind parked cars. It was the opposite corner from where Sam thought Henry would be, but then he had not thought Henry would be anywhere. His legs were crossed in a carefree manner, and his head rested against the wall of the Garden of Eden. He held a bottle concealed in a paper bag and paid no attention to Sam until Sam was almost upon him.
“Say, mister, you got a dime for a cup of coffee?”
“Coffee costs more than that, Henry.”
“Jeez, I didn’t see it was you. I didn’t recognize you out of your uniform.”
Henry rose shakily from his sitting position and dropped the bottle onto the asphalt. Henry was not drunk, however. At least he didn’t seem drunk. Sam picked up the sack and looked inside the wrapper.
“This really 7-Up?”
“It sure is. Like to make me sick. Let’s get out of here. Something weird is going on.”
Henry headed down the alley and left Sam holding the bottle. He tossed it to the asphalt beside other bottle-laden sacks and followed. Henry kept a few paces ahead until they were two blocks away. During that time, Sam didn’t know whether to laugh or call a halt. Henry finally stopped at the arching entrance of a building so tall that they wouldn’t have been able to see the top if they had looked. There Henry turned to look at Sam again.
“I didn’t want to take no chance on that Perry fellow seeing us. He tricked me once. He went into that peep-show place where I was sitting, and it was real dark in there. No way you could see anybody. Anyway who’d want to? But I seen the back door open and I figured it was him. So next time I waited up the alley where I was sitting when you came. Walked right by me. I asked him for a dime, just like I did you. He never paid me no mind. You want to know where he went after that?”
Henry paused, the shaking brought under control, eager to part with his information but wanting to be paid some mind in the process.
“I sure do, Henry.”
“Right back to the same building where that Donut Shop is. Only he went down to the basement.”
“What are you talking about? What basement?”
“Right there in that building. There’s steps in the back, right off the parking lot.”
Sam tried to picture the steps in his mind, but there was nothing very clear showing up. He had been down that alley a thousand times, too.
“There’s a railing there.” Henry tried to be helpful. “Behind the fence. Hell, it would be easy to miss. The steps start up by the alley and kind of work their way down below the parking lot.”
The picture was becoming a little clearer for Sam.
“Anyway,” Henry said, impatient to move on, “I seen him go down those steps. But that ain’t the funny part. There was a couple of kids, I guess they’re kids, that went there ahead of him. I just happened to see them. They snuck in along the alley, and you don’t hardly notice them.”
“Were they carrying anything? Bags? Something under their clothes?”
“Nothing that I could see. But I didn’t stand there with my head sticking out. They wasn’t in there more than a few minutes.”
“Do you think you could recognize them again?”
“No. I didn’t see that much of them. In fact, the only reason I think they was kids was by the way they walked. Kind of fast like. You know how kids are. They left out the alley to Pike Street. I hardly seen them.”
“How many times did that Perry guy go down there?” Sam liked Henry’s version of the name better than Pierre’s, and he couldn’t help smiling when he thought how Perry would react to his new name.
“Just that once. Of course, I missed him that first time.” Henry seemed to notice Sam’s smile and lightened up a little himself. “With all those walks he takes, you’d think he’d be a little skinnier.”
Henry’s bad teeth shone in the afternoon sun, but then he looked around and seemed to sense he was out of place. The smile disappeared. They were both out of place. Past them a parade of men and women in expensive suits and equally expensive hair walked with their heads high and looked as though they were in a hurry to get someplace they didn’t want to go. Were they all deal makers, Sam wondered, or were they just practicing? Deals were made in every block, he reminded himself. When those men walked down First Avenue, they didn’t walk with their heads so high.
“You did a good job, Henry,” Sam said and patted the little man on the shoulder. If it was condescending, Henry didn’t seem to notice. As when he got his new shoes, he stood a little straighter, a man of means, now a man with responsibility.
“You want me to keep on watching? I got time, you know.”
“No. Let’s call it a day. We don’t want them to get suspicious.”
He wanted to go home, and he didn’t want to think about Henry watching the back door alone. Besides, he had checked the Second Watch schedule; McDonald and Fisher were off. Now he knew where Pierre went. That was enough for one day. After he met Maria at Silve’s, he was leaving, too.
“What do you think they’re doing, Officer Wright?”
“Call me Sam. My name is Sam.”
“Yes sir, Sam.”
“What do you think they’re doing?” Sam asked, returning the question to Henry.
“I don’t know. I wouldn’t mind finding out though.”
“I wouldn’t either,” Sam said. “You want to watch again tomorrow?”
“Sure. I ain’t never worked for the law before. Maybe I could get me something in the morning first unloading those trucks, like I did today. I don’t want no more money from you.”
“Okay. I’m usually in the Market about that time. Maybe I’ll see you.”
“Sure. Well, guess I better get going then. Got to keep on the move.”
Henry swallowed hard and his Adam’s apple skipped in his skinny neck as though his throat were parched. Like a fast-moving cloud, a look of torment moved across his face that had only a moment before showed renewed possibilities. Sam had seen that shadow before. He looked up for the sun, for the offending cloud, but the sun was hidden behind buildings, and the sky overhead was clear.
He stood with Henry on the steps of the giant building. He wanted to leave. It was far past the time he should have been away from this hopeless mess.
“Well, I guess we’ll call it a day then,” Sam repeated, unable to think of new words for the same thing.
“Yeah, that’s what we’ll do,” Henry said.
“Which way you headed?”
“That way,” Henry said, pointing south. “To the mission, I guess.”
“I’m heading the other way. See you in the morning.”
“You bet,” Henry said with forced enthusiasm.
Sam lingered for
one more moment, the familiarity of Henry’s face among all the strangers delaying him.
“You got any family around here?” Sam asked.
“Them I still got are in Missouri. Not many left, though. Didn’t even know about my mother dying until I passed through. They didn’t have no way to reach me. I seen her grave though. She ought to have a bigger stone, but with the likes of me to look after her, it ain’t surprising. How about you? You must have lots of family.”
“Not so many. My mother died a year ago. Let me tell you, Henry, none of us do right by our mothers.”
“I bet she was proud of you.”
“You think so?”
“Sure. You in your uniform and all. A mother likes to see her son in some kind of uniform. I was in the army once, and that was the picture she kept on the bureau.”
“I wonder what picture Perry’s mother has of him?”
“He didn’t have no mother.”
From Henry, there came a sound almost unheard in the rush of afternoon business, but it was there. And from Sam, the same sound—two shadows laughing misfit laughter on the steps of the big important building. Sam walked away with Henry’s laughter lasting in his memory a block, or maybe two, until he remembered he had to go back to see the basement steps that he had somehow missed and the Indian girl above them.
Chapter 26
Since midnight Katherine had been alone. Mike had found a way to get off early and still be paid court time—something to do with the next day being their day off. The sergeant gave her the choice of teaming up with someone else or working alone. She chose to work alone.
A heavy fog had settled at the waterfront, and she could see no lights across the Sound. When she flashed the car’s spotlight over the water, the beam revealed nothing. Even close images blurred and faded as though she were nearsighted.
Katherine walked down the stairway to the thick, wood planks of the dock. She heard the rustle of water against them. Radio announced the time—0400 hours.
Evenly spaced and mournful, two foghorns played opposite each other—first one, then the other at a different pitch. The closer, louder horn had the lower tone. Each hummed its single note as though tuning before playing the rest of the music, but there was no more music.
First Avenue Page 20