First Avenue

by Lowen Clausen

  The young woman was now watching her. Maria smiled, grateful and fearful, and took more steps toward the street. She would like to have been the silent woodcarving standing on the counter. She crossed one of the two streets at the end of the Market and entered a small park overlooking the water. Many people were in the park. She walked to a concrete railing that marked the edge. People were sitting on the railing, and she sat on it, too. She looked at the water and waited for her mother’s story to return.

  They made a plan.

  She remembered that the boy and girl jumped into the river and swam toward each other. They met in the center and held hands. The river carried them downstream to the villages.

  They held their hands high so that everyone could see. The people came out from the villages. The girl and boy shouted that everyone should stop arguing. They should forget all of their disagreements and call the river Love. Instead of making them forget, the people united against the boy and girl. Everyone threw stones—so many that they blocked the sun.

  The stones dammed the river.

  The boy and girl would have drowned, but a red raven flying high above, the last of the red ravens, saw them, swooped down, and picked them up. It carried them away from all the angry noise to a place of their own—a place that would never change.

  The flood from the dammed river destroyed the villages. A long night replaced the day, and the river became a great, frozen sea. Most of the people ran to get away from it. Some never stopped running. The few who stayed became lost in the darkness. They scattered like red feathers in the wind.

  One by one they began to recognize a star that never moved. It guided them, and over time, small groups came together. They were glad to be around each other. They did not care which village they had come from. One day the sun moved around the mountain of rocks so that there was light again.

  Everyone was happy. They danced and sang together, but after a while, they began to forget how much they had missed each other in the darkness. Just as it seemed the people would fall back to their old, bickering ways, the sun disappeared behind the mountain of rocks, and they saw the star again. Then the bickering stopped as the people remembered the long night that would come, and they touched hands, and shook their heads, not believing they could be so foolish again.

  Which star is it?

  It was always her mother’s question. It’s the North Star, Mama.

  Why doesn’t it change?

  It’s the place where the red raven took the girl and boy.

  That’s right, Maria, and it’s not as far away as people think.

  But I can’t see the stars here, Mama. Too many lights get in the way.

  Maria touched the corners of her eyes with her fist. She looked around the park, but no one had noticed the end of her story. Out on the water a ferryboat was coming in. There was already one at the dock below her. It blew a long blast from its horn, and the water next to the dock began to churn violently as it slipped slowly away. Much more quietly, she slipped away herself.

  Chapter 31

  The promised storm had arrived, and the wind threw water at everything exposed to the south and west. It was strong enough to pick up water from the pavement and make it rise again. Sam parked as close as possible to the south door of Betty’s Cafe and turned to Markowitz, whose window was sheeted with water.

  “Do you ever come here anymore?” Sam asked.

  “Haven’t for years. I take it you do,” Markowitz said.

  “Every week or so. Old times’ sake. Betty is dead, you know.”

  “No kidding?”

  “She had a heart attack in the kitchen about a year ago when nobody was here. Funny, you could count on one hand the number of times there wasn’t at least one cop in her place, but that’s when it happened.”

  “Goes to show you,” Markowitz said, “there’s never one around when you need one.”

  Betty’s Cafe, and it was still called that after Betty died, was a tiny square building on a triangle lot that fit in the first small block of Second Avenue Extension South. The street was a mutant arm of Second Avenue from Yesler to the train station. It filled a gap created when the streets that followed the waterfront changed direction to a truer rendering of north and south. If no one parked on the sidewalk, there was room to drive around all sides of the cafe. That seldom happened. A police car was usually parked there.

  “You brought me here the first time. This is the first place I ever went as a cop,” Sam said.

  “We all came here.”

  “My first night, Markowitz, and you taught me all I needed to know. Right out of the station, you drove down here to Betty’s and up to the back door. You took out your nightstick and hit the door twice. The door opens, and Betty hands out two cups of coffee. You take a sip, I take a sip. Then we get a call. A knife fight at Third and Lenora. You dump your coffee out the window, so I dump my coffee out the window, and off we go. The knife fighters have disappeared and there isn’t any blood, so we come back here to Betty’s. You hit the door twice and out come two more cups of coffee. You take a sip, I take a sip. Then we get another call—an injury accident. You dump your coffee out the window, I dump my coffee out the window, and off we go again. By the end of the night, I figure I know what police work is about. You get a cup of coffee, drink a little, throw the rest out the window, and go like hell from one call to the next.”

  Markowitz laughed as Sam told the story. “Damn, those were the hot dog years, weren’t they? Do you guys still get coffee from the back door?”

  “No. We have these portable radios now. We go inside and listen to the damn radio while we drink coffee. One other difference,” Sam said, the humor of old memories leaving his face. “We don’t get it free anymore.”

  “I didn’t think you dragged me down here just for a cup of coffee,” Markowitz said.

  “You want to come in or get some to go?” Sam asked.

  Markowitz looked out his window. “Let’s get it to go,” he said.

  “Still black?” Sam asked.

  “Black.”

  Sam opened his door and made a dash for the cafe. Once inside Betty’s he stood at the door a moment and let the water drip from his coat. Rosemary ran the cafe now. She had worked for Betty, and the cafe remained as it had always been. There were eight stools at the counter and four tables in front of the big windows on the east and south. It had closed the day of Betty’s funeral, but otherwise, there had been no interruption in the business. It opened at 5:00 and didn’t close until midnight. A customer could order chili for breakfast and bacon and eggs for supper, and many did.

  “Nasty out there,” Sam said to Rosemary, who was behind the counter. The weather had thinned out her business, but she was long past caring about that.

  “Haven’t seen you for a while,” Rosemary said. “Take a little time off?”

  Sam walked over to the register.

  “Not much,” he said. “How about two cups to go.”

  “Who you got with you?” she asked. She tried to see through the south window, but sheets of water obscured it.

  “Markowitz. You remember him?”

  “Sure. What’s the matter with him? Too much a stuffed shirt to come in here anymore?”

  “He didn’t want to get wet,” Sam said.

  “Chicken,” she said, but she had already turned to the coffeemaker. She put two large Styrofoam cups filled with coffee before Sam and pushed the cream pitcher toward him.

  “Maybe he needs a little cream?” she asked.

  “Black.”

  She reached below the counter for plastic lids.

  “Do you remember Captain Jenkins?” she asked.

  “Kind of,” Sam said.

  “Retired five or six years ago,” Rosemary said. “He was just in here yesterday. You probably never met his daughter.”

  “I’m not sure I ever met him.”

  “Lovely girl. Saw her a few years ago at the wedding. Captain Jenkins said she was getting divorced
. Too bad. She’s smart, too. Got a degree and a good job and all that. You know how it is. Some men have trouble with a smart woman.”

  He knew how that was. He watched Rosemary slowly put the plastic lids over the edges of the Styrofoam cups. She took an unusually long time.

  “I could get her phone number, you know.”

  “No thanks, Rose.”

  “Something else on your mind?” she asked. “You seem kind of glum this morning.”

  Sam smiled to show that he was not glum.

  “Who else belongs to Rosemary’s lonely hearts club?”

  “Nothing lonely about it. Just passing the time, that’s all.”

  “Rose, you know I’m waiting in line for your divorce. You tell me when that happens. Then I’ll be interested.” He smiled again.

  Rosemary was well into her sixties, but she still enjoyed a compliment however it came. An additional red tone crept behind her heavy layer of makeup.

  “It could happen any day, Sam. You better be careful what you say.”

  Sam paid for the coffee and laughed as he walked to the door. “Thanks, Rose,” he called over his shoulder. “I’ll be waiting.” Then he opened the door into the rain.

  Markowitz slung the car door open for Sam. He handed both cups to Markowitz and slid into the seat. Water dripped from his hair down onto his face. He put the car into gear, turned the windshield wipers to high speed, and moved slowly into the street.

  “Rose wonders why you’re so stuck up you wouldn’t come in,” Sam said.

  “She still works there?”

  “Owns the place now.”

  “No kidding. I ought to drop by sometime. It’s funny how you forget about the old places.”

  Sam parked beneath the Viaduct, but it offered little protection from the rain that swept sideways. He left the car running, and the windshield wipers struggled to keep up. Markowitz handed him a cup, and they both pulled off the plastic lids and laid them on top of the dashboard.

  Steam rose from the Styrofoam cups and disappeared into the backseat with the air from the defroster. Behind his glasses Markowitz was steady and serious, but the cup trembled slightly in his hand, disturbing the plume of steam rising beyond his control. It seemed a lifetime ago when they had last sat together like this. Sam was the green kid back then, expecting to bring diligence and good purpose to this work, expecting to make a difference. He didn’t believe then what old-timers like Markowitz with more than a year in the department had to say.

  As the water dried from his face, his skin felt as though it were shrinking and pulling back from his eyes in weary lines. He accepted the weariness the same way he accepted the rain in the fall, and then the months of gray.

  “Do you remember that time up on the hill when the two kids broke into the old lady’s house?” Markowitz asked.

  “I remember,” Sam said, knowing which story was coming although there were many stories about kids breaking into houses.

  “The old lady was upstairs and called when she heard them breaking in,” Markowitz continued. “You caught the one kid running down the street and handcuffed him around a telephone pole. So there’s the kid hugging this pole, and we take off after the other one. We can’t catch up with him so we head back to the pole. We hear our kid yelling his head off, and there’s the old lady, still in her nightgown, whomping on him with a broom handle. I can still see him dancing around the pole trying to get away from her, and she’s following him around whaling away with all her might. Never forget it,” Markowitz said as his laughter broke up the happy memory.

  Sam laughed, too.

  “We walked back slow, as I remember,” Markowitz continued. “The old lady stops whaling on him when she sees us, but I think it was because she was all tuckered out. That kid had slivers in his face from dancing around that pole. Never forget it.”

  Now the car was rocking from their combined laughter.

  “God, was he glad to see us. Can you imagine? Glad to see us. He wanted us to get that old woman away from him. She was standing there panting but still mad as hell.

  “I asked the old lady if she could identify the kid who got away. She couldn’t. We got the idea at the same time. It was perfect. So we ask if she’ll watch our kid a while longer while we go look some more for the other one. The old gal was getting her wind back, and she says she will ‘watch him good.’ Remember how she pounded the broom on the sidewalk?

  “Oh god, that kid didn’t want us to leave. Just as we were walking away, he yells out the name of the other kid. ‘Luther Smith.’ Never forget it.

  “But the best part was court. I thought that judge would die laughing. He denied all the defense motions and ruled that the admission was voluntary. Damn, that was great. Even the defense attorney was laughing. Those kids were the only people in the whole courtroom who kept a straight face. Damn, that was great. I’d still be on the street if there was stuff like that every day.”

  “That’s the way it is, Fred. You’ve just forgotten. You ought to come back for a while.”

  “No. Those days are gone. You ought to get out of there, too, while you’re still standing.”

  “Me? I’ve thought about it, but I just can’t see myself pushing paper all day. Bad enough on the streets. Too long a line of blue collars in my family, I guess. No, when I leave work, I want it to stay there. Leave it to the next shift. I don’t want stuff to drag on day after day.”

  “Like this case with Olivia Sanchez?” Markowitz asked.

  “Yeah. Like that.”

  All the humor was sucked out of the car, and they became silent as a different image filled the vacuum.

  “So what do you have this time?” Markowitz asked, breaking the silence. “It’s getting so I hate to see you coming.”

  “Some new information about our friend, Pierre,” Sam said. “I think I know how he does his dealing. When he takes off on his little strolls, he walks down the block, goes into the Garden of Eden, out the back door, and then back to the basement of the Donut Shop.”

  “What’s the Garden of Eden?” Markowitz asked.

  “Peep show south of the Donut Shop.”

  “So he makes a big loop to get back where he started from?”

  “Just about where he started. You can’t get to that basement without going outside. The basement steps are on the south side of the building.”

  “But he doesn’t have to go all the way around the block to get there.”

  “That’s right. My informant saw kids coming and going, too. Another thing. Pierre met a guy yesterday a little after ten in the Re(a)d and Green Book Store across the street in the Market. Different kind of deal, though. This was an older guy, white, about forty-five. Big, over six feet tall, broad shoulders. He was wearing a suit and had brown hair slicked back to cover a bald spot. Oh, and he likes war books.”

  “War books?”

  “He bought one with a cannon on the cover.”

  “We’re getting more interesting people all the time,” Markowitz said.

  “You know, you might have been right about checking in with Narcotics,” Sam said. “Do you know anybody over there? Maybe ask a few questions on the quiet?”

  “Sure.” Then a strange, strangled look crossed Markowitz’s face. “Lieutenant Jamison. Used to be my sergeant in Homicide. Big guy, slicked-back brown hair.”

  “Bald spot?” Sam asked.

  “I can’t remember, but I know he was some kind of war buff.” Markowitz’s voice tightened as though he were tiptoeing across cannonballs. “World War I, I think. His grandfather or somebody was a general.”

  The rain seemed to be letting up. Sam could see Elliott Bay across Alaskan Way. Waves hit the piers hard at the ferry terminal and shot salt spray high into the air. He wondered, briefly, incongruously, how his kayak was faring farther down on the Jefferson pier. He had crossed the bay before the bad weather had set in. It had been bad enough, but now he would have to leave it until the next day. Maybe longer than that.

&nb
sp; “Maybe you could get me a picture of Jamison,” Sam said, reluctantly turning back to Markowitz.

  “You need a couple pictures,” Markowitz said. His voice was flat, without inflection. “Other people, about the same age. If you just have one picture, it might prejudice the witness.”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll get them to you before your shift ends.”

  “Look, Markowitz, what the hell are we going to do?”

  “Let’s just see what your informant says about the pictures. Okay? Then we’ll think about that.”

  Markowitz probably did not intend to sound angry. His voice was distorted by the sound of the wind outside. It was an angry wind that crossed Alaskan Way.

  Chapter 32

  Outside, people seemed to blow past the windows on First Avenue. One man in a somber gray suit chased his hat past the Donut Shop window. Each time he was within reach, the hat took off again. Maria laughed even with Pierre standing fixed at the window and looking angrily out at the weather that conspired against his doughnut business.

  Sam came in at nine o’clock. Strangely none of the kids had come. She would report that to him at three. Sam sat on the stool and read a newspaper he had brought with him. Pierre went to the kitchen and made batch after batch of doughnuts that no one would eat. He seemed trapped as long as the policeman sat on the stool. She wondered where they would stack all the doughnuts.

  This time Sam said nothing to Pierre or to her, but waited patiently while she brewed fresh coffee. She saw the scowl appear on Pierre’s face when she dumped the nearly full pot of stale coffee into the sink to make room for the new, but she didn’t care what looks he had. Sam Wright was there and Pierre could do nothing about it.

  When Sam left, Pierre came to the front and poured himself a cup of coffee from the fresh pot she had made. He said nothing to her about dumping the coffee and stood again at the window. He had left his doughnuts in pans beside the fryer. She didn’t offer to find room for them in the display case. It would be a waste of time.

  She wondered why the weather seemed to bother him so much. Business was bad, but it was never very good. What difference would one day make? Maybe his mood had something to do with the kids not coming that morning.