Jackals at a nearby table stared at Papa Smurf, then at Linc, and they had the dumb look of scavengers waiting for the next piece of carrion.
Detective Donaldson had to—absolutely had to—find something on Madmaxx's shoes. A fingerprint, a bloodstain, a hair, a fiber. If he didn't, Linc was a dead man.
Linc walked to the cafeteria napkin dispenser, got some napkins, and wiped the grape pop away.
Maybe the men from the thin blue line would be here this afternoon, after Detective Donaldson had had a chance to look at the shoes for evidence. Maybe they would arrest Papa Smurf, and even Dilbert and Niveda. Because which was worse, doing it, or standing by and watching it?
He went to the parking lot, opened his cell, scrolled to Detective Donaldson's number, and thumbed the automatic dial.
Waited a long time, listened to it ring eight times, smelled the grape pop on his jersey, watched pigeons walk around in the snow, pecking at a Wendy's Spicy Chicken, birds eating birds, leaving footprints everywhere. Rang and rang, but he finally got through, and asked Detective Donaldson about the shoes. Detective Donaldson said that the men from the thin blue line had come to get them last night, and that the technicians had studied them all morning.
"But they're clean, Linc. Strong detergent residue and some trace blood, Ahmed's blood, but nothing else."
Linc's fear foamed like liquid nitrogen, spreading through his body in a cold and numbing cloud. He would be dead by sunset. His ma would be another Mrs. Sameer, sad, lonely, and missing her only child.
"You sure?"
"I'm sure, son."
Not good enough. There had to be something he could do before his blood wound up freezing in a back alley.
In gym class, the first thing Papa Smurf did was grab him by the back of the neck and smash his head into the locker room wall.
Neon dots jumped to his eyes, like fairies of pain summoned by the Smurfmaster. Linc's legs grew wobbly, and he slumped to the floor. He nearly lost contact, but pulled himself out of it just in time to hear Papa Smurf say, “You a dead man, Linc."
He sat on the floor in his gym shorts, feeling sick to his stomach because the pain was so bad, smelling the stink of his own fear through the Mountain Air scent of his sports deodorant, all the jackals walking out to the gym, ignoring him, no one helping him.
He heard the whistle blow in the gym. Mr. Quantz barked, and the boys played basketball, the ball dribbling with painful whacks up and down the hardwood floor.
He pushed himself up. The bile rose in his throat, but he choked it down. He touched his forehead, felt a warm wet bump forming, pulled his fingers away, and saw blood, not much, but enough to make him think of blood the way Madmaxx might. Could blood freeze? He thought of his own blood on the windowsill. He thought of the pigeon print in the blood. And it was then that the heavens opened, and sunlight flooded through, and he realized that the whole thing was about shoes after all, only not about Madmaxx's shoes, but about a different pair, Papa Smurf's size 14 Nikes, the Smurfmaster's bright red Shox Ride 2s, worn day in and day out, picking up scratches and nicks, thousands of identifying characteristics, so they at last had their own pattern, as individual as a snowflake, and as unique as the grains of sand on a beach.
He got out of his gym uniform and put on his street clothes. He checked his wallet, had seventeen dollars, enough to get him downtown. He walked to the garbage can, lifted the bag out, and found extra ones beneath, ready for the janitor. He took out a spare bag and stuffed the regular one back in.
He walked to Papa Smurf's cubbyhole, retrieved the Shox Ride 2s, turned them over, and inspected the soles the way a palm reader might look at lifelines. Nicks and dents, even a chunk missing from the left one—a pair of shoes like no other, a snowflake, a grain of sand, uniquely identified, perfectly designed to leave an impression in half-frozen blood, like that pigeon print on the windowsill.
Papa Smurf had written his name on the inside, “Alexander Guthrie,” as well as his telephone number. Case closed.
Linc slid the shoes into the bag, left the locker room, exited the school by the back, and took the bus downtown.
Got to the police station and went inside. Cops all around, but they hardly gave him a look. He approached the duty desk, said to the desk sergeant that he was Detective Donaldson's friend, they played hoops together. Detective Donaldson had forgotten his shoes, and here they were, in this garbage bag, could you make sure he got them?
The desk sergeant opened the bag, looked inside, and backed away. “They stink."
"They stink all right.” And Linc wondered if all killers had the same stink. “But they be special. Tell him that. They be one of a kind."
The desk sergeant's eyes narrowed.
Before the desk sergeant could put it together, Linc moved off.
He didn't go home, couldn't go home, went to the library instead.
He called and left a message for his ma and pa. “Don't worry about me, I be fine. I ain't comin’ home tonight, but I be fine."
He sat in the DPL's Main Library on Woodward Avenue, a Wednesday night so it was open till eight, and read Guitar World, interviews with newer guitarists—Warren Haynes, David Chastain, and Derek Trucks. Chilled there until they finally kicked him out, but still didn't go home, stayed away from home, protecting his ma and pa.
He left the library and wandered Detroit's cold streets. The snow had been packed by people walking on it, and was as dirty as a doormat.
He walked to keep warm. He rubbed his hands repeatedly. The cold wind blew from Canada and he knew that he should have worn gloves, that he had to learn how to keep better care of his hands if he was going to be the next Hendrix. He tried to form, midair, a flat-nine chord, but his hands were so stiff, his fingers wouldn't cooperate, and he finally gave up.
Went to a jazz club, but they kicked him out because he was underage. Not good enough. Madmaxx always telling him that. Always getting him to strive for better.
So he went to another, and the doorman let him stay because he was a musician and wanted to learn. As he sat there, he felt some of the old thrill coming back, especially when the guitarist played a blues lick. He was reminded of all the hours he and Madmaxx had sat in his room listening to music, and how Madmaxx, just by his presence, had made the music mean something. For the first time since the murder, his hands loosened. He touched his finger calluses over and over again, remembering how Madmaxx had once called them miracles of determination.
He wanted to stay all night, but the club closed and he had to go, so he wandered around some more, walking, walking, trying to keep his blood moving. Blood froze. Sometimes, after a concert at the Fox, he and Madmaxx would walk around. Sometimes they would go to the library together. He was going to miss Madmaxx. Madmaxx was his friend. His main man. And he would never have a main man like Madmaxx again
The sun rose over the Detroit River, and by that time the soles of his shoes had picked up a few more identifying nicks and dents of their own.
He phoned Detective Donaldson, but all he got was voice mail.
He went to school because they wanded for weapons at school, and at least he would be safe there for a while.
He called his ma and pa and said he was okay, and his ma asked, “Where are you?"
"At school, ma. Same as always. Papa Smurf show up?"
"No, son, he didn't."
That made him feel good.
He went inside, the security guard wanded him, and once he got past the checkpoint, he knew he could rest easy.
He went to his homeroom, Mr. Constanza's class, was the first one there as usual, but after a while the jackals drifted in, and they all stared at him as if they couldn't understand why he wasn't a piece of carrion freezing in a back alley yet.
Dilbert came in, and Dilbert kept glancing at the ceiling like he thought it was going to cave in. Niveda arrived and she looked bewildered, as if she had studied for a science exam all night only to discover it was an English exam. Mr. Constanza came
in and gave Linc a quick glance, a grin on his face, the kind of grin you saw on dogs when they were having their bellies scratched.
Linc waited for Papa Smurf, but the Smurfmaster didn't show up.
Instead, two officers from the thin blue line arrived, and Mr. Constanza went out to talk to them.
A minute later he came back, and it was, “Niveda, Dilbert, could you please come out to the hall?"
Niveda and Dilbert went out to the hall. Some of the jackals looked at Linc, as if they couldn't figure out how someone so low on the food chain could still be alive, but Linc kept his eyes down. Mr. Constanza came in, and Linc heard footsteps fading down the hall, the door to the stairwell opening, then closing, then silence, Dilbert and Niveda being led away by the men of the thin blue line.
Mr. Constanza stood at the front as if in a trance. He gave Linc another glance, the same glance he sometimes gave Madmaxx when Madmaxx had A-plussed a test, then told the class to turn to page 187, they were going to look at alkalies today. Madmaxx, his main man, always at the top of the class, and now hovering with remarkable clarity above page 187.
After a minute, Linc couldn't concentrate on page 187. He stared out the window at the parking lot. The two men from the thin blue line led Niveda and Dilbert to a police car. And Linc thought, X plus Y equaled Z after all, because which was worse, pulling the trigger, or watching someone else pull it?
On his cell to Detective Donaldson later, he learned that the equation was a little more complicated than X plus Y equals Z, that it had the complexity of adding an oxygen atom to an ammonia molecule.
"We picked Alexander up late last night. Alexander says Dilbert did it, and Dilbert swears Alexander did it, and Niveda's waiting to see what she can get out of the deal before she decides which way she'll go. It doesn't matter. They're all going down."
"So you got the shoes?"
"They were one of a kind, Lincoln, just like you said."
Linc asked if he could have Madmaxx's shoes back. “Got to give ‘em to Mrs. Sameer."
Linc got them back after one week.
He walked down the long, bungalow-lined street to Mrs. Sameer's house. Linc wondered what Mrs. Sameer thought of all this, her life in America, coming from Qatar twelve years ago, a widow, wanting a fresh start for Ahmed, only to have Ahmed's blood freezing in a back alley, life's long road leading her to a place she never wanted to go.
He knocked on the door and she answered. She looked shrunken, worn by grief, her brown face as wrinkled as the shell of a walnut, her gold earrings hanging like desert flowers on her sagging lobes.
"Thank you,” she said, her English sounding strange. “Thank you."
That's all she said because Mrs. Sameer had never mastered English.
Had gotten Madmaxx to translate everything for her.
Now she would have to learn.
Linc walked away, wondering if doing the right thing had made a difference. He didn't feel good, the way he thought he would.
He just felt it was over.
And was that good enough?
The wind picked up and blew snow against his legs.
Maybe that's all he could hope for. It wasn't the same as having Ahmed walk through the classroom door every morning, but at least he now felt the music coming back. He lifted his collar around his neck to protect it from the cold. The crampiness was leaving his hands, and the sweetness was coming back to his ears. And because of that, he knew the riffs would come easily tonight.
He would play for Ahmed when he got home.
And Ahmed would be there, in the music.
A part of the beat.
Elevating the blues. Becoming the blues.
His main man, once again.
Copyright (c) 2006 Scott Mackay
[Back to Table of Contents]
After the Fall by Elaine Viets
Mort was walking down the street Monday morning when a woman landed splat! on the sidewalk, right in front of him.
She burst like a water balloon, and Mort was splashed with a tidal wave of blood and little dots of gray-white that he couldn't identify. Then he could and his stomach heaved. He was already dizzy from the coppery smell of the blood. He was starting a sickly sway when a man in a dirty white apron ran out of Sammy D's Deli and said, “Whoa, pal, where are you hurt? You been shot? Don't worry, we've called an ambulance."
"It's not my blood,” Mort said. “It's hers.” He pointed to the small twisted figure on the sidewalk. That steadied him somehow, and he was able to go on without fainting or throwing up.
"Jesus,” the deli man said. “She must have jumped."
They both looked up and saw curtains flapping out of an open window far, far above them.
"You're darn lucky,” the deli man said. “A few inches more and she would have landed on you. She would have killed you dead."
The EMS people told Mort he was lucky too, as they took him to the hospital, where he was scrubbed down with a horrible harsh disinfectant that clogged his sensitive nasal passages. It smelled of cherries, like some perverted candy.
"Sorry,” the nurse said when he complained of the smell, “but we have to do this for your protection. Bodies are crawling with bacteria."
Mort felt queasy all over again at the unseen horrors invading his sensitive skin, burrowing into his nose and distorting his taste buds. For Mort Heffern was an ordinary man in every way but one. He was average height: five feet seven. He was ordinary looking, with a little round paunch and small brown eyes. His thin, tan hair was receding. Well, to be honest, it had already receded.
Yet ordinary Mort enjoyed many extraordinary delights, including a luscious blond wife, a five-bedroom house in Nyack, New York, and a bottle-green Range Rover because of one unusual feature. Mort's sense of taste was superbly sensitive. It was so sensitive that he was a coffee taster for a top New York firm. Mort's taste buds could distinguish Kona (which he considered overrated) from Kenya AA. He could even tell you the slope where the coffee beans grew.
To protect his precious taste buds and their ally, his nose, Mort never smoked. He'd only had one cigarette in his life, back when he was sixteen, before he decided to become a taster and forsake smoking for the rarer and more exquisite pleasure of tasting. Sometimes, he thought about that one smoke. But mostly he thought about all the good things his taste buds brought him because he didn't smoke.
Naturally, he did not drink. Nor did he wear cologne or use scented soap, and he did not permit his luscious wife, Jasmine, to use them, either. When he first met her, Jasmine was as fragrant as her namesake flower, but he couldn't tolerate living with such a strong scent. She gave it up for him. Mort lavished Jasmine with jewelry to console her for her loss.
Now his taste buds and nose were clogged with the ugly scent of the woman's death and the overpowering odor of that disgusting cherry disinfectant. Mort had no idea what the woman looked like in real life. He caught only a flash of pale arms, flailing legs, and wide, horrified eyes, before she hit the pavement and made a splash.
He didn't mean to be flip about the woman's terrible death. He was shaken, that's all. He called the office of Percardian and Sons from the hospital and explained why he wouldn't be at work that day. Mr. Percardian Senior was sympathetic.
"Take a couple of days off,” he said. “Shock can throw off your taste buds."
Mort slept badly that night. He couldn't get that splat! out of his mind. The sound was like something out of a cartoon, except that a woman had exploded like a ripe watermelon on the sidewalk and showered him with her blood.
Finally, after tossing and turning and awakening Jasmine several times, Mort got up and sat in the living room. He wished he had a cigarette. He could see it, glowing in the dark night. He could taste it. But he didn't. He showered three times, trying to remove the smell of disinfectant. But his powerful smelling and tasting apparatus could still detect the faint traces of the cloying candylike scent.
At six a.m., when the newspaper arrived, Mort looked fo
r a story about the dead woman. It was on page six. He learned that she was Patricia Henley Daniels, forty-seven, a special education teacher. She was married to Decameron Daniels, fifty-one, a stockbroker with Wayne-Symmons. The accident occurred at about seven thirty Monday morning. Her husband told police that he had been dressing in their bedroom when he heard a noise and noticed the living room window was open. He said his wife had been depressed about her father's recent death from cancer. Patricia had jumped or fallen twenty-one stories to her death.
In her photo, Patricia looked small and pretty. She had large dark eyes, curly dark hair, and a friendly smile. She looked like the sort of person you would want to teach your child. Mort felt sad that she had ended her useful life on a Manhattan sidewalk.
Mort was mentioned too in the news story: “Police said the deceased had fallen close to a passerby on the sidewalk, Mort Heffern, forty-two, of Nyack. Heffern was not injured."
"Not injured” indeed, thought Mort, as he replayed that awful splat! in his mind and smelled the odor of cherry disinfectant. His hands shook so badly the newspaper rattled.
He stayed home that day as his boss, Mr. Percardian, advised. Mort was pale and tired and everything still tasted of hospital disinfectant. He showered every hour, praying the insinuating cherry scent would leave his nostrils.
He ate sparingly, hoping the blandness of white meat of turkey and whole wheat bread would restore his tortured taste buds. But under the soothing taste of prime turkey breast he caught the corrupting cherry tang. Even sharp English mustard on his sandwich did not remove it.
He tried to nap between his several showers, but every time he closed his eyes, he saw the flailing limbs of Patricia Henley Daniels. Now the dead woman had a face, and he saw those dark eyes, pleading with him to save her in the last dreadful seconds of her life. Then he heard the splat!
"Are you still carrying on about that jumper?” Jasmine was filled with wifely concern. “You should be glad she didn't land on you. You're lucky."
AHMM, Jan-Feb 2006 Page 23