by Bill Cameron
Time passed. The next day and the next month. Winter came, creeping up and settling on her hard shoulders like a shroud. The breeding sows on her dad’s farm got sick and a quarter of them died. She gazed out of the shroud at her husband. “You been witching, Lizzie?” Stuart was jolly with a baby on the way. He laughed, because everyone was so pleased. His folks were pleased and her mother was pleased and her brothers were pleased. Even her father seemed a little bit pleased. And Stuart, he especially was pleased, convinced he’d fathered a boy. When he didn’t know she was nearby he’d mutter under his breath. “A son, a son. My son.” But with the sows sick and dying so artlessly in her father’s barns, Ellie visited the obstetrician. UltraSound revealed the girl growing in her womb. Ellie told Stuart there was nothing she could do. There was no magic. The caul had given her no power over her fate, or good fortune.
He didn’t believe her. He screamed, accused her of casting a spell and making it a girl. He pushed her to the floor and kicked her. She vomited. Within the hour, a pint of blood flushed the dead fetus into the toilet.
Winter stayed on hard that year. Ellie wrapped herself in a blanket and moved through the house like a ghost. She shivered as Stuart worked. He fed the surviving pigs and trucked in oil for the furnace, even collected the eggs. On her best days, her torpor made supper hours late. More often there was no supper at all. And though there wasn’t much heat in the house, even with the furnace firing around the clock, Ellie refused to share what little warmth remained in her. There will be no more fucking, she told Stuart. As her snowy shroud trickled out of the dark sky he looked into her eyes, and he believed her. He knew what she said was true.
November 19 — 10:02 am
Between Him and His Right Hand
I can’t blame Susan. At best, Eager is just another complication in a day already fucked beyond reason. Another charge to hang on Mitch when there’s no dearth of charges. Maybe a witness at trial, assuming the case ever comes to trial. Assuming Eager survives the bullet behind his eyeball.
But Mitch isn’t going to trial. Assuming he survives. A couple dozen cops saw him draw down, and at least one eye in the sky above recorded it. He’ll plead out. As far as Susan is concerned, Eager represents little more than another stack of paper. She has her own problems; Eager is all mine. Unease plays across my belly like a charged wire.
I don’t know what to do with myself, so I start walking. I need to get away from all the boiling motion, the staring onlookers, the earnest cops. I don’t bother to go back to the house for my keys. The cops in my living room could very well still be there tomorrow. But before I move a dozen paces, I knock up against someone. He turns, face sour until he recognizes me. Michael Masliah. He’d been on district patrol when I was still in Homicide, but he’s moved over to the Neighborhood Response Team. I haven’t seen him since I started working on my tan full time.
“Michael.”
“Hey, Skin. What’s going on?”
“Wondering if I’ll ever get my house back.”
“That’s right, they moved in. I heard even the chief was up there.” He shakes his head. “Crazy morning, huh?”
“You said a mouthful.” I laugh, though I’m not sure where the joke is. Sometimes I feel like I hung up my ability to trade banter with other cops with my dress blues.
“What are you up to these days?”
It’s the kind of question I don’t like answering, but I figure Michael isn’t interested in an actual response. “As little as possible.”
“I heard you were working at that coffee shop where you used to hang out.”
I feel my cheeks ignite and I look away. Outside of Susan, I didn’t realize anyone was keeping track of me. “I do a little insurance investigating, but otherwise ...” He’s looking at me sideways. I shrug, realizing it’s a stupid thing to lie about. I’m hardly the first ex-cop to pick up honest work after retirement. “The coffee thing, it’s ... well, yeah, different shop, but the same owner.”
“She’s a cutie, if I remember right.”
Tell me about it. But I keep my mouth shut and lift my shoulders like it’s something I never think about. But the comment shifts my thoughts to my part-time job at Uncommon Cup. From cop to barista had never been the plan. Some cops are in it to do some good for others, some to do good for themselves. For me, it was about making a living off my one half-assed aptitude: teasing a plausible, admissible narrative out of available evidence. It was a job I did pretty well, and we all need a job. Until the job doesn’t need us anymore. Now it’s hard to look a working cop in the eye and talk about pulling espresso shots for tips and a gnat’s hair more than minimum wage. Or, if I’m lucky, spend a day or two a month snapping long lens photos of some nitwit bricking retail shop windows and so he can file a phony insurance claim.
Michael doesn’t help by being decent about the whole thing. “Hell, Skin, I don’t blame you. If there’s one thing citizen hate more than paying our salaries, it’s paying our pensions after we’ve busted our humps for twenty-five years. You gotta make ends meet.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Thanks for stopping by to cheer me up, man.”
I smile, in spite of myself. “Ah, you know me. Far as I’m concerned, the whole world’s a shit hole and we’re all looking up from the bottom with our mouths hanging open.”
“Then shut your fucking mouth, Skin. Jesus.” He slaps me on the shoulder. “So what happened here, man? Guy was your neighbor, right?”
“I’m as shocked as everyone else.” If I’d have picked anyone in that house to go off the rails, it would have been Jase, but even he would have been a long shot. Just a pissed-at-the-universe teenager, like there aren’t a million of those. I don’t want to get into another post-mortem of Mitch on the porch, but it occurs to me that while Susan might be dodging my bullets, Masliah may be able to help with my real concern. “You remember that kid, Eager Gillespie?”
“From Mount Tabor, sure. What about him?”
“He was here this morning. He got hit by the round our friend on the porch got off.”
“Jesus, you’re kidding. Is he all right?”
“You didn’t see it?”
“I’ve been tied up since I got here. Talking to the neighborhood association folks and trying to get people back in their houses. Dealing with all this.” Beyond him, citizen press against the barricades as uniforms work to maintain some semblance of order.
“Sure. So you don’t know where he went.”
“Where he went? Are you saying he swallowed a pill and then just walked away?”
“I don’t know. The paramedics tried to check him out, but then they got busy with Mitch and no one’s seen him since.”
“Well, I don’t know what I can do, but if I see him—I mean, Jesus, where’d he get hit?”
“Eye, looked like to me.”
Masliah whistles under his breath.
“That was my thought.”
“What did the lieutenant say?”
To mind my own business. “She’s got enough on her plate, Michael.”
His lips tighten, and I can tell what he’s thinking. In his spot, I’d be thinking the same thing. He answers to a chain of command, and I ain’t a part of it. “You know if he took a bullet in the head, we’ll probably find his body somewhere, an hour or a day from now.”
I don’t like admitting that, but I know he’s right. I’m sure I’m wearing the denial on my face, but Michael has other things to worry about. I can feel him pulling away, but he throws me one last bone.
“Where would he go if he is still on his feet?”
There is one place where I might find, if not Eager, then someone who knows him. Trick’ll be getting them to answer my questions. But my car is still inside the perimeter.
“Michael, you got anyone heading downtown, maybe I could hitch a ride?”
He thinks, and then smiles indulgently. “Give me a minute.” It takes him two, but then Masliah connects me with a taciturn sergea
nt named Kuhl who could give a lesson to a cucumber. He’s on his way back to Central Precinct and agrees to drop me on the way. I try to make small talk, but his responses are monosyllabic. Then, when I mention I used to be on the job, he lets me have it.
“Yeah, I know what you used to be, Kadash. And I know you also stood by and let a suspect pop one of your own. So how about you shut your yap, unless you’d rather get out and walk.”
So that’s it. He’s a friend of Richard Owen, a former colleague, former boss—a man I’d never gotten along with. It’s true enough that I’d let a citizen hit Owen and done nothing, but the fellow in question wasn’t a suspect and Owen more than deserved it. His retirement, at my encouragement, made room for Susan to move up to commander of Person Crimes. The encouragement hadn’t been friendly, and clearly Owen wasn’t the only one who knew it. I shut my yap.
Kuhl doesn’t speak again until he drops me at the corner of Burnside and MLK. I walk to Ankeny, then a couple of blocks down to 2nd through a brief spit of rain followed by a sudden sun break that threatens warmth. My destination is tucked under the Burnside Bridge. To a certain kind of person, the place is world famous, a destination feared by the skittish and admired by the recklessly skilled. To the rest of us, it’s a strange landscape of curves and ramps sculpted of discarded fill and smooth-skimmed concrete.
The Burnside Skatepark came about as a result of a little organized anarchy, such as it was, when a group of determined skaters started building banks and transitions under the east end of the bridge back in the early 90s. Squatters, but squatters with their shit together. The early work was good, and with time and growing commitment the later work got better and better. A trash-filled vacant lot under the bridge grew into one of the premier skateparks in the world. Eventually the city sanctioned the park, and improvements are ongoing. I’ve been here when as many as two hundred skaters sparred for space and status in a kind of Brownian alpha skirmish. Master of the board, a position coveted by a species of stringy, agile creature, male and female alike, who don’t give a fuck about anything except not being anybody’s bitch.
In my age range, there are three kinds of men who linger at the margins of a place like the Burnside Skatepark. You got the man with a few dollars in his pocket and a taste for the young, taut skin hinted at beneath the hoodies and baggie shorts. Then there’s the man with a mission, salvation on his mind, hoping to peel off a soul or two from among skate punks for whom the only real danger is wiping out on a monster tranny or getting hassled by some asshole straight who can’t mind his own fucking business. And then there’s the cops, but they stick their heads in no more than necessary to make sure there’s no obvious dealing or hooking. They’re too busy, the guys on patrol, to waste time tracking every street kid with authority issues and a skateboard. And at Burnside, the skaters know they have something good; they police themselves well enough.
Finally there’s me. No one confuses me with the first type, and I’ve made it clear I’m not interested in lost souls or any misdemeanors and minor felonies that might go down in the shadows on the far side of the bridge wall. Some of the guys know me, nod when I show up to stand at the fence and watch the action. Some only offer the barest acknowledgment, letting me know we got nothing in common, but we got no beef either.
There’s not a whole lot of action when I arrive this morning. A dozen guys, a few girls, standing board-ready at the top of the banks or staring through the chain-link fence on the north side of park. Only a few are skating. I take up a spot behind the street-side bank and watch the skaters work their lines. My usual habit. After a few minutes a fellow I know skates up the ramp and skids to a stop, stares down at me. He’s tall and thin, buzzed hair under an orange knit skullcap. No clue if he’s fifteen or twenty-five, if he has a job or a home or a just cardboard box to sleep in. But he’s always here and he talks to me. Goes by Push.
“You’re looking more raggedy than usual, old man.” He taps his neck with the first two fingers of his right hand. His knuckles are tattooed with little red stars.
“Your mother name you Push, or is that what she wants to do when she runs into you on a busy street corner?”
“I hatched from an egg, man.” He grins and kicks off the bank, rides across to the big hip opposite and performs a perfect, unconscious ollie, then swerves back among other skaters and rejoins me. Can’t stand still for long.
“So what’s the word?”
“No word. Just need a laugh and thought I’d come watch you amateurs fall on your asses for a while.”
“If you weren’t such a pussy, I’d let you give my board a try. But I hate to see someone’s granny cry.”
I chuckle and he starts to kick off again. “Hey, you seen Eager Gillespie lately?”
Push’s smirk is made sinister by a pattern of black filigree tattooed around his eyes and across his cheekbones. “He steal your social security check?”
“Something like that.”
He tugs at his cap, thinks for a moment. “Ain’t seen Eager in I don’t know how long. I heard he moved.”
“He’s back. You know anyone he hangs out with, maybe someone who knows where he’s staying?”
“You should ask Jase.”
“Jase Bronstein? Is he here?”
Push laughs now, picking up on my obvious interest. He points toward the fence opening where a clump of skaters are smoking and jawing. Among them I see Jase’s beefy figure. “Maybe you catch him, he don’t see you coming first.” Then he rolls off.
I move along the back of the bank, head down. Push skates over to a group sitting at the top of the bridge wall bank. After a moment they all hop onto their boards and skate in different directions. I don’t know why he’s giving me cover. Maybe he likes the fact I’m an old guy who doesn’t mind being fucked with. I round the bridge support at the northeast corner of the park, my footsteps masked by the skirr of wheels echoing under the bridge. Jase stands with his back to me, hands waving as he talks to some other kids. His plaid boxers bulge with ass between his sagging pants and a black Raider’s jacket at least one size too small. I hunch my shoulders and move along like I have no interest in anything, just a fellow walking from here to there, maybe a guy heading to work at Pacific Fruit the next block up. No one pays me any mind until I’m standing behind the cluster of boys.
“Jason.” He turns his head my way, but doesn’t respond. Then his eyes pop. He starts to back away and I raise my hands, palms out. “No one is with me, no cops, nothing. No one knows I’m even here.”
“Fuck off.”
“Not until we have a chat.”
His friends have already scattered. He turns, ready to bolt, then sees Push at the top of the bank above us. Push stands with his arms folded across his chest, chin down. He shakes his head and Jase surrenders. He drops his board. It rolls to a forlorn stop against the park wall. “What do you want?” Over Jase’s shoulder, I see Eager’s tag on the wall, an EG® the size of my palm, faded and partly obscured by other graffiti, drawn with a fat black marker.
“I was hoping you could clear something up for me.”
“Don’t know nothing about what happened this morning. Dad flips out, bang bang, and I run. That’s it.”
“I’m more interested in Eager.”
His face goes carefully blank. “Eager.”
“Yeah. Eager.”
“I don’t know what to tell you.”
“He was there this morning.”
“So were like a million other people.”
“I’m only interested in one. What was he doing there?”
“Like I give two shits what Eager does.”
“How many shits you give when he tagged your house a few months ago?”
That catches him off guard, but he recovers quickly. “That was my dad’s thing, not mine.” Then he smirks. “He thought you were gonna go all Magnum, PI for him.”
“He didn’t need me. He had you.”
Jase looks back toward Push, who is skatin
g in lazy circles close by and not paying obvious attention to anything.
“Why didn’t you tell your father that was Eager’s tag?”
“If he’s so out of it he can’t figure out EGR, why should I care? Not my problem.”
“Wasn’t it you out there scrubbing it off?”
A shadow passes over his eyes. “So fucking what?”
“What did Luellen say about it?”
“Nothing. I don’t know.”
“Then what did Eager say about it?”
“The dude moved away.”
“His mother may have moved, but he stuck around. Which you know. I’ve seen you two running around together since she left.”
He throws his hands out, shifts his weight from one foot to the other. Eyes twitching, refusing to look back at me. I’m boring him, or making him nervous. I try a new tack.
“Didn’t you two try out for that Gus Van Sant movie together, the one they filmed here at the park? That was after his mom left.”
“My dad wouldn’t let me, even though it was just extras. Skaters. I don’t know if Eager tried out, but it wouldn’t matter anyway. He’s not that good.”
“He seems pretty good to me.”
“He’s a poser. Got no business skating here, that’s for sure.”
“But I guess he’s good enough when you want to scam money at the off-ramp.”
He shakes his head. “That was a long time ago, man. We were never friends or anything. He just hung around.”
“Why did he hang around if you were such not-friends?”
“I don’t know, man. Maybe because he has a thing for my stepmom.”