by Mike McKay
Four hundred million desperate people fled from dysfunctional cities to the countryside. It did not help a bit. The impoverished villagers did not have enough land, enough water, and enough food for all. The lucky ones managed to get themselves a fishing boat and ended up all over the place: from Australia to Myanmar and Madagascar, and even in the United States. The rest… Nobody was sure what this crisis ended up with – the news just stopped coming. It was speculated that there should be several million survivors; some would estimate the remaining India's population at twenty or even fifty million. But everybody uniformly agreed the survivors lived in the Stone Age by now…
Soon Kim and Mark located their second database hit. The family was a mix: a Caucasian husband and an Indomerican wife, with five kids. The man was a cobbler. At the front of his tiny shack, there was a plywood shelf with several pairs of cheap rubber flip-flops and sandals on display, while the cobbler himself was at work: cutting an old car tire to make soles for yet another pair of sandals. Fittingly to the common proverb, the cobbler's children were without shoes, but in case of this particular cobbler, the proverb applied not only to his children, but also to his wife and to himself. Two older kids, about six and seven, dressed in stained shorts, helped their father by holding the tools and offering free advice. Three other boys, aged between two and five, obviously did not belong to the workforce yet: completely naked, they played in the road dust. Their mom cooked something conspicuous in the old blackened pot set on top of four bricks. The fuel between the bricks looked like dried cow dung.
“Morning, sir,” Kim approached the cobbler. “How is the business?”
“And good mornin' to y'all. Business – as usual. It's Apr'l! Who the hell would come for a pair of 'flops in Apr'l? By June – it'll be completely different deal. To-ons of clients! But now… The display's just for fun. My sons enjoy setting the shelf in the morning and packing it back in the 'noon. I don't mind. I'd say, they should learn how to run a shop, what'd y'all think?”
Mark also doubted the display was too necessary. Clearly, Mr. Hobson was either working by the order, or was sending his production for sale in the better-off neighborhoods. Here, in the Indomerican community, as far as Mark could see, hardly one person out of ten had sandals or 'flops on.
The cobbler turned to Mark. “And ya, sir? Also with the Police?”
“The FBI,” Mark smiled. He liked the man's juicy southern accent.
“The FBI!” – the man whistled, “ya must be a rich man, sir. Don't ya need a pair of tire sandals? At home? My quality's good, and my prices are – excellent! Discount on top of discount on top of discount! For a pair of sandals – jus' thirty-eight hundred dollars. And the 'flops – three thousand. Ya'll can't find 'em any cheaper, sir. It's Apr'l, jus' as I said…”
Mark glanced at the display shelf once more. The sandals were of the common ugly type. Mark's kids wore such to school in the Summer, if pavements were too hot. Three thousand dollars for the pair of tire flip-flops was not expensive, but not too cheap either. At their local flea market, the same would also sell for three thousand. “Do you have any children sizes in stock, sir?” he asked. Not like he was going to purchase something right now: his own kids all had a pair. He rather predicted the answer and hoped to cut the sales pitch short in the polite way, so they could proceed with the investigation business.
“Children sizes? For ya' kids? Ya'o a rich man, as I jus' said! Nos'sir. Not in stock, sir. Can't afford them in stock. Who the hell would buy ones? But for ya, sir, I can do by the order. Kids sizes go five hundred cheaper: the sandals for thirty-three hundred, and the 'flops – jus' twenty-five hundred bucks! Ya'd like to order now? Jus' gimme the sizes, sir.”
“No, not today, sir. I don't remember the kids' sizes, anyway. This is more like my spouse's responsibility,” Mark made an excuse. The trick worked as expected. In these slums, buying shoes for children was an exuberant luxury, only ‘rich’ people like him could afford.
“We wanted to ask you, sir,” Kim wisely used the pause to insert the question: “do you have a relative, or know of someone named Nicholas Hobson?”
“Nicholas Hobson? On'o my gran'-gran'uncles was Nicholas. But he's dead lon' time. Surely, it's not 'im y'all after? Nos'sir! Not on my side of the family. Not on 'er side too. OK, I'll ask anyway…” He turned to his wife, who was still spooning something in the cooking pot. “Niyati, sweetheart, the officers he'a, they're ask'n if we have somebody named Nicholas Hobson for a relative.”
“Not on my side, darling,” the woman replied. Surprisingly, she spoke without a trace of Indian accent. “All my relatives have Indian names. And even by the nickname, American name, whatever, – I don't know of any Nicholas in my clan.”
“Ya've so many relatives, sweetheart. If I'o ya, I wouldn't be that sure,” the man disagreed.
“Maybe, not ‘Nicholas,’ but just ‘Nick?’ Nick Hobson?” – Mark corrected the Deputy's question.
“Even if any of the boys in my family, went under ‘Nick,’ they surely wouldn't be ‘Hobsons,’ sir,” Niyati said, “I am the only Hobson, and this is only because I was crazy enough to fall in love with this dude,” she pointed to her husband.
Mark did not want to press the questions further. The woman's skin was dark, and the facial features were clearly Indian. Likely, nobody in her family would pass for a Caucasian.
“And I'm sure no ‘Nick’ o'my side either,” the cobbler added, “as for the shoes for ya' kids, sir, as I jus' said, jus' gimme the sizes…”
Mark and Kim wished the cobbler good day and rushed away before his second sales pitch progressed any further.
The next two database hits were also a complete waste of time. At one place, there was a small tailor shop. As for the cobbler, their business was slow too, and they too desperately wanted to sell Mark something. This time, Mark did not mention the FBI at all. Perhaps, his office attire made the locals believe he was rich? Apparently, Deputy Kim was not targeted in the impromptu sales. Goddamn Indomericans! Next time, if I need to do an investigation in the Eastern GRS, I must borrow a Police uniform, Mark decided. After fighting his way through the T-shirt and pants offerings, Mark finally received the desired information. Yes, the Hobsons lived here – two or three years ago, but since moved on. Where to? They never told us! Need a baseball cap, by chance? And none of them was Nick Hobson, anyway. What about a dress? For your wife, sir?
At the second location, an old Indomerican woman simply waved her hand: “no Hobson, no Hobson.” She was evidently scared of Kim's Police uniform and was not inclined to talk. So much for my decision to wear the uniform next time, Mark thought. Either way, extracting information here was like pulling a tooth. They abandoned the uncooperative crone and went to ask the neighbors. Few quick questions confirmed that the federal databases had been a bit dated.
The next address was from the AFCO (Armed Forces' Career Office) database, which tended to be the most reliable. They approached a group of tiny huts, constructed from dirt bricks and recycled wood and leaning on each other for extra support.
“I remember the place,” the Deputy suddenly pointed out, “We investigated a case here about three years ago. Forgot the surnames too, but now it comes back: Hobsons, for sure.”
“What was the case?”
“A rape. Two girls were raped. Although, I was just a trainee and was not allowed to learn any details…” he added as an excuse.
The little hut was empty. The elderly neighbor volunteered his opinion: “Great family, but unlucky ones. Yes, unlucky! Girls are working so hard to get the younger brothers through school. Law-obeying too. The boys went to register for the Army a couple of months back… Not often we see this now. Everybody runs from the service, yes! In our time, we all volunteered! I served during the Desert Storm! We were deployed in… Oh, never mind… Anyway, about the family you are after. Their dad died four or five years ago. An industrial accident, they said. And the following year their mom died too. Cancer. The oldest girl
, Amy, was just sixteen or seventeen at that time, and the second one – not sure, eleven or twelve, I guess. And then – boom! Both girls got raped, imagine this! As I said: great family, but unlucky, so bloody unlucky…”
“They did not have any relative, a young man, served in the Army Corps of Engineers, now a vet with an artificial leg?” Mark asked.
“Young man? Served in the USACE? Not what I know of… No. If the man was here, I would have seen. I sit here all the time. Too difficult for me to move around – arthritis, goddammit… I would recognize a military man from half a mile away! Back in Kuwait we used to… Oh, never mind… You two are busy men, I understand… No, no such a relative, for these unfortunate girls. Sorry, could not help you any better, gentlemen…”
Chapter 5
Thus, they had finished with all the database hits in the eastern part of the Slum. The time was approaching noon, and it was getting hot.
“How about I feed you lunch?” Mark offered, “you deserve at least this much – for all the trouble.”
“No trouble at all, sir. I would be patrolling the beat anyhow. But yes, it would be too stupid from my side to refuse a free lunch. Do you eat Korean? I can show you the best place – and not too far from here.”
They cycled for another fifteen minutes. The dirt path suddenly ended at a paved road. This was the commercial center of the Garret Road Slum. On both sides of the road, there were little shops and cafes.
Kim pointed around. “You see, sir? This part is already Koreamerican, not Indomerican, as on the east. Still a slum, I take that! But much cleaner – isn't it?”
He was right, Mark thought. The concrete pavement was nicely swept, no garbage piles, and no poo in sight. And the people were dressed a bit better. Not in terms of having new or fancy clothes, many were dressed in rags, not any less tattered than in the eastern part of the slum. But the clothes were clean.
They stopped in front of one eating place. The cafe's name and everything else on an enormous signboard were in Korean; Mark only recognized the web address and the telephone number. This establishment seemed to be indeed very popular, and all the tables were occupied, but the owner quickly went to the back and brought the officers two plastic chairs and a little table, obviously reserved for the special guests. They ordered Tubu Jigae – a spicy soup with tofu and Kimchi cabbage on the side. The prices were quite reasonable: 220 dollars for two portions.
While they were waiting for their order, Kim pulled out a box with local tobacco and rolled himself a cigarette. Mark did not smoke. He belonged to the ‘tobacco-free’ generation: when he grew up, smoking was forbidden almost everywhere, and steadily went out of fashion. The younger generation started smoking again. Since the Meltdown, there were no global tobacco companies anymore, and the tobacco had to be grown locally. The Houston variety was not too good, and was not cheap. Sometimes, Mark wondered why the youngsters bothered with this poison, considering all the trouble involved.
Suddenly, they heard grinding noise of skateboard wheels on concrete. A young Afro-American woman on the skateboard rolled in front of them and lifted her red plastic bucket: “Change for Vets, officers?”
The woman had no legs all the way to the torso, and pushed the skate with two chunks of wood in her hands. For a moment Mark thought she was a fake. He heard stories about unscrupulous beggars who preferred to boast they were mutilated in the Army and not, let say, at the 'Fill. Upon the second glance, he changed his opinion. The woman was no older than twenty, dressed in pristine Navy Service Uniform with an authentic Purple Heart pinned on. Her collection bucket had a genuine Salvation Way shield and a serial number. No doubt she was a real military vet, not a pretender. The officers simultaneously reached for their pockets and dropped a couple of dollars each into the bucket.
“Thank you for your donations, officers!” the woman gave them a mockery salute, touching her garrison cap with the fingertips. Then she pointed to Kim's cigarette, “sorry bothering you once more. I desperately need a smoke! Got plenty of stuff, but no paper left. It will be so cool if a brave sailor can spare some ammo for the former shipmate…”
“How the hell did you guess I was in the Navy?” Kim passed the woman his tobacco box. He was definitely impressed.
“And how did you guess we are both ‘officers’?” Mark added.
The woman on the skateboard smiled. “Two identical Police-issue bikes parked next to each other. Two men at the table, one of them in the Police uniform. How difficult is it to add two and two? As for the Navy, just a lucky guess. From this lighter left on the table. It has an anchor on it and a ship name: USS Punishing. The younger man is the only smoker at the table, so he must be from the Navy, what else!”
“Ouch! You surely have sharp eyes,” Kim said, picking up the lighter.
“But here I could be mistaken. Let say, you got the lighter as a present from somebody, or bought it at the flea market. Although, for a real sailor, it would be real hard to separate from such a lighter. Almost like abandoning the ship without the Captain's orders… To make it short, I took my chance. And apparently guessed spot on!”
“Bloody awesome!” Kim was flabbergasted, “if not for your skin color, I would bet a million you are a grand-grand-granddaughter of Mister Sherlock Holmes himself!”
“For your information, shipmate, Mister Sherlock Holmes is a product of imagination. A book character, not a real person. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle used his hospital colleague as a prototype. As for the skin color, the black skin comes from the dominant genes. To put it simple, once you are black, all the offspring is black, does not matter if the partner is white or black. If my grand-grand-grandfather Sherlock really existed, all he needed was a little tourist trip, for example, to Jamaica. Even easier: there were enough emancipated black girls in London, even during the Sir Arthur's time…” While explaining literature and genetics to Kim, the woman pulled a piece of paper from Kim's box and expertly rolled herself a cigarette, not with tobacco, but with some grass from her own box. Kim clicked his lighter for her to light up.
“If you want, I can roll you a To-Ma-Gochi, too,” the woman offered, returning Kim his tobacco box, “I have a nice blend: grass and tobacco, three-to-one. Medicinal purposes only, as you may expect…” Texas and Alaska were the two last American states to legalize Marijuana. Offering the Grass to Police officers was still in-fashion.
“Not while I am on-duty, sailor,” Kim made an excuse.
“Oh, they still don't allow the Police personnel to smoke the legal stuff? OK, not now. But I can make you one anyway – you can enjoy it at home tonight.”
“No, no, I really prefer the tobacco.”
“No worries, shipmate. If you don't mind, gentlemen, can I sit here for a while? I don't need a chair…”
Mark and Kim nodded in confirmation. The woman slid from her skateboard to the concrete and used her Salvation Way bucket as an armrest.
“I have not seen you around my beat before. Where are you from?” Kim asked.
She giggled. “From the Dumpster-of-Caribbean, what else? Do you know what she is?”
“Sure as hell. My eldest son took a free cruise on her, not too long ago. Only, they halved you from below, and him – from above,” Mark confirmed, a bit upset.
“Oops, I am sorry, sir. I didn't want to be offensive… Really I am from Detroit, Michigan.”
“Did you volunteer? I mean: for the Navy?” Mark asked.
“Volunteer? You may put it this way. Not like I had much choice, huh. Detroit is like a ghost town now. In Mich, there is nothing to eat, especially in the winter, simple as that. Dad left us when I was three months old. Mom died recently. My older bro and his girlfriend are both psycho-alco… Not a place to call home.”