Scorch City

by Toby Ball

  The second body found in the rocks had put him on edge, unsure what he was supposed to make of it. But in the Community—a place that did not, as far as he could tell, operate under the normal laws of cause-and-effect or even reason—this had seemed just another event Winston couldn’t make sense of. He was certain that his understanding of the world was at best shaky, and at worst plainly wrong, so he’d resigned himself to not understanding. The discovery of a second body was just another increment in his growing sense of disquiet.

  The third body was too much. Where he had been willing to grant the strange gods of the Uhuru Community a cloak of inscrutability, he was now filled with a dread certainty that they were malevolent. At least toward him. Was there another explanation? Winston had spent the previous night alternating between an unsuccessful attempt to understand the appearance of the two girls on the riverbank and a deep sleep that had strangely left him exhausted.

  The Palace was just a block away. A beggar afflicted with St. Vitus’ dance shimmied manically up and down the sidewalk.

  Winston needed to leave the City. He’d gone as far as he could go, from the Checkerboard up to the Palace. The Palace was the pinnacle in the City and look at him—still sleeping on the dirt floor in a shantytown shack on the nights when he wasn’t with a woman. Things weren’t going to get better here. It was time to get out before they got worse. But he had to leave the City on good terms with the Uhuru Community gods, and that meant staying for the next day’s Square. That was his chance to gain their goodwill, though he had no idea how to go about it.

  88.

  Westermann paced around Headquarters, working off nervous energy. He’d called out to Fort Deposit and asked McIlvaine to track down James Symmes, Boyce Symmes’s crippled son. Westermann would come out that night to talk to him. “Too late,” McIlvaine had said, “he’s already coming your way. Hopped on a bus less than an hour ago.” Kraatjes had authorized a tail team for Koss and a couple of uniforms were dispatched to meet Symmes at the bus station and bring him in. Things were moving fast, picking up an end-of-the-road momentum.

  Westermann found Grip smoking a cigarette at Westermann’s desk.

  “I heard your father was in the room with Maddox.”

  “Yeah.”

  Grip shook his head. “Jesus.”

  “Where’s Morphy?” Westermann asked, changing the subject.

  “He went to get us lunch. Look, I need to talk to you about something.”

  “Okay.”

  “You see”—Grip struggled for the right words, worrying, for once, about nuance—“you know my political views, that I’m concerned about—”

  “The communist menace,” Westermann said, semi-ironically.

  “That’s right. I know you don’t share my … enthusiasm for the politics of it.” Grip paused, not sure how to proceed.

  “Where’s this going?”

  “You know Ed Wayne. From what he says, sounds like you two got into it a little.”

  Westermann’s mouth went dry. He found himself licking his lips, trying to work up some moisture like a punk on his first bust.

  Grip squinted a little and Westermann got the feeling he was getting a read. “He’s an asshole, Wayne, but he’s also with the cause, and we run into each other because of that. Anyway, he’s got it in his mind that maybe you’re Red, and he starts getting on me about it. ‘Your lieut’s a commie bastard,’ stupid shit like that. And I know it’s because he doesn’t like you and that’s just the kind of asshole he is. But last night he gets one of the guys down at the bar,” Grip said, technically not lying, “to shadow you; see what you got up to.”

  Westermann, his pulse pounding in his ears, stared at Grip.

  “I don’t know how to say this, but he says you went to a meeting with Frank Frings, the reporter, and Carla Bierhoff. And I was going to say I don’t believe that shit, but just a couple nights ago I ran into those two exact same people—together—when I was looking for Mel Washington. That makes me think maybe it isn’t bullshit. It makes me wonder if Mel Washington was there, too, and that gets me thinking about this investigation—and don’t take this wrong—but how you’ve been playing down the Uhuru Community angle the whole way. You know? I don’t know what to think.”

  Westermann’s voice sounded strange coming out. “We’re getting close on this—the Maddox angle.”

  Grip grimaced, not enjoying this conversation. “Are we? Is this a better angle than the bodies being found right by the shanties?”

  Westermann felt the sweat on his face. “Twenty-four hours. If we don’t have this nailed down in twenty-four hours, we’ll go after the Uhuru Community as hard as you want.”

  Grip nodded, thinking. “You still didn’t answer me about Mel Washington.”

  Westermann had found his footing again. “You really want to push this, Torsten?”

  Grip frowned and shook his head. “I know enough. This isn’t a conversation I wanted to have.”

  Westermann could see that. “Okay.”

  “But there’s another thing. That guy, the one Ed Wayne got to follow you, he didn’t just leave after your meeting. He kept following you.”

  Westermann knew what was coming next.

  “He says he followed you to a certain address and that you entered that address and didn’t come out again by the time he’d left, he said, maybe about an hour later.”

  “Okay.”

  “You know the address I’m talking about?”

  “Sure.”

  “I know that Morphy was working a security gig last night.”

  The energy drained from Westermann’s body, the excitement he’d felt just a few minutes before displaced by a type of dread. It was hard for him to register what was happening, the stress was too much. He asked the big question, feeling like an observer, watching this happening to someone else.

  “Does Morphy know?”

  Grip nodded.

  “What do you think he’ll do? You think he’ll try to kill me?”

  Grip sighed. “Lieut, you ever have a clue what Morphy will do? I talked to him. I’ll talk to him some more. But I’d watch it, if I were you. He might not do anything. He’s just … it’s Morphy. I thought you should know.”

  Grip left. Westermann sat back in his chair staring blankly ahead. Nothing seemed real, yet the weight of all these things seemed almost too much to bear.

  Morphy.

  Wayne and Deyna.

  Big Rolf.

  Maddox.

  Lenore slowly swirling downstream.

  Westermann closed his eyes and his head swam; the Holiness Church nipped at the edge of his thoughts—the complete release he’d felt there, release from his worries. He stood and walked to his window, watching the street traffic below, clearing his head. Because it was the easiest thing to think about, he wondered why James Symmes was coming to the City.

  89.

  Moses Winston showed up for his last performance at the Palace a couple of hours early, wanting to be sure that everything was okay between himself and Floyd Christian, who had been nothing but straight-up with him over the past few days. He’d agreed to do shows for two weeks, but things were getting hot, and when things got hot, it was time to move on.

  The Palace wasn’t really a dinner joint, but people did show up before the music started to have a light meal, and the house was maybe a quarter full. House lights up, smoke-free air; it was demystifying, Winston thought, a different place from when the show was on.

  He asked a waiter where he could find Christian and was pointed to the back office. The door was closed—this was unusual—and Winston knocked tentatively. From inside, he heard Christian ask who was knocking.

  “Moses Winston, Mr. Christian.”

  He waited for a moment and the door was opened by an ofay that Winston thought he’d maybe seen before.

  Christian beckoned him in and he sat down next to the white cat, across the desk from Christian. Christian’s office was smoky; smelled of reefer. Ch
ristian introduced the white guy—name of Frings—and they shook hands, the white guy telling him how much he liked his guitar playing. Winston wasn’t quite sure how to respond, so he smiled and didn’t meet the man’s eyes.

  Christian cleared his throat. “Moses, you live down in the Uhuru Community, right?”

  “Sometimes, Mr. Christian. I’ve got a friend who’s been letting me stay there. Sometimes I have other places to stay …” Winston let that go, not wanting to get into his many lady friends with Frings there.

  “You there the last few nights?”

  Winston nodded.

  “I’m trying to figure out what’s going on down there, Moses. I’m hearing things—from Frank, here, and from others—that the Community may be closing down. People are preparing to leave. Is that accurate?”

  Winston scowled in thought. “I think so, Mr. Christian. There’s a lot of rumors going around the shanties. Folks talking about moving on while they can.”

  “And you?”

  “Me? It’s time for me to move on anyway, but I don’t like what’s happening down there. Crackers driving by, chucking bottle grenades at the shanties. White thugs. I’ve seen it before. Nothing good comes of it. I’m staying around tomorrow night because those crazy islanders are having a ritual in the Square and I said I’d be around for it, maybe beat on a drum. I’ve been helping out a little with some of those boys, trying to keep the Community safe; paying them back for their kindness.”

  Frings asked, “Samedi’s people?”

  This startled Winston, and he looked from Frings to Christian, who nodded that it was okay.

  “Yeah, Samedi. I’m not one of them, but I help them out. They’re crazy but they’re all right.”

  Frings said, “Where are you moving on to?”

  Winston shrugged. “Heading north. See where the road takes me.”

  “I’ll miss seeing you play. I really mean that. I’ve seen a lot of people play. You’re as good as any of them.”

  Winston thanked Frings, looking him in the eye, then looking away again. Something about Frings bothered him; made him think maybe Frings was a threat.

  90.

  Two uniforms brought James Symmes in that evening. Symmes walked with the help of a cane crafted from a knobby branch. He might as well have had COUNTRY tattooed on his forehead. They brought him to an interview room, gave him a cup of coffee, and went to find Westermann.

  Westermann was at his desk; the two uniforms paused at the threshold of his office, unsure whether to disturb him. Westermann was staring at an open file on his desk, but clearly not reading. The men could also tell he was unaware of their presence. One of the uniforms finally tapped on the doorframe, and Westermann, startled, looked up. They told him that Symmes was waiting in the interview room. Westermann waved them in.

  “Any trouble?”

  The senior of the two cops, a short guy with a barrel chest named Konchesky, did the talking. “No, sir. He was surprised to see us, but didn’t seem too bothered.”

  “Good.”

  “He had a gun, though, sir. Army-issue Colt.”

  Westermann frowned. “He say anything about it?”

  “Said there was no way he was coming into the City without being able to protect himself.”

  “Country mouse,” the other chimed in.

  “Okay,” Westermann said, thinking about Symmes’s shack; how the entire population of Fort Deposit wouldn’t fill some of the apartment buildings here. “He say anything else?”

  “No, sir. We saved him for you, just like we were told.”

  “Thank you.” Westermann let them go. He closed his eyes, willing his mind to empty of competing thoughts; to focus on the task at hand. He called Kraatjes.

  * * *

  Kraatjes placed a pack of Luckies on the IR table and invited James Symmes to take one. He shook his head.

  “Am I under arrest?”

  Westermann was surprised by Symmes’s eyes. They betrayed no fear; no intimidation at being brought in, without explanation, to police headquarters in a strange city. He wasn’t scared, didn’t even seem curious. The question came off as an attempt to clarify a minor detail.

  “We just have a few questions for you. I was going to come back out to Fort Deposit, but the chief out there told me you were headed this way, so it saved me the trip.”

  Symmes grimaced with the good side of his face. This close, it looked as if the right side of Symmes’s face was slowly sloughing off, his eye drooping, his mouth frozen in a permanent half frown, his cheek slack. He held his atrophied right arm close to his chest, as if he were clutching books.

  With his left hand, Symmes scratched next to his left eye. “What questions?”

  “Why don’t I start with why you came to the City today?”

  “To see Dr. Maddox.”

  “About what?”

  “Am I in trouble here?”

  “No.”

  “I wanted to talk to him.”

  “About what?”

  “Ole Koss.”

  “What about Ole Koss?”

  Symmes snorted a laugh. “How much time you got?”

  Westermann shrugged. “All the time you need, James.”

  “Jimmy.”

  “Okay, Jimmy.”

  “You want to know about Ole Koss?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, we was in the service together, after the war. They sent a dozen of us over to Africa, watch over this open-pit mine they had. We didn’t actually do much; they had other troops on guard. We just dried out in the sun, rested, drank. We’d had a rough go in Germany.”

  Westermann stole a look at Kraatjes, who was leaning forward in his chair, forearms on the table and fingers laced. Symmes took a sip of coffee and used his left hand to wipe away some that had dribbled from the right side of his mouth.

  Kraatjes said, “Excuse me, Mr. Symmes. I don’t mean to be insensitive, but it doesn’t seem to me that you would pass an entrance physical. Is this something that happened to you in Africa?”

  Symmes closed his eyes and nodded. “I’m getting to that.

  “We didn’t have much to do, like I said. So, sometimes we went looking for something. One time, this carpenter we knew, called Van Oot, he asks us if we want to go out in the bush, see a friend of his that’s got a ranch somewhere. Van Oot traded some pills to a hophead at dispatch for a few days’ use of a jeep, and we loaded it up with gas cans and beer. The bush, there are tracks but there aren’t really roads. Van Oot drove and I don’t know how he found it, but it took us a half day to get out to the ranch and we drank the whole way. Van Oot’s friend Danny lived on this ranch that was over a river, and he had a team of Africans that worked for him. We sat out on his porch that overlooked the river and drank beer and watched the crocs and hippos in the water.

  “So, the next day we woke up with hangovers and had breakfast and this tea that’s half-whiskey. Danny, he was big, maybe like six foot five, he asked if we wanted to go deeper into the bush, see this African he said would take us on a lion hunt. So, yeah, sure. We headed out in two jeeps this time; me and Joe Turner following the other three in Danny’s Rover. We drove for hours, passed some villages; stopped for lunch at this watering hole where there were some elephants.” Symmes shook his head at the memory of it.

  “We kept on and in the late afternoon we came to this village. The other villages, we’d gone around them, you know. Waved to the people we saw, but basically stayed away. Here, Danny led us right to the village edge and we parked the jeeps. It was quiet there, except for some dogs that came out to us and some livestock noises, like all those villages.

  “I’ve seen a lot,” Symmes said, shifting his gaze to the table, “what with the war and all. But this was something different. I don’t know. Maybe when you look back at things you think that you remember this or that and maybe it was that way and maybe it wasn’t. But we knew before we got there that something was wrong. We didn’t see anyone outside the village. And when w
e went in—this village was really just a bunch of huts around a clearing—there were a couple of bodies lying out in the open. I don’t know if they had just died there or whether the hyenas dragged them out, but animals had started on them, but then just left them alone. We could hear the sound of the flies coming from everywhere. We found the villagers dead in their huts. It looked like they had been vomiting blood, or maybe bleeding from their mouths.

  “Danny got frantic, looking for someone, running in and out of huts; saying that people were missing; that maybe they’d left. But he finally found her, a woman. He was grabbing her and holding her and getting blood all over himself. Koss and Van Oot and I pulled him off, but he fought like hell, busted us up pretty good. He was big, you know. And he’d lost it.

  “When we’d gotten over the shock of it, we put bandannas over our mouths. Joe Turner had been checking the perimeter, and when he joined us, you could see that he hadn’t found anybody alive. You could also see what we must have looked like, with all this blood on us. Some of it was the woman’s, but some of it was ours, too. Like I said, Danny was big and we had a hard time pulling him off. We finally forced some whiskey into him and he calmed down enough that we got him in the jeep. Koss made us wait for a minute and he went back into the village. We saw smoke, blue smoke rising into that low sky, and Koss walking out with this wall of flames behind him.”

  91.

  Frings read the Gazette on his couch and drank a beer. Behind the closed bedroom door, Ellen Aust slept in his bed. According to Renate, Ellen had slept most of the day. Frings had gone in to have a look at her, her face plumper in the laxness of sleep; making her look like a little girl. She seemed to bring out some maternal instinct in Renate, though the women were essentially the same age. Renate had drawn Ellen a bath and made her soup and coffee during the few hours that she was awake. Renate had also lent a sympathetic ear. When Frings arrived home, she related their conversation in hushed tones as if it were some kind of conspiracy.