Bandanna
seemed to agree.
The
kid was traveling light. A long olive-green duffle bag and black
ghetto blaster were all he hit the dock with. I tossed the pipe
wrench in the water. Buster moaned, fluttering his eyelids constantly
now, his extremities beginning to twitch as he came around.
Grabbing
a double handful of Buster's coveralls, I rolled him, one revolution
at a time, over the edge and then toed him over the side. As I'd
hoped, the freezing water instantly revived him. He emerged from the
darkness sputtering and coughing, frantically clawing at the
smooth hull of the Haida Queen for a purchase.
"He
can't swim," blurted Bandanna.
"Even
better," I said.
I
watched as Buster slapped the green water into foam. Wedged in
between the hulls of two boats, he had no choice but to wallow over
toward the dock. He thrashed his way toward me, his eyes now wide
with fear. The second his sausage-like fingers managed a grip on the
dock, I stomped them hard. He involuntarily let go, and quickly
slipped beneath the oily surface, leaving only a striated ripple
expanding on the surface. Instinctively, I stepped back to the middle
of the dock.
After
what seemed like minutes he breached like an orca, blasting up and
out of the water, getting both forearms up on the dock, whooshing
great gulps of air, reaching blind for where he thought I should be.
The wrench had put a jagged split in his forehead. A thin solution of
blood and seawater rolled down
between
his eyes, dripping off the tip of his nose onto the timbers. He used
one hand to wipe the hair and water from his eyes. His sodden
coveralls were floating away behind him, leaving him naked but for a
yellowed T-shirt that had floated up around his neck.
I
drew back one foot. "No. No swim," he gasped. "The
girl."
"What
girl?" he wheezed.
I
kicked him in the head. He lost his purchase and slid back toward the
water. Only by the immense power of his hands did he maintain a grip.
I walked to the edge, resting the sole of my shoe on the fingers of
his right hand.
"Norma,"
I said quietly.
"All
I did was—" I put some weight on my foot.
"Don't
even start with me, Buster. I'm afraid of what I'll do. Just answer
my questions. When you drove her home, where did you take her?"
His
eyes were open again. His lips were beginning to turn blue. His teeth
chattered like discolored
"I'm
not flfffrom here. I dddddon't—" I increased the pressure of
my foot. "Try harder."
"Bbbby
the market," he stuttered. "Which market?" "The
fffffamous one." "Where by the market?"
"Rrrright
accross the street. I llllllet her out right under that LUllllive
Girls sign. She said she could wwwwwalk from there."
I
put all my weight on his fingers. He began to shake.
"You
sure?"
"Swear
tttttttto GGGGGGod," He ratcheted out. As the kid and I started
down the dock, Buster began yelling at the net menders for help. His
luck was no better than mine. They turned a deaf ear to his cries for
help, mending ever faster as he flailed his arms.
"Try
Latvian," I yelled back.
I
nudged the kid toward the north. The smell of fried foods drifted out
over the pavement, mixing with the seawater and diesel fumes that
swirled about us as we walked along the face of the Chinook's
Restaurant.
"How's
your English?" I asked.
"I'm
from Hoboken," he said.
"Then
I'm pretty sure I know where you can find a job."
Since
they inherited the house and became slumlords, the Boys were seldom
hard to find. In the old days I'd have started in the alleys down by
Pioneer Square, kicking appliance boxes, waking drunks under the
Viaduct, passing out promises and dollar bills until I got a line on
one of them. These days, there were only two real choices. If it was
early in the month and they were flush, they were at their favorite
watering hole, the Zoo, playing snooker and bending their elbows. If
not, they were back at the house, playing cribbage and pouring their
own. The only real differences were the price of the liquor and the
distance to bed.
I
doubled-parked on Eastlake for long enough to poke my head into the
Zoo and ascertain that the Boys were presently not holding down their
deeded stools. I backtracked up Lynn and then turned left onto
Franklin.
Like
most downtown middle-class neighborhoods, the Eastlake area had found
that the dramatic rise in property values was having a profound
effect on the composition of the area. The widening gyre of yuppies
that spread relentlessly outward was being shadowed by an
equally insistent wave of faceless bistros, bakeries, and fern bars,
which now nipped hard at the old neighborhood's heels like a pack of
wild spaniels.
Franklin,
between Lynn and Louisa, was a block in transition. What in a less
pretentious era had once been simply called two-family houses had
been gutted and resurrected as trendy condos. Most of the
single-family dwellings showed the typical outward signs of recent
cash infusion: restored gingerbread railings and facings,
colorful stained glass door panels, and pastel two-tone paint jobs,
all designed to recreate a revisionist sense of a nonexistent
past.
Here
and there the block was dotted with the actual remnants of the past,
standing in mute rebuttal. Unembellished, overgrown, views blocked by
their taller, newer neighbors, they persevered as insistent reminders
of the street's humble origins. What new and old alike shared was an
abysmal lack of parking. A combination of gridlock, astronomical
parking rates, and the gnawing fear that they might never find an
open parking space again had forced most of the residents onto public
transportation, relegating their cars to occasional weekend use. This
left the two curb lanes perpetually packed. What remained in between
was a clogged little capillary barely wide enough for a single
vehicle.
I
gunned it down the narrow lane, sprinting for the Boys' driveway
about two-thirds of the way down. Since none of the Boys had been
permitted a driver's license in recent decades, parking was not
generally a problem. To my surprise, two cars were parked in the
driveway—a green Explorer and a gunmetal-gray Accord. I slipped the
Fiat against the curb, blocking the driveway.
Twenty-seven-oh-four
was a psoriatic three-story neocolonial, its white weathered facade
in a constant moult, shedding old paint like unwanted skin. Just
outside the front door, the Speaker's omnipresent sandwich board
leaned crookedly against the wall.
Today's
missive read "Ozone-Schmozone." I vowed not to ask.
The
sound of the opening door had no visible effect on the three guys
staring blankly at a black-and-white TV in the front parlor. Each
flicked a glance my way, then unconsciously tightened his embrace on
the bag-shrouded bottle he guarded like a Doberman.
I
continued down the long central hall toward the kitchen in the back.
I got about halfway down before George looked up from his cards,
forced a focus, and broke out in a wide grin. Slapping his cards on
the table, he rocked to his feet.
"Leo!"
he shouted.
I'd
interrupted the evening cribbage marathon among George, Ralph,
Harold, and Nearly Normal Norman. I was, as usual, greeted like a
visiting dignitary. It was hugs and handshakes all around.
"Whose
cars are those in the driveway?" I asked.
"They
belong to the kids across the street," said George.
George
Paris had to be the better part of seventy. A former banker, he'd
drunk himself out of half a dozen jobs, two marriages, and eventually
into the streets, without ever looking any worse for wear. His thick
mane of slicked-back white hair always reminded me of a boxing
announcer. Since Buddy's death, he'd become the de facto leader of
this little band.
"We
rent 'em the space," said Harold Green, his softball-size Adam's
apple bobbing furiously as he spoke. Year by year, Harold was in the
process of disappearing right before our very eyes. His gaunt frame
lost a few more pounds every year. A former shoe salesman, he looked
to be made of old, distressed leather.
"Seventy
bucks," blurted Ralph. "Each," amended George.
"Seventy bucks," Ralph said again.
"We
got it, Ralph," sighed George.
Ralph
Bastista had, years before, been a minor official with the Port of
Seattle. Ralph was, as George liked to point out in moments of
extreme unpleasantness, perhaps the only guy in history to drink
himself out of a civil service job. Twenty years of uninterrupted
debauchery had exacted a terrible toll on Ralph, unlike George. His
round pleasant face and agreeable manner belied a startling lack of
functioning gray matter. Whoever it was said life doesn't take place
in a vacuum hadn't spent much time trying to give Ralph instructions.
Ralph was, however, renowned as the finest flopper in the Pacific
Northwest. Whatever his other failings, Ralph could still spot a
tourist in a rental car a block away and be bouncing off the fender
in the wink of an eye. Many an out-of-town visitor, visions of
exploding insurance premiums numbing his brain, had silently
thanked God that the old guy was miraculously unhurt as they slipped
him fifty bucks and sent him limping on his way. The Lord provides in
mysterious ways.
Little
or nothing was known of Nearly Normal Norman's background. Different
days produced different stories. My inquiries as to his family's
state of origin had on successive attempts been met with Rhode
Island, Indiana, and Sri Lanka. While his vast store of esoteric
knowledge suggested a formal education, Norman was less than
forthcoming with any usable facts. A pair of the most seriously
unhinged eyes since Rasputin coupled with a heavily muscled
six-foot-six frame precluded insistent inquisitiveness from all but
the most seriously addled.
"Nice
crowd out in the parlor."
"They're
all right," commented Harold quickly.
"They
got no bugs. They don't steal things or cause no trouble. That's all
we ask, Leo. We just give 'em a roof over their heads for a while. No
questions asked.
If
they wanted a fucking sermon they'd go to the Mission. If they fuck
up, they work it out with Norman," added George with just enough
zing to let me know that he didn't want to hear any jokes about the
boarders.
"And
pizza," said Ralph.
"Yeah,
we give 'em pizza too," agreed George.
"We
give everybody pizza," Ralph said with obvious pride.
When
I looked confused, they pulled me over to the rear door. The entire
back porch was hip deep in empty Domino's boxes.
"Summer
Special," said Harold. "It was Ralph's idea. He found the
first handful."
I
looked to George for confirmation. He shrugged.
"Believe
it or not," he confirmed.
"There's
a coupon for a free small pizza in every box they deliver."
"So
you guys buy one and then—" I started.
"We
don't buy squat," said George. "The solid citizens, they
don't give a shit; a small pizza ain't worth crap to them. They throw
the coupons out with the box when they're done. We just go out after
dinner and liberate the coupons from the containers."
Experience
had taught me that liberation meant scrounging, and container meant
dumpster.
This
talk of food had touched a nerve in Norman, who exited to the porch
and began digging through the collected boxes in search of a snack.
"How's
it going, Norman?" I asked.
"There
used to be a hippopotamus on Madagascar the size of a dog," he
said without interrupting his forage.
George
shrugged. "He's into animals lately." "What does
Domino's think of this loaves-and-fishes program of yours?" I
asked.
"After
a few nights, they wouldn't deliver anymore," said Ralph.
"That
was until we sicced Mr. James on them," added Harold.
"He
said the coupons were an implied contract."
"And?"
"And
he called the main office and threatened them. Threatened to get the
media, involved. You know, discrimination," George continued.