First Avenue (36 page)

Bill stopped when he realized she had lagged farther behind him.

“I ain’t standing here in the rain,” he said. “You coming or what?” Then he turned and walked off.

It was like
Bill
to get it all wrong. It was not raining on them when they stood in the alley, but the rain came hard against them at the stairway behind the building. The stairway was not wide enough for both of them, but she wouldn’t have walked beside
Bill
if it were six feet wide. The walkway at the bottom of the steps was several feet below the parking lot, and a broken wire fence separated it from the blacktop. Cars had hit the fence many times.

The depressed walkway acted as a trap for any garbage that blew under the fence. It had not been cleaned in a long time. She wondered why
Pierre
would care about the basement and never sweep the walkway.

Bill walked down the sloped walkway to the end, pushed open a basement door, and stepped out of sight. When she reached the door, the parking lot was above her head.

She looked behind her and up the steps to the wall of the next building. She looked for a sign, but the walls were dark and blank. She felt as though she were a little girl walking alone in the dark, but it was not dark, not completely dark.

She looked inside the door.
Bill
was in the middle of the room pushing boxes around with his feet until he found one that wasn’t empty. He ripped open the top and pulled out a bag of paper cups.

“These are the boxes,” he said. “You doing this or what?”

She had asked herself that question on the sidewalk, in the alley, and down the steps. It was a simple question for a simple chore, and she had not answered it. Instead she had been drawn along by this indifferent boy. It made her angry. She picked up the first box inside the door, ripped open the taped top, and folded it flat.

“They get stacked over there,”
Bill
said.

“I can see where they’re supposed to go.”

Bill shrugged indifferently and walked to the door.

“Leave the door open,” she told him.

After
Bill
left, she broke open the boxes slowly and quietly while she scanned the room and listened for other noises. At the opposite end there was another door. She moved away from it toward the outside door where daylight reflected weakly onto the concrete floor. She looked outside. The stairs were empty. Water was pooling in the lowest part of the walkway where trash had dammed part of the drain. She looked back toward the second door and wondered if it led to another room. If so, was it the same—more boxes, more shelves—or something else? Should she care? She looked outside toward the stairs again. Probably no one ever used them.

She picked up a box close to her, but instead of ripping it open, she dropped it in front of the door and walked cautiously through the first room. At the second door she twisted the knob, pushed it open, and heard it scrape on the floor. A light bulb, already lit, hung from a cord in the middle of the room. This room was different. There were no boxes and only a few empty shelves; a table, but no chairs. There was no reason to go farther.

She heard a scraping noise, not from her door but from the other. Somebody was moving the box she had dropped. She saw two people in the weak daylight at the door. Then the daylight was closed off. One was the boy with the orange cap.
Sam
knew his name.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” she said as she tried to turn her fear into anger. “Get out of here right now.”

“Listen to that,” the boy with the orange cap said to the other one, a smaller boy she had never seen. “Who says I’m not supposed to be here?”

The two boys blocked the outside door. Without answering the boy’s question, she looked inside the room with the table. There was no door out of it except the one in which she stood. She looked around the room where the boys were. They were all looking around.

“Stay here,” the boy with the cap said to the other.

He walked toward her and kicked boxes out of his way although there was an unobstructed path to walk. She had the feeling he was practicing for her.

She jumped inside the inner room and slammed the door closed. He was on the other side immediately and shouting for the other boy to join him. She held the door with her shoulder and tried not to let him turn the doorknob. The doorknob turned in her hand, and the door bounced against her shoulder. She could not stop them from getting in.

She saw two pieces of lumber leaning against the brick wall on the other side of the table. She let the door go and lunged for the wood. Her hip struck the corner of the table, and the table bounced out of her way. She grabbed one of the sticks of lumber and turned to face the door. It flew open.

The boy with the orange cap became more cautious. She pushed the table so that it separated them and held the piece of wood in both hands like a baseball bat.

“Get out of here, or I’ll scream for help.”

“It won’t do any good to scream.”

“
Pierre
knows where I am. He’ll be here in a minute.”

That seemed to amuse the boy rather than scare him. Every time she had spoken, it had provoked a reaction opposite the one she wanted. She decided to keep quiet.

She raised the wood a little higher and held it tighter in her hands. The boy in the orange cap edged around the table but remained beyond the reach of her stick.

“Don’t play games with me.”

The other boy stayed in the doorway.

“Jack, go around the other side,” the boy said through his teeth. “Move!” he screamed when
Jack
did not move.

She jumped at the boy in the cap and swung the stick across his head. It hit him hard and knocked him back away from her. She lunged toward the door.
Jack
jumped away from her. She would have knocked him down if he tried to block her.

She stumbled into a pile of boxes in the next room and fell. Her stick dropped out of her hand. The other boy, now without a hat, jumped on top of her. She hit at him with her fists and tried to kick him away. He hit back. The boy,
Jack
, jumped around them and kicked her when he could.

“Get her, Shooter. Get her,”
Jack
yelled.

She felt the other boy’s hands on her throat and his fists and then little more until she felt herself being dragged back into the other room. Someone had grabbed her hair. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t get any sound out of her mouth.

“The cop,” the boy with the orange cap hissed. “What did you tell the cop?”

As a normal routine
Sam
was seldom in a hurry to leave the station after shift. Not that he hung around for any reason, but he wasn’t one of the minutemen who had the shift-end routine programmed like an efficiency expert. He preferred to sit on the bench for a moment, contemplate his shoes, take off his blue shirt and pants deliberately. See, the pants are hung up. Now the shirt. Put the badge in the wallet. Hide it. Forget it.

Today, however, he took no time for contemplation. He was out of the station with the best of them. His badge was in its case in his back pocket, and his gun was in the shoulder holster. He had
Lieutenant
Jamison
’s picture in his pocket and three others. He hurried to get out, but for what? Something he felt when he was in the Donut Shop? He had bad feelings every time he went in there. He couldn’t watch it every minute.

So much for what he felt. Everything looked the same. At least what he could see looked the same. The windows were so steamed up that it was difficult to see anything clearly inside the Donut Shop from his location across the street, but there was movement and normal activity. He relaxed a little. This was the last day he would wait for the girl. If she recognized
Lieutenant
Jamison
from the pictures, she was out of there. She was out of there anyway. They wouldn’t wait until Friday. He was getting out of the baby-sitting business for good.

Retracing his steps,
Sam
walked south again to
Union
, crossed
First Avenue
, and went up the alley to find
Henry
.
Henry
might have left anyway. Surely he had enough sense to get out of the rain.

Sam never imagined that a drunk camped out on a piece of cardboard would give him any amusement. Stubborn little guy, he thought.
Henry
had found a sheltered spot among some garbage cans that allowed him a full view of the alley and the basement door. Even so his clothes were soaked. Like the day before, he had a bottle wrapped in a bag that made it look like a bottle of wine. Perfect camouflage.

“What are you doing here in this weather?”
Sam
asked as he stood above
Henry
.

“Hey there. Damn rain got me wishing this was real.” He raised the bottle and took a swig.
Sam
smiled at
Henry
’s deception.

“
Pierre
show up?”
Sam
asked.

“Nope. It ain’t the same as yesterday.”
Henry
was more serious than
Sam
expected. “I seen a couple people go in there a little while ago. They ain’t come out yet. One of them is a girl. The girl went in there first with a guy, then the guy comes out, then these two other fellas went in.”

The smile froze on
Sam
’s face as he looked down toward
Henry
. Squatting beside the little man, all his concern for secrecy suddenly gone, he looked hard at the weathered face and hoped he had misunderstood.

“A girl?”

“Yep. You suppose they’re up to something else?”

“Did you get a good look at her?”
Sam
asked, ignoring
Henry
’s question.

“No, couldn’t make much out.”

“How old was she?”

“I don’t know. Young, I guess. You can’t always tell.”

“When did she go in there? How long ago?”

“Fifteen minutes, twenty maybe. Yesterday they was in there just a minute, and then they was gone. But today—”

“What color was her hair?”
Sam
asked, cutting
Henry
off.

“Dark.”

“Did you see her complexion? Was she white, black, Indian?”

“She wasn’t black.”

“How about her clothes? What color were her clothes?”

“Now there you got me,”
Henry
said. He looked skyward for the image he was trying to remember. “I ain’t sure.”

“Was she wearing a dress or pants?”

“Boy. I guess I should have paid more attention. It’s kind of hard to see from here. I didn’t figure it was that important.”

“That’s okay,”
Sam
said as he stood up and prepared himself for the next step. What if it wasn’t
Maria
? He had to be sure. His gut told him that it was, but his mind was telling him to check inside the Donut Shop first.

“You know, I think her hair was tied up at the sides,”
Henry
said, still trying to be helpful, “Like those braids you see sometimes.”

Sam’s gut and mind coalesced with a jerk. He reached inside his jacket and touched the steel of his gun the way he might feel for his wallet in a crowded bar. It had to be
Maria
. Why would she go there?

“How many people are in there now?” he asked
Henry
.

“Two fellas and that girl. One of them was wearing an orange cap. I remember that.”

“Orange baseball cap?”

“Yep, that was it.”

“Nobody’s come out?”

“Not since the first guy. Those other two are still in there. That’s kind of why I’m wondering.”

“I know the girl,”
Sam
said. “She’s in trouble.” He thought how shift change was the worst time for this to happen. “I want you to get to a phone and call the police—911. You don’t need any money. Just dial 911. I’m going into the basement right now. Tell the operator that it’s an emergency. Tell him that an off-duty policeman needs help. Tell them I need help right now,
Henry
. Meet the cops on the corner and show them the door. Tell them I’m off-duty making an arrest, tell them my name, and tell them I’m wearing this blue jacket.”