First Avenue (6 page)

Once it was certain that the man could not hurt any of them, the cops looked at one another for a moment before undertaking the next step. This crazy man, common enough but past understanding, made more than one of them shake their heads. “Take it easy!” one of the two helping cops shouted into the suspect’s ear, knowing that he would take nothing easily. The cop repeated the command, shoving the words into the man’s head with his hands, but still with the same lack of effect. The cop looked up, ready for the next idea.
Mike
said they would carry him. In a lurching mass they carried the man to the jail elevator, which was standing open inside the gated enclosure. There they dropped him on the floor and held him while
Mike
pushed the button to the sixth floor.

A fighter received preferential treatment in jail. One of the jailers came quickly from behind the booking counter and led them to a padded room. There they stripped the prisoner and bound his body and legs into a straightjacket. Then they left him alone to scream all he wished under the watchful stare of a camera that transferred his distorted image to the front counter. They booked him for assault and resisting arrest. In his possession he had thirty-three cents, a belt, two work boots, a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and one brown, corduroy jacket. As the jailer wrote down the inventory at the booking window,
Katherine
could hear the muted, insane voice echo through the bars and walls of the jail. She initialed the property form that the prisoner normally signed and where the jailer had printed “Refused.” She signed the booking sheet as the arresting officer with a hand that moved slowly as though it had been lifting a heavy weight and could not adjust to minute requirements.

Back on the third floor she washed her hands in the women’s room before touching her clothes. Then she took off her gun belt and pushed her shirt neatly back into her pants. She washed her face, blew her nose, and washed her hands again. Her right breast hurt where she had been kicked, but she wouldn’t mention that in the report. Nor would she mention the one threat that seemed to bring temporary lucidity to that crazy man.

Before this job she had never hit anyone except her sister. Now she had hit with her fists, which had little authority, and with her flashlight and nightstick, which had more. She had hit and been hit and could not scream—although she wanted to scream at the insanity of it all.

What if he had snapped when she held the gun on him? She stood for a moment before the mirror, pondering that question and looking to herself for the answer. She remembered how she felt as she had told him to drop the knife. Hate. Was it really hate? She remembered the look on his face, the sound of the knife as it hit the floor, her lack of relief that he had complied, her indifference almost to his compliance. For the first time that night, that day, she smiled. It was a quick, odd, insufficient smile, but a smile nonetheless.

Mike was strangely quiet the rest of the night as they went about their work.
Katherine
expected him to make some joke about what she had said. If the bartender had heard her, he would have heard, too. He said nothing, and when it was time to eat, he asked her if she was ready. For the first time she understood that he would wait if she was not. His testicles had not been threatened, but he almost acted as if they had.

At the end of her shift her six days were over. And on the seventh day she would rest, although she had made nothing better and doubted that she left anything better than it had been before.

J
esus Christ Made Seattle Under Protest was the irreverent method all cops in the academy used to learn the downtown streets north of Yesler—Jefferson and James, Cherry and Columbia, Marion and Madison, Spring and Seneca, University and Union, Pike and Pine.
Sam
’s district began at
University Street
, although he considered all of
First Avenue
from Yesler north to Denny his territory.

Beneath the pergola in a small triangle park at
First Avenue
and
Yesler Street
, a man lay stretched out on a bench with his feet sticking through the open end of the steel armrest. He was either asleep or dead. Asleep, most likely. At
Madison Street
, a drunken man struggled out the door of Pennyland and waved with a ridiculously proper movement at the policeman who passed slowly up the street in the blue car.
Sam
returned the proper wave. A young man with dyed blond hair, black pants, and blank hopeless eyes stood at the door of a porno shop between Union and Pike on the east side of First Avenue and watched him pass.
Sam
watched him, too. The Donut Shop at the corner of Pike was dark, and the parking lot behind it was empty.
Sam
glanced to the west where
Pike Street
became cobblestones and ran into the Pike Place Market, or simply the Market as everyone on the street called it. Two blocks more and he passed
Stewart Street
, the northern border of his district, the smallest patrol district in the city. Two blocks beyond
Stewart
was the
Donald
Hotel
.

He pulled over to the curb and braked. A light shone in the hotel stairway. He picked out
Alberta
’s room on the fourth floor, the top floor, three windows from the end. The windows were still open.

He removed his foot from the brake pedal and idled back into the street. He continued his slow journey north. A block from
Denny Way
, he made a U-turn and retraced his path south on
First Avenue
. The man with yellow hair was gone, but there would soon be another to replace him. There was always another. The drunk in front of Pennyland had also disappeared.

There were rumors that Pennyland was going to shut down, that the whole block was to become rehabilitated, like the drunks they picked up there and sent to the detoxification center. He heard that Pennyland was supposed to become a fancy hotel.
Sam
couldn’t imagine that.

His education of
First Avenue
had begun at Pennyland. He and a friend, both eighteen and about to leave for Alaska for their first year of fishing, had taken a bus downtown to First Avenue. They walked the street, pretending to be men, and ended up in Pennyland. Even then, there was nothing to buy for a penny. They played pool for a quarter a game and eventually crept into the peep booths in the back room. Sam had never seen anything like them.

There were signs on every booth then, just as there were now, prohibiting more than one person to enter, but he and his friend ignored the signs and stood in the booths together—curious, embarrassed children. They didn’t know that by feeding more dimes into one machine the scratchy movie on the smudged little screen would progress considerably beyond the single woman undressing. He knew that now, which explained as well as anything the nature of his continued education.

Would rich people stay in a hotel that used to be Pennyland? He couldn’t believe it. He realized, however, that it didn’t matter what he believed because money was coming to
First Avenue
.

Rehabilitation had gone first to the old buildings south of
Yesler Street
. There had been a lot of publicity about it in the tourist magazines. They called it
Pioneer Square
now instead of Skid Road. Then a new condominium development was built north of the Market with a view of the harbor and the latest in security locks. And now this in the center. A few banks had already arrived. He guessed that more would follow the new money like pawnshops followed the down-and-out taverns.

At eighteen he was quite certain he would do something important, something that would take him far from
First Avenue
. Now twice that age, he wondered if he would ever leave. If the rumors were true, he would outlast Pennyland. Was it possible that he would outlast
First Avenue
, the street he knew, or would
First Avenue
only fade into hidden recesses and wait to be forgotten like old storybooks in an abandoned cellar?

Sam turned west on Madison Street, leaving First Avenue behind, and drove downhill a block toward Elliott Bay. On
Western Avenue
he turned north again. Above him the Viaduct passed through downtown on concrete stilts. Where the north end of the Market met
Western Avenue
,
Sam
reversed his direction, shut off the headlights of his patrol car, and drove into
Pike Place
against the one-way signs. From his open window, he heard the popping sound of his tires crossing the rough cobblestones. He parked when he was even with the eye of the “City Fish” sign and pushed a button to eject the portable radio from its console.

A shadow moved beneath the roof overhang of the fish stalls.
Sam
stood beside his car and watched. He heard the clang of metal as the shadow dropped a garbage can lid. One of the regulars was looking for food before the garbage trucks arrived. It was too late for the good stuff.

Silve’s kitchen stood out like a beacon among the dark shuttered businesses, and
Sam
walked down the concrete ramp that led to it. He tapped on the door window. Silve walked quickly to the door, wiping his hands on his apron as he approached. The smile from the old man was a morning gift.

“Good morning, sir,” Silve said as he unlocked the door. He had a rich accent he still carried from his home in the
Philippines
.

“Good morning, my friend,”
Sam
replied—his accent from
Seattle
.

Silve’s faded orange chef’s coat and hat were too big for him, but there were probably none smaller. The hat had a way of dropping over his eyes whenever he spoke with feeling, and Silve had many strong feelings.
Sam
wondered if it would not be easier to dispense with the hat altogether, but Silve thought the hat gave him the professional appearance he should have as the owner.

After opening the door, Silve returned to his place behind the stove. He picked up his knife from the cutting board and resumed trimming and slicing beefsteak for the adobo. His hands were like those of a blind person. From touch alone, he could expertly trim the fat and gristle.
Sam
stood at the side of the stove close to Silve.

“I think you must have a day off because I don’t see you yesterday,” Silve said.

“I couldn’t make it.”

“Must have been something bad not to come all day.”

“My business is always bad. Better for us if I don’t have any business.”

“You have business and you don’t want it. I don’t have business and I want it. It’s crazy.”

“Yes,”
Sam
agreed. “How come your business is slow?”

“I don’t know. Too many restaurants, maybe. But not so long now until Thanksgiving. Then it will get better again. My new girl comes an hour late yesterday. Not even a phone call. I kick her ass right out. She wonders why I fire her. Her second day of work and an hour late.”

Silve’s knife worked faster as he thought of the new girl who lasted one day. He gestured with it as though it were part of his hand.
Sam
shook his head in disbelief but believing as always when he stood in Silve’s kitchen.

“Maybe I should take her job.”

“That would be something to see,” Silve said. “You could shoot anybody who complained.”

“I’m afraid you would fire me, too.”

“Yes,” Silve agreed, “but I would like to see that. You shoot them if they bitch about the food.” He laughed at the ceiling in his high-pitched cackle with the idea of
Sam
serving the food and then shooting the complainers.
Sam
laughed along with him and again with renewed vigor as Silve raised his knife and said, “Pow.”

“I don’t see that
George
girl for a while either,” Silve said, lowering his head so that he looked at
Sam
over his glasses.

“She’s been in
San Francisco
.”

“Good-looking woman. Why does she go to
San Francisco
?”

“Meetings, I guess. She’s my neighbor, you know.”

“I know. That’s what you tell me.” Silve repeated the look that made his glasses slide down over his nose.

Sam stayed in the kitchen longer than usual to make up for the previous day. He was glad there was no one to interfere, just the two of them, together in the warmth around Silve’s stove. He should not have brought
Georgia
to Silve’s restaurant. Sometimes it was better to keep quiet about things, to hold them just the way they were and not risk adding more weight than they could stand.