At the City's Edge (7 page)

She thought of sitting in Michael Palmer’s bar with Galway, she and her partner listening as Palmer said that there were things
going on in the neighborhood that were worse than anybody guessed, that the gangs were the tip of the iceberg. Saying that
he would have proof soon. Calm and logical, with a polite kid and a history of community service. Not seeming even a little
crazy.

But what she said to Jason was, ‘I knew him.’

‘So then you know about him and the gangs. That he was fighting them.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Good.’ His jaw set and posture grew rigid as he came into himself. ‘Good.’

A thought occurred to her. In the mathematics of a crime scene, if spots equaled accelerant, and accelerant equaled arson,
then accelerant with a body equaled homicide. Which meant she had no place here. Technically, her job was just to babysit
Palmer until the detectives arrived, at which point they’d tell her to head back to the station and work on her damn database.

On the other hand, if this was a gang matter, no one could say it wasn’t her case.

‘You mentioned gangbangers.’ She jerked a thumb at a JJ Fish across the street. ‘Why don’t you let me buy you lunch, tell
me about them?’

‘I…’ He paused, looked back toward a storefront extensions place. ‘No, I can’t. My nephew is here, and I’m worried.’

She said, ‘You know how I made it sound like a choice?’

He said, ‘Yeah?’

She said, ‘It’s not.’

‘This is the name of a doctor at UC Hospital, the ER.’ Cruz wrote on the back of her business card. ‘Tell him I sent you,
he’ll make time for your nephew today.’

Jason reached across the table for it. ‘Thanks.’

‘No problem. You mentioned someone named “Soul Patch”?’

‘That’s not his name. I mean, I don’t know his name. That’s just what I called him.’

‘Who is he?’

‘I don’t know. Some sort of gang member. Gangbanger, I guess you call them.’

‘How do you know him?’

‘Yesterday he tried to kidnap me.’

She sat quiet as he told the story, how he was jogging when a banger came at him with a gun, had tried to force Palmer into
the car. How he’d gotten clear, and then come to make sure his big brother was okay. ‘You a martial-arts guy, take a lot of
self-defense classes, that kind of thing?’

‘Huh?’

‘Well, I mean, you scuffle with two men, both of them armed, you get away…’

‘I’m a soldier.’ His voice steady and maybe a little proud.

‘What did these guys look like?’

‘Black,’ he said, not African-American, and she liked that he didn’t try to put on a show of how racially sensitive he was
to impress the Latina. ‘One was maybe five and a half, stocky, weighed one-eighty or so. Wore a lot of gold. The one I called
Soul Patch was about two inches shorter than me, and thin. He had tattoos on his arms and, well, a soul patch,’ holding his
thumb and forefinger up to pinch his chin.

Which, between the two, described about half the boys in the Gang Intelligence files. ‘Anything notable about the tattoos?’

‘I didn’t get that good a look. A star with letters inside, maybe “GD”?’

Gangster Disciples. She felt a quickening in her stomach. She had pictures of a lot of them. If he could ID the men who came
for him, she could shut this thing fast, maybe earn her way off the database and back on the street. Plus get a little justice
for Michael Palmer, with his good kid and his good handshake. ‘Would you recognize them?’

He nodded, looked out the window at the fire investigators picking through the ruins of the bar, lawnmowering back and forth
like they were searching for a lost contact lens. ‘I never expected to see this again.’ His voice low and soft, like he didn’t
realize he was speaking.

‘Again?’ She looked up.

‘I was in Afghanistan, and then Iraq.’ He picked up a fry, swirled it in ketchup like he was mixing paint on a palette. ‘When
I first got there, I couldn’t believe the destruction. Whole blocks of apartment complexes where the walls had been knocked
out, you could see right into people’s homes, their kitchens. A lot of the Humvees have mounted Mark-19s, that’s a grenade
launcher, and they just demo the shit out of a building. And these beautiful mosques. Once the insurgents figured out we were
trying not to damage mosques, they started sniping at us from the towers.
So we had to light them up too.’ He shook his head. Dropped the fry, picked up another, poked listlessly at the pile. ‘Everywhere
you went there were these piles of rock and ash. Something was always burning. Always. IEDs, insurgent mortars, trash fires.’
His eyes seemed clouded. ‘I expected everyone would just, I don’t know, drop to their knees. Stare. But they didn’t. They
went about their business while the world burned around them.’ He shrugged. ‘Get used to anything, I guess.’

‘You mind if I ask where you were last night?’

Palmer looked up, and she saw surprise in his eyes at the change of subject, but no flash of fear, no game face. ‘I was with
someone.’

‘Girlfriend?’

‘Just someone I met.’

‘You have a phone number?’

He shook his head. ‘Her name was Jackie. She said she was a hostess at Spring. You know the restaurant, North and Milwaukee?’

‘Out of my price range.’ She sipped her godawful excuse for coffee. ‘Your brother have life insurance?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You know it doesn’t pay out on homicide?’

Palmer set down the fry he had been playing with, wiped grease on a napkin. Stared at her, unblinking. ‘I understand why you’re
asking. But I didn’t kill my brother.’

He wasn’t the bad guy. Half her job was instinct, and she knew. Of course, it would be worth running
down the girl to be certain. First thing you learned was that
everybody
lied. But he wasn’t the bad guy.

Which left her with the gangbangers. ‘I need you to come to the station with me, look at some pictures. See if you can identify
Soul Patch.’

‘Okay.’

She nodded. ‘You drive, or you want to ride with me?’

‘You mean
now
?’

She cocked an eyebrow.

‘I can’t.’ He leaned back. ‘My nephew. I told you, I want to get him out of here.’

‘Perfect. I want to talk to him, too.’

‘No way. He’s in shock. No way.’

‘Mr. Palmer, I’m trying to solve your brother’s murder. You can help. Don’t you think Michael would want you to?’

He stared at her, jaw clenched. A long moment passed. Then he said, ‘You know what my brother would want, lady? He’d want
to know his son was okay.’

She leaned back, feeling like a bitch.

‘Look.’ He set his napkin atop the uneaten fries. ‘I loved my brother. I’ll do anything to get the fuckers that killed him.
I just want to take care of Billy first. Please.’

She could compel him, but that didn’t make for the best witnesses. Besides, she liked his insistence on taking care of the
kid. Too rare in the people she dealt with. ‘Tell you what. How about you come see me first thing tomorrow morning?’

‘Thank you.’ He started to scoot out of the booth.

‘Meantime, if you or your nephew remember anything else, call me right away.’

‘Yeah.’ He stood. ‘Can I go?’

Cruz took a sip of coffee. ‘Sure.’ Watched him turn and push through the door, back ramrod as he strode broken sidewalks.
Good-looking guy, seemed smart, cared about the kid. There was definitely something off about him – the way his eyes had gone
all thousand-yard when he was talking about Iraq – but she still didn’t like him for the murder. He was hurting too much.
Tough to lose someone like that. One day there, the next, poof, gone forever.

She thought again about the afternoon last week, when she and Galway had sat down with Michael Palmer. Things were bigger
than anyone realized, he had said, and worse. And she’d humored him. Said if he had proof, she’d act on it. She’d said it
the way she said a lot of things on this job, a voice aimed at calming people, at mollifying the crazies. Not really believing.

And then someone had killed him.

She sipped her coffee and gazed out the window, wondering if that counted as proof.

In the dream, Washington Matthews was back in his cell. Bare concrete floors and the scarred metal of the open toilet. History
books from the prison library stacked neatly on his desk. Pharaoh snoring in the rack above, that wet choking gargle bouncing
off lonely midnight walls. Washington thought of getting out of bed, and then in the way of dreams, he suddenly was, just
standing barefoot in the dim light of lockdown. The air was thick and humid. He stretched his body, prison muscles and bruised
knuckles, and in his chest that old cold feeling, the song of twisting metal.

Pharaoh snored louder, and Washington went to bump his cellie, tell him to roll his ass over. Only as he got closer, he realized
Pharaoh wasn’t alone. He had his arm around a thin figure, a slender black boy with a cauliflower ear spooned up against him.
The boy was eight, and the thick wet gurgling was coming from the bloody ruin where his throat used to be.

Washington tried to run. His limbs were bound with sticky ropes.

Then he woke to find himself bound with sticky ropes.

It took a moment to realize that it was his sheets that tied him, sweat-soaked from the heat. August.
The dog days of summer. He’d read somewhere that the phrase came from Sirius, the Dog Star, whose conjunction with the sun
used to mark the hottest months of the year. In modern times the conjunction is slowly coming earlier each year, something
to do with the Earth wobbling. He struggled free of the bedding, wobbly himself. His hand hit something heavy and smooth,
and in the sharp sunlight he just had time to recognize the highball glass before it dropped to the hardwood floor.

‘Shit.’ He stopped thrashing, gently worked his arms loose, and patted around until he found the Beefeater. Empty. He set
the bottle on the nightstand, then extricated his legs. Sallust Crispus’s
The Conspiracy of Catiline
lay open on the bed, the pages wet. The book was ruined, but at least he hadn’t finished the whole bottle this time.

Washington swung his feet over the edge of the bed. The dream muscles were gone, replaced with droopyman-breasts and a forty-three-year-old
paunch. His temples were sore and his eyes spiked. A vision of the boy with the cauliflower ear was painted on the inside
of his mind.

In the shower he danced as the water flickered hot-cold-hot. Trimmed his mustache in the mirror, thinking how his days of
looking like Richard Round-tree were over. Now it was more like James Earl Jones, and that on a good day, which today wasn’t.

There was a racket through the floor. Something metal gonged. A pause, and then the sound of yelling
in two languages. Washington grimaced, yanked his pants on and ran for the door, struggling with his shirt as he went. Took
the stairs in a rumbling plunge.

In the kitchen, Oscar and the new boy – Diego? – were screaming at each other and bucking against the arms holding them back.
Silverware gleamed on the counter, and a bag of groceries had been knocked over, spilling oranges across the hardwood floor.
Two boys had a solid grip on Diego, while Ronald’s monstrous arms wrapped around Oscar from behind, nearly lifting him off
the ground.

‘Let me go,
putas
!’ Diego’s face burned scarlet as he tried to shake free.

Washington stepped into the kitchen. ‘Gentlemen.’ He didn’t yell, but everyone’s head cut sideways. A guilty look crept into
Oscar’s eyes. ‘This dude,’ he started, ‘came at me outta nowhere.’

‘That’s a fucking lie, you piece of –’ Diego bucked and struggled.

Washington sighed. His head hurt too much for this right now. He took a saucepan from the drying rack and stepped in front
of Diego. The boy saw the heavy pan and threw himself harder against the arms holding him, fear flashing in his eyes. Washington
drew his arm back and grit his teeth, feeling that old cold song of twisting metal.

Then, hard as he could, he slammed it down on the counter.

The impact was shockingly loud, and everyone froze. ‘Gentlemen,’ Washington said again, looking
back and forth, decided to start with Oscar. He should have known better; he’d been coming here for months. Washington stared,
taking in the rage in Oscar’s eyes, the pits in his cheeks, mementoes of a driveby. The boy was alive only because the shooter
hadn’t known the difference between birdshot and buckshot, and yet here he was, falling back to the old ways.

‘You can leave,’ Washington said, ‘anytime you like. No one is forced to stay. You can go back to the street, back to putting
your work in. I know you’re strong enough,’ glanced over his shoulder, ‘both of you. I respect your strength.’ He set the
pan down. ‘But is strength enough?’ He paused, nodded at Ronald, who unwound twenty-inch arms from Oscar’s chest. ‘What did
strength get you, Ronald?’

‘Four years gladiator school.’ The man spoke quietly, his voice at once rumbling and soft. ‘Me shot three times. My l’il brother
dead.’

Washington nodded. ‘That’s right. And you know why?’ He gestured at the two boys holding Diego. They slowly released him,
but stayed close. Diego puffed out his chest, kept his face hard, but didn’t make a move. ‘Because that kind of strength isn’t
enough.’ Washington stepped forward, put a hand on the boy’s shoulder, feeling the play of muscles beneath. Looked him in
the eye. ‘You know that. That’s why you’re here.

‘The street says stand up straight. Take shit from no man, right? Murder if you got to.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s a start. But
when everybody gets that same lesson, what happens?’

Washington scanned their faces. Other than Ronald, not one of them was over nineteen. Most had been banging since they were
shorties, twelve or thirteen years old. Children of single mothers, never knew a father figure. That they were listening at
all was a miracle, a testament to how badly they wanted out of the life. Even Christ hadn’t been able to sell salvation to
contented sinners.

‘Everybody here came on their own. Left their set and came to me for help. Climbed past the sign says Lantern Bearers, knocked
on my door. Said, “Dr. Matthews, I’m tired. There got to be more.”’ He paused. ‘And I said, “Son, there is.”’