Frag Box (9 page)

Chapter 10

Sheeny Gulch

My informants from the night before were nowhere to be seen as I led the way through the industrial debris at the rim of the Gulch. The snow was all melted now, leaving scores of little rivulets dribbling down toward the hollow and hundreds of puddles that weren’t draining anywhere at all. I was glad I wasn’t wearing any shoes that had cost more than sixteen-fifty at the outlet mall. Anne Packard’s, I noticed, were much more sensible than mine, rugged-looking things that were almost like low hiking boots. I wondered if she kept a pair of classy-looking heels at her desk. Then I wondered what she looked like in them. I wondered a lot of things that I had no business thinking about at all.

“Are your street people, the ones you said saw the federal agents, still around?” she asked.

“I don’t see them,” I said. “And we’re just as glad for that, since neither of us has a sidearm.”

“A cell phone is better,” she said. “Nobody attacks you if they can see you can call for help. You don’t carry one, I take it?”

“I’d rather die.”

“Well, it’s good that you understand your options so clearly.”

The road down into the gulch didn’t look nearly as steep as I remembered it.

“This is where I watched it from,” I said. “This gate was closed and had some burly type guarding it, but he left when the commotion started down below.”

“And you didn’t follow?”

“Nope, I chickened out, pure and simple.”

“You obviously have no reporter’s instincts.”

“Also no unnatural desire to go in harm’s way. I expect to die someday, but I’m really not ready for it just yet.”

“Well, there are no flames now. Let’s go see if they left any traces.”

As we descended on the rutted gravel roadway, I began to feel more than a bit foolish. Things looked so ordinary in the daylight. What did I really expect to find, a ten-ton pile of ashes? Anne Packard led the way, and I saw her looking over her shoulder at me from time to time. I was sure she could read my mind.

Down in the trough of the gulch, there were several sets of train tracks, some rusted and some shiny from recent use, piles of old railroad ties, a lot of scrub brush, and all kinds of assorted rubbish. There was still some snow in the shaded areas under bushes or trees, but most of it was gone, leaving just wet stones and mud. A lot of the underbrush and the rubbish looked blackened, but the effects of mildew, random trash fires, and spilled creosote and oil were impossible to distinguish from what we were looking for. Now and then, Anne would poke at a black branch on a scrubby tree, to see if the soot on it was fresh. Then she would throw me a look that I was sure said, “You brought me here for
this
?”

I was rehearsing an apology when she pushed aside a burned head-high poplar, stopped, and said, “Oh my God.”

“Something?” I said, rushing to catch up to her.

“Dog.”

“Dog?”

“Dead dog,” she said. “Burned. And look at the tracks in what’s left of the snow.”

I looked. It had been a big dog of some kind. Now it was a grotesque, blackened corpse, and it had left deep marks in the snow and dirt, as if it had tried to burrow into the earth to stop the fire, or at least the pain. And most telling of all, what was left of its fur still smoked faintly. I wanted to cry for it.

“What do you think?” she said.

“I’ll tell you what I don’t think. I don’t think this dog died from a trash fire set by homeless people.”

“No. Not from careless cigarette smoking, either.” She pulled a tiny silver camera out of her purse and began weaving around, looking for a good angle. “Pity,” she said. “I don’t think we can print anything this heart-rending. Why would anybody do such a thing?”

“They was tryna make an example, is what.”

We both turned around to see that the voice came from a shapeless, pasty-faced woman with about three scarves on her head, oversized rubber boots on her feet, and uncounted layers of clothes everywhere else.

“First they beat up on some of the guys, and when that didn’t do no good, they started burnin’. They had cans of gas or somethin’, an they burnt our stuff and then they burnt the dog, said they’d do the same to us. Poor thing screamed something awful. Finally they shot it.”

“Who?” I said. “Who were they?”

“Who wants to know?”

“Press,” said Anne, producing a business card and a winning smile faster than I would have believed possible.

“Strib?” said the bag lady, squinting at the card. “The good one?”

“
Pioneer Press
,” I said. “The local one.” Anne gave me a dirty look.

“Oh, that one.”

“Tell us what these people wanted,” said Anne, starting to shoot pictures of the woman.

“What’s in it for me? You got some money for me?”

I started to reach for my wallet, but Anne pushed my hand down and said, “You’ll get your picture in the paper. Maybe you’ll even get quoted. Would you like that?”

“Really? Front page?”

“That’s up to my editor. I’ll do what I can.”

“Will you bring me a copy?”

“Sure. Lots of copies.”

“Will you tell everybody how I lost my job at the bank when I wouldn’t fuck the manager?”

“Tell us about the people who killed the dog.”

“I’d really like to see that asshole reported on. Bet his fat-assed wife and ugly kids don’t even know—”

“The fire? Please try to stay on track, miss, um…?”

“Glenda.” She furrowed her already wrinkled brows and nodded. “I think so. Yeah. I started hitting the juice just a little harder than I should a few weeks back, maybe, and sometimes I forget some stuff. But I’m pretty sure it’s Glenda. Like the witch, you know? I don’t s’pose you got any red? I remember real good with a shot of the red.”

Swell
, I thought.
My only corroborating witness, and she turns out to be a wino with Alzheimer’s
. But Anne didn’t seem dismayed in the slightest.

“Think hard, Glenda. Concentrate. Tell us exactly what happened and we’ll get you fixed up with something to drink afterward, okay? What did these people who burned the poor dog want?”

“Well, shit, the first time, they wanted Charlie.”

“The first time?”

“They was here twice,” she said, nodding. “The first time was in the daylight, and they was looking for Charlie, only he wasn’t around. Then they came back after dark and wanted Charlie’s box, is what they said. Lots of people was looking for that thing, all freaking day and night. They said they found his squat, but his box wasn’t there. That didn’t make no sense to me. I mean, his squat
was
his box, wasn’t it? Anyway, first there was Elmer Fudd with his weird hat and then and then these guys with the guns and the gas cans and finally these two Bobsey Twins in black suits. The twins told them they better go. They was mad.”

“And did you know where this box was?”

“I didn’t, but I think some of the guys mighta. I don’t think Charlie even lived here. He hung around here a lot, but when night’d come, he’d go someplace else. We didn’t tell nobody nothin’, though. We wouldn’t. People don’t understand that. After you lived on the streets for long enough, you can’t be threatened anymore, is the thing. What do people got, to scare you with? Pain? Cold? Hell, they’s old friends. Death? Who gives a shit? A broken arm or leg? That’s a trip to a nice warm hospital with good food. I got to admit, the fire was pretty scary, and they had some really big guns, but killing the dog mostly just pissed us off. I mean, he wasn’t a
great
dog or anything, but he didn’t hurt nobody.”

“So who were the guys with the guns?” I asked again. “More agents? Cops?”

“Don’t put words in her mouth,” said Anne, half under her breath.

“No, man, they was soldiers.”

“You mean like uniform security guards?”

“You gonna tell me what I mean now? When I say soldiers, I mean soldiers. They didn’t have their regular uniforms on or nothin, but you could tell. The way they talked, the way they moved. Even the way they had their hair cut. And they all had those funny looking boots they wear nowadays, the kind they don’t have to polish?”

“Herman, why don’t you go and get us some coffee and something to eat.”

“Sausage biscuits,” said Glenda the Witch. “I like them.”

“Sausage biscuits,” said Anne.

“And some red.”

“And a bottle of wine,” said Anne. “Glenda here has a lot of things to tell me, don’t you dear?”

“I’ll curl your fucking hair, is what.”

“There’s a sweetheart. Run along, Herman.”

***

Forty-five minutes later I was back, with the finest gourmet sandwiches that the SuperAmerica in Lowertown had plus a bottle of red wine so cheap, I wondered if it was safe to drink. I picked it mainly because it had a screw top. I figured if I had gotten one that needed a corkscrew, Glenda the Witch might just have opened it with a brick and wound up drinking the broken glass. Somebody once told me that was the homeless person’s equivalent of having it on the rocks. The guy who told me that thought it was a joke.

When I got back, Anne Packard was sitting on a large rock, letting Glenda talk into a hand-held tape recorder, nodding encouragement now and then. They stopped when they saw me.

“Did you get the good stuff?” said Glenda.

“Did you earn it?”

“She did, Herman. Go ahead and give it to her.”

Glenda opened the bottle first and had a big slug. She paused and looked off into space for a moment, as if she was pondering some great truth, and then she had another, bigger than the first. Then she screwed the top back on and made the bottle disappear somewhere inside her layers of clothes. Finally, she dug greedily into the paper bag with the sandwiches.

“How many ketchup you get? Looks like two.”

“That would be because two is what it is.”

“Didn’t your mama teach you nothin? Something’s free, you take all of it you can get.” Her face darkened and she rummaged harder. “Ketchup, mustard, salt, napkins. Them are staples, man!” Her voice was rapidly escalating to hysteria-pitch.

“I’ll remember, Glenda.” To Anne, in a much lower tone, I said, “Time to leave.”

“We’re not quite done.”

“I’m afraid we are.” I gently took an elbow and tried to steer her away. Meanwhile, Glenda was working herself up to full frenzy.

“Next time? What the hell good’s that do me, that ‘next time’ shit? You go back and get the rest of that stuff now, or I’ll kick your ass, is what I’ll do.” She was screaming now. “Who the hell you think you are anyway? You come down here with your fancy clothes and your camera and shit, and you think you can cheat me. You think I’m nobody but…”

We walked away and left her ranting. When we got back up on high ground, Anne said, “What on earth was that all about?”

“Apparently Glenda is a mean drunk. Also a bipolar one, with maybe a touch of schizophrenia or alcoholic dementia here and there.”

“But she only had the two drinks.”

“You don’t have a lot of experience with winos, do you? After enough years of pickling their brains in the sauce, the well-known trend of ‘increased tolerance’ starts to go the other way. They might go through a quart a day for years, and then one day they find they can get higher than a kite just by licking the cork.”

“That’s terrible.”

“Well, yes. Life on the street is terrible. Maybe that’s what you ought to be writing about. Not that it’s exactly a new topic.”

“So are you telling me that all the stuff I just got from her is just drunken delusions?”

“No, I’m not. She’s probably never really sober, but she was at least dry when you were taping her. Did she say she was dry when the soldiers came to the gulch?”

“I think so. She had a lot of stuff to say, most of it totally beside the point, but I think she said that, yes.”

“Then you should be all right. The cops would write her off because they couldn’t count on her in court, but you don’t have that problem.”

“No, I only have the problem of getting two corroborating sources. Sometimes I think it might be easier to be a cop.”

“Do reporters actually do that, that two-source business?”

“I do.”

Back downtown, we went up into the skyway system at its eastern end, through the lobby of the former Buckby-Meers Building, where I’m told there used to be a real Foucault pendulum. I’ve never figured out what purpose it served, taking the pendulum out. A block or two farther on, I pointed to another deli and gave Anne an enquiring look. She pointed to her watch and shook her head, no, and we headed back toward her office.

“So what do you think?” I said. “Do you have a story?”

“Oh, it’s a story, all right. But I can’t see what it’s about yet. It’s at the stage we call holding a monster by the tail. I still need the hook, something to hang it all on. Until I get that, I really can’t write it.”

“That makes sense. I don’t know what it’s all about, either, but I intend to find out.”

“Well, when you do, give me a call. Here’s my card, with my direct line. I’ll write my cell phone number on it, too.” She proceeded to scribble as we walked, looking up from time to time.

“And here’s my office,” she said. “So I’ll say goodbye now. Pam, would you please give this gentleman back his box?”

“Some people from his office came and picked it up, Miss Packard. They said he needed it right away.” She smiled sweetly, as if she were expecting a pat on the head.

“What did they look like?” I said.

“Well, like you two, sort of. Business people. Not crooks or anything.”

“A man and a woman?” I said. “Dark, severe clothes, very formal, superior manner?”

“Yes, that sounds right. So they were your people, then?”

“No, they were not. I think they were spooks, actually, but I would definitely like to see the tapes from your surveillance cameras for that time slot.”

“I don’t know if we can do that.”

“Herman,” said Anne, suddenly very serious, “that wasn’t it, was it?”

“What wasn’t what?”

“Don’t be cute. Was that Charles Victor’s box, the one everybody is supposed to be looking for?”

“No, it was a decoy. And somebody just bit on it.”

“But you know where the real one is?”