Kansas City Noir (12 page)

She stared at Hodge from over her shoulder. “How old’re you?”

Hodge clutched his meter-reading pad between his knees. He wished she’d step clear of the door. “Nineteen.” He tied the strings and hot-stepped off the porch.

“You in a hurry, cutie?” she said.

Near the route’s close a green frame house stood. Grapevine tangled over an arbor at the entrance of the walk; honeysuckle wove through a chain-link fence. Meter in a stone basement. An old woman lived there, vestige of a neighborhood as the developer had intended, and she always insisted he stay for ice tea and a ham sandwich of homemade bread and meat cut from the bone. Hodge ate at the kitchen counter while in a quavering voice she spoke of lost days. Her husband had been a cabinetmaker. “Folks here worked. Not like these ones let their houses go to rot. Can’t even mow the lawns. Fairyland back when kept those kind out until they threw a fit at the gates. Before you were born probably.”

“I was alive,” he said. He tolerated her bigoted rants. People rarely said what they thought.

Once, she took his face between her hands. “You’re a good boy,” she said. “A good boy.”

He was not. Three blocks off Metcalf, on the Kansas side, down a sweetgum-lined street of board-and-bat ranch houses with cedar-shake roofs, Hodge had shouldered open a privacy-fence gate to find a woman laid out naked, oiled and shining on a wicker lounge chair. She sat up, arms across her breasts. “Just a minute,” she said, and Hodge shut the gate. When she let him in the yard, a peach-colored bath towel was wrapped around her. He apologized. She pointed to the meter above the air-conditioning unit; peppermint had gone to flower below it.

“Hot,” she said as he scratched down numbers, then he turned. Shell-colored combs held up her auburn hair, wisps loose on her neck.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Come in for a cold drink,” she said. “Please?”

At the kitchen counter she poured lemonade over crushed ice and added a sprig of mint he had to work around as he drank.

“Thirsty?” She poured him another and stood too close. Her towel had slid down some, and when she let it drop and lifted the glass from his hand, he knew he’d chosen this as the hapless way of his first time. He clenched his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering. He visited the house twice more before one dusk he pulled up outside. She sat at the dining room table, a husband in a blue oxford across from her, a boy on either side. He lost her name, her number; she’d written them on a Wrigley’s wrapper.

But the Fairyland route had stayed with him. He drove it four times before he parked outside the green frame house; the roof had collapsed. Thistle, poke, and dock had overrun the yard, and in wild violet at the edge of the walk a gray kitten crouched. The arbor was gone. Hodge toed open the gate, and the creature fled. Palming sweat from his neck, he stepped to the porch as a car crept past, bass line rattling the trunk, theremin whining through the beat. He turned the front door knob, and a cat scrambled over the kitchen windowsill and past the corner drainpipe. Hodge slapped his hand to his chest.

After he passed the house where the T-bird had vanished last night into an attached garage, he parked three vacant lots to the north, screwing his rear- and sideview mirrors for a clear view: small split-level board-and-bat painted brick red, ornate cream-colored ironwork over the storm door and windows, fertilized lawn, clipped grass, edged walk. No bushes or flowers, but a residence that avoided complaints and Housing Authority violations. On his passenger’s side a slab stairway led to foxtail gone to seed and flowering Queen Anne’s lace and a thick white oak that had once shaded a house. Two blocks ahead stood yellow stucco-coated storefronts, three windows nailed over with plyboard, one intact, a corner joint with a hand-lettered sign over the entrance—
POPS SUNDRIES
. The door was flaking gray paint.

He’d emptied his bank account—$2,100. If a girl was indeed there he intended to hand over the cash and get her to someone who could help. If Mama made trouble, or the pimp, Hodge would talk his way clear. And if he could at least say the girl existed, maybe the authorities would do something. He might get his tapes back too; who’d want them?

He drank ice water from a Coleman jug. He dozed, sweat; he stuck to the bench seat. Sometimes he patted the bank envelope of cash in his T-shirt pocket. The air-conditioning unit to the red house ran and ran, and he longed for its cold.

All night the shades stayed drawn. He dreamed a hand touched his forehead as if he were fevered. Mosquitoes raised welts. At blue light he startled, and when sun crested behind the oak an old woman appeared in his rearview mirror. Working a garden hoe for a cane, she shuffled in slippers and an orange robe up the middle of the street, sports section folded in her thigh pocket. At Hodge’s bumper, she studied his plate, mouthing letters and numbers, then pointed his way with the tool. She shook her head and moved on into the neighborhood’s vanishing point.

At dusk on the second night, the T-bird backed from the garage, and Hodge ducked as it passed, waiting to follow until the taillights turned toward Prospect. He lost the boat at Independence Avenue but checked parking lots of hourly rate motels and cruised from Paseo to North Terrace Park. Waiting on a red, Vietnamese boys in a Datsun with a Bondoed tailfin tossed a lit cigarette through his open window, and when Hodge flipped it back, the driver waggled a snub-nosed .38 at him.

At his rental, he showered, shaved, changed. He drank a glass of milk and brushed his teeth. Come first light he parked at the steps of the vacant lot, but held to his steering wheel as if the car might drift from under him. The old thirst had returned: bourbon, rye, chilled can of Black Label even. When cicadas began squawking, he stepped from the car and headed for the storefront.

A bell pinged. Motes drifted in amber light angling through the window, and shadows shifted in the farthest corner. On his right, the counter led to a polyester blanket nailed over an arched doorway, pale-blue fabric stained down the left-hand side; sixty-watt light illumined the frayed edges. Another shadow shifted, shape of salvaged gargoyle, winged and waiting. Metal shelving ran perpendicular to the counter: chips, Valomilk, motor oil, gardening gloves, Sterno, pseudoephedrine. At the end of one row stood a glass-faced fridge of whole milk, Sunny Delight, and thirty-two-ounce bottles of Bud and Schlitz.

An unshaven man with a monk’s fringe of gray curls appeared from behind the curtain. His skin matched the varnished counter. “Goddamnit,” he said, and snatched a sawed-off broomstick, whacking it at the door jamb. A brown thing flashed across the far endcaps, tailed by a scrape and a bang.

“Cat door,” the old man said. “Wife’s cat. Now I ain’t got no cat and ain’t got no wife—God rest her mendacious soul. I nail it, deck screw it, nut and bolt it; that boy kicks it in quiet as Death. Dorito thief. Nacho cheese.” He shelved the broomstick under the register.

“A boy fits through a cat door?” Hodge said.

“Cane-thin. Grease-slick. One big cat too. Was.” He scratched at the sleeve of his V-neck. “
Crackbaby
, they call him. Like hell. Baby’s a baby. Shit’s a shit. Mama’s moved on to meth.”

“He belong to that house down the street?”

“You hunting something?”

“Cold drink.”

The old man waved to a Coca-Cola coffin fridge by the door. Vess cans, tallboys, and malt liquors bobbed in ice water. Hodge hefted a Budweiser, its cold weight a comfort. He loosed a breath, then dropped the beer and fished out a cola.

“Fetch me a black cherry, boy.”

“Sorry?”

“Black. Cherry.”

Hodge set two dripping cans on the counter and tugged a tube of peanuts from a rack.

“Sit there for days on end, and that’s all you eat?”

“I ain’t hungry.”

The old man cracked his Vess. “What is it you are?”

“I ain’t wanting trouble.”

“Never matters what you want.”

Hodge nodded. “I read meters at this store years ago. Vess was a quarter then.”

“Freeway gonna be your Memory Lane soon enough. Tear shit down, lay a road. Improves the neighborhood, they say.” The man drained his can. He laid his hands flat on the counter, seeming to study the woodgrain, then belched. “You a cop?”

“No.”

“Ain’t no geeker; ain’t no perv.” He lifted his gaze. “You some spook. I see through you to the wall. Best float on out, spook.”

Hodge took the envelope from his breast pocket; he held out a five.

“Keep that shit,” the old man said. He raised a hand as if blessing Hodge, then pinched up the broomstick and swung it like a pendulum. “You shouldn’t be here,” he said. He pushed back the blanket, sidestepped the cover, and let it drop. Hodge abandoned the five on the counter.

* * *

Tossing the tube of peanuts onto the front seat, he leaned against the driver’s-side door, arms outstretched on the hot roof, hands around the can from which he sipped. He watched the house. Behind him undergrowth stirred, and at the opposite walk’s edge a calico kitten appeared. Hodge tugged his damp T-shirt from his chest, and the animal vanished as if snatched away. Hodge turned back to his Vess. The boy from the store had wandered into the widespread shade of the oak. Thick switch in hand, he stood amid Queen Anne’s lace and foxtail, eyeing the ground before him. He whipped three times at something, then glanced at Hodge before resuming his work, weeds around him trembling with each slice of the air.

The front door of the house opened, and the ironwork swung outward. The woman’s face appeared, glistening with sweat. She studied the street toward Fairyland, the lot across the way. “Goddamn crazy-ass,” she yelled. She shook her head at her shoes. “Freak show,” she said. “Dead boys. Rollercoasters.” Backing the security door wide she waved to Hodge with a thin scabrous arm, then waved him off. A girl stepped to the stoop: lavender shift with a lace collar; not four, six maybe, seven, a head above her mama’s waist. She dragged a Big Wheel behind her like a rag doll, and by the time she reached the walk, the woman had let the ironwork slam, and the door bit shut.

The child boarded her ride, pink flip-flops firm on the pedals. At the scratch of plastic on concrete, the boy looked up, but already the girl was gone as if into the chain-linked forest of Fairyland itself. In old tales, lost children left a crumbled trail so they might be found. Hodge took a pull of Vess and set the can onto its sweat ring. The boy beat and beat to the rhythm of Hodge’s heart.

Finally, the girl skidded around the northwest corner of the block, legs pumping. Headed for the Futura, she came on, jamming the brakes, the fat front wheel punching the slab step. She fixed on the boy, who’d moved to the edge of the oak’s shade, and dismounted, taking every other step to the border of the vacant lot. Hodge set his hands at the door frame. She turned. Lilac polish had flaked from her nails. Her frizzed hair was parted clean and off-center, bunched to either side of her head with purple bands. “Why’re you here?” she said.

Lilah might have known his mind, but words hooked in his throat. He swallowed hard and put his hand to the cash. “Your mama’s got something I want back,” he said.

The girl shrugged. “Gets what she deserves.” She turned, shift swirling around her calves with flamenco condescension, and stooped, snatching up a stripped limb long and thick as a forearm. High-stepping through alien flowers, she closed in on the boy, who stopped labor long enough to nod. At his side she stood, eyeing him, the ground, him again. Hodge had the can of Vess to his lips when she gripped the boy’s downswing. With both hands she hefted the clean limb over her head—her turn.

At Pops the shades had been drawn against the southwest light. Hodge tried the driver’s-side handle, but the car drifted from him, the street rising in a swell so high he sidestepped in loose gravel and slipped, near to falling, before he regained ground. Hodge was standing. Hodge was standing, still.

PART II

C
RAZY
L
ITTLE
W
OMEN

THE INCIDENT

BY
C
ATHERINE
B
R
OWDER

Northeast

They told her the bullet had passed through the right side of her body, miraculously missing any major organ or artery. She heard them but couldn’t respond. From the foot of the hospital bed a cheery voice emerged from a white lab coat: “The gods smiled on you, girl.”

Girl?
She was thirty-four. And what did it matter what was “missed” when the damage felt so enormous?

“You’re okay, aren’t you, baby?” Juanita was leaning in from the left, her face a blur. Everything was a blur, and her eyes felt bruised and swollen. Ladonna recognized Juanita’s voice immediately but was too drugged to register any feeling, even fear. It seemed better not to be conscious or to try to figure out
who
or
what
or
where.
The lab coat hovered near Juanita and then withdrew. From time to time she heard muted electronic sounds, some sort of quiet machinery doing its job. She’d felt safe until Nita’s solid frame came too close, blurring what little sight she had.

Someone else entered the room and sat on a chair beside the bed.

“I don’t think you should be talking to her,” the voice said. A man’s. “You’re still on administrative leave, officer.”

Juanita’s shape pulled itself to its full height. Ladonna had forgotten what an imposing person Nita was: solid and broad-shouldered. Ladonna thought it was this solidity that had once attracted her, until one thing led to another.
Love,
Nita assured her. She’d never understood that part of it, understanding instead an attraction to Nita’s power and the confidence it gave her. The fact that Juanita was a cop seemed a mere sidebar, but perhaps it wasn’t. Perhaps it was part of the package. She’d once joked—
I’ve fallen for a uniform.
She was never sure Nita found it funny. Nita was so quick to take offense, and she’d wondered if all Latinas were so defensive. She would have liked to ask—an honest question—but was afraid of Nita’s reaction. Her own mixed-race parents never showed offense, even if they felt it. They were so cool when confronted, so quick and clever. Ladonna had always strived to be like them and was unprepared for Juanita’s volatile response to any perceived slight.