Serpents Rising (6 page)

“Jay … he looked lost, didn't even know if he was allowed to have the breakfast. I happened to see him, and told him he was welcome to join in. I noticed he didn't seem to know many people so I got some pancakes and juice and sat down across from him. Good-looking kid; he looked like he should have been the quarterback on the football team or learning his lines for the school play.

“Anyway, it was obvious he hadn't had a lot of good meals in a while so I just let him eat. I could tell he was really enjoying the breakfast, every few bites he'd nod as if to say ‘now that's a great chunk of pancake right there.' When he was finished we both got another cup of coffee and sat back down. Small talk for a while, then he told me about himself. Or at least he told me some of it. Soup and canned spaghetti on that middle shelf.”

She pointed and I nodded.

“Turns out he was pretty much as advertised. Even though he looked like he'd been on the street a while, he had something about him that told you he had come from something a lot different. Sure enough, he had played on the football team, he told me that, although I'm not sure he was the quarterback. Clean cut, went with one of the prettiest girls, got decent grades, drove a cool teenager car — one of those guys who didn't give anybody much trouble. Like I said, a good kid.”

“I have a feeling the story is about to turn.”

Jill nodded. “Depression. All that great stuff going on, looked like he had it all but inside he hated himself, hated his life, even talked suicide. Doesn't remember when it started, just remembers feeling like that as far back as junior high. His parents got him into counselling, some drug therapy. It was hit and miss. He'd go along for a while feeling okay, then it was like the world, all of it, was a real bad place to be. Then when he was in eleventh grade, his parents split and the universe seemed to crash down around him. They got back together after a couple of months, but it didn't get Jay back to what he'd been. He started skipping, hanging out with different kids at school, badass kids, he broke up with the pretty girl, started staying out later and later. At first it was alcohol, then pot, and the downhill slide was on. A few months later he was living on the streets, doing whatever it takes to get money for the next buy.”

She'd stopped filling boxes while she talked about Jay but now she started again. With attitude, like she needed to be doing something.
You wish all of them could get off the shit but there's some, like Jay, you really …

“He told me he'd tried to kick it a few times but couldn't. I believed him … about trying to get clean. I guess I
wanted
to believe him. And I know he went back home a couple of times. But it never lasted.”

“Did you see him after that, after the Christmas breakfast?”

“A couple of times, but never like that. He'd say hi but he seemed to want to keep moving. It was like he didn't want to connect with anyone. Like he'd chosen that other life. Made the same choice so many of them make.”

Her voice had grown quieter. This was someone who had seen the dark side of this world but was not a street tough woman. What was happening around her, all the misery of these streets, got to her. That's when I remembered she wasn't a professional — she'd said she was a volunteer.

“And you don't know where we might find him? Or who we could talk to who might know where he is?”

She shook her head. “Last I heard he was camped out in a park area over near the Stampede grounds. But that was in the fall. Too cold for that now. So I hope … I'm guessing he's in a building, a house or something somewhere.”

I rolled my sleeves down, pulled on my coat. “If you should happen to run into him or hear anything, maybe you could let me know. It would really help and it
is
important.” I wrote my cell number on a piece of paper and handed it to her. She took it, glanced at it, stuffed it in the pocket of her jeans. “And thanks for the insights. It's tough seeing what happens to these kids.” It was weak, but it was the best I could come up with.

She nodded again, looked up at me. “I hope you find him. And I hope you can help him.”

“So do I.” I turned and headed back out onto the street.

The cold had deepened and the wind was stronger, the combination of the two making the night still more unpleasant. I looked at my watch. I'd be a couple of minutes late getting back to the bookstore.

When I got there, Cobb was inside talking to the proprietor, showing him the picture. The guy was older, with a long grey ponytail and both arms a roadmap of tattoos. He was wearing a T-shirt that read “I'm Kissable.” I wondered if this guy and Jackie Chow shopped at the same Value Village. He was shaking his head. Judging from the look on Cobb's face, this was the latest in a line of similar responses.

When we were outside the store, Cobb said, “I hope you had better luck than I did.”

“Nothing?”

“With a capital
N
.”

I gave him the Coles Notes version of my conversation with Jill Sawley. He nodded a couple of times, then pointed a thumb back in the direction of the bookstore.

“This guy mentioned an old warehouse not far from here. Some company was supposed to turn it into lofts. When the economy softened, the company folded and the place has been sitting vacant. Mostly squatters there now.”

“Worth a try,” I said.

“My thinking exactly.”

We headed for the car, walking fast. The cold was intensifying. I was hoping Jeep made good heaters.

I didn't have time to find out. The drive to the warehouse didn't take long enough for the heater to generate more than cold, then merely cool, air. We were on a street that whoever built it had forgotten to finish. South of 9th Avenue a couple of blocks, then left. A sign told us it was Garry Street. Looking east, we could see that it just kind of stopped. Dead-ended up against a hill that probably shouldn't have been there. I pictured a gaggle of 1930s engineers working on their drawings and noticing the hill after the street was started. Saying screw it and moving on to another project.

We parked under a sign that said,
VEHICLES TOWED TWENTY-FOUR HOURS
. I wondered why the sign was there. It wasn't like the curb in front of the warehouse was a prime parking spot. Cobb must have thought the same thing.

We walked to the front door of the building. A faded sign above the doorway told us that this had once been the home of Mainwaring Tool and Dye. Beneath it a smaller sign, even more faded, announced “De iver es At Re r.”

We tried both sides of a set of double doors — they were either locked or had simply sealed themselves shut with years of disuse. Cobb stepped back, looked up at the front of the building. Some of the windows were gone completely, others were broken, a few were intact. I followed Cobb's eyes to one particularly dirty but intact window. Third floor.

A man in an undershirt sat smoking and staring down at us. Cobb motioned to him that the door was locked and tried to indicate to the man that we could use his help getting in. The man behind the filthy pane of glass took a drag on the cigarette and continued looking at us. Didn't move.

“Let's try the back. Unless that's a robot up there, there has to be a way into this place.”

I found myself hoping that maybe the smoker
was
a robot and we wouldn't get in. To no avail. The back door was not only open, it was gone.

We stepped over broken chunks of cinder block, two-by-fours and bricks, remnants of the unfinished construction, into the building. Cobb pulled out the kind of flashlight you see in cop shows and aimed it at the hole that had once been a door.

Straight ahead was a large open area where I guessed that back in the day people did whatever you do in a tool and dye plant. To the left was a set of stairs leading up to where the lofts would have been located, had they been completed. Beyond the stairs was an elevator, the door carved, scratched, and painted with graffiti. There was a hole in the wall where the buttons for the elevator should have been.

“Think I'll take the stairs,” Cobb said.

I followed him. We moved slowly, not because we were trying to sneak around but because the stairs appeared to have been there from the building's first life and hadn't received much if any attention during the short-lived renovation.

We came out on a second floor that looked and smelled like it was the building's garbage dump and communal toilet. As Cobb directed the beam of light first left, then right, I stared down at the mounds of garbage and human filth.

“How is something like this not condemned?”

Cobb didn't answer. I was hoping he wouldn't suggest we try to navigate our way through the refuse and he didn't, opting instead to follow the stairs up to the next floor.

When we reached the top of the stairs we entered a narrow, dark hall that led off in both directions, like the hallway in a hotel. And like a hotel, doors stood on both sides at regular intervals leading into who knew what. My guess was that this part of the renovation had begun and what were to be lofts had at least been framed in.

A small generator hummed away about halfway down the hall to the right and a lone light bulb hanging from a protruding board offered what light there was. Cobb stowed his flashlight and we started off in the direction of the light. As we walked, it became clear that some of the doors were hanging by their hinges; others were missing altogether.

The first door we came to had no handle but was closed. Cobb studied the door for a while as if trying to figure something out. He didn't say what and finally knocked. No answer. He knocked again, waited maybe thirty seconds, then pushed on the door. It offered no resistance.

Flashlight out again. We were looking at a room about the size of my own, framed and drywalled but not painted. Holes in several places in the drywall. A couple of rooms led off of the big room; they were intended to be a kitchen and bathroom maybe. The main room was empty but for a sleeping bag piled in a heap on the floor, a few cases of empty beer bottles, and a discarded cereal box — Honey Nut Cheerios — in one corner. A large grey and white cat, surprisingly healthy looking, watched us, unconcerned.

“Anybody home?” Still no answer.

We stepped into the room. Several candles and a box of wooden matches lay next to the beer bottles. I lit the longest of the candles and moved to one of the rooms leading off of the main room. I peered into what I guessed was to be the bathroom, though nothing was plumbed. Part of a newspaper lay on the floor and I bent down to note the date. November 17. Less than a week old.

I stepped back into the main room at the same time that Cobb returned from the other room. “Kitchen,” he said, “but all that's in there is a wooden crate, two empty wine bottles, a used syringe, and half a Coke can.”

“Stove,” I said. Heroin users had taken to using half a soft drink can to heat their smack. Better availability. Easy to use.

“Uh-huh.”

“Someone's been here not that long ago.” I told him about the newspaper.

We stopped at the door and looked back into the place.

“The cat looks like he's doing okay,” I said.

“Maybe he likes Cheerios.”

Cobb stepped out into the hall. I followed him and we moved on to the next place. This one had no door but a stained and tattered makeshift curtain hung limply from a couple of nails. Again Cobb called and again received no response. He pushed the curtain aside and we stepped in, did the tour — same layout as the last one. This one looked a little more lived in. Rumpled clothes on the floor, another sleeping bag, this one rolled up, lay next to a makeshift ashtray that was overflowing, mostly cigarette butts, a few roaches.

Several bricks supported a length of board that served as a counter or cupboard or maybe both. Two tins of cat food, a large jar of peanut butter, a plastic-wrapped half loaf of bread, a deck of cards, and one bottled water container, half full, occupied space on the board.

“Must eat out a lot,” I said.

Back in the hallway we continued down the hall, past the generator, still humming, a couple of black extension cords leading away from it. The third door in the hallway was closed and had a handle. Upscale. Cobb knocked once, then again, louder.

A male voice from inside said, “Yeah.”

“All right if we come in?”

“What d'ya want?”

“We're looking for someone, wondered if he might live in the building.”

“Shit.”

Cobb looked at me. I shrugged.

“All right if we come in?” Cobb repeated.

A pause, then, “Yeah.”

Cobb gestured for me to step back, turned the handle and pushed the door open, stepping to one side as he did. He slowly leaned forward, looked in, nodded to me, and stepped across the threshold. I followed him inside.

The man was the one we'd seen from outside. He hadn't moved and didn't now. He was turned away from us, sitting on a stool, still staring out the window. I didn't get a sense that he was actually looking at anything.

He was wearing a dark blue sweatshirt, faded blue jeans with no belt, and some kind of slippers that looked like deck shoes. No hat, and what hair he still had was mostly grey. It hadn't been combed in a long time. He was either the toughest person I'd ever met or he had two or three shirts under the sweatshirt. The room was the temperature of a meat locker.

It was also the cleanest we'd seen to that point, which isn't saying a lot. And there was actual furniture — a worn armchair in one corner, a TV with rabbit ears adorned with scrunched up tinfoil at the tips in another corner, and a refrigerator with a cord that ran into the other room. I guessed if I followed the cord I'd find the other end hooked to the generator in the hall. A space heater was also plugged into the extension cord. Its effect was negligible. A second heater sat unplugged a couple of feet away. I wondered if it would be bad manners to go over there and plug it in, decided it probably was.