First Avenue (22 page)

“Thanks for going with me yesterday,” he said.

“You’re welcome,” she replied. “I’m glad I went.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

She opened her door and got out. Then she stooped down and looked back into the car. Her smile held him like the charm of a hypnotist.

“Good night,” she said. “Or is it good morning?”

“I don’t know,” he replied.

A block away from Katherine, Sam picked up the mike and held it in his lap for a moment as he drove north on Sixth Avenue.

“1-David-4 in service,” he said robotically.

“1-David-4,” came the immediate acknowledgment.

Sam continued with the log-in. “One man. 3297.”

“Stand by for a call, David-4.”

Sam replaced the mike, pulled a ballpoint pen from his pocket, and clicked out the writing tip. He realized he was not ready for work. His briefcase with the clipboard inside was still in the backseat. He looked for scratch paper to write down the address Radio was about to give him, but
Katherine
had left the car clean. There was no paper lying on the dash or stuffed into the visors.

“A citizen reports a man down at Occidental and
Main
,” Radio said. “Will you check it out before you head up to your district?”

There was no need to write anything down. He keyed the mike without lifting it from its holder on the dash. “Received,” he said abruptly, leaning toward the mike a little as if that were all the attention it deserved.

He drove downhill on
Marion Street
and turned south on
First Avenue
. The call was out of his district, out of the
David
sector even. He turned east on
Main
and pulled the car off the street and onto the sidewalk at Occidental. There was a park on the north side of
Main
. The south side had been closed off to cars to form a walking street. It was supposed to look like old
Seattle
, and new brick had replaced the asphalt. The streetlights hung on poles close to the ground with incandescent bulbs that were not as harsh and did not light as well as the new type that soared high and wiped out shadows for half a block at a stretch. It was a good place for street people to go at night and get out of the spotlight.

Which man down? He could see at least half a dozen from where he parked. He chose to walk down the brick street. He was not interested enough to ask a precise location from Radio, but he guessed an early-arriving business owner had called. He stopped first at a bank entrance and roused an old man who was cuddled in front of the doorway like a child who had fallen from his bed without waking. He woke relatively easily with a few nudges from the flashlight and a repetition of “hey.” The old man sat up and looked without surprise at his waker.

“Time to get up. Move on down to the park.”

The man nodded but did not move immediately.

“Down to the park. You can’t stay here any longer.”

If
Sam
were in his district, he would have offered more far-ranging suggestions, such as down to the King sector. Most of the men, almost all were men, were surprisingly cooperative, but occasionally someone moved too often or not often enough would object, claim his rights under the law, demand to know why he had to move or where he could go. Where could they go? It was a question no one answered with any truth, but
Sam
would give an answer with his flashlight, pointing down the street toward the south, threatening as much as required to achieve movement. Now he was in the south pointing north but not so far north that this old man, somehow he seemed old, would venture up his way.

The old man got up from the sidewalk and stood weaving back and forth.
Sam
stood a few feet away, not offering to help, not threatening any consequences, merely waiting. The drunken man, surprised that he had not fallen back down, stuck out his hand in drunken friendship. Years ago that offered hand had perplexed
Sam
. He had not wanted to shake it but had never in his young life refused to shake another person’s hand. He had learned. Raising his left hand, the one not intended for shaking,
Sam
gestured down the street with as little malice as he felt.

“Don’t come here tomorrow, then everything will be all right.”

The man understood that. He understood tomorrow. Although he might not remember it, he understood the idea. With a friendly grin he staggered down the street. It was early in the month; the supply of alcohol was plentiful; there was reason yet for all to be friends.

Sam walked down the pedestrian street, roused two more sleepers out of doorways, and sent them down the sidewalk to the next block. After walking both sidewalks on either side of Occidental between
Main
and
Jackson
, he got back into his car and looked into the park where he had sent his three sleepers. They had joined one another on one of the benches and were the only ones up and about so early. One of them, the first he had roused, waved to him like a friend passing by. He was not a friend nor was he yet passing, but the gesture helped conceal the bottle placed discreetly on the bench between them. Although it was not against the law to be drunk in public, it was against the law to drink. The bottle must have slipped by his less than thorough examination. Even so
Sam
didn’t intend to disturb their communal goodwill.

He picked up the mike to clear the call and held it in his hand while another car ran a check on a license plate. As he waited for the air to clear, he scratched out the entry on his log sheet—the type of call, location, code number, resolution. The resolution sat on the bench in the park. When he was a rookie, those hopeless men on the bench had disgusted him so much that he had volunteered to work high-crime areas to get away from them. He had youthful certainty then that he could never be on that bench. Although he still could not imagine himself there, he no longer thought himself quite so far removed.

There was an urgent tapping on his window, and he jerked away from the noise. Instinctively he placed his right hand on his gun. A grizzled, intent little man gestured fiercely for him to roll his window down. He did.

“He’s right over there.” The odor of alcohol followed the voice.

“Who’s over there?”

“Hurry up, he’s leaving,” the man said, peering through the window of the police car down the sidewalk toward the next block.

There was a man leaving—in some hurry, too. The little man tried to open the back door of the police car, but it was locked.

“What did he do?”
Sam
asked, sounding as police-like as possible while trying to watch the disappearing man and the man at his window at the same time.

“He robbed me, the bastard. You’re going to let him get away.”

Sam got out of the car quickly and frisked the man. He was wearing a flannel shirt and corduroy pants but no shoes. On this street there was often little difference between victims and suspects. He led the man around to the other side of the car and put him in the front seat, then skipped back to the driver’s side and took off down the street.

“Did he hit you?” he asked, trying to make the answers simple.

“He would have.”

“What did he take?”

“There he is. We got the bastard. There he is.” The little man beside him pointed with gleeful anticipation at the suspect who had given up running and had turned to face the oncoming police.

“Does he have a gun?”
Sam
asked, judging for himself that it was not likely. Robbery meant many things.

“Maybe he does. Maybe he doesn’t. I don’t know.”

“Stay in the car,”
Sam
said as he pushed the button to eject the radio. He got out slowly. He kept his eyes on the suspect, who was panting painfully and looked anything but dangerous.

“Turn around,”
Sam
instructed him. “Put your hands on the wall.”

“Look, mister, I ain’t—”

“Hands on the wall,”
Sam
said, with more force than before.

The suspect turned resignedly toward the wall and leaned against it with a practiced motion. Until then
Sam
had said nothing to Radio. Even at this point he wasn’t sure what he had. He began anyway, telling Radio his car number and then his location. Before he could finish his sentence, the accuser leaped out from the front seat and quickly covered the distance to the suspect.

“Give ‘em back, you bastard,” he shouted at the cornered suspect and began kicking and pulling the other man’s legs.

The bastard, his hands still against the wall as instructed, looked back at
Sam
with a face that said he was used to such treatment, but even so, he was not going to lift his feet high enough to give satisfaction to the other guy.

“What the hell are you doing?”
Sam
demanded, although it was quite plain that the disagreement focused on a pair of worn brown shoes. The little man did not answer, intent as he was on kicking the bigger fellow while he had the chance.
Sam
watched with some patience, knowing that it was likely the only justice the shoeless man would get. Still he couldn’t let it go on forever.

“Okay, that’s enough.”

When the little man still did not stop,
Sam
grabbed him by the arm and pulled him away, practically lifting him off the ground. He had not intended to be rough. The little man’s composure began to fail him as the distance increased between him and the man he had followed so diligently.

“He stole my shoes,” he said.

“I didn’t steal anything from him,” the other responded. He was relieved that
Sam
had stepped between them. “He traded them to me.”

“What did he trade?”
Sam
asked. He saw nothing on the little man that looked like a recent trade.

“I gave him half a bottle.”

“Is that true?”
Sam
asked.

“I guess so, but I let him have mine for nothing when I got some.”

The other man, who was a picture of brown—brown coat, brown pants, now brown shoes, shrugged indifferently. “You didn’t have no wine,” he said.

Another police car came down the alley to offer backup if it were needed.
Sam
waved it on and in doing so indicated the level of interest he was going to take. The two men with him did not miss the signal. The man in brown, his face stretched long from hair to chin, let a smile escape his face, while his shoeless companion shrank smaller into himself like a rubber ball with a leak.

“What’s your name?” he asked the shrunken man.

“
Henry
.”

“Well,
Henry
. A deal’s a deal. What about his shoes? What did you do with them.”

“There wasn’t nothing left of them. Soles all falling off. He took mine when I was sleeping.”

“They’ve got shoes down at detox. I can call for the wagon and have them give you a lift.”

“That’s where I got them. They won’t give me more shoes. I ain’t going back there again.”

Sam wrote down the name of the man in brown in his notebook with exaggerated precision and sent him down the alley. Then he looked at
Henry
, the deflated man, and wondered what he should do. More than that he wondered why he was wondering. Point down the alley the opposite direction from where the other half of the trouble had gone and wish him luck. That was the simplest and therefore the best course of action. Anything else was useless, hopeless. Look at the street, he told himself.

“Why don’t you get in the car, Henry. We’ll see if we can find you another pair of shoes.” Who else was included in the “we,”
Sam
was not sure, but he thought it made him sound less foolish.

“You ain’t taking me to detox. I know my rights. They told me I didn’t have to go there if I didn’t want to.”

That was it. He was not going to waste time with a fool just to get him a pair of shoes.

“Do what you want then. Only head down that way.” He pointed down the alley where he should have pointed first, then started walking back to the car.

“You won’t take me to detox, will ya?”
Henry
asked, keeping pace with
Sam
, stepping gingerly like a person trying to hurry barefoot across a rocky beach. “I mean, you won’t take me there if I get in the car?”