"Ah, they're all right," Del said. "They get a little antsy sometimes."
They found West before the woman arrived. A couple of cops halfway down the hill, and two hundred yards south, started yelling and humping around one spot on the hill. A group of college students, who had gathered on the sidewalk, cheered, then booed. Lucas could see the cops bending into the hillside and then yelling some more. "What the hell's going on down there?" Del wondered. They all started down the hillside, holding on to tree limbs and brush, skidding along in their slick-soled city-cop shoes.
"What?" Lucas asked when they got to the cops. More cops were crossing the hillside to where they were standing.
"There he is," said one of the cops. He was hot and pissed off. He pointed at the hillside, and Lucas took a moment to see what he was pointing at-the worn white soles of two gym shoes, six or eight inches into a hole so small that it seemed impossible that a man could be on the other side of them. The hole, worn by water out of the rotten rock, apparently extended straight back into the hillside.
Lucas stooped to look, and Sloan and Del scrambled around behind him "Come out of there," Lucas said. He heard what might have been a muffled reply.
"He's holding on to something, inside there," one of the cops said. "We tried to pull him out, but we couldn't budge him."
"How about some shovels?" Del asked.
"It's mostly rock; we'd need jackhammers."
"We could try dynamite," somebody suggested, with a snigger. Most of the cops were now enjoying themselves: watching the heavyweight detectives looking at those two fuckin' feet. "Or maybe we oughta send for a proctologist," somebody else said. "I bet he could hook him out."
"He's not going to smother in there, is he?" Lucas asked, looking at the shoe soles.
"Fuck if we know," said the cop.
Del started to laugh, and Sloan shook his head and turned away.
"Stop laughing and give me a hand," Lucas said, irritated. Del came over and they managed to wedge their hands into the hole and grab hold of the man's ankles. There were more muffled comments from inside the hole. "Pull."
They pulled, pulled some more, and nothing moved. "We're gonna hurt him if we pull too hard," Del said. "We're gonna pop his knees."
"Why can't anything be easy?" Lucas asked, giving up, dusting his hands together.
Sloan said, "Anyway, here're Shrake and the woman."
THEY SAW SHRAKE coming down the hill, one hand on the woman's arm. Jenkins, who had apparently stopped to light a cigarette, trailed unhappily behind.
The woman, Sandy, was young and round faced, and dishwater blond. She looked concerned in the way that nurses looked concerned when told of pain and illness-a kind of reflexive sympathy.
"Can you help us?" Lucas asked. "He's wedged himself inside."
"I can try," She said, looking doubtfully at the soles of the gym shoes. "He gets scared sometimes." She knelt: "Mike? This is Sandy," she shouted. "This is Sandy from the cafeteria. The police don't want to arrest you, they want you to help them. They need you to help them catch somebody else."
Nothing.
"Mike, you're going to hurt yourself if you stay in there. You'll run out of air…"
SHE CONTINUED TO TALK, reassuring sometimes, pleading other times. There were muffled replies, but no movement, and nobody could decipher what West was saying. West twisted and retwisted his feet, but gave no sign of giving up. Lucas finally stepped away and asked Shrake, "How're you guys doing?"
"Gettin' tired. I'm too old for this all-night and all-day shit." Jenkins blew some smoke and nodded: "Me too." Shrake said, "Butt me," and Jenkins held out a pack of Marlboros. Shrake took one and lit it with an antique brass Zippo; the smell of lighter fluid hung in the air for a moment.
"I really appreciate all this," Lucas said, gesturing down the hillside. "Put in for every minute of overtime. I'll sign anything reasonable. And you don't have to stay here-you can take off if you want."
"I'd like to see the little asshole's face before we go," Shrake said. "That's all I've seen of him." He nodded at the hole. "The bottom of his feet."
Sandy shouted, "We're having pumpkin pie tonight, that's your favorite."
"You want me to get him out of there?" Jenkins asked.
"With whipped cream," Sandy yelled.
"He's really wedged in," Lucas said.
"Fuck a bunch of wedges. Let me talk to him for a minute. And get that broad out of there, she ain't helping the situation."
"I don't want him gassed…," Lucas warned.
"I ain't gonna gas him, for Christ's sake," Jenkins said. "Just let me talk to him."
"Whatever," Lucas said. "No saps."
"Get the broad out of there."
THEY TOLD SANDY that they might have to work on another concept and eased her away from the hole. She went up the hill white-faced, looking back, afraid the cops were going to do something weird, like shoot West in the feet.
Jenkins did do something weird. He leaned into the hillside, fumbled around West's shoes for a moment, then started untying one. He took his time getting it loose: West twisted his feet around, trying to get away from the hands, but apparently couldn't get any deeper into the hole.
"You know what I'm doing, Mikey?" Jenkins shouted into the hole. "I've been looking for you for two days. I'm really tired, and now you're fuckin' with me. So I'm gonna take your fuckin' shoes off, and if you don't come out of there, I'm gonna throw them in the fuckin' river. 'Cause I'm pissed off."
There was more muffled noise from inside the hole, more foot twisting, and then Jenkins, still taking his time, pulled the first shoe off. There was a sock under it, black and shriveled and wet with sweat or river water. The ankle above it was almost as black as the sock. Jenkins touched neither.
"That's one shoe," he yelled into the hole. "I'm gonna put it right here, until I get the second one. Then I'm going to throw them into the fuckin' river, I swear to God."
He started working on the second shoe, taking time to untie it, and suddenly one of West's legs extended a few inches, and then the other, and then the first one a few more. Somebody said, "He's coming," and with some muffled shouting, Mike West squirmed out of the hole, tears in his eyes, dragging a plastic garbage bag behind him. "Don't take my shoes, man," he said to Jenkins. "Don't take my shoes."
"I ain't gonna take your shoes," Jenkins said. He sat back and took the Marlboros out of his pocket. "You want a smoke?"
WEST WAS A PHYSICAL WRECK. He was short, skinny to the point of emaciation. His face was grimed with dirt, both old and new, and his cheekbones stood out like axe edges in a field of blemishes. His hair, a uniform four inches long, looked as though it had been cut with hedge clippers and stuck out from his head in dirty brown clumps. His eyes were wide, blue, and frightened. He was wearing a open long-sleeved flannel shirt, North Face nylon drawstring pants, and a theme T-shirt. The theme was outer space-a small black circle on top, labeled uranus, with a much larger black circle below it, with the caption, URANUS IN PRISON.
"I didn't do anything," he said to Jenkins.
"Tell this guy here," Jenkins said, turning a thumb at Lucas.
"We don't think you did anything," Lucas said. "We just want to get you a shower, maybe get a McDonald's or something, maybe get your clothes washed, and talk."
West wrapped his arms around his garbage bag: "Talk about what?"
WEST WAS WILLING enough to talk, when he remembered to. He was one of the legion of the lost, a schizophrenic who could tolerate neither his condition nor the drugs that treated it. As Lucas and Sloan talked him along, he'd break off to stare, to mumble, to twitch. He had an uncle, he said, who pinched him. Hard. "I know he's not really there," he said to Lucas, "but I can feel him. He hurts. What an ass wipe he is."