“Man, Tandy ain’t smart enough to do nothing but raise a bottle.”
“Not much, I agree, but have you seen him—or Bear or Jolene?”
Tanker swallowed a bite of burger. “Hmph! I think I saw Bear a while back before Christmas. Jolene I don’t know—she don’t stand out much. And I don’t give a crap in a paper bag about Tandy. Him and Lass drink together all the time. You should ask that peckerhead where his friend is, ‘cause I don’t know and I don’t care. He could fall down a sewer and drown in shit and I couldn’t care any less than I do.”
Quinton nodded as Bella finished off her sandwich with a joyful smacking of her jaws, her master only a few bites behind on his own food.
“Huh,” Quinton grunted. “I wonder if something could have happened to them. You think anyone would hurt one of them?”
“Everybody likes Bear and Jolene! And nobody give enough of a damn about Tandy to do him hurt. I don’t know why anybody’d kill poor ol’ Jenny, neither. She was kind of a stupid woman, but she wasn’t mean ‘less she was needing a fix.” He chewed the last of the burger and swallowed with a smile.
Bella felt I needed my face washed with meatloaf-scented doggy tongue.
“Bella, off,” Tanker said. “Don’t go slobbering all over the lady.” Apparently the food had bought some goodwill from the owner as well as the dog.
Bella stopped licking me and gave me a half-apologetic look with her tongue hanging out one side of her mouth.
“That’s all right,” I said, getting back to my feet after a final scratch behind the dog’s ears. “She’s a nice dog.”
“I trained her myself,” Tanker said with pride.
“You did a good job.”
“Dogs like to know who’s boss, else they get in trouble. But if you’re a good boss, they’ll do anything for you. Anything. I swear, I’m gonna let her eat that damned Lassiter next time we see him. Don’t know why I didn’t let her this last time. That damned asshole done something to her and it’s only ‘cause I don’t want her eating on nothing so trashy as him I didn’t let her rip his leg off. Can’t trust no man’d hurt a dog.” Tanker had begun to glower and the aura around him had gone red with his anger.
Quinton patted Tanker on the shoulder. “Bella’d get a stomachache from Lass. Better not let her get a good bite.”
Tanker snorted. “Keeping away from him, for sure.”
Quinton nodded. “You seen Sandy tonight?”
Tanker scratched his head through his hood. “Yeah… Round on Second Ave. Extension by the Quick Mart. She might have gone back to the park, though—it was getting cold and I think she was watching someone.”
“We’ll find her. Thanks, Tank.”
“Yeah. You the same.” Tanker nodded at us awkwardly and clucked at Bella, “C’mon, girl.” We walked back out of the alley as he continued deeper into it.
We slunk around to Occidental Park, staying out of the sight lines to my office building. Quinton pointed at the bear totem.
“John Bear used to like to sleep under that. That’s what Blue Jay meant when he talked about Bear sleeping with the bears. You can see there’s no one sleeping under it now.”
Just beyond the totem, a trash can fire burned to warm the hands of a small circle of homeless. The obese woman at the foot of the other carving scowled at us as we passed and pressed herself into the dark. I couldn’t see much of her in either the Grey or the normal, cowering as she did in the black fold of the totems shadow. It occurred to me it wasn’t a nice totem—Nightmare Bringer. I wasn’t too surprised it cast a very dark shadow and I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to sleep near it with such an association. The woman pulled a black blanket over herself and hunched into a shapeless mass.
We walked on down to the burning trash can and found Zip, Sandy, and the man I often saw pacing and talking to himself. We were offered cigarettes by Zip and drinks from an unseen bottle in a paper bag. Sandy nodded and the talking man told us the voice of the turtle would be heard in the land.
“God, Twitcher. In’t no turtles here ‘bouts,” Zip complained. “In’t likely to be talking noways.”
“Even the End of Days must have an end,” Twitcher replied.
“I think that’s supposed to be the Final Judgment,” Sandy said. “I don’t think we’ve quite got to that yet.”
“Aren’t the dead supposed to rise up and be counted or something?” Twitcher asked.
“Yes,” Sandy replied uneasily, giving him a sideways glance.
“Ah. Then I guess it’s not time after all, or the streets would be full of ‘em.”
Twitcher nodded to himself and settled into nervous jiggling from foot to foot and flapping his arms.
“Perhaps,” Sandy said.
“Hey’m, Harper,” Zip said. A waft of beer and rotting teeth made me turn a little away as I answered.
“Hey, Zip.” I put myself closer to Sandy and upwind of the incredible stench Zip had acquired.
“Hows your case?” Sandy inquired.
“Could be better. How’s yours?”
“Gone to ground for a while I think. Lost him earlier today. Hope to pick up his trail later tonight, maybe tomorrow. What brings you here?”
“Trying to find out who was down by the hotel construction in the last few months.”
“We’ve all been down around the hole,” Sandy said, but she had a thoughtful frown on her face.
“Yeah,” Zip added. “Sometimes t’ey got wood scraps we kin winkle out. Lockin’ up t’garbage since that leg were found, though.”
Quinton poked Twitcher in the ribs. “Hey, Twitcher. You know anyone’s been down there, or who had a mad on for any of the lost?”
“Not to mention all of them,” Twitcher replied. I noticed that he stopped jiggling if he was talking or doing something, but when he had nothing to say, he twitched. His spasms were less controlled when he tried to stand still and I realized he walked and muttered to keep some control over his body’s incessant movement.
“Try that again,” Quinton requested. “Are you saying every one of them was someone someone else wanted to hurt? Who?”
Twitcher shook his head rather violently and bounced on his toes. “No, no. Nobody didn’t like Little Jolene or Jan and we all didn’t like Hafiz. So that’s everybody and nobody. Go-cart got a lot of people mad, but they didn’t usually stay that way. Well, Tanker never did forgive him for running over his foot that time…”
“An’ Bear were good, but he weren’t allus a easy fella t’be friendly wit’,” Zip said. “Him ‘n’ Lass’d go around—you’d think they hated ch’other.”
“Can’t go by Lass—he doesn’t like anybody,” Twitcher said. “You call me twitchy—hah!”
“Lass in’t twitchy, he jes crazy.”
“But…” said Sandy, “I’d rather be on Tanker’s bad side or Bear’s than Lassiter’s.”
“Oh? Why?” I asked.
“He’s sneaky. Tanker and Bear both let you know when they’re mad.”
Zip hooted. “Lass in’t so good at keepin’ his temper on the QT. Remember when him’n Hafiz got into it? Hoppin’ at ch’other like frogs on a griddle.”
“Not that everyone didn’t get into it with Hafiz sometime, the mouthy so-and-so,” Twitcher supplied.
“What about Tandy?” Quinton asked. “Anyone ever get into an argument with him?”
“Nah,” Zip said. “Couldn’t git inta nothin’ with him. He’s allus drunk and happy.”
“Drunk and sloppy,” Sandy corrected. “He’d drink with anyone who could keep him upright enough to tip the bottle.”
“When was the last time anyone saw Tandy?”
The three undergrounders fell silent, thinking.
“Thanksgiving,” Sandy finally said. “Before the windstorm.”
“Where did you see him?” I asked.
“Down near the football stadium.”
“Near the hotel construction?”
“Not that close, but he could have walked there. He wasn’t too drunk at that point.”
“Was he with anyone?”
“Actually, he was with John Bear and Little Jolene.”
I glanced at Quinton, who shook his head. “Bear and Jolene were seen later than that.”
“But Tandy wasn’t,” Sandy added.
“Are you sure?”