Underground (36 page)
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.
“How’s 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!”
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?”
“Well, I never saw him after Thanksgiving and I watch.”
“When was Hafiz killed?” I asked.
“He was found the Monday after Thanksgiving, but I think he’d been dead a day or two,” Sandy said, thinking aloud. “The body was under some tree limbs that fell off the plane trees here in the windstorm.”
“He was killed by the falling boughs?”
“Oh, no. They just hid the body.”
We kept chatting with the three until our toes were numb in our boots and we couldn’t feel our faces, but nothing else useful emerged. As Quinton and I walked on to find more undergrounders, he said, “Tandy and Lass used to drink together a lot—but Tandy did drink with pretty much anyone, as Sandy said.”
“So he could have been with Bear and Jolene or he could have been with anyone else whom we haven’t talked to yet.”
“But the fact that he disappeared just before the leg was found makes him prime suspect to be the owner of that leg.”
I shivered. “Ugh. So that would make Tandy the first to disappear, then Hafiz was killed—but he seems universally disliked— then what?”
“After that, Jan and Go-cart were both found dead—in that order. But there was a good lag between Hafiz and Jan.”
“Who disappeared between those?”
“I’m not sure. I’d guess the order was probably . . . Jheri, then Jolene . . . then Jan was killed . . . then Bear and Felix disappeared, and Go-cart died. And Jenny.”
“That’s about one a week, average. Pretty hungry monster.”
“Yeah.”
I paused, frowning and thinking there had to be a connection I wasn’t making. “I want to talk to Lass. His name keeps coming up. Then we might want to go back to Tanker.”
“You think Tanker knows something he hasn’t told us?”
“Someone knows something, and the only people who can be ruled out are the confirmed dead.”
We walked around the area for a while but didn’t have much luck finding Lassiter, so we went below.
Down in the bricks, we found Tall Grass, raging in a corner and waving a soft brown object in the air. When he spotted us, he raced down the crumbling floor and shoved the object into my hands. “You wanted it! You take it! Take it away!” He shook me, shouting into my face.
“Grass, Grass, calm down,” Quinton murmured. “They’ll hear. Be quiet.”
Tall Grass turned on Quinton. “You brought her down here. She wanted the hat. It’s your fault! It’s your fault Jenny’s dead!”
Quinton pulled his face back from the other man’s. “Grass, you’re out of your head. It’s not our fault. Something or someone killed Jenny, but it’s not me or Harper. And it’s not you.”
“It’s that hat!”
“Damn it, Grass, get a grip. It’s not the hat.”
“It was Bear’s hat. Bear’s dead. It was Jenny’s hat. Jenny’s dead,” Tall Grass babbled, his voice cracking toward hysteria.
“Grass. How do you know Bear’s dead? We don’t know Bear’s dead. He’s just—”
“I saw it! I saw his spirit! And the creature—the monster—I saw! I saw!” He was hyperventilating. Then he began to scream, staring at nothing at all, bellowing in terror, his eyes rolling up to show too much white.
“Damn it,” Quinton muttered. Then Tall Grass gulped, fainted, and slumped to the floor.
Quinton looked down at him. “I was never glad to see someone faint before.”
“Hey . . .”
We both looked around. Someone had stuck their head around the corner. When we caught sight of it, the head pulled back.
“Don’t run off, Lass!” Quinton hissed. He motioned with his head for me to catch Lass.
I sprinted down the rough walkway, feeling sudden twinges in my bad knee, and collared Lass less than ten feet down the Occidental side. “C ’mon and lend a shoulder, Lass,” I suggested. “We have to get Tall Grass out of here.”
Lassiter goggled at me, shaking. His hands crabbed for his pockets.
“Don’t reach for that,” I told him. “I don’t go down easily and I’ll take you with me. Not going to hurt you if you come help Quinton and me out.”
He shuffled reluctantly ahead of me to where Quinton was trying to get Tall Grass up. The Indian was unconscious and limp.
Quinton looked hard at Lass and told him, “Put your shoulder under his armpit and get him up. We’ll have to carry him up the Cadillac stairs and hope we can find a place to leave him.”
“Why not here?” Lass whined. “Who cares? Why are we risking our necks for him?”
“Because if he stays down here while he’s like this, he might die. I helped you. Now you help me. Or I won’t be doing you any favors in the future, Lass. Get me?”
“OK, OK. I got you.”
Lass helped lift Tall Grass and the two men carried him like a sack between them to the bottom of the stairs that came up beside the Cadillac Hotel. I scouted up the stairs and peeked out, waiting until I was sure the street was empty to hiss at them to come up.
Tall Grass was making noises and trying to move by the time we reached the street. Quinton set him on the sidewalk and hunched down beside him. I grabbed Lassiter’s wrist before he could hare off.
While Quinton checked on Grass and muttered to him, I interrogated Lass a bit.
“What were you doing down there?”
“I—I live down there.”
“Not right there . . .”
“Not all the time, no. I—I heard something. I heard Grass talking to himself. He’s on drugs, man!”
“Surprise, surprise. He thinks he saw a monster eat John Bear.”
“I told you—he’s flipped out.”
“I’m not sure he didn’t see a monster down there.”
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