Текст книги "The Wolf in Winter"

Автор книги: John Connolly

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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

16

I got to the Preble Street Soup Kitchen just as the dinner service was coming to an end. A woman named Evadne Bryan-Perkins, who worked at the Portland Help Center, a mental health and community support facility on Congress, had directed me to the kitchen. Shaky had given me her name as a contact person, but she told me that she hadn’t seen him in a day or two, and suggested that he might drop by Preble Street for a bite to eat.

Preble Street served three meals per day not only to the city’s homeless, but to seniors and families who were struggling to get by on welfare. That added up to almost 500,000 meals per year, but the meals were just a starting point. By getting people in the door, the staff was in a position to help them with housing advice, employment and healthcare. At the very least, they could give them some clean, warm socks, and that meant a lot during winter in Maine.

One of the volunteers, a young woman named Karyn, told me that Shaky had been through earlier in the evening, but had finished his meal and headed back out almost immediately after. This was unusual for him, she said. He was more sociable than some, and he usually appreciated the company and warmth of the shelter.

‘He hasn’t been the same since his friend Jude died,’ she said. ‘They had a bond between them, and they looked out for each other. Shaky’s talked to us a little about it, but most of it he’s kept inside.’

‘Do you have any idea where he might have gone?’

Karyn called over another volunteer, this time a kid of about college age.

‘This is Stephen,’ she said. ‘He was one of the coordinators of this year’s homeless survey. He might be able to help you.’

She went back to cleaning tables, leaving me with Stephen. He was a tall young man. I pretty much had to lean back just to look him in the eye. He wasn’t as open as Karyn had been. He had his arms crossed as he spoke to me.

‘Can I ask why a private detective is looking for Shaky?’ he said.

‘He came to talk to me about Jude’s death. I think he set tumblers falling in my mind. If I’m to take it any further, then there are some questions that he might be able to help me answer. He’s in no trouble. I give you my word on that.’

I watched him consider what I’d told him before he decided that I wasn’t about to make Shaky’s existence any more difficult, and he loosened up enough to offer me coffee. Between the beer I’d had in Ruski’s, and the coffee in Rosie’s, I was carrying more liquid than a camel, but one of the first things I learned when I started out as a cop was always to accept if someone you were trying to talk with offered you a coffee or a soda. It made them relax, and if they were relaxed then they’d be more willing to help you.

‘Karyn mentioned something about a survey,’ I said, as we sipped coffee from plastic cups.

‘We’re required by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to do a census of the homeless each year,’ said Stephen. ‘If we don’t know how many folk need help, then we can’t work out budgets, staffing, even how much food we’re likely to require over the months to come. But it’s also a chance to make contact with the ones who’ve avoided us so far, and try to bring them into the fold.’

I must have looked puzzled.

‘You’re wondering why anyone who’s hungry would pass up the chance of a hot meal, right?’ said Stephen.

‘I guess it doesn’t make much sense to me.’

‘Some people who take to the streets don’t want to be found,’ he said. ‘A lot of them have mental health issues, and if you’re a paranoid schizophrenic who believes that the government is trying to kill you, the last thing you’re going to want to do is turn up at a shelter where someone might start prying into your business. Then there are others who are just plain scared. Maybe they’ve gotten into a fight with someone in the past, and they know that there’s a knife out there looking to sink itself into them, or they’ve had a bad experience with the authorities and now prefer to keep their heads down. So, for one night of the year, we go out in force looking under bleachers and behind Dumpsters, and we try to reach out. I mean, we’re out there at other times of the year too, but the sustained focus of survey night, and the sheer weight of volunteers on the streets, means that we get a hell of a lot done in a few hours.’

‘So where does Shaky hang out?’

‘Shaky likes to come into the shelter, if there’s a mat available to sleep on. He hasn’t been in so much since Jude died, which means that he’s either set up camp somewhere off the interstate, probably around Back Cove Park, or he’s sleeping at the rear of one of the businesses on Danforth or Pleasant, where the cops can’t see him. That’s where I’d look.’

He toyed with his coffee cup. He wanted to say more. I didn’t hurry him.

‘Did you know Mr Jude?’ he eventually asked.

I’d never heard anyone call Jude ‘Mister’ before. He was always just Jude. It made me warm more to the kid.

‘A little,’ I said. ‘I’d sometimes put money his way if I needed someone to watch a car or an address for a while. He never let me down.’

‘He was a smart man, and a good one too,’ said Stephen. ‘I could never quite figure out how he’d ended up in the situation he was in. Some of the men and women here, I can see it. There’s a trajectory you can reconstruct. But not in Mr Jude’s case. The best I can tell, there was a weak bolt in the machinery, and when it broke, the whole mechanism ground to a halt.’

‘You’re not an engineering student by any chance, are you?’

He grinned for the first time. ‘Know a man by his metaphors.’

‘You sound as though you liked Jude,’ I said.

‘Uh-huh, I did. Even in the midst of his own troubles, he still had time for others. I tried to follow his lead by helping him in turn.’

‘You’re talking about his daughter?’

‘Yeah, Annie. I was kind of keeping an eye on her for him.’

‘Really?’

‘Because of my work with the shelter here, I was in a position to talk to others in the same business. I made an occasional call to the Tender House in Bangor, where Annie was staying, just so I could reassure Mr Jude that she was doing okay. When she disappeared, I—’

He stopped.

‘You felt responsible?’

He nodded, but didn’t speak.

‘Did Jude say anything to make you believe he felt the same way?’

‘No, never. It wasn’t in his nature. It didn’t help, though. It didn’t make me feel any less guilty.’

Stephen was clearly a good kid, but he had the egotism of youth. The world revolved around him, and consequently he believed he had the power to change how it worked. And, in the way of the young, he had made another’s pain about himself, even if he did so for what seemed like the best of reasons. Time and age would change him: if they didn’t, he wouldn’t be working in soup kitchens and shelters for much longer. His frustrations would get the better of him, and force him out. He’d blame others for it, but it would be his own fault.

I thanked him and left my cell phone number with him, just in case I couldn’t find Shaky, or he chose to come into the shelter for the night after all. Stephen promised to leave a note for the breakfast and lunch volunteers as well, so that if Shaky arrived to eat the next day they could let me know. I used the men’s room before I left, just to ensure that my bladder didn’t burst somewhere between the shelter and Back Cove. An old man was standing at one of the sinks, stripped to the waist. His white hair hung past his shoulders, and his body reminded me of the images I’d seen of Jude’s poor, scarred torso, like some medieval depiction of Christ after He’d been taken down from the cross.

‘How you doing?’ I said.

‘Livin’ the dream,’ the old man replied.

He was shaving with a disposable razor. He removed the last of the foam from his cheek, splashed water on his face and rubbed his skin to check that it was smooth.

‘You got any aftershave?’ he asked.

‘Not with me,’ I said. ‘Why, you got a date?’

‘I haven’t been on a date since Nixon was president.’

‘Another thing to blame him for: ruining your love life.’

‘He was a sonofabitch, but I didn’t need no help on that front.’

I washed my hands and dried them with a paper towel. I had money in my pocket, but I didn’t want to offend the old man. Then I thought that it was better to risk hurting his feelings. I left a ten on the sink beside him. He looked at it as though Alexander Hamilton might bite him if he tried to pick it up; that, or I might ask him to bite me as part of some bizarre sexual fetish.

‘What’s that for?’ he said.

‘Aftershave.’

He reached out and took the ten.

‘I always liked Old Spice,’ he said.

‘My father wore Old Spice.’

‘Something stays around that long, it has to be good.’

‘Amen,’ I said. ‘Look after yourself.’

‘I will,’ he said. ‘And, hey?’

I looked back.

‘Thanks.’

17

It’s a full-time job being homeless. It’s a full-time job being poor. That’s what those who bitch about the underprivileged not going out there and finding work fail to understand. They have a job already, and that job is surviving. You have to get in line early for food, and earlier still for a place to sleep. You carry your possessions on your back, and when they wear out you spend time scavenging for replacements. You only have so much energy to expend, because you only have so much food to fuel your body. Most of the time you’re tired and sore, and your clothes are damp. If the cops find you sleeping on the street, they move you on. If you’re lucky, they’ll give you a ride to a shelter, but if there are no beds free, or no mats available on the floor, then you’ll have to sleep sitting upright in a plastic chair in an outer office, and the lights will be on full because that’s what the fire code regulations require, so you go back out on the streets again because at least there you can lie down in the dark, and with luck you’ll sleep. Each day is the same, and each day you get a little bit older and a little bit more tired.

And sometimes you remember who you once were. You were a kid who played with other kids. You had a mother and a father. You wanted to be a fireman or an astronaut or a railroad engineer. You had a husband. You had a wife. You were loved. You could never have imagined that you would end up this way.

You curl up in the darkness and you wait for death to kiss you a final, blissful goodnight.

Shaky was back on the streets. He’d been tempted to stay at one of the shelters and find a mat on which to sleep. His arm ached. It always pained him in winter, leaving him with months of discomfort, but it had been hurting more since Jude died. It was probably – what was the word? He thought and thought – ‘psychosomatic’, that was it. It had taken him a good minute to recall it, but Jude would have known the word instantly. Jude knew about history, and science, and geography. He could tell you the plot of every great novel he’d ever read, and recite whole passages of them from memory. Shaky had once tested him on a couple. He’d jokingly remarked that, for all Shaky knew, Jude could have been making up all of those quotations off the top of his head. Jude had responded by claiming that Shaky had impugned his honor – that was the word he’d used, ‘impugned’ – and there had been nothing to do but for the two of them to head down to the Portland Public Library on Congress, where Shaky had pulled The Great Gatsby from the shelves, along with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Lolita, The Grapes of Wrath, As I Lay Dying, Ulysses and the poems of Longfellow and Cummings and Yeats. Jude had been able to quote chunks of them without getting a word wrong, without a single stumble, and even some of the librarians had come over to listen. By the time he got on to Shakespeare, it was like being in the presence of one of those old stage actors, the kind who used to wash up in small towns when there were still theaters in which to perform, their costumes and props in one truck, the cast in another, and put on revues, and comedies, and social dramas, or maybe a condensed Shakespeare with all of the dull parts removed, leaving only the great moments of drama: ghosts, and bloodied daggers, and dying kings.

And there was Jude in his old checked suit and two-tone shoes, the heels worn smooth and cardboard masking the holes in the soles, surrounded by curious readers and amused librarians. He was lost in words, lost in roles, someone other than himself for just a little while, and Shaky had loved him then, loved him as he basked in the glow of pleasure that emanated from Jude’s face, loved him as his eyes closed in reverie, and he said a prayer of gratitude for the presence of Jude in his life even as he wondered how one so clever and so gifted could have ended up scavenging in Dumpsters and sleeping on the streets of a city forever shadowed by winter, and what weakness in Jude’s being had caused him to turn away from his family and his home and throw himself to the winds like a leaf at the coming of fall.

Shaky’s pack weighed heavily on him. He thought again about the shelter. He could have left his belongings there – even without a bed for him, someone might have been willing to look after them – and returned to pick them up later, but increasingly he found the presence of others distressing. He would look at the familiar faces, but the one he sought was no longer there, and the presence of the rest only reminded him of Jude’s absence. How long had they been friends? Shaky could not remember. He had lost track of the years a long time ago. Dates were of no consequence. He was not marking wedding anniversaries, nor the birthdays of children. He left the years behind him, discarded without a thought like old shoes that could no longer fulfill even his modest needs.

He was near Deering Oaks now. He kept returning there, coming back to the place in which Jude had breathed his last. He was a mourner and a pilgrim. He stopped outside the house, its windows now boarded. Someone had placed a new lock and bolt on the basement door since Jude’s death: the police, he assumed, or the owner, assuming it was still owned by a person and not a bank. Crime scene tape had been placed across the door, but it was now torn. It drifted in the night’s breeze.

Shaky had no sense of Jude at the house. That was how he knew that Jude had not taken his own life. Shaky didn’t believe in ghosts. He didn’t even believe in God, and if he turned out to be wrong, well, he and God would have some words about the dogshit hand that Shaky had been dealt in life. But Shaky did have a certain sense about people and places. Jude had it too. You needed it if you wanted to survive on the streets. Shaky instinctively knew who to trust, and who to avoid. He knew the places in which it was safe to sleep and the places, though empty and apparently innocuous, in which it was best not to rest. Men and women left their marks as they moved through life, and you could read them if you had a mind to. Jude had left his mark in that basement, his final mark, but it didn’t read to Shaky like the mark of a man who had given in to despair. It read to Shaky like the mark of one who would have fought if he’d had the strength, and if the odds had not been against him.

He walked down to the basement door and took the Swiss Army knife from his pocket. It was one of his most valuable possessions, and he maintained it well. There was one blade that he kept particularly sharp, and he used it now to make two signs on the stonework beside the door. The first was a rectangle with a dot in the center, the old hobo alphabet symbol for ‘danger’. The second was a diagonal line joined halfway by a smaller, almost perpendicular line. It was the warning to keep away.

He spent the rest of the night asking questions. He did it carefully and discreetly, and he approached only those whom he trusted, those he knew would not lie to him or betray him. It had taken him a while to figure out what he should do. Talking to the detective had crystallized it for him. Someone had taken Jude’s money, and the contents of his pack. It might have been those responsible for his death, but it didn’t seem likely that they’d then call in his hanging corpse to the cops. Neither would they have taken the money if they wanted his death to appear like a suicide. Anyway, from what Shaky had learned, Jude was dead for a day or more before his body was found.

All this suggested to Shaky that the person who had called in the killing, and the person who had taken the money and rifled Jude’s belongings, were one and the same, and it seemed to Shaky that it might well be one of their own, a street person. One of the city’s homeless had either stumbled across Jude’s sleeping place by accident or, more likely, had gone looking for Jude to begin with. The word was out: Jude was calling in his loans. He needed money. The unknown person could have been seeking out Jude in order to pay his debts, but equally there were those on the street who would not be above hunting Jude down in order to steal whatever cash he had managed to accumulate. It didn’t matter: either way someone had found Jude hanging in that basement, and looted his belongings in the shadow of his corpse.

Shaky well knew that $127 was a lot of money for someone who struggled by on a couple of bucks a day. The instinct would be to celebrate: booze or perhaps something stronger; and fast food – bought, not scavenged. Alcohol and narcotics made people careless. Rumors would start to circulate that one of their own had enjoyed a windfall.

By the time he returned to his tent at Back Cove Park, Shaky had a name.

Brightboy.

18

The next morning Shaky didn’t join the line for breakfast at the shelter. He kept his distance and fingered the note in his pocket. It had been pinned to the bulletin board at Preble Street. The detective wanted to talk. Shaky had memorized the number, but he still kept the note, just in case. He knew that the years on the streets had raddled his brain. He would sometimes look at a clock face, and see the hands pointing at the numbers, and be unable to tell the time. He could be in a store, the price of a six-pack or a bottle of liquor clear to read on the sign, his change laid out in his hand ready to pay, and fail to make the connection between the cost of the booze and the money in his possession.

Now, as he stood in the shelter of a doorway on Cumberland Avenue, he repeated the cell phone number over and over to himself. He had considered calling the detective and telling him what he knew, but he wanted to be sure. He wanted to present the detective with hard evidence. He wanted to prove himself, both for his own sake and for Jude’s, so he stood in the shadows and watched his fellow homeless gather for breakfast.

It didn’t take him long to spot Brightboy. He arrived shortly before eight, his pack on his back. Shaky’s keen eyes were drawn to Brightboy’s boots. They were tan Timberlands, better than what Brightboy usually wore. It was possible that he’d found them, but equally they were the kind of Goodwill purchase that even a moron like Brightboy might have the sense to make while he had money in his pocket. A good pair of boots would keep your feet warm and dry, and make days spent walking the streets a little easier. He watched Brightboy exchange greetings with those whom he knew, but for the most part he kept to himself. Brightboy had always been a loner, partly out of choice but also because he couldn’t be trusted. There were those with whom one could leave a pack and know that it would be safely looked after, that its contents would not be searched and its valuables – socks, underwear, a candy bar, a can opener, a permanent water bottle – looted. Brightboy was not such a man, and he had taken beatings in the past for his thievery.

Shaky had learned that Brightboy had been on a drunken tear these last few days, and a serious one too: Mohawk 190 Grain Alcohol and Old Crow bourbon, bottle after bottle of it. As was his way, Brightboy had declined to share the contents of his portable liquor cabinet. Had he done so, there might not have been quite so many whispers of discontent.

Shaky didn’t follow Brightboy into the shelter, but instead waited on the street and nibbled on a bagel from the previous day’s bake. Shaky was known in most of the city’s bakeries and coffee shops, and rarely left them without having something to eat pressed upon him. He was careful to spread his lack of custom evenly, and by now he had his weekly routine down: this place on Monday morning, this one Tuesday, this one Wednesday … They had grown to expect him, and if he missed a visit questions would be asked of him when he returned. What happened? Were you ill? You doing okay? Shaky always answered honestly. He never played sick when he wasn’t, and he never lied. He didn’t have very much, which made retaining some semblance of dignity and honor all the more important.

Brightboy emerged an hour later. Shaky knew that he’d have eaten, and used the bathroom. He would probably have half a bagel or a piece of toast wrapped in a napkin in his pocket for later. Shaky let Brightboy get some distance ahead of him, then followed. When Brightboy stopped to talk to a woman known as Frannie at Congress Square Park, Shaky slipped into the Starbucks across the street and took a seat at the window. With his damaged arm, and the slight stoop that came with it, he felt like the unlikeliest spy in the world. Undercover Elephant would have been less conspicuous. It was fortunate that it was Brightboy he was following. Brightboy was dumb and self-absorbed. He was nearly as bad as the regular folk in his failure to notice what was going on around him.

Portland was changing. The old Eastland Hotel was being renovated by a big chain – Shaky had lost count of the number of new hotels and restaurants the city had added in recent years – and it looked like part of Congress Park, the old plaza at Congress and High, would be sold to the hotel’s new owners. A Dunkin’ Donuts had once stood at the corner of Congress Park, and it became a gathering spot for the city’s homeless, but it was long gone now. The businesses that had occupied the space over the years sometimes seemed to Shaky as transient as some of those who frequented its environs. Over the years it had been a laundry, a Walgreens, the Congress Square Hotel and, way back, a wooden row house. Now it was a brick-and-concrete space with a sunken center and a few planting beds, where people like Brightboy and Frannie could conduct their business.

Brightboy’s encounter with Frannie ended with the woman screaming abuse at him, and Brightboy threatening to punch her lights out. Shaky wished him luck. Frannie had been on the streets for a decade or more, and Shaky didn’t even want to think about the kind of treatment she’d endured and survived in that time. The story was that she’d once bitten off the nose of a man who’d tried to rape her. This was subsequently described as an exaggeration: she hadn’t bitten off all of his nose, said those who knew of such matters, just the cartilage below the nasal bone. Shaky figured that it must have taken her a while because Frannie didn’t have more than half a dozen teeth in her head worth talking about. He had a vision of her holding on to the guy by his ears, gnawing away at him with her jagged shards. It gave him the shivers.

He kept after Brightboy for two hours, watching him search for coins in pay phones and around parking meters, and halfheartedly rummaging through garbage cans for bottles and soda cans to redeem. At the intersection of Congress and Deering Avenue Brightboy took a detour on Deering past Skip Murphy’s sober house. He lingered outside for a time, although Shaky didn’t know why. Skip’s only accepted those who were in full-time employment, or students with some form of income. More to the point, it only took in those who actually wanted to improve themselves, and Brightboy’s best chance of improving himself lay in dying. Maybe he knew someone in there, in which case the poor bastard in question would be well advised to give Brightboy a wide berth, because Shaky wouldn’t have put it past Brightboy to try and drag someone who had embarked on a twelve-step back down to his own level. It was the only reason why Brightboy might offer to share a drink. Misery loved company, but damnation needed it.

Brightboy moved on, Shaky trailing him, and at last they came to Brightboy’s stash, where he kept the stuff that he couldn’t, or didn’t want to, carry. There were some who used a shopping cart to haul their possessions, but they were mostly the ones who tried to make a bit extra by scavenging. Brightboy didn’t have that kind of resolve. He had hidden whatever was worth keeping behind a warehouse on St John Street, stashing it in the bushes beside a Dumpster that didn’t look like it had been emptied since plastic was invented. He was crouched over the bushes when Shaky turned the corner, and so intent on whatever he was doing that he didn’t hear him approach.

‘Hey,’ said Shaky.

Brightboy was squatting with his back to Shaky. He looked over his shoulder, but didn’t try to get up. Shaky could see his right hand moving in the bushes.

‘Hey,’ said Brightboy in reply. His hand kept searching. Shaky knew that it had found what it was seeking when he saw Brightboy smile. Glass flashed in the sunlight as Brightboy withdrew his hand. He started to rise, but Shaky was too quick for him. Some might have called him a cripple behind his back, but he was far from it. His left foot was forward, his right moving in a strong arc to join and then pass it. The toe of his boot caught Brightboy in the side of the head. Brightboy gave a single yelp and fell sideways. The empty bottle of Old Crow fell from his hand and rolled across the ground. Shaky aimed a second kick at Brightboy, just to be sure, and because he wanted to. He had never liked Brightboy. Jude hadn’t cared much for him either, even if his personal code of ethics forbade him from turning his back on him. Jude’s attitude toward Brightboy was proof positive to Shaky that his late friend had not been without flaw.

This time, Shaky landed a glancing blow to Brightboy’s chin. Brightboy started to crawl away, and Shaky finished him off with a toe to the groin from behind. Brightboy stopped moving and lay on the ground, cupping himself with his hands as he moaned softly.

The previous night’s breeze was no more, and the day was still. Shaky began to search Brightboy’s possessions. It took him only a minute to find Jude’s old canvas bag. Jude had used it to transport what he called his ‘essentials’: wipes, toothbrush, comb and whatever book he happened to be reading at the time. It was small enough to carry easily, and big enough to take any treasures he might scavenge along the way, while he left his main pack in a locker at Amistad. Brightboy must have swept Jude’s valuables into it before he left the basement.

Shaky sank down against the Dumpster. The sight of the bag, the feel of it in his hands, brought home to him with renewed clarity that Jude was gone. Shaky started to cry. Brightboy looked up at him from the ground. His eyes were glazed, and he was bleeding from the mouth.

‘You took this from him,’ said Shaky. ‘You took it from him while his body was still warm.’

‘His body weren’t warm,’ said Brightboy. ‘It was cold as shit.’

He tried to sit up, but his balls still hurt. He lay down again, rocking with pain, but managed to keep talking.

‘Anyway, Jude would have wanted me to have it. He couldn’t take it with him. If he could’ve talked, he’d have told me so.’

God, Shaky hated Brightboy. He wished that he’d kicked him hard enough to drive his balls up into his throat and choke him.

‘Even if he’d given this to you, you wouldn’t have deserved to have it,’ Shaky told him.

Inside the bag he found the last of Jude’s money – $43, still wrapped in the same rubber band – and Jude’s toothpaste and comb. The wipes were gone. Strangely, the book Jude had been reading at the time of his death, an architectural history of early churches in England, was also among the books stolen by Brightboy. Jude had ordered it specially, Shaky remembered. The people at Longfellow Books had found a paperback copy for him, and refused to accept payment for it. Jude had picked it up days before he died, just after returning from his most recent trip north. Shaky had put it down to another manifestation of Jude’s magpie intellect, but his friend had been different about this book. He hadn’t wanted to discuss it with Shaky, just as he hadn’t wanted to tell him exactly where he’d gone when he’d left Portland those final two times.

‘Bangor?’ Shaky had pressed him.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Your daughter still up there, you think?’

‘No, I believe she went … someplace else.’

‘You find her?’

‘Not yet.’

Jude had begun to mark the pages as he read. Shaky flicked through them, and some bus tickets fell out. He tried to grab them, but at that moment the wind came up again from out of nowhere and snatched the tickets away. It blew them into some briars, and Shaky tore the skin on his right hand trying to retrieve them. He almost gave up, but he hadn’t come this far to let anything slide that might help the detective. He knelt down and reached into the bush, ignoring the pain and the damage to his coat.

‘Damn you,’ he whispered. ‘Damn bushes.’

‘No,’ said a voice behind him. ‘Damn you, you fuck.’

The sunlight caught the bottle of Old Crow again. This time it didn’t roll away, but shattered against Shaky’s skull.

Shaky came back to consciousness as the paramedic tended his wounds. Later he would learn that a driver had come into the lot to turn, and spotted him lying on the ground. The driver had believed him dead.

‘We’ll need to get you stitched up,’ said the paramedic.

He and his colleague wore blue plastic gloves that were stained with Shaky’s blood. Shaky tried to rise but they held him down.

‘You stay there. We got you.’

Shaky felt something in his right hand. He looked and saw the bus tickets crumpled in his fist. Carefully he put them in the pocket of his coat, and felt his fingers brush against the piece of paper with the detective’s number on it.