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NORCESTOR & IMPERIAL,
MARKET PARK
9:32 AM PDT
POPE COMPARED the Norcestor Arms’ dusty blueprints to a police report and tried to block out Al’s negativity and cynicism. Focusing on the mission at hand and what was known.
According to the Red Garter’s bouncer, a white male aged mid-to-late 20s, was seen fleeing in the direction of Building 3 at three in the morning. The bouncer’s description matched the description of a Mrs. Doris De La Clemente. Notably, a man dressed in a outfit Mrs. De La Clemente called ‘Interview with a Vampire-y’. In the picture taken at the masquerade ball, Christian Ducroix wore a mask, and the woman beside him, identified as the Russian agent, Mona Romanokova, wore an elaborate, feather and sequin-adorned mask. Pope thought they both looked to be dressed as French aristocrat, but then Pope was never a big fashion. Either way, a person matching Christian Ducroix’s description and . That man, upon being denied use of Mrs. De La Clemente’s phone— and cursing her in an unknown language— had promptly fled her door, to disappear into the depths of the Norcestor Arms, Building #3, at just before three in morning.
At that moment, Al offered another opinion, the fifth or sixth box car in a train of opinions . . .
What were you thinking? What? You could have just jumped in the truck and bugged!
. . . that had Pope wondering if he really gave a damn about another government goat-fuck described as the end of the world scenario, especially so soon after the First Lady’s missing belt.
Sorry to say, and never let Al know it, but the thing just felt hinky.
“— and I’m telling you, Gideon, this shit’s got hink written all over it. You seeing what I’m seeing?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, no? Well you mark my words, Gideon, you mark my words. This kid was here scoring drugs. Coke, Ecstasy, heroin, I don’t know, but it was illegal narcotics. And it’s because of illegal narcotics the kid was down here to get car jacked. Not kidnaped, what weak ass story, kidnaped. That kid was car jacked trying to score illegal narcotics. And because he was breaking the law, me and you gotta postpone our fishing trip so we can make.” Al glanced over at Rose—
Still furiously texting.
— and back at Pope. “I am telling you, Gideon, this is one great big government goatfuck to cover up the fact that cocksucker Dominic Ducroix’s got a junkie for a son.”
Pope glanced down at the picture. It was hard to tell, but by stature and the little bit of skin showing, the kid looked good for a junkie. And definitely good for a person infected with Ebola.
“I must say, your faith in the US government is astonishing.”
“Hey,” Al said, “I just call em how I see em. We keep checking the trash chutes, he’ll turn up.”
He winked. “I’m East Coast. I got a sense for this kind of thing.”
“You’ve also got tapioca on your jacket.”
“What the . . . Ah, for chrissake.”
While Al searched out a napkin, Pope consulted a street map of a six-block radius.
A car headed west out of Market Park down Imperial could be on the 805 south in Tijuana within 15 minutes. If it was a kidnaping, why had the RussiansWhoever jacked the kid’s Mustang had headed east on Imperial through Encanto, Lomita Park, Skyline and on to Lemon Grove, closely pursued by an unidentified silver Mercedes Benz . . .
“Shizmato to Base.”
Pope keyed his handset. “Base— Go ahead, Shiz.”
“Chief, we’ve got a body down here, least we think it’s a torso. It’s covered in maggots and until we get it fished out and outside for a better look, we can’t be sure. The flies down here are Biblical plague-level.”
Pope grimaced a little at the thought. “What’s your 20?’
“North-east trash receptacle. Right at the bottom of the chute.”
“Meet you there in three.”
Al looked up from his tapioca-spattered jacket, smiling. “Am I good? Or am I good?”
THEY ARRIVED AND GOT INTO BIO-SUITS in time to watch the body hauled from the maggot infested trash-pit located in the basement that had been fed for decades from a dilapidated system of chutes in turn fed by a dozen stories of government-subsidized housing; the trash had piled unchecked for nearly a month because, the maintenance manager explained,
“There’s been some kinda foul-up at the waste company.” Equally alarming was a stench so powerful it actually penetrated Pope’s BioSuit, causing him to wonder about the suit’s performance in a full-scale gas attack.
Swatting at the flies ferociously buzzing his mask, he watched a torso-shaped thing wrapped in a sheet emerge from the trash pit, the sheet covered in a mass of squirming hungry maggots that Pope thought looked a lot like tapioca pudding dripping back into the pit. That’s when Al threw up in his mask.
FORTUNATELY— OR UNFORTUNATELY—once the sheet was removed and the maggots cleared away, the torso was discovered not to be Christian Ducroix’s or any human’s, but rather a dead basset hound, half consumed by maggots. Also discovered was a goodbye note in a child’s hand addressed to ‘Pookie’ and concerned with dogs and Heaven.
Head-Maintenance stepped in then to say dogs were forbidden. “Not from Heaven,” he explained. “From the Norcestor Arms. And not just dogs. All pets.”
In the corner, cleaning out his mask and looking bilious, Al burped, “I’ll be fine, no worries. Just the tapioca backing up.”
POPE EXITED THE NORCESTOR ARMS to find a place where the sun could burn away the stink of the trash pit, standing there a moment amid the hard stares of the residents, the glares of people themselves feeling invaded for the sake of an invading stranger—
Pope felt a tug at his sleeve.
It was little Mexican girl, no more than 6 or 7, with braided hair and glasses too big for her face.
“Is FBI police? Because Mama says I can’t talk to the police. Or La Migra. Specially La Migra. But she never said anything about the FBI. Are you police?”
Pope smiled, just a kid, but he had to get back to Basecamp Cardtable and reporting to Deputy Inspector Rose’s. “Yes, I am a kind of police.”
“Well, you don’t act like police. I was wondering if I can talk to you.”
Pope scanned the area and spotted Rose, off to the side and texting furiously. “Talk about what?”
“About the man you looking for. I saw him. He ran away.”
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