Dire Means (15 page)

“Great. This will get them off my back. I appreciate it.”

The next day, Bracks contacted Mark and told him that two camera feeds were missing from the ALCO building. Mark knew then that Bracks’s level of technical expertise was above average.

Mark logged onto his computer and had the missing feeds restored within five minutes. Cody would have to share his surveillance equally.

Chapter Ten

IT WAS SUNDAY, four days since Mark’s assault at the gas station. He found it easier to sit up in bed and swung his feet out to the floor. Although he still felt some pain in his ribs, the scrapes on his arms and face had darkened to scabs.

He was ready to spend some time at Soft Landing Shelter House setting up the computers donated by Cody—unmerited favor, as Uncle Leon would have called it. He hoped to eventually see Uncle Leon there.

Soft Landing already had much going for it. The shelter seemed to be well-funded, and Mark intended to further enhance its resources. He would donate his labor to configure the computers so that the homeless and other visitors to the shelter could access email accounts and, perhaps, acquire some computer skills.

He dressed, grabbed his computer bag, and headed to Bonfiglio. With a solid half-day of work ahead, he’d need some breakfast.

The café was quiet since most of its regulars slept in on Sundays. Althea was on her knees up on the counter using both hands to scrub the grill with a steel brush. Henry leaned against the counter watching the TV with a rolled newspaper tucked under his arm. The only other diner was a young man of about nineteen who had stopped in for breakfast.

“Morning, Mark,” Henry said. He tossed the newspaper on the counter and slid a place setting to Mark.

“Good Morning. Any news?” Mark said, pointing to the television.

“A new one went missing—the tenth. A college kid. He’s been gone for two days and they found his bicycle in an alley over off Main Street,” Henry said. He sucked his teeth and mumbled, “What a shame.”

“Any leads?”

“Well, if there are they aren’t saying. FBI’s been on it for three days now since the postal worker went missing.”

“I think they got nothing,” Althea said, climbing down from the counter top and wiping it off. “I don’t like it one bit. These folk couldn’t have disappeared any better if they had gotten in their cars and just drove off somewhere.” She tossed her rag over her shoulder and washed her hands. “That should scare the hell out of all of us.”

Mark ate, thanked Althea and Henry, and took off for the Soft Landing Shelter House.

The shelter’s front door was locked, so Mark rang the buzzer. Tory answered and welcomed him.

“Ho, ho, ho,” Mark said. She laughed. “Did you explain this donation to Neva and did she have any problem with it?” he asked.

“Are you kidding? She was ecstatic. It isn’t often that I get to tell her something that makes her happy.”

“Is she here?”

“No, she doesn’t come in on weekends unless she’s giving a tour.”

Tory propped the door open for Mark to bring in the computers. He set them up along a wall of the dining room.

For three hours he configured, connected and tested the computers. He found a closet where the shelter’s router and DSL modem were located. He installed a network switch and connected the newly installed computers to the shelter’s Internet service that, to this point, only served Neva’s office.

It was mid-afternoon when Mark finished. He was tired, but very satisfied with his installation. The computers looked great, lined up in a row, keyboards scrubbed free of grime, and screen savers running on monitors. The computers would provide a useful technological service to people who, in many cases, had no home.

Mark was disappointed that he hadn’t seen Uncle Leon at the dinner service. On his way out of the shelter, he leaned into the kitchen and called Tory over to him.

“Have you seen an old man come in to volunteer? He calls himself ‘Uncle Leon.’”

Tory thought for a moment. “What does he look like?”

“He’s about 5’ 7”, white, combed-back hair.”

“Does he wear green socks?”

“Yes—that’s him.”

“We call him Leonardo. Yes, he’s been a regular and tells great stories, but he had an argument with Ms. Boyston a couple weeks ago and hasn’t been back.”

“An argument about what?” Mark asked. He couldn’t imagine Uncle Leon offending anyone.

“He was entertaining the other volunteers before dinner service with this silly dance and Ms. Boyston said it was inappropriate behavior in the shelter. I think she was jealous of the attention he was getting. He told her that the shelter should supply happiness and she said something about reputation. They went back and forth until he walked out.”

Mark thanked Tory for the information and she thanked him for the computers.

Mark left the shelter admiring Uncle Leon even more. Their interesting conversation about favors remained with Mark. He wanted to talk to him again and decided that he owed it to himself to try to find him. He’d be sure not to bear gifts or thanks or payback that would ruin Uncle Leon’s grace.

Mark would return to the place where they had met—the Third Street Promenade. The odds of finding Uncle Leon should be good if it was true that he lived there.

§

Despite the unusual chill in the evening air and the unsettling news reports of people going missing each day, thousands of tourists and local shoppers walked the outdoor mall of the Third Street Promenade.

Mark parked on Ocean Avenue facing the high Santa Monica beach bluff and walked toward the Promenade. After a block, he passed a mobile news crew working under two skinny spotlights. Two short, lighted palm trees framed the reporter with the Santa Monica Pier as her backdrop while another woman powdered her face with a brush. Two blocks away, Mark saw hundreds of people coursing into and out of the pier’s entrance. The shops and amusement park rides of the pier sparkled and their neon colors danced on the ocean’s surface.

A man wearing headphones cued the reporter. She raised her microphone, pointed to a row of parking spaces, and explained that the abandoned cars of four victims were found there.

Mark didn’t wait to watch the report. As he walked he wondered how there could be absolutely no leads in this case. Maybe the police weren’t telling all they knew. That was a more comforting thought than a person abducting citizens using a perfectly untraceable method.

Every person Mark passed began to appear suspicious to him. A man passing in a van stared for a moment longer than was necessary. As Mark passed a dark alley, he saw a man force a shop’s back door closed by ramming it with his shoulder. Was the man pressing the door against a struggling victim?

Still, he wanted to find Uncle Leon and walked as if he was on a mission. He checked all the benches just north of Broadway Street where Uncle Leon claimed to live, but saw him nowhere. He saw the fountain where he had been tempted to lift a few coins for a phone call, and shook his head in disgust at his temptation.

After a block, he came to the bench where Uncle Leon had found him. He sat. With any luck, the man who could see favors would show up.

The Promenade seemed different to Mark. Something about the mix of people was not as he remembered. There appeared to be more homeless people than ever—despite the relatively chilly evening. He wondered if his short stint with poverty had affected the lens through which he viewed the world.

As he waited, he saw a woman on the opposite side of the mall. She wore a tie-dyed bandana and dirty baggy clothes that looked like they may have been bright orange and green at one time. She lifted the lid from a trashcan. Stubby fingers poked through gloves that were missing their fingertips. She placed the lid carefully against the base of the trashcan as though she were the regular janitor about to empty the trash. She rummaged through the can’s contents for a few moments and her nose wrinkled up. She pulled out several food items and after inspecting each, she threw them back like a quality-control agent on a factory assembly line. Then she pulled out a half-eaten hamburger sniffed it, and re-wrapped it. She stuffed it into a dirty, green knit bag slung over her shoulder.

Mark remembered how good the food smelled when he was stranded here. Even now, the aroma from a grill promised something tasty. As he watched the woman, he wondered how many more hours or days it would have taken before he was driven to lift the lid of a public trash can and look for something to eat.

The woman smoothed the trash liner, placed the lid back on top, and shuffled away toward the next trash bin on her route. Todd would have argued that the woman was an actress, trying to dupe people into helping her. Mark felt sympathy and followed her. Now that he had a sample of how difficult it was to obtain help from most people, he had new resolve to help her out.

Her face was locked down as she scuffed her feet along. “Excuse me,” Mark said. She didn’t respond. “Excuse me,” he said louder.

The woman stopped and her head turned slightly. The lines in her face sketched years of unrelieved pain. She stood up straight, bracing herself for an insult.

“I have something for you,” Mark said, a vague sentence to test her reaction—her sanity.

She was shorter than she had seemed from a distance—the top of her head only chest high to Mark. She turned and then looked up to his face. Mark had two gift certificates that a client had given him over a year ago. He fanned them, saying, “These are gift certificates for Traney Bistro right down the way.” He pointed and the woman followed his finger. “I want you to have these,” he said.

The woman’s eyes went back to Mark and he thrust the certificates toward her. She took them with her dirty fingers and examined them just as she had examined each item from the trash can. The certificates were for $30 each. Mark had hoped to sneak the certificates into Uncle Leon’s bag or jacket unnoticed, but he was losing hope in his search for Uncle Leon. On impulse, he decided that this woman was a worthy recipient.

The woman’s expression saddened and she pointed in the direction of Traney Bistro. “They don’t let me go in there,” she said, brushing the certificates against her leg.

Mark wasn’t prepared for that answer. He expected her to say, “Thank you,” or “God bless you.”

“Are you kidding?” Mark said. “That’s money in your hand—of course they’ll let you in!” Mark said this even though he could smell the stench of her body odor each time the cold breeze came from behind her.

“Disturbing the patrons, disturbing the patrons, disturbing the patrons, gotta move, gotta move, move it outta here,” she repeated, her voice getting louder. Mark looked around to see if she was attracting attention. He only wanted to give a gift quietly and be on his way.

“I can give you some cash instead if you prefer,” Mark said quickly.

“You don’t have to give me anything,” the woman replied, holding up the certificates. “I’ll sell you these certificates for sixty bucks.”

Mark laughed so hard he bent over. When he stood up, the woman wasn’t laughing with him. She hadn’t even cracked a smile. She still held the certificates up in front of Mark’s face.

Mark could afford to buy back his own property, but the principle of the transaction, mixed with his inability to find Uncle Leon had him frustrated. “Wait a minute—you can’t sell me my own gift to you.”

“Did you give these to me?” She shook the certificates in Mark’s face and her eyes widened.

“Yes, but—”

“Then they’re mine. But I can’t use them because the restaurant has banned me, so really you gave me something that you can use, but I can’t. Nice gift, mister.”

Mark’s mouth fell open in an awkward laugh of disbelief. “Are you serious?”

“Dead serious. Matter of fact, you made me remember something painful. You made me remember a place where I was thrown out again and again, so you really hurt me tonight, right here,” she said, pointing to her heart. Her eyes went to the ground, but then she snuck a peek at Mark.

“Unbelievable,” Mark said. He shook his head and took cash from his pocket, peeling off three twenties. He handed her the money and she made a flagrant show of handing him the certificates.

§

After wandering the Promenade for another half hour, Mark was tired. He had one more chance to find Uncle Leon as he headed back to his car. He noticed another TV news crew about half a block ahead in front of a shoe store. A camera operator aimed a shoulder-mounted camera at a TV reporter just outside its door. A few shoppers stopped to find out what news the crew was reporting. The reporter said that the location was the last place the most recent victim was seen before disappearing.

Mark paid little attention to the news crew and continued walking. He thought about the uselessness of helping people, how attempts can backfire when exploited by a con. Maybe Todd was right, he thought. After all, his altruism had resulted in nothing but grief this week.

He made a wide arc around the spectators, mostly tourists, who watched the news crew. He side-stepped a few times to avoid collisions. Clear of the crowd, he slowed down to look up at the clear night sky. His eye was drawn to something high and off to his left across the wide Promenade walkway. Something was out of place; he saw the slightest motion where he wouldn’t have expected it. The light of the mall shops below drew a faint outline of a figure—a man up on a rooftop. He wore a long coat and a baseball cap. The bottom of his coat flapped in the breeze. There was no railing to protect him and he was so near the roof’s edge that Mark thought he could see the man’s toes jutting over. The man’s head was tilted down to the crowded sidewalk far beneath him. He stood motionless.