One Foot Off the Gutter (19 page)

“Hey, Coddy! Where are you?”

There were cobwebs and holes in the plaster everywhere he turned. The place was a complete war zone. Water was dripping from the ceiling, splatting onto his riot helmet, making a hollow sound in his ears. What Coddy saw in this dump was beyond him.

 

I was hunkering down on my knees in a room far away from the front door. I got to my feet and made for the next room by running my fingers over the walls. I read the walls as a handicapped man would study braille. I was home now. I heard Bellamy shout out my name. I couldn't think of any reason to answer him.

The walls, ceilings and the floor were aligned in direct proportion to my size. It was a mammoth house; I was sure it was large enough to get rid of the claustrophobia I'd carried around on my back since the moment I was born. This was where Alice and I would start over.

My fingers wandered over the worn out woodwork. If only I could've brought Alice here tonight. She would understand what I was feeling. There was freedom in the ruins of a building that no one wanted. I walked into the next room, only to find myself at the doorway to another hall. There were rooms in every direction.

 

“Coddy! Where the fuck are you?”

Bellamy slogged through a puddle in the front room and found himself in a vestibule that led to a decrepit
stairwell. He became interested in the staircase, seeing that it wound around the side of the building to a landing on the second floor. There was some light up there. He pointed the flashlight at the stairs. Then on a whim, he aimed the beam at the second floor's landing. He almost died of fright when the ray caught a face inside its dusty halo. It was a face covered in plaster dust; the eyes looked like two holes. A pulse later, it was gone.

“Hey, wait a minute! Who are you?” Bellamy shouted.

Nobody answered him. The silence was powerful enough to make him doubt whether he'd seen anybody. What a stupid ass he was, letting the building play tricks on him. He'd be a fool if he let his guard down. Bellamy unsnapped the holster and withdrew his pistol. He pressed the thumb plate on the frame, releasing the cylinder. The six-chambered cylinder dropped into his palm, reassuring him. All six chambers were loaded with Black Talons.

There might be someone up there. You never knew. What he really wanted was a cigarette and a drink. When they got out of this wreck, that would be his reward. Bellamy snapped the cylinder back into place. He pointed the flashlight at his feet and started to climb the stairwell.

Barbie listened to Bellamy's slow ascent. The cop was having problems navigating the broken slats on the staircase. She heard the hesitation in his foot steps, the way one shoe moved forward, followed by the tread of the other shoe. She began to speculate on his chances in finding them. She entertained the notion that he might get discouraged and quit. He might go back downstairs. That was laughable.

“He's coming,” she whispered to Free Box.

“What are we going to do?”

“I think we'll find out very soon.”

 

Bellamy rested his hand on a railing, only to have it drop to the stairs at his feet. He couldn't see anything. He should have gotten a pair of glasses like the doctor ordered. Since they cut back the benefits on the job, he just couldn't afford it. It was another thing that would have to wait. He held the flashlight in one hand and the pistol in the other hand, calling out, “Hello? Hello? This is the San Francisco Police. Why don't you come out and get acquainted?”

The flashlight's beam was picking up cracks and fissures in the walls, reminding Bellamy of the old horror movies he saw on late night television whenever he was staying over at someone's house. He stepped over piles of broken wood and glass. He was making pretty good time getting up the stairs, considering he was slightly winded. It was amazing how out of shape he was these days.

He reached the landing on the second floor and looked around him. The first doorway he saw made him curious. There was the light he'd seen earlier. He let the flashlight guide him down the short hall toward the door. It wasn't so bad once you got used to the dark. Bellamy approached the room and whispered in a falsetto, “Is anybody home?”

Free Box pressed himself against the wall, standing as far away from the door as he could get. But in his fear, he didn't watch where he was going and he stumbled over a
kerosene lamp. The glass vessel fell over with a clatter, shattering into several pieces, leaving a solitary tongue of flame to lick itself on the floor.

“What's that?” Bellamy stepped into the room. Like a compass, his flashlight found the flame, now standing a foot tall. Free Box was kneeling by the fire. The muscles on his naked back writhed under his ashen skin. That's strange, Bellamy thought. The guy was all white with plaster dust.

Bellamy didn't see the woman aiming a revolver at him.

Two shots rang out. He never saw them coming until the flashlight and the pistol were knocked from his hands. Two quarter-inch holes were left smoking in his sleeve and pants leg; he collapsed to the floorboards. Unable to retain his balance, Bellamy sprawled on the floor. He was mindful of the colors he saw; pink was turning into blue. At the last moment, he remembered to scream.

“Coddy! Help me!”

 

The abandoned building saw everything that was unfolding on her second floor. The pigeons roosting under her eaves scattered, flying across the street to a safer haven. The rats in the attic crawled through the chimney and dropped off onto the roof of the doctor's house, where they scurried down the drainpipes into the plumbing. Something worse than human beings and the wrecking ball was tearing at her. It raced up into the attic, and down to the basement. It rippled in waves across her walls. It was the deadliest of her enemies. It was a fire.

 

 

 

 

 

 

i
started running towards the front of the house. I threw myself into one dim hallway after another, not knowing where Bellamy was. Every room was pitch black and dead still. There were too many rooms and too many doors to open. I tripped over a gap in the floorboards, jumped back up and staggered, reminding myself that I'd left the flashlight in the squad car.

The house had changed its persona right before my eyes. A house could be many things. A moment ago, it had been a playground. I plucked my revolver from its holster, stood at the doorway to another room. I couldn't hear the traffic on Twenty-first Street. I brushed away a cobweb, and crept forward a few more feet.

A hush was left frothing in the wake of Bellamy's scream.

When it was this silent, I was afraid of hearing things. A doctor had told me they weren't quite hallucinations,
but close enough. I'd been having them ever since I was a kid. The devil talked to me, his uncharitable words loitering in my ears. The more alone I was, the louder his voice became. I'd never spoken to anyone about the voices that were in my head, not since I signed up for the job.

I called to Bellamy, not so much as to gain an answer, but to hear myself. I was in danger of losing my sense of direction. The devil was getting stronger; he was crowding out Bellamy's call for help.

“Bells? Are you there? Where are you?”

 

Barbie stuck her pistol in Bellamy's mouth.

“Keep still, you creep.”

Bellamy couldn't help himself, hurting like he was. The room was rotating, reminding him of a carousel he used to ride when he was a kid. A merry-go-round with gaudy wooden horses bobbing up and down. Every horse had an expression of vacant boredom painted on its face. Bellamy pressed his hand against the hole in his pants. Blood was flowing down his leg into his riot boot. She nudged him again.

“Didn't I tell you not to talk?”

Was he talking out loud?

“Excuse me, lady. I didn't mean anything by it.”

He was babbling on the floor of an abandoned building. There was a naked girl pointing a gun at his head. It was his birthday next week. He'd be turning forty-one. An extra charge of dizziness swept over him. And who was going to tell Doreen?

Barbie poked her head out the door on the second
floor landing. The other cop was down at the bottom of the stairwell. She could hear him thrashing like a wild elephant in the garbage. Behind her, the fire in the room was gaining strength; flames were stroking the walls, smoke was spurting out the front window.

She raised the pistol and aimed.

 

Bellamy was up there. Call it a knack, seeing beyond walls, something only policemen know about. I stopped for a moment and lifted my cleft chin. I was about to start off in the other direction when I heard the tantalizing ghost of a whimper. My headache came rushing back with a vengeance, hurling spearheads of distress into the back of my neck. I shouted, “This is the police! Whoever you are, come out with your hands up!”

The first shot went over my head without so much as touching me. The second bullet streaked down the stairwell and sank into the plaster between my feet, cautioning me. I was getting ready to shoot back when a tall, slender man flew through the doorway and bounded down the stairs, heading straight for me. The size of the guy was unbelievable, strictly for the circus. I cocked the hammer and shrank up against the staircase wall, keening wildly, “Put that gun down or I'll shoot!”

“I don't have a gun!” he cried.

“Don't give me that shit! I don't want to hear it!”

I didn't notice the girl. I assumed the man in front of me had the weapon. There was a light in the room behind the perpetrator. The asshole's head and shoulders were coated in white plaster dust. The sight of him made me queasy.

“Take it easy,” I warned him. “Don't make me do something I don't want to. Just relax and everything will be all right. Drop the gun on the floor and put your hands in the air, where I can see them.”

“I don't have a gun,” he complained.

I hated it when the assholes got to whining. I was about to snap off a sarcastic retort when the girl stepped out from behind him. She was pointing a gun at me.

Two sharp blasts came my way, two faint red lines that got brighter the closer they sped toward me. Simultaneously, I caught a glimpse of the young woman again, half-naked and covered with blood.

This was before the bullets hit me in the chest.

Two spinning kaleidoscopes lifted me off my feet. I was knocked back down the stairs, hitting the wall and the bannister. I rolled over on my stomach and sat up; the slugs were protruding from my kevlar body armor. Alice had given me the vest on our wedding anniversary last year. Feeling a spring of affection for her, I lifted my nickel plated Brazilian revolver and began shooting.

The white dusted devil stood for a second trying to comprehend what had happened to his face. He raised an unsteady hand to his mouth to explore the holes where his nose and eyes used to be. But he never got there. The scraps of bone and tissue splattered on the wall behind him explained his failure.

Plaster dust was flying everywhere. Then he crashed to the floor, pinning the girl under his body. She struggled to get out from under him while I crawled up the staircase on my hands and knees, waving the gun at her.

Bellamy was lazily floating upwards to consciousness when he heard the gunfire. He'd been busy asking Doreen if she wanted to go out later that night. Nothing much, just him and her and some pizza at a place on Fulton. He pried open one gummed eye. The fire was billowing in all directions, spewing gray coils of smoke out the window. Organdy tendrils of flame were testing the wall by his head.

Free Box was crumpled into an unrecognizable heap by his feet. Bellamy had never seen the asshole before. Where Free Box's head used to be, there was nothing but the bloody tail of his spine. Purple and green nerve endings, and a strip of glistening muscle were hanging from stunningly white cartilage. Bellamy dropped his hand into something sticky on the floor, a granulated clot of his own blood.

 

I peered at the girl.

“Drop the gun,” I said.

When she fired the next round at me, I didn't see it coming until the shell droned by my ear. I jerked my head back; the bullet buzzed into the wall, setting off a puff of plaster dust.

I couldn't take it anymore. There wasn't anywhere to turn. I steadied my arm on a stair slat, cursed myself for having been born, and plugged the young woman's left kneecap with a single shot.

“You bastard!” she bawled.

I saw her hit the floor with a liquid, neck-wrenching, head-rolling snap of her shoulders.

The flames were reaching for the ceiling on the second floor, alighting on the walls. The remaining rats in the attic had scrambled through the chimney, and were now taking shelter next door. Chunks of plaster kept hitting the floor; the beams under the roof shrieked, then exploded. The pieces flew from the attic, sending out embers to start more fires in the far corners of the abandoned building.

I found Bellamy and threw him, surprisingly light, over my shoulder and staggered toward the staircase. Sirens on the street, each one louder than its predecessor, were multiplying with every step I took.

 

 

 

 

 

 

t
he fire moved from room to room, playing tag with the ceilings. Every room was awash in a bath of swirling black ash. The roof had caved in, dropping through to the second floor. Then the ceiling fell down to the ground floor, causing massive cracks in the foundation. The chimney collapsed on its side, showering the sidewalk with several volleys of hot bricks.