The Love-Haight Case Files (14 page)

“Next time get some of the Oskar Blues,” Pete said.

A pair of pigeons lit on the edge of the building and waddled toward Pete.

“Oh, birds, I wouldn’t do that,” Zaxil said.

Like lightning, Pete’s arm shot out and his stone fingers closed around one of the pigeons. The other took off in a flurry of feathers. Pete squished the bird and let its little bloody corpse drop onto the sidewalk below.

“Uhm … Pete … do you really have to—”

The gargoyle craned its head around, barely seeing over the decorative edge. “I like birds, Z-man. You know I like birds. Like to watch them … rails, starlings, robins, Yellow-rumped Warblers, Chestnut-backed Chickadees, and even White-crowned Sparrows. But pigeons? Pigeons are not birds. Pigeons are rats with wings and they crap all over me at every opportunity. Just like the courts will crap all over me because I have no rights.”

“Just like Franklin Arnold is trying to crap all over the both of us,” Zaxil said. “Stop thinking about it, Pete. Evey’s gonna keep us safe. She’s sharp. I have no doubt that if we end up in court, she’ll win for us.”

He cinched his book bag across his back and started down the fire escape.

“I told you to be a writer, Z-man! Writers are good with words, and good at telling lies.”

Chapter 2.4

He’d had Gretchen leave the lights on when she left, as he wanted to work late and had no tangible fingers to manipulate the switches. Thomas’s ghostly vision was improving, and though he was close to mastering the ability to see in utter darkness, he wasn’t quite there yet.

He floated above the conference table, which was strewn with papers on building codes, historic preservation, and zoning requirements. The words had become a blur, insects flitting around behind his dead eyes. The pictures of buildings were spread at odd angles, some in color, some black and white, some old and curled and yellowing on the edges. He thought it might make a neat image to turn into a jigsaw puzzle … which he would not be able to physically manipulate to make the pieces fit.

Thomas didn’t get headaches anymore. He used to, when he was alive, when he concentrated deeply, stayed up late to study casework, when he worried about clients and making the rent and keeping Evelyn in the law practice and making sure Pete steered clear of Arnold’s wrecking ball. Now he didn’t feel … emotions, yes, those had not abandoned him. But he couldn’t
feel
 
…
not the breeze that he’d watched tease Evelyn’s hair this afternoon on the roof, not the smoothness of this table that he used to set his fingertips against, not his heartbeat, not the rush of blood in his ears, not the sun on his face in the morning.

Nothing.

Dear God, wasn’t I good enough to get into heaven?

Thomas had drifted away from church and all the organized trappings when he went off on his own and into college. He believed in God … or desperately wanted to.

Dear God, why can’t I feel something?

Thomas instead focused on the words on the pages.

Stop wallowing in this morose morass. There’s important work to do. Pete, Zaxil, Evelyn all depend on you. Gretchen, too.

Again today Gretchen reminded him that he needed to keep the law office open, as she had no intention of retiring a second time. Besides, she said, the cases that came through the front door were much more interesting than the senior citizen tours she could take to fill her days.

He couldn’t smell anything either … not the scent of Evelyn’s cologne or Gretchen’s Bengay, or the various odors wafting out of the two bars across the street, not the pine boughs hanging from the lampposts and draping some of the Victorians’ porches.

“Ack,” he said.

“—and two is four and four is eight. Something bothering you Tommy-boy?”

Thomas saw a misty patch congeal into the shape of the ghost that haunted the corner: Valentino Trinadad. His long hair trailed away like foggy serpents.

“I can’t turn pages, Val.” That was something that really made him feel helpless and trapped.

“Wow. I can see where that’d be a serious bummer for someone like you. Hacks you off, huh? A legal cat that surrounds himself with mounds of dead trees? Can’t even hike your leg on the stacks.”

“Thanks for the sympathy, Val.”

“Anytime, bro.” The specter floated closer, until the two wispy forms were practically touching.

The nearness unsettled Thomas and he floated back toward the file cabinets. “I can’t even open the drawers, Valentino. Oh, I can poke my head in them, but I can’t read what’s in the files, everything packed together.”

“So make some more bread, Tommy-boy. Get some more cases. Hire someone to be your fingers, you know, like the geezers do.”

“Excuse me?”

“The geezers. The old folks. The ones who live at home and can’t do for themselves. They hire live-ins, you know. They did in the sixties, anyway. My grandparents did. Make enough bread and you can hire one of them live-ins to turn the pages for you, to pull stuff out of the file cabinets. Won’t make you look so useless in Evey’s eyes, you know. Man, that chick is outta sight, ain’t she? I saw her in that green sweater today. Humming. No foam domes there. You can’t turn pages? Man, I can’t cop a feel. I can’t shoot up. I can’t—”

“That’s enough, Val.”

The hippie specter shrugged and appeared to shrink in on himself. “Them buildings you got pictures of. I remembered seeing them fifty years ago. They were rad then, Day-Glo graffiti on the sides, peace signs big as a VW microbus, and the tunes that came from them had you swaying. People sitting on the sidewalk, clothes a rainbow, everyone happy and mellow. This neighborhood lost a lot of its cool when the sixties left. Like a big storm came in off the coast and blew the color and character away.”

“I like the neighborhood fine the way it is.”

Val glanced at the ticking clock on the wall. “Hey, I gotta split, Tommy-boy. They’re advertising two-for-one specials across the street. Dudes there are going to be seriously buzzing, and I need to absorb me some of that. Care to join me? The music’s good. A lot of blues, sometimes some Dylan. You can see this office from the front of the bar.”

Thomas scowled. “I’ve got work to do, Valentino. But thanks.” He felt glued to this place. “I need to research zoning restrictions.”

“Zoning. I can dig that. In the zone. Zoned out. Catch you later, Tommy-boy.” The ghost faded into the floor.

Thomas drifted to the front of the office and held his face to the glass. He imagined that it felt cold, the first of December; it was probably in the mid-forties out there. The fluorescent tubes of light on the bars competed with Christmas lights the owners had strung up in the windows.

The law firm needed more money for a variety of reasons, at the top of the list to keep the building and Pete safe. But also to pay Evelyn and Gretchen fair wages, buy some better equipment … and maybe, just maybe … hire someone to turn the pages of his law books.

Chapter 2.5

Evelyn was out of her apartment and down the stairs as the sun came up. She’d dressed in San Francisco Forty Niners sweats, her most comfortable pair of running shoes, and had her backpack in place and filled to the point the seams were screaming. Jogging with the extra weight would do her good, she thought. She loved to run, but had been too sedentary the past few weeks, alternately chained to her desk in the law office trying to catch up with Thomas on building legislation, in the law library looking for last-ditch measures to stop Arnold, then at her kitchen table studying for her classes. So close to the end of her last semester—two weeks to go before final exams—she couldn’t screw up and risk her grade-point dropping. Evelyn was in pursuit of that perfect 4.0 across the board. Then she’d have the bar exam come February.

It was just next to impossible to fit everything in with her current schedule. Sleep was becoming a luxury she needed to forego.

She shouldn’t be doing this right now. She should be locked in her apartment studying admiralty law, which focused on all maritime concerns—her toughest subject.
Should
be studying. But after watching the gargoyle on Market Street smashed to pebbles, her priorities had shifted.

She had a map in her pocket with several spots circled in red. Some were buildings that had been targeted by Franklin Arnold; all of them had gargoyles. According to Pete, many of the gargoyles in San Francisco were living creatures—particularly the ones carved of green-tinted granite. But he warned that not all of them would animate in front of her.

Evelyn intended to be at her persuasive best.

Normally she let a tune play in her head and set her feet in time with it. But every time she tried to call a song up this morning, even her old standby, “The Beat Goes On,” all she heard was the wrecking ball slamming against the building on Market Street. Her pace was uneven, rushed when stretches of the sidewalk were empty, her shoes slapping irregularly, and the weight of the backpack throwing her off.

Evelyn hadn’t always been such a crusader for OTs. In fact, she’d not given them much thought in her early years. Then she was all about figuring out where her next meal was coming from and how she was going to keep a roof over her mother’s head … at a time when her mother was still around. OTs had only been oddities she’d occasionally spotted on the street.

But since she’d gotten involved with Thomas’s little practice, OTs had come to the forefront. She’d realized just how badly some segments of society discriminated against the OTs, and the notion of discriminating against anyone curled her toenails.

In the back of her mind she saw the wrecking ball swing again.

Two miles later she reached the first circle on the map, an office building with twin gargoyles poised below the lip of the roof. She dug out her digital camera and took a series of pictures, of the building, the ones next to it, then pointed to the very top and zoomed in to catch as much details on the gargoyles as possible. They looked a little like Pete—resembling pictures of goblins from children’s books—similar coloration, but larger, and their visages had a fierceness.

She started toward the door; she’d already cleared it with the owner that she could have roof access. While he wasn’t exactly an OT supporter, he wasn’t opposed to them, and he said Arnold would have to “seriously up his offer” to get this building that had been in the family for so many decades. Evelyn figured Arnold could eventually wear the owner down; money was the ultimate eroding factor. This was one of the structures that had survived the 1906 quake, when eighty percent of the city either crumbled or burned in the fires that raged afterwards. It wasn’t remarkable looking, except for the gargoyles. She wondered if these gargoyles helped keep this structure intact through all the earthquakes.

She hoped they were friendly.

“Show time,” she said. She put on her happy face, tugged on the door handle, and stopped. She looked one way and then the other down the sidewalk, something niggling at her senses. Was she being followed? It had that feel to it, like when she jogged home from class on Thursday nights rather than taking the bus, when someone from the less-than-desirable element of the city fell in step behind her and she sped up to leave them in that proverbial dust. Same feeling, and yet different.

Evelyn scanned the faces, seeing two men that she
thought
she’d spotted after leaving her apartment. She watched them out of the corner of her eye, pretending to be interested in a Christmas display in a window.

They were talking, one pointing to a cell phone and gesturing wildly like he was upset, and then pointing to the other side of the street. They crossed at the intersection.

Her imagination.

She shook it off and the feeling went away, stepped inside, and decided to take the stairs. Nine floors, the workout good for her. She felt the burn in her legs as she jogged with her knees high. At the fourth floor she slowed and adopted a quick walk, her side starting to ache. Have to start back in the routine, she told herself, jogging to and from classes, the cold weather be damned.

She had a slogging pace by the time she reached the ninth floor. There was a collection of offices on this level—one an attorney’s, one an insurance agent’s. An orthodontist took up the largest space. At the end of the hall was an accountant, and she went straight there. The owner said he’d leave a key for the roof with this woman.

Minutes later Evelyn was on top of the building. It was a flat roof covered with a gritty-pebbly-gravel that looked like something she might see at the bottom of a tropical fish aquarium. There was the faint smell of tar, and the finish tugged a little at her shoes.

Great, recently worked on, she realized, and now she’d be wearing part of the tarred roof on her favorite running shoes. She took a few more pictures of the city from this vantage. It looked cleaner and smelled better here, and she could see the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance. She took a few pictures of that—just for herself.

“Hello?” she called as she quietly approached the edge. “Hello? I’m a friend of Pete’s, Permythius, the gargoyle on Haight. And I knew Thurman on Market Street. I—”

Sirens screamed, but not close, and a cracking, grating, snapping sound that made her teeth hurt came from the side of the building. A green-clawed hand gripped the lip of the building, and the gargoyle pulled up and over, swinging easily despite his weight and landing on the roof agile like a monkey. The roof groaned with the impact. Evelyn took more pictures.

“You are the one Thurman spoke of.” The gargoyle stretched itself straight, which put it at almost four feet of emerald green-veined granite. It had one wing, the other a stump, perhaps victim of one of the city’s quakes. “The lady lawyer.”

Evelyn almost corrected him, but decided that since she had the gargoyle talking, she’d press on. “I tried to stop the demolition, but—”

“You did something.” The gargoyle’s features softened, the hard edges smoothing and the eyes widening. He had a round mouth and an extended lower lip, and she suspected he served as a rainspout. His voice was lyrical and pitched like a tenor, reminding her of a recording of Pavarotti she’d recently listened to. “You did something. And that
is
something. No one else tried to do anything.”