Page 23 of Fish in a Barrel
It was impossible to tell anybody’s age, and Jackson knew that the “bathrooms” had to be nearby, because every now and then a gust of wind picked up the smell of human waste and threw the stench back over the huddled humans who had nowhere else to go.
Jackson hadn’t been planning to hang around the firepit—he wasn’t going to get anywhere asking any questions, particularly since he didn’t know Cody Gabriel’s name undercover. But maybe if he started asking about the guy who got the chick in the park, he might get answers. He was suddenly unsure of his ability to find the guy on thisparticularnight without help.
And then he tripped over him.
He went sprawling into the mud, which was crusted with cigarette butts and old food wrappers, and tried not to retch like a baby as he pulled himself up. Then he turned to see what had caught his foot, and he realized it was a man, not hiding under a tent, not curled onto a mat—only a man crouching on a tiny section of concrete, arms wrapped around his knees.
“I’m sorry, brother,” Jackson murmured, squatting down in front of the guy to make sure he wasn’t hurt. In the light from the firepit, Jackson could see that he was dirty—as were they all, including Jackson, now—but relatively young. His beard was scraggly, his hair was probably light brown when it was clean, and it was down past his shoulders and hung in tangles. His cheeks were hollow, and so were his eyes, and he looked at Jackson with mute appeal.
“I don’t know my name,” he whispered. “Can you tell me my name?”
Jackson hissed. High. High as a kite. But so sad. So lost. Jackson only had Annette Frazier’s description to go on, but nobody was listening that he could see.
“Cody?” he asked softly. “Cody Gabriel?”
And Cody Gabriel lowered his face into the cave of his arms and started to cry softly.
Jackson drew in close to him, looping an arm over his shoulders. “How you doin’, brother?”
“I’m lost,” he sobbed. “So lost. I can’t find my way home.”
“You’re close enough to walk,” Jackson told him. “Look up. Look past the fence. Do you see it?”
“I can’t go back,” Cody hiccupped. “I can’t. I’ve… I’ve done things. They told me to do things. And I couldn’t. And I had to. And I’m so lost.”
Oh Lord. “Brother, if you stand up, we can go get you cleaned up. I’ll get you someplace warm. Get you something to eat. We can find your way home.”
“They’ll kill me,” he said, taking a shaky breath.
“I’ll protect you. I swear.”
Cody looked up and blinked hard, seeming to see Jackson for the first time. “Whoareyou?” he asked, his voice growing clearer.
“That’s complicated.” Jackson winked. “But don’t worry. We’ll get there. First let’s get you out of the rain.”
Cody wiped his nose across the back of his hand, which looked like it had seen a lot of that action. “Okay,” he said, compliant as a child. “I’m so cold.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I bet you are. C’mon.”
Together they stood, and Jackson looked around again, afraid maybe their conversation and activity had been noted by the other campers.
Buttheyweren’t the ones causing a ripple. Jackson heard the low mutter of conversation and the buzz of excitement almost the same time he smelled the exhaust of a poorly maintained diesel-run bus. And then he saw the figures, made more ominous in the rain, silhouetted by the pink of the soda lamps: beat cops in rain ponchos, strolling through the encampment, swinging their collapsible batons casually, as though just making sure they were handy.
“C’mon,” they urged. “Get out of the rain. Gather your things. We’ve got a hot meal for you if you get on the bus. Get up, there,” and the tap—not brutal, but very, very clear—with the club. “Get yourself up. Food and shelter on the bus. Everybody up.”
They were being nice. Too nice. Jackson had heard cops talk to the homeless too, and they were brutal. Inhuman. No empathy, no carrot before the stick.
Jackson remembered the power-washed pavilion in Harmony Park and how there hadn’t been a hint of an encampment in the last week.
“Oh God,” Cody whispered. “Don’t let them see me. Don’t let them see me. They know me.”
Jackson nodded and wrapped one arm around Cody’s shoulders while he pulled his hood and hat over his face with the other hand, checking that his earbud was in place as he did so. He knew them too, from court this last week. Engall Goslar was the tall one—the one who had probably told Cody to cause a ruckus at the homeless camp. Freddy McMurphy was he blond one, the one who’d probably been going to shoot the dog. The one who had whined about Ezekiel “resisting arrest” when Arizona called him on it. With them were the other two policemen who’d been on the list of witnesses for the prosecution—Neil Freethy and Keith Brown, in their thirties, medium builds, brown hair, brown eyes, just average everyday white boys with badges and batons, trying to herd the entire homeless encampment onto two buses that were sitting by the curb.
Jackson kept his arm around Cody and kept their faces hidden, looking for a way around the buses through the crowd of tired, wet, miserable people moving toward a heated place to sleep. Every time he tried to steer them through a gap in the crowd, another cop would show up. At one point, Engall Goslar himself sneered at Jackson, apparently taking the arm around Cody’s shoulder for romance.
“C’mon, you two. You can screw when we get where we’re going. Get on the bus. Food and shelter on the bus. Get your asses over.”
Jackson thought for a moment he was busted, but then he realized Goslar wasn’t really looking at his face. At the dirt and mud crusted on his old clothes, yes, but not at his face.