All this suggested to Shaky that the person who had called in the killing, and the person who had taken the money and rifled Jude’s belongings, were one and the same, and it seemed to Shaky that it might well be one of their own, a street person. One of the city’s homeless had either stumbled across Jude’s sleeping place by accident or, more likely, had gone looking for Jude to begin with. The word was out: Jude was calling in his loans. He needed money. The unknown person could have been seeking out Jude in order to pay his debts, but equally there were those on the street who would not be above hunting Jude down in order to steal whatever cash he had managed to accumulate. It didn’t matter: either way someone had found Jude hanging in that basement, and looted his belongings in the shadow of his corpse.
Shaky well knew that $127 was a lot of money for someone who struggled by on a couple of bucks a day. The instinct would be to celebrate: booze or perhaps something stronger; and fast food – bought, not scavenged. Alcohol and narcotics made people careless. Rumors would start to circulate that one of their own had enjoyed a windfall.
By the time he returned to his tent at Back Cove Park, Shaky had a name.
Brightboy.
18
The next morning Shaky didn’t join the line for breakfast at the shelter. He kept his distance and fingered the note in his pocket. It had been pinned to the bulletin board at Preble Street. The detective wanted to talk. Shaky had memorized the number, but he still kept the note, just in case. He knew that the years on the streets had raddled his brain. He would sometimes look at a clock face, and see the hands pointing at the numbers, and be unable to tell the time. He could be in a store, the price of a six-pack or a bottle of liquor clear to read on the sign, his change laid out in his hand ready to pay, and fail to make the connection between the cost of the booze and the money in his possession.
Now, as he stood in the shelter of a doorway on Cumberland Avenue, he repeated the cell phone number over and over to himself. He had considered calling the detective and telling him what he knew, but he wanted to be sure. He wanted to present the detective with hard evidence. He wanted to prove himself, both for his own sake and for Jude’s, so he stood in the shadows and watched his fellow homeless gather for breakfast.
It didn’t take him long to spot Brightboy. He arrived shortly before eight, his pack on his back. Shaky’s keen eyes were drawn to Brightboy’s boots. They were tan Timberlands, better than what Brightboy usually wore. It was possible that he’d found them, but equally they were the kind of Goodwill purchase that even a moron like Brightboy might have the sense to make while he had money in his pocket. A good pair of boots would keep your feet warm and dry, and make days spent walking the streets a little easier. He watched Brightboy exchange greetings with those whom he knew, but for the most part he kept to himself. Brightboy had always been a loner, partly out of choice but also because he couldn’t be trusted. There were those with whom one could leave a pack and know that it would be safely looked after, that its contents would not be searched and its valuables – socks, underwear, a candy bar, a can opener, a permanent water bottle – looted. Brightboy was not such a man, and he had taken beatings in the past for his thievery.
Shaky had learned that Brightboy had been on a drunken tear these last few days, and a serious one too: Mohawk 190 Grain Alcohol and Old Crow bourbon, bottle after bottle of it. As was his way, Brightboy had declined to share the contents of his portable liquor cabinet. Had he done so, there might not have been quite so many whispers of discontent.
Shaky didn’t follow Brightboy into the shelter, but instead waited on the street and nibbled on a bagel from the previous day’s bake. Shaky was known in most of the city’s bakeries and coffee shops, and rarely left them without having something to eat pressed upon him. He was careful to spread his lack of custom evenly, and by now he had his weekly routine down: this place on Monday morning, this one Tuesday, this one Wednesday … They had grown to expect him, and if he missed a visit questions would be asked of him when he returned. What happened? Were you ill? You doing okay? Shaky always answered honestly. He never played sick when he wasn’t, and he never lied. He didn’t have very much, which made retaining some semblance of dignity and honor all the more important.
Brightboy emerged an hour later. Shaky knew that he’d have eaten, and used the bathroom. He would probably have half a bagel or a piece of toast wrapped in a napkin in his pocket for later. Shaky let Brightboy get some distance ahead of him, then followed. When Brightboy stopped to talk to a woman known as Frannie at Congress Square Park, Shaky slipped into the Starbucks across the street and took a seat at the window. With his damaged arm, and the slight stoop that came with it, he felt like the unlikeliest spy in the world. Undercover Elephant would have been less conspicuous. It was fortunate that it was Brightboy he was following. Brightboy was dumb and self-absorbed. He was nearly as bad as the regular folk in his failure to notice what was going on around him.
Portland was changing. The old Eastland Hotel was being renovated by a big chain – Shaky had lost count of the number of new hotels and restaurants the city had added in recent years – and it looked like part of Congress Park, the old plaza at Congress and High, would be sold to the hotel’s new owners. A Dunkin’ Donuts had once stood at the corner of Congress Park, and it became a gathering spot for the city’s homeless, but it was long gone now. The businesses that had occupied the space over the years sometimes seemed to Shaky as transient as some of those who frequented its environs. Over the years it had been a laundry, a Walgreens, the Congress Square Hotel and, way back, a wooden row house. Now it was a brick-and-concrete space with a sunken center and a few planting beds, where people like Brightboy and Frannie could conduct their business.
Brightboy’s encounter with Frannie ended with the woman screaming abuse at him, and Brightboy threatening to punch her lights out. Shaky wished him luck. Frannie had been on the streets for a decade or more, and Shaky didn’t even want to think about the kind of treatment she’d endured and survived in that time. The story was that she’d once bitten off the nose of a man who’d tried to rape her. This was subsequently described as an exaggeration: she hadn’t bitten off all of his nose, said those who knew of such matters, just the cartilage below the nasal bone. Shaky figured that it must have taken her a while because Frannie didn’t have more than half a dozen teeth in her head worth talking about. He had a vision of her holding on to the guy by his ears, gnawing away at him with her jagged shards. It gave him the shivers.
He kept after Brightboy for two hours, watching him search for coins in pay phones and around parking meters, and halfheartedly rummaging through garbage cans for bottles and soda cans to redeem. At the intersection of Congress and Deering Avenue Brightboy took a detour on Deering past Skip Murphy’s sober house. He lingered outside for a time, although Shaky didn’t know why. Skip’s only accepted those who were in full-time employment, or students with some form of income. More to the point, it only took in those who actually wanted to improve themselves, and Brightboy’s best chance of improving himself lay in dying. Maybe he knew someone in there, in which case the poor bastard in question would be well advised to give Brightboy a wide berth, because Shaky wouldn’t have put it past Brightboy to try and drag someone who had embarked on a twelve-step back down to his own level. It was the only reason why Brightboy might offer to share a drink. Misery loved company, but damnation needed it.