Pigeon Blood

CHAPTER FIVE: A Small Price to Pay

  Blair took the second blow with a terrific grunt. “Awww,” he moaned, rolling over onto his stomach. Lifting his aching head, he found the backlit image of a police officer towering over him.

  “Get moving, rummy,” the patrolman said, his voice booming in Blair’s sensitive ears. “Pick up your stuff and get on your feet.”

  Whenever the officer stepped to one side, the sun behind him was blinding. Blair felt stiff and sore, and his head was spinning. He tried to stand up but only managed to stumble back into a sitting position again.

  “Come on, come on,” the policeman insisted. “Get up!”

  “All right, I’m getting up,” Blair said, dusting off his suit pants and then looking around for Horace. Horace was long gone.

  “Go to a shelter next time,” the officer said. “Don’t sleep on the street.”

  “The shelter was filled up,” Blair said, finally able to see the man’s face and badge. The sunlight forced him to squint as he read the name Follen on the man’s uniform.

  “Do whatever you can to get into one next time,” Officer Follen said. “Don’t you go sleeping on my beat.” Obviously the officer was a man who took his job seriously, perhaps a bit too seriously. His collar was tight around his neck. So tight, in fact, that it squeezed his neck up and out into a two-inch, fiery red mass. Perhaps that was why he was so easily agitated.

  Follen’s black shoes were meticulously polished, as was his belt buckle. Everything he needed was strapped around his waist: a set of handcuffs, a walkie-talkie, and a can of mace; a nightstick, a flashlight, and a whistle. His pistol was at the ready, the butt of which was worn from either hours of practice, daily use on the job, or both. Either prospect was enough to make Blair extremely vigilant when dealing with the man.

  Blair collected his things as quickly as he could. Officer Connery was the man who usually patrolled this section of town, but for some reason he had this Officer Follen standing in for him. Maybe Connery was on vacation or something. Blair had a great deal of respect for Connery because he always tried to help those less fortunate. With so much crime in the city, Blair hoped that ill fortune hadn’t befallen the poor fellow.

  “Where’s Officer Connery?” Blair asked, pulling his jacket closed with trembling hands. “Why isn’t he walking the beat today?”

  “They rotate us around,” Officer Follen replied, glancing at Blair for no longer than necessary; a dead shade of blue, his eyes were those of a man who had lost all hope for people who’d fallen so far from the social graces.

  Follen got a call from a dispatcher on his walkie-talkie, so he picked it up and answered the woman. Apparently someone was having trouble breathing in a restaurant nearby. After responding, Follen gave Blair another move-it-along look. Blair complied, raising his hands.

  As Blair turned away from the patrolman and walked down the street, he thought a lot about the dream he’d had the night before. He was curious to find out how much of it had actually happened and how much had been made up in his mind. Two people had in fact been murdered, but what of his conversation with Mercedes? How could he sit next to someone for what had to be at least fifteen minutes and not remember most of the conversation?

  Blair felt a tickling sensation so he paused, putting two fingers against his neck and then pulling away a grub. It was lively and plump, and its wormlike body writhed around Blair’s finger as if finding an old friend. Tossing it aside, Blair realized that he felt nauseous, almost on the verge of vomiting. His head was pounding; of the many migraines he’d ever had, this one was the granddaddy of them all.

  After finding a newspaper dispenser, he stooped down to read the headlines: “Two Found Bludgeoned to Death on Baker.” As Blair read on, the article mentioned that one of the victims was indeed Dr. Cynthia Maxwell, Dr. Calvin Maxwell’s daughter. Despite his foggy mind, the name Cal Maxwell was all too familiar to Blair. He had worked for Calvin part-time for almost two years after graduating from dental school.

  Cal’s only child, Cynthia had been in the dental class ahead of Blair. There was a time when Blair believed that he was in love with Cynthia, but he was unable to persuade her to leave her boyfriend, a classmate named Vinnie Moorland. Not only had Blair and Vinnie been involved with the same girl, but Blair’s senior year got off to a shitty start because he and Vinnie had been assigned to the same dorm room.

  As Blair continued to read the article, he found out that a Kevin Massey had been murdered with Cynthia. Now this Kevin had been an employee of Best Burger, an establishment just four blocks from where the murders had taken place.

  It was curious to read that Kevin hadn’t worked on the night he was murdered, and his apartment was a lengthy walk from Baker Street. Had he gone there to pick up his check? Even Blair knew that Best Burger wasn’t open at two-thirty in the morning. There were no bars or dance clubs in the area, and no movie theaters. There were a few eating places, but all of them were closed by then.

  So what the hell was he doing there?

  Maybe he had gone there to meet Cynthia.

  Although Blair was feeling quite sick, he went into a fast food restaurant and ordered some biscuits and eggs for breakfast. The coffee was strong and black. He still had almost five dollars left over from the twenty, which was more than enough to cover the tab.

  After forcing himself to eat as much as he could, Blair stuffed a leftover biscuit slice in his pocket and then went into the bathroom to relieve himself. As he did, he glanced into a mirror and was surprised to see how red his nose and cheeks were. He liked to think that he’d just gotten too much sun, but he knew better. It was a thing called spider angioma, or gin blossoms to the layman. A small price to pay for an overindulgence with the drink of kings.

  Blair tried to make himself more presentable by washing his face. He cupped his hands and drank lots of water from the faucet, but he was still thirsty. Dirt was crusted on the sleeves of his jacket, and the chalk stripes could hardly be seen anymore, fading in with the rust-colored background. Without a razor, he couldn’t do anything about his beard, so he just made sure that it was clean. His hair insisted on sticking up in the back, but otherwise it looked much neater than usual; a receding hairline didn’t always calm disheveled hair. On the way out, he spared five cents for a couple of breath mints and then left the restaurant.