Paul Cleave - Collecting Cooper

I bundle up the mess and drop it into a trash bin.

If what Jesse Cartman said is true, then the Twins did this city a service by taking care of some of the trash-the trash being those who faked their illness. But they did the city a disservice by beating on those who were ill, hurting those who couldn’t defend themselves. There’s no excuse for that. After I find Emma Green, I’m going to find those twins.

It’s less than a ten-minute drive to the halfway house. The friendly construction of old places being knocked down and replaced by the new in this part of town hasn’t reached this block of homes, tall miserable-looking state homes with unkempt yards and junked-out cars parked up on front lawns, warped clapboards and twisted fences and dog shit every few feet. The halfway house is a two-story place that hasn’t been quite as neglected as the neighboring properties, the difference being only one third of the fence is missing compared to the others, which are shooting around half. I park opposite it, thankful there’s still five hours of sunlight left; this is one neighborhood I wouldn’t want to be caught in after dark. The house is painted a poor choice of green, the roof a poor choice of red, the front door a poor choice of black. The whole thing would look good in orange; nice large engulfing orange flames. I separate the remaining cash Donovan Green gave me into two one-thousand-dollar piles and fold them into separate pockets. I cross the road and knock on the front door and hope I haven’t just contracted syphilis.

A guy in his midsixties opens it. He’s wearing a white buttoned-up short-sleeve shirt with a black tie and pants and a fedora. He looks like he’s about to head to the track in 1960. There are cigarette burns all up the insides of his arms that look as old as his outfit. His blue eyes burn out from his deeply tanned face and I realize forty years ago this guy would have done well with the ladies. “You lost, son?” he asks, his voice is low and gravely.

“No. I’m. .”

“You the police?”

“Yes.”

“Somebody done something?”

“Yes.”

“What exactly?”

“I need to talk to somebody in charge.”

“I’m in charge.”

“Are you really?”

“We’re all in charge, son. We all have to be in charge of our own lives to take responsibility for ourselves.”

“That’s admirable. Is somebody else here responsible for everybody else besides themselves?”

He starts picking at one of the burns on his arms, but it’s an old burn and he can’t lift any of the scar tissue. No way of telling whether he gave them to himself or had a helping hand. My cell phone starts ringing and I reach into my pocket to mute it.

“The Preacher,” he says.

“The Preacher?”

“That’s not his real name, son, it’s just what we call him.”

“Yeah? Or is that what he calls himself?”

“Both,” he says, smiling. “But I don’t know what started first. I think he’s just always been the Preacher.”

“Can I talk to him?”

“Wait here.”

I stand on the doorstep with the sun beating down on me. I can hear sirens in the distance as an ambulance speeds by a block away, maybe it’s come to the neighborhood to hand out plague vaccinations like an ice-cream truck selling ice cream. Every few seconds a thick drop of sweat tickles my body as it rolls from my armpit. Even in the heat a couple of guys walking their dog out on the street are wearing big black leather jackets with gang patches on the back. The dog is solidly built with short black hair and doesn’t have a tail. Not only does it look like it could rip my throat out, it gives me a look like it really wants to. Long strips of saliva are dangling from its mouth and it starts to growl. The only thing holding it back is a thick leash and a dog collar with small metal spikes decorating it.

“What fuck you staring at, muvafucker?” one of them asks, glancing over at me and slowing down.

I turn back to the door, hoping it will be enough for them, but it’s not. I hear the dog growling from a few meters behind me. They’ve come to the fence line. I take a quick glance back. Both men look like they weigh at least a hundred kilograms each, fat and muscle compacted beneath tattoo-covered skin. I imagine they do okay with the ladies too-but not where the ladies have any say in the matter. I knock on the door again.

“Hey, hey, fuck-knuckle,” one of them shouts.

It’s one of those common situations that people get caught up in all the time in this city on their way to becoming a statistic. Just random shit like this, and it pisses me off, and I feel like taking the gun out of my pocket and giving Christchurch some spring-cleaning.

“Hey, muvafucker, you got a problem with us?” the other one asks.

“You fucking deaf?” the first one says.

I check the door. It’s unlocked, so I step into the halfway house and close the door behind me. A glass bottle smashes against the porch and the two men keep yelling at me, but after a few seconds their yells turn to laughter, then the laughter fades as they carry on their way.

The hallway smells of body odor and cigarette smoke so strong that the actual house needs to take a shower. It branches off to a couple of bedrooms to the left and right, the doors to all of them closed so there isn’t much light hitting the hallway. There’s a staircase heading up to the right, and ahead is a large, open-plan kitchen. There aren’t any paintings on the walls, no pictures anywhere, no plants. I head into the kitchen. The guy with the cigarette burns up his arms is talking to a guy in a pair of flared trousers with holes in the knees, and a buttoned-up black shirt with a large, pointed collar. It must be button-shirt day at the house. He looks like he picked one favorite item of clothing from each decade and chose today to test the ensemble. They both look over at me.

“You’re the Preacher?” I ask.

“You’re the cop?” he asks back.

“Detective Inspector,” I say.

“Got a badge?”

“It’s in the car.”

“That why you didn’t flash it to the guys with the dog?”

“I could have flashed a sword and they wouldn’t have cared. I’m here to talk about one of the men who stays here.”

The Preacher is in his fifties, perhaps almost as much as sixty. He has a boxer’s nose and cauliflower ears and a blink rate that’s thirty percent as often as anybody I’ve ever met, which is a little unnerving-it’s like talking to somebody who’s trying to hypnotize you. He has dark hair and a lot of it, not just on his head, but thick curly hair up his arms and sticking out from the gaps between his shirt buttons. He nods toward cigarette burn guy who then wanders off, leaving us alone in the kitchen. All of the utensils are mismatched, probably from city-mission donations over the years. The only matching things in the room are a pair of holes in one of the walls, perhaps created by somebody’s head. Otherwise nothing has a twin-different types of mugs, no matching chairs, different light fittings, random drawer handles.

“We make do with what we have,” he says, watching me look around, his blink rate still slow. “We get very little government support, and we rely on the kindness of others, and like you know, there ain’t much kindness left to go around in this world. I’m the Preacher,” he says, holding out his hand.

I take it, expecting it to be strong, and it is. I keep an eye on the hair on his wrist in case it’s after more real estate.

“Coffee?”

“No, thank you.”

“Not a bad decision,” he says. “It’s bad for you, and I’m addicted to it, but many addictions are bad for you, wouldn’t you say?”

“I’m looking for somebody.”