The survivor

Eighty-Four

Striker watched Felicia drive away, south towards Hastings Street. When the roar of the Crown Vic faded, the sound of the wind became more prominent, howling between the burned framing of the house.

Striker spotted the old woman peering out between the drapes again. She pretended not to see him, then slowly backed away from the window. This time, Striker knew he had something. He used his cell to call Info, queried the address, and discovered there were numerous calls to her residence — all of them labelled as EDP.

An Emotionally Disturbed Person.

Commonplace for this area.

He headed up the block. By the time he had crossed the street and made it to her lot, the curtains were pulled shut and the interior and exterior lights were turned off. From here, the house looked empty, abandoned. And it gave him the creeps.

He took the stairs two at a time until he came flush with an old screen door. It let loose a creaky protest as he swung it open and knocked three times. He’d barely finished the knock when the door opened and a tiny old woman stood in the doorway.

She was an even five foot and about one hundred pounds. Her rail-thin body had a look that suggested she was either on the way out of this world, or suffering from crack addiction, and her face was deeply lined with wrinkles. The three coats of make-up that plastered her skin were thick and oily.

‘Hello,’ Striker said.

‘Hello, Officer,’ she replied, her voice smoker-rough. ‘I’m Phyllis. I’ve been expecting you.’

Five minutes later, Striker stood inside a crowded living room that stank of decade-old cigarette smoke and mustiness. The walls were now smoker’s-teeth yellow, and everywhere he looked, ashtrays full of cigarette butts covered the tables.

He tried to ignore them and looked around the room. Old newspapers were piled up high in every corner, as were mountains of rocks and artistic stacks of Diet Pepsi cans. The sofas were brown, sat in an L-formation, and were covered in a clear plastic so old it was cracked and discoloured. When Phyllis offered him a seat, Striker politely declined and remained standing. He moved left, nearer the window, and knocked over another stack of Diet Pepsi cans.

He looked up at Phyllis, forced an embarrassed smile. ‘I’m sorry.’

Phyllis picked up the cans, restacked them. ‘Diet Pepsi, kid. Nectar of the fucking gods.’

‘Not a Coke fan?’

She humphed. ‘Coke? That stuff is shit. Know why? It’s not the original — all they did was steal the Diet Pepsi formula, ’cause they knew it was better than the poison they were selling. They stole it and they renamed it Coke Zero. Read that in one of those supermarket papers.’

Striker nodded. ‘There sure is a lot of information out there nowadays, isn’t there?’

Phyllis lit up a smoke, inhaled deeply. ‘Coke fuckin’ Zero. Pfft! Know why they call it Coke Zero? ’Cause only a zero would drink it!’

‘Hey, I hate the shit.’

Phyllis gave him a queer look, as if trying to either believe or disbelieve his words. Finally, she shrugged like she didn’t care one way or the other and brushed her skin-and-bones fingers through her long, yellow-grey hair.

‘So I know why you’re here, Sugar. Came ’bout that fire, I betcha.’

Striker’s interest piqued. ‘Bang on, Phyllis. You see it?’

‘Damn right I saw it. Big production. All them firemen runnin’ round with their big hoses and their big red machine. Smoke was so bad it turned the entire neighbourhood into a black cloud. Stunk up the place worse than the chicken choppers down the street. Then the cops came and they tried to make me leave, but I wouldn’t go. Said I was the last house on this block, I did, and I’d be keeping it that way till the day I die.’

‘Well, hopefully that won’t be any time soon.’

She took a long drag on her cigarette. ‘Soon enough, Chuckles. Know how old I am? Ninety-two. Ninety-two goddam years old, and I been smoking Camels for seventy years and using aspartame for forty. Been drinking Diet Pepsi! Tell that to those organic-loving granolas!’

‘Drinking Diet Pepsi, not that Coke Zero shit.’

She nodded. ‘Fuckin’ Coke Zero. Always trying to make it look like their recipe is such a big secret when all it is is fuckin’ caramel and water! Everyone knows that. Except in the old days when they tried to hook everyone with the cocaine they put in it.’ She snorted once, dropped her half-smoked cigarette into the ashtray, then took out a bright pink plastic tube. ‘Damn cigarettes always wipe off my lipstick.’ She put on another smear, lit up another cigarette, then took a long drag.

Striker looked at the ashtray full of pink goo and cigarette butts, and shuddered. ‘So about the fire… can you tell me if there was anything unusual about it?’

‘Everything down here’s unusual. Makes the unusual look usual, know what I mean?’

‘Sadly, yes I do. Did you know your neighbours before the fire?’

‘Neighbours? Ha! If you can call them that. Never saw them, not once. They always came in the back lane. I heard them though. Always coming in with those big delivery trucks. Sometimes twice a day.’

‘Twice a day?’ Striker tried to sound casual. ‘You ever see what they dropped off?’

‘Who knows? Shoulda been fire extinguishers. Ha!’

Striker grinned. ‘For sure. Not that it would’ve done a whole lot of good. That was a pretty bad fire.’

‘The second one was.’

Striker gave her a hard look. ‘Second one?’

‘Yeah. The second fire. There were two, you know. First one happened earlier in the night — five, maybe six hours earlier — just a little bit of smoke coming out the window, the front one there. But they got it under control. Police came anyway, and the next thing you know, people are being taken out and the entire place is roped off.’

‘Roped off?’

‘Yeah, yellow tape everywhere.’

‘Crime scene.’

‘Sure, whatever. The whole place shuts down, and you think the show is over. But naaaw-aaahh. Suddenly, the cops’re back, hauling shit outta there. Then there’s another fire — the real one this time — and the whole place goes up. Fuckin’ whooosh!’ Phyllis let out a loud phlegmy cough, took another drag on her smoke, then reached for more lipstick. After smearing it on, she continued, ‘All I know is, someone musta fucked something up real bad, because soon after that, we got the City out here and the entire place is condemned.’

Striker let her finish talking, and he was glad when she reached for another cigarette. The momentary silence gave him a chance to think things over. So he had been right. There had been two fires, hence the two calls. But the two calls had been written up under one file number, then linked. Interesting, but just that. It still left too many unanswered questions. He looked out the window at the blackened shell just down the road.

‘You ever wonder what they were bringing out of there, Phyllis?’

‘You mean, the people that used to live there before the fire? Or the cops after the fire?’

Striker frowned. ‘Both.’

‘No, and I don’t rightfully care.’ She downed her Diet Pepsi, pulled another one from the mini-fridge beside her chair, then cracked open the tab. ‘But one guy did.’

Striker blinked. ‘One guy?’

‘Yeah. The one guy who kept coming round here. Chinaman. Hard face. Real thin.’

‘When did he first come around?’

‘Oh… right after the first fire. And he waited for a long time, just over there.’ She pointed her knobby finger out the window, to a small patch of bushes that ran between two auto-body shops. ‘Stood there in the shadows for hours, just watching everything.’

Striker thought this over. ‘So to clarify, he got there after the first fire had started, and watched it burn?’

‘Yes. Well, it was already going when I saw him.’

Striker nodded. ‘And he stayed long afterwards, till after the second fire?’

‘Yeah. In fact, he stayed there till after the place had burned down. Just watching. Always watching.’

Striker absently rubbed the skin of his left hand, where the acid had splashed him. The skin around his fingers was raw, swollen. ‘You ever tell the cops about this guy?’

‘Nope.’

‘Why not?’

‘No one asked.’

Striker let this go without comment. ‘And then what? He just leave?’

‘Yup.’

‘You ever see him again?’

‘Sure. He come right back the next day. Musta spent, oh, two, three hours in the house there, just lookin’ at things.’

‘Things?’

‘Yeah, you know, in the house. Lookin’ at the walls, the floor, the ceiling. Seemed like he was lookin’ for something real specific, trying to figure things out. Like a Chinese fuckin’ Matlock.’ She sipped her Diet Pepsi and shook her head. ‘I dunno, I’m just an old woman, what do I know?’

Striker felt a twitter in his chest. Nervousness. Excitement. Hard to define. He took out his BlackBerry and brought up the images of Tran Sang Soone and Shen Sun Soone he’d downloaded from Ibarra back at the Strike Force HQ. When the images were completed, he held the phone up for Phyllis to see the screen.

‘Look familiar?’

She put on her glasses, pointed at the second image — the one of Shen Sun Soone. ‘Yep, that’s him.’

Striker put the BlackBerry away. ‘Thanks, Phyllis, really, you’ve been a great help.’ He headed for the door, stopped, handed her a business card. ‘You mind if I come back if I have any more questions?’

‘Come anytime, darlin’.’

Striker gave her the thumbs-up. ‘Fuck Coke,’ he said.

‘Amen to that, Chuckles.’

He left Phyllis alone in the room with her pink lipstick and Diet Pepsi, and closed the door behind him.