Finding Wally was harder than I had expected. I burned a whole day and a full tank of gas searching for him. I should have given up that first afternoon and looked for another lead, but I had gotten myself hitched to the idea of finding him.
Wally moved around a lot and the best anyone could tell me was a guess, so I had to drive past all the likely spots. I checked under bridges, down alleys, and wherever I knew criminals to gather. I even checked a few dingy dives just in case Wally had a few coins jangling in his pocket. I kept myself sober despite the temptation, but did pick up a pint of whiskey while I passed through a liquor store Wally was known to shoplift from.
It was late Saturday evening when I finally found the bastard near the Gutter, where many smokestacks pumped out a persistent cloud and noxious fumes floated just above the poisoned water. The feathery miasma of mingled pollutants left a sheen of sweat on every surface.
I saw Wally beyond a ragged chain-link fence, huffing and puffing at a junction box on the side of a derelict electric relay station. The unrelenting bath of humidity had caused components to corrode, meaning they needed to build a new station further inland. The move had cost millions and left many poor families without power for weeks on end, but the ones calling the shots didn’t think twice.
Wally had come to take his revenge by mining its resources. The ripped-up fence said others had tried before him, but Wally was determined. He had a pair of garden shears, a rusty crowbar, and a can-do-spirit. The first two definitely hadn’t been his that morning.
After I saw Wally, I circled the block once and pulled up to the curb. It was about as dangerous a neighborhood as you could find in Hot Type City, but I left Dolores running. If someone made off with her, I’d find her stalled out at the next intersection. Getting her to the junkyard without knowing all the tricks to keep her running would be near impossible.
Wally was absorbed with the delicate larceny, and he didn’t look up. I reached for the glove box, but thought better of it. Wally was a degenerate coward, but he wasn’t the violent type. He also knew me well enough to know I had nothing worth stealing that didn’t require surgery to take out.
I opened the door gently. I would’ve needed to slam it to set the latch, so I left it ajar. Wally wouldn’t hurt me, but it didn’t mean he would stick around to chat if he got spooked.
I walked down the length of the fence until I found a tear bigger than a doggy door and ducked through. The yard was strewn with the evidence of punks who had squatted there—broken bottles, cigarette butts, fast food wrappers, and a thick coat of graffiti over any surface porous enough to hold spray paint.
Wally grunted as he wedged the end of his pry bar into the cover of an electrical box and shifted his weight back onto his tail to get leverage. His sleeves were rolled up and fresh sweat spread out from his chest and under his armpits, adding another front to the tides of yellow stains. He had thrown his coat, which was more patch than fabric, and scuffed-up hat onto a loose tangle of copper wire next to him. I pictured him dragging the whole wad down the street, trying to find a buyer between heaves and hops.
The rusty panel gave way, and he fell forward as it clattered to the ground. He caught himself by shoving his hand into the mess of cables inside, then stood straight, stretching his back with a firecracker barrage from his spine. He wiped his bared wrist across his forehead as he twisted from side to side, but jumped when he saw me.
He scrabbled to find a more casual pose, drawing more attention to his malfeasance. When he was still again, he leaned on the crowbar like a gentleman’s cane and crossed one leaf-spring leg over the other.
“Good afternoon, officer.” His freehand reached toward his crown, and he looked surprised when there was no hat to tip.
“Jesus Christ, man. Your brain really is fried.”
“Oh shit, hey there, Howl.” Wally’s smirk shifted, and he stood straighter now that he didn’t have to pretend he wasn’t up to no good. “I thought you were someone else.”
“Sure,” I said. “And you’re exactly who I thought. Come on, we need to talk.”
“Sorry, Howl. Got my hands full here. Maybe another time… Unless you can make it worth my while.”
“Or I could turn this into a headache for you,” I said, gesturing around.
He called my bluff and shrugged, then he traded his crowbar for the garden shears. He jammed them into the panel at random, chopping and rocking.
“Sorry, bribing scummy wallabies isn’t in my budget for this case. Lucky for me, you’re already wrapped up in it. Why don’t you tell me what you know? I can make sure the police don’t come knocking.”
Wally groaned and his arms shook while he squeezed the shears. A few strands of the braided cable caught in the pincer gave way then the rest followed with a metallic snap. Wally lurched forward again, and his tail flicked out to keep him balanced.
“I’ll take my chances,” he said, inspecting the free end of severed cable while he caught his breath and geared up to cut the other.
I hated bargaining with a creep like Wally, but it was the only way to get him to talk. The years of working as a CI had spoiled him, taught him information wasn’t supposed to be cheap.
“Fine, then. Why don’t I give you a ride to wherever you were planning on dumping all that shit.” I gestured at the pile of wire in the dirt beside him, bunched up like used dental floss. “Maybe we talk a bit on the way.”
“All right, all right, give me a minute.” He dug his ersatz bolt cutter back into the electrical box. Before he started reaming on it again, I cleared my throat. I wasn’t shy about the gravel I put into it so it almost sounded like a bark.
Wally jerked his tool back out.
“Maybe this will change your mind.”
He recoiled when I reached into my coat, but his eyes lit up as soon as I pulled out the whiskey. By the way he reacted, you would have thought the swill was vintage Dom Pérignon.
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I was going to let him drag his junk to Dolores by himself, but it took too long. Wally was a little guy with a big appetite for a quick buck. I let him take it a few hops on his own, but I gave him a hand when the uncanny feeling I was being watched returned.
I didn’t see Marcella anywhere, nor did I see a black Cadillac. If I saw wheels like that here, where most people drove cans almost as rickety as Dolores, it really would be a reason for concern. I was just anxious, pressed to find the kid as soon as possible.
The key to the trunk had broken off in the lock years ago, so I opened it with my thumbnail. Springs were meant to lift the lid as soon as it unlatched, but they were rusted all to shit. I had to fight them to get it open.
Together Wally and I wrangled his knot of wires in, but it was sweaty work in the nauseating heat of Dolores’s exhaust.
We had to compress the metallic wad into a diamond to get the lid down and latched, but we managed with both our weight combined. I got in the driver’s seat and let Wally figure out the enigma of the passenger side door on his own, taking a second to plot our course.
When Wally finally got in, he sawed the door back and forth, trying to close it. I got a waft of his scent with each pump and a blast of it when he slammed the door shut. He was ripe to be sure, but I didn’t have a leg to stand on. I hadn’t bathed in days either, and I’m sure I smelled almost as bad.
I put Dolores into drive, but I didn’t take my foot off the brake. Wally looked around the interior like it was a spaceship. He checked out the cluster of dials on the dashboard, the roof lining that sagged like an old crone’s neck wattle, and the busted radio, still crackling with something that would almost be recognizable as jazz if I turned it up. I got his attention before he found the glove compartment.
“Seatbelt.”
He looked at me, then at the strap over his right shoulder, confused.
“Come on, Howl,” he said. “I don’t think this hunk of junk can reach terminal velocity.”
“That’s not—” I shook my head and got Dolores moving. Wally had gone this far in his life not knowing what terminal velocity meant, I wasn’t about to teach him. I didn’t invite him out for an impromptu physics class, and it wasn’t why he had agreed to come. It took him until the first stop sign to remember that.
“Hey, where’d that whiskey go?”
I needed him to think straight and would have preferred we talk fist, but a deal was a deal. Besides, sometimes the only time men like Wally could think straight was when they had a few splashes of the good stuff to stifle the fires in their heads.
I handed him the bottle. He cracked the seal practically before it was out of my hand and attacked it with a hearty guzzle. When he realized how quickly he was taking it down, he pulled the bottle away from his lips with a thunk then let out a deep.
I let him indulge in a few more sips. They kept him busy while I mounted the ramp to the Loop, a section of H-5 that circled the commercial district with lots of offshoots for trucks to get on and avoid the gridlock of I-18 downtown. At this time of night, freight traffic was low, and I could circle around and around for as long as I liked. Wally wouldn’t be able to weasel out until I let him.
“All right, Wally,” I said once I’d settled in and got Dolores as close to seventy as her whiny, coughing motor would go. “I think you know why I came looking for you. Now talk.”
Wally stopped with the quarter-full bottle almost up to his lips. “Shit, Howl. I swear to God I thought she was eighteen. Broad said she was going to be on the cover of Barnyard in April. How was I supposed to know it was a birthday exclusive?”
“Jesus fuck,” I said, a shiver shaking my upper body. “I don’t want to know about that. I’m talking about Ethan Calhoun.”
“Oh, thank Chr—” Wally started to say, then sat up straight again, more nervous than before.
“You know him?” I asked.
“Might’ve seen him around a time or two.”
“Seems like you’ve been spending a lot of time around kids lately. Something the cops should know about?”
“No, Howl, come on. It’s not like that. The girl was—”
I held up my hand to stop him from rambling. He licked his lips, then took another pull from the bottle. “Ethan Calhoun? When did you see him last?”
“What’s got you so curious?” Wally asked. “That old fox of a mother finally find out he got booted from school?”
“I’m sure the police mentioned it to her.”
Wally stopped admiring his bottle for a second and cocked his head at me like a curious spaniel.
“Kid went missing,” I said. “For all I know, you were the last person to see him alive. Or at least the only one who didn’t end up taking a dirt nap himself.”
Wally gulped. It was hard to get down without a shot of liquor, but the bottle squeezed under his white knuckles was the only thing keeping him anchored. “What happened?”
“I suppose you don’t find yourself with two spare bits for the morning paper most days, do you?” I said. “Seems someone snatched the kid. Popped his driver while he was at it.”
“Shit.” Wally conspicuously glanced at the door handle, then saw the exit for the 24/7 scrapyard whiz by. I pushed Dolores harder, so he knew it wasn’t a mistake. The engine sputtered, then purred again as the speedometer reached halfway to the optimistic maximum value printed on the gauge.
“You gotta believe me,” Wally said. “I didn’t touch the kid. That time at the school was the last time I saw him. God’s honest.”
“It’s pretty clear why he wanted you there, but how’d he get you to do it. I know your spine’s as strong as a wet spaghetti noodle, but Ethan’s small. It’s hard to imagine him bullying you around.”
“He got me the same way you did. Told me he needed help and offered me a bit of juice—although his came rolled up in paper with a few more sticks and stems in it. He promised more work to come once he had things up and running. When he never came a-callin’ I figured that had been a bluff.”
“What kind of work?”
“Kid said he was expanding his business. Needed someone who could get into all of Hot Type City’s cracks and crevices. After a bit of not hearing from him, I went to check out his…office…but he wasn’t there, and none of the other punks would let me in.”
“Other punks?” I asked. “Who was he working with?”
Wally squirmed in his seat. When I saw him stiffen and look forward, I glanced back up and saw the taillights of an overloaded truck coming on fast. I switched lanes to cut around him, left then right. Dolores rocked like the boat she was.
“I don’t know, Howl. It was dark, and I was a bit under the weather. They were just some kids.”
“Give me something, Wally. What’d they look like? Were they mammals? Birds? Reptiles?”
“You know I don’t give much credence to those kinds of things.”
“Right, when I think of Sidewalk Wally, I think of equality.”
Wally looked out the window. I put Dolores’s wheels on the rumble strip, and the road growled for me, rattling his teeth.
“You must remember where his place is at least.”
“Might know it if I saw it again.”
“Why are you being so evasive? Got something to hide?”
“No, it’s just…” Wally’s speech stumbled, and he hid his cowardice behind a phony off-gassing of emotion. “They’re good kids, you know. Don’t want to get them sent down the wrong path. They get picked up for wanting to make a quick buck off guys like me, then soon enough they got no choice but to turn into guys like me.”
Ah, Sidewalk Wally, victim of America’s busted justice system. There were plenty of people out there whose bullshit arrests had ruined their lives—I was responsible for more than a couple as a beat cop—but I wouldn’t count Wally among their number. The only time the system fucked him over was when he tried to exploit it and it sprang back the other way.
“Look, Howl, I hope the kid gets found too, but I’m on thin ice as it is—with Johnny Law and a hundred scarier boogie men. I don’t want to get involved.”
“Like it or not, the kid and his friends are going to get found. If the police are the ones to do it, I don’t see any reason to expect your name doesn’t come up when they start talking. The only way to make sure they leave you out of it is to help me now.”
“Geez, Howl, what an offer.” I saw conceit in the way Wally slumped and polished off the whiskey.
“So. This place? It’s in The Margin?”
“Wha— I thought you didn’t know anything about what was going on.”
“I’ve got a few hunches.” The neighborhood where the cops found Al’s body was as good a place to start as any.
An exit that would take us to the heart of The Margin came up, and I put my blinker on. “You’d better remember some directions real quick. I’ve wasted enough gas on you already.”