“You didn’t like him, Orv?” Harry asked.

“I liked Red plenty, Harry. Smart guy, sharp. I wanted him to clean up full time, maybe do something right for the next forty years. Every time I’d roust him I’d give him the speech, pass over a list of detox centers. He’d climb free of the shit, fall down two months later. I’d heard through the grapevine that he’d cleaned up again. Guess it didn’t last.”

“How’d he make his living?” I asked.

“Car detailer, when he was clean.”

“And when he wasn’t clean?”

“He hustled. It was another thing I’d roust his ass for; leaning a wall by the docks, winking at rich white guys in Lexuses. He was a good-looking guy. It made scoring off horny old guys pretty easy.”

“Bust him lately?”

“Not in three–four months. I hoped he’d seen the light.”

“He hustle down here by the docks?” Harry asked.

Ryan nodded. “Red preferred being where he could walk to the water. He liked to watch the ships come and go, said the water felt like home.”

“He had fish genes, too?”

“Red called himself a breed of the world, Harry. Said his daddy’s side of the family was Australian Aborigine-Irish-Italian and his mama was Thai and Chi and Russian and French. He said the ocean touched all those places so the ocean was as close as he could get to home.”

“A genetic smorgasbord,” I said. Chinese Red’s multilateral heritage was nothing new in a port city like Mobile; I figured the world’s ports were the planet’s most efficient melting pots.

“The ocean was home?” Harry said. “That’s kind of poetic.”

“There was poetry in Red’s soul, Harry,” Ryan continued. “Like he’d made peace with his life, and just wanted to enjoy it, the dope notwith-standing. A shitty end to a life that might have had some promise.”

Ryan pushed up from his crouch. He nodded to the cop at the door. “Tell the bus drivers they can have the body, Jerry. Chinese Red has sailed for home.”

The bus attendants came for the body. They grunted the dead weight from the bed toward the gurney.

With Harry looking between the body and Ryan, I saw a blue denim pant leg sticking from the shadows beneath the bed, a dark spot on a rolled-up cuff. I tweezed the pants out with my fingertips. When I saw the familiar stain I pulled latex gloves from my pocket and snapped them on.

“What is it?” Harry said.

“Blood,” I said. “A decent amount on the pants. Dried, but I’m sure it’s blood.”

I got down on my hands and knees. Pulled a white wad from beneath the bed.

“Got a T-shirt, too. Same stains.”

Harry looked between the deceased and the clothes. “I don’t see any wounds on the body. Let’s get the clothes to forensics. Have them verify the blood’s his when they get the chance.”

When I stood I felt dampness in my knees. Looking down I saw wet splotches.

“The carpet’s soaked,” I said.

“Piss, I expect,” Ryan said. “Red’s bladder let loose before he fell on the bed.”

I leaned my nose close to my wet knees. Sniffed. I expected to smell urine, but didn’t.

“It smells like sea water,” I said, befuddled.

“What was that?” Harry said.

“I said it smells like –”

“No. From outside.” Harry canted his head toward the open window.

“Dead guy! Dead guy!” A woman screamed for a second time. “There’s a dead guy in the street!”

We ran down the stairs, followed the woman’s screams around the corner. We saw a body face-down in an alley, hands splayed like the guy was hugging the pavement and kissing its surface. I slid up beside him like a ballplayer sliding to home plate. I pressed the back of my fingers to his neck, felt nothing. Harry had his phone out to call for assistance.

“They’s a man dead over here!” a male voice howled. I saw a head sticking from the vestibule of a ragged building, waving at me, at Harry, at anyone watching to please come help. Ryan and the uniformed officer came from the Hoople, looked our way with confused faces. I did a palms-up gesture of helplessness.

Another shriek of despair from across the street. A woman came running from an apartment. “My boyfriend won’t get up. I don’t think he’s breathing. Help me!”

“What the hell is going on?” Harry whispered, watching a brace of radio cruisers screaming on to the far end of the block.

“I don’t know,” I said, my heart thumping just under my chin. A little girl wandered up, not over eight years old. She tugged at the back of my pants.

“Mister? Mister?”

I turned and looked down, tried to affect a smile. “We’re pretty busy here, dear. What is it?”

She pointed toward the next block over. “They’s a man laying on the steps in front of my house. He look like he sleeping, but he won’t wake up. Why he doin’ like that?”

Chapter 28

The block had been cordoned off. Scared people stood in tenement doorways or huddled on corners as lights flashed from over a dozen official vehicles. Bodies were being loaded into ambulances, evidence was being gathered. I saw Orville Ryan accompanying one gurney to an ambulance, seeing O’Fong off to the next world. I felt sorry for Ryan; he’d believed in Chinese Red.

Clair Peltier had arrived a few minutes into the mayhem, alerted that something major was going down. I’d nodded her way when she arrived and let her work. Now, with the hubbub dying away, Harry and I wandered over. I studied my shoes while Harry spoke.

“Any ideas, Doc?” he asked. “Is it what it appears?”

She nodded. “I get the feeling someone forgot to cut a batch of heroin. Those poor folks got into some smack so pure it shut them down.”

Mobile wasn’t known for the quality of its heroin, usually brown scag, Mexican tar, and other bottom-level crap so stepped on by greedy local dealers that ten per cent heroin to ninety filler was a general rule. Pure heroin would have been like slamming nine extra bags into a vein at once, almost instantly depressing the machinery to the Off setting.

As part of the response, news organizations and social agencies with contacts in junkie-land were being alerted, soon to issue warnings about the deaths and potential for more problems. If you don’t know it, don’t shoot it, was the mantra being prepared. Hopefully, what we had were a few isolated cases, a mistake along the pipeline.

“How about an adulterant?” Harry suggested. “A toxin in the junk.”

“I’d lean that way,” Clair said, “except the reactions suggest OD from all directions. But I’m going to no-comment the media until I get a forsure verdict.”

I looked across the street and saw reporters bunched up like runners at the start of the Boston Marathon, held back by uniformed cops. When the scene was released they’d run rampant.

“Carson?” Clair called to my retreating back.

I looked over my shoulder. “You’re looking better,” she said quietly, and hustled off to consult with her crew. I turned back to Harry. “If it’s all accidental OD’s, we’re off the hook. Clair seems to think that’s the way it’ll fry up. What next?”

“Back to our regular grind,” he said. “And that means Scaler. You were saying Fossie found some kind of number in Scaler’s office?”

“Stuck on the underside of his monitor.”

“Why not give the number a ring; see who answers? Probably best to use the clean phone.”

Our clean phone was a pre-paid cell we used when we wanted a call to be anonymous, not tipping off the recipient who was on our end. We mainly used it with skittish snitches. I pulled the phone from the cruiser, dialed. Four rings and pickup.

“Hello?” said a voice sounding both hesitant and oddly familiar.

“Who’s this?” I asked pleasantly.

“Who’s this?” the familiar voice on the other line responded.

I said, “I got this number from a friend who said I probably needed to call it.”

A beat. “What was the friend’s name?”