May Day. Time to gather the blossoms of the field, festoon the big pole with streamers, put on the dancin’ shoes.
Also the Workers’ Holiday, the People’s Holiday. Sally had an old friend, a sixties leftie turned Realtor, who’d sent her a card last year, a bright red square printed with the message “It’s May Day. Time to think about private property.”
After weeks of blustery winds, scudding clouds building into afternoon hailstorms, cold, thin sunlight at dawn and shivering silver dusk, isolated days of balmy false promise, the weather turned. Crocuses poked their heads up. Daffodils ventured out timid blooms, nodded their yellow heads with growing confidence. Irises and tulips speared forth, lilac bushes budded out. In all likelihood, there’d be one more monster snowstorm, but for now, Sally stretched in the sunlight, shook out her legs, and welcomed the first morning in months she’d run without gloves and a hat.
She needed thinking music, so she’d chosen jazzy guitar/bass duets by Hot Tuna and set off at a lope, seeing the familiar street scenes, the very houses along her route in an entirely new light. Here, somebody was adding on a second story, with vaulted ceilings and custom wood windows out the wazoo. There, workers were hauling plumbing pipes and fixtures, a china sink, a porcelain toilet, into what had once been a detached garage, now being transformed into a luxury cottage for the proverbial mother-inlaw. And there... something else again. A huge Victorian with peeling yellow paint, gravel driveway packed with a VW van painted with clouds and graffiti, a superannuated Buick Century with a broken taillight, flying the Jolly Roger from its radio antenna, and a light pickup sporting a “Go Pokes” bumper sticker; two motorcycles parked on the front lawn. On the huge, inviting front porch, someone was huddled in a sleeping bag on a dilapidated couch. An empty Southern Comfort bottle lay on its side, halfway down the front steps.
A mud-spattered brown Chevy Suburban with University of Wyoming logos painted on the front doors sat at the curb. Sally sidled up to the passenger side, peered in at the front seat. A sweat-stained feed cap with a “King Ropes” logo lay on the bench seat. In the plastic slot on the inside of the driver’s door, someone had stuck a curve-headed rock hammer and a yellow-backed waterproof notebook, the kind geologists used so they could take notes on rainy days in the field.
She glanced back at the porch, and now she noticed a pair of crusty boots sitting on the deck next to the sleeping bag–shrouded figure on the couch. The mud job on the boots matched the one on the Suburban. Hmm.
And something else caught her eye. A “For Sale” sign in the middle of the lawn. Sally mentally noted the name and phone number of the listing Realtor, then spent the rest of her run reciting the phone number to herself, over and over, until it had become the lyrics to the Hot Tuna instrumental jam. She kept up the repetition, even as she decided to take a detour past the apartment that had once housed Billy Reno and his roommates. She was not at all surprised to see a “Sold” sign out front.
The minute she got home, she wrote the real estate agent’s number down, did a few stretches, and then picked up the phone. “I’d like some information on a house for sale at Tenth and Kearny,” she began.
“Oh yes, that’s a fantastic property,” said the Realtor, who’d answered the call herself. “I could meet you there in an hour and a half. I’ve got another appointment right now, but if you’re interested, you’re going to want to move fast. You understand, of course, that the place has been a student rental, so it’s going to need some updating and a touch of TLC.”
Which was supposed to stand for “tender loving care,” but in this case, Sally suspected, probably meant “tremendous load of cash.”
Think fast, Mustang. “Um, actually, I can’t make it this morning. But for now, could you just tell me about the place?”
“Five bedrooms, one and a half baths, farmhouse kitchen, detached two-car garage. The tenants have a lease until August 1, but we could get them out sooner if absolutely necessary. We’re listing it at three-seventy-five, and if you move quickly, you can probably get it for that. But once there’s a bid in, a war could start.”
Real estate war? Sally swallowed. “That sounds like a lot, frankly. I mean, there’d be plenty of expense just repairing what the tenants have broken. Not to mention putting in another bath, updating the kitchen and appliances, paint, landscaping . . .”
She was taxing the agent’s patience, and she knew it. “Look, it’s entirely up to you. I’d be delighted to show you the place, if you’re really interested.” Sally was beginning to think “interested” was a code word for “rich enough.”
“But to be honest, for this neighborhood, you’re looking at a seller’s market. My most recent listing sold the day it went on the market. Either you jump on what you want, or it’s gone. And as far as this property goes, the owner is in a position to demand the asking price, or more.”
In a position? Meaning, again, “rich enough”?
Might as well go for it. “So who does own the place?” Sally asked, knowing that Realtors really weren’t supposed to divulge that kind of thing, but what the hell.
“Sorry,” said the Realtor. “I’m getting a call on my other line.” She hung up.
Sally called the development office at the university. “This is Professor Sally Alder,” she said.
“Oh yes, Dr. Alder. One moment, please.”
The receptionist connected her with a development officer, a man Sally had met several times socially, and once for a business lunch at which they’d agreed that nothing mattered more than having a first-rate university. It wasn’t the greatest deep-thinking moment of her life, or for that matter, his, probably, but he’d seemed like a nice, intelligent guy.
“Ted,” she said, “have you heard about somebody snapping up a lot of real estate near campus lately?”
“I put down a bid on a house on Custer,” he said. “Asking price. They came back later and said somebody had offered twenty K more. And then I heard they’d turned right around and sold the place for fifty more. It’s obscene. And of course, whoever has the bucks to do that kind of stuff ought to be giving giving giving to their friendly neighborhood institution of higher learning. But are they? Nooooo. We can’t even find out who it is.”
“Really? Why not?” Sally asked. “I’d have thought you guys would have a line on every dollar in this town.”
“Maybe that was possible ten years ago,” said Ted. “But it’s a new world. One of our attorneys did a title search on some of the properties that have changed hands in the last six months, and you know what? About a dozen houses in this town have been bought and sold at least twice during that period, with big price jumps. In every case, the first buyer, second seller turned out to be a corporate blind with offices in Longmont, Colorado. When you call them up, you get an answering machine.”
“What’s the name of the outfit?” Sally asked.
“Just letters. WWJS. Probably the last initials of the partners or something. We’re still pursuing it, but in the meantime, we’re focusing on the people who’re ending up with the places. We have this foolish idea that they might actually be planning to live in the houses, and they’ve all shelled out a big chunk of change, which suggests to us that they might want to show us some love. Frankly, we don’t see it as all that fruitful to go chasing after some money-grubbing Coloradans who’ve probably got about as much interest in Laramie as a community as they do in saving the whales.”
Did anybody care about the whales anymore? What about saving the students, or at least their chance of living in something remotely resembling a campus neighborhood? Sally thanked the development guy, then hung up.
Hawk came into the kitchen, damp from his post-basketball shower.
“Who do you know who drinks Southern Comfort?” she asked him.
He made a face. “Students,” he said. “They’ll drink anything.”
“Okay,” she said, “let me narrow it down. Who do you know who drinks rotgut and might have checked out a university truck yesterday?”
“That doesn’t narrow it down much,” said Hawk. “But it’s easy enough to find out. Why? Have you joined Professors Against Drunk Driving of University Vehicles?”
“No. But tell me what you think of this,” Sally said, and related what she’d seen on her run.
“I don’t get it. What’s your point?” Hawk asked.
“Think about that eviction I saw,” said Sally. “Consider the fact that Charlie Preston’s name was on that lease. I mean, the slumlords probably make more money evicting deadbeat tenants than they do renting to them, but still. She was barely of age, she had a long history of mental illness and run-ins with the law, she was a mass of facial piercings and, not to put too fine a point on it, she’s a girl. Who the hell would rent to her?”
Hawk thought about it. “Somebody real stupid, somebody real cynical, or somebody who knew her and thought they were doing her a favor.”
“My theory,” said Sally, “is that the somebody was her father. Try this out. Let’s say he owned some rental property, and she knew it. Her boyfriend needed a place to live. In one of their make-up moments, maybe she told Daddy she’d come back home if he’d rent sweet misunderstood Billy an apartment, and he said he couldn’t take the risk, and she talked him into it somehow by offering to sign the lease herself.”
Hawk was following closely.
“Then things went to hell between them as they always did, and Brad ended up deciding to kick them out. Maybe he was watching the market and figured it was time to sell anyhow. It took the rental management company a few days to get around to actually evicting them, and in the middle of all that, somebody got pissed off,” Sally finished.
“Pissed enough to beat him to death?” Hawk asked.
“I don’t know. There I lose the thread,” said Sally. “But as I told you, I ran by that place, and it’s been sold. I really want to know who’s buying and selling these party houses. I’ve hit kind of a dead end with the real estate side, so maybe it’s time to start talking to the tenants. Maybe make a few subtle inquiries with our students.”
“Yeah. You specialize in subtlety, I’ve noticed,” said Hawk.
“I can be subtle when I need to! But why not? Maybe there’ll even be somebody who could tell us more about Charlie’s situation. Anybody who parties a lot in this town probably gets around to all the usual places,” Sally said.
Hawk gave in. “I can drop by the motor pool this morning and see who signed out a van. And then I’ll go talk to the guy.”
“Call me. I’ll come with you.”
“Sally,” said Hawk, “let me handle this one thing. For all I know, it’s one of my own students. And if it is, and he’s been drinking and driving in a university truck, we’d surely have to have a few words. One way or another, I can check it out, maybe work the conversation around to the party scene, see what I can dig up. For once, I can give you some cover.”
She grinned at him. “I really like it when you give me cover.”
Meanwhile, she’d practice patience.
It was a beautiful Friday morning, not a teaching day. She had, remarkably, no meetings, no appointments until the afternoon. She futzed in their little garden, planting lettuce and spinach and beans and peas, things that would survive cool days and cold nights and be lush and delightful by the end of June. She fiddled with her next lecture for women’s history, took care of lagging correspondence, deleted a couple of hundred outdated emails. By then it was time for lunch, and she decided she’d just mosey over to Hawk’s office on the way to her own. Just, she told herself, to see whether he felt like grabbing a bite.
To get to Hawk’s office, you had to navigate the wonderful old geology building, a mazelike cabinet of curiosities. The hallways were lined with display cases full of rocks and maps and scale models of oil wells, and, of course, photographs of windburned, hearty geologists grinning their heads off in scenic places. Hawk’s office was around about fifty corners, and she’d been known to lose her way.
“...budget crunch time, son,” she heard him say as she came around the last corner and spotted him sitting at his desk, addressing a young man who looked very much as if he’d been ridden hard and put up wet. “If you had a mishap with that truck, how long do you think it’d be before the university had the bucks for another one? In case you’ve forgotten, you checked out that van to do a little something we call fieldwork. We can’t be put in the position of getting jerked around when we need vehicles, and trust me, they’d hold it against us at the motor pool if one of our drivers was irresponsible enough to screw up one of their trucks. Am I getting through to you, Mike?”
The guy looked absolutely miserable, and not just because Hawk was tearing him a new one. His jeans were muddy, his boots a mess, and he appeared not to have combed his lank, shoulder-length hair in a week. He slouched so low in the chair, he seemed in danger of sliding right out of it and onto the floor. His eyes were slitted nearly closed, and he was working his mouth in a way that made her suspect he was badly in need of a toothbrush.
“I’m really sorry, Dr. Green,” he finally managed. “I know what you think. But I didn’t drive drunk, I swear it. I was out in the field all day yesterday, and on my way back to the motor pool when a friend called up and asked me over for a beer. Uh, well, you know how it is. Sometimes you have one beer, and sometimes you have two...”
“And sometimes,” said Hawk, “you have six. And a couple-three shots of tequila, maybe, or was it Southern Comfort?”
The kid groaned softly.
Hawk looked sympathetic. Sally felt the same way. It wasn’t as if they were unfamiliar with the feeling of having nails pounded into your skull. And it wasn’t as if it hadn’t taken them both years to learn that you could avoid that unpleasant sensation merely by, well, not drinking until you lost the use of one or more senses.
“Well, at least you showed good judgment in not driving after you’d started drinking,” Hawk conceded. “But you’re sixteen hours late turning in the truck. You’re my frigging student, not to mention the fact that I need you as a field trip driver. You’re a candidate for the doctorate in earth sciences, a grown man. What, may I ask, were you thinking?”
“I dunno. I’m a jerk. I have no self-control. It wasn’t supposed to be a party, but you know how these things go. First it was just a few of us sitting around. Then somebody started taking up a collection to get a keg. Then everybody started making calls, and more people started coming around, and the next thing I knew, the cops showed up and busted a bunch of kids for MIP. People were screamin’ out of there, tryin’ to get away before they got popped.”
“MIP? What’s that?” Sally asked, deciding she’d lurked in the hallway long enough.
“Minor in possession,” said Hawk. “So it wasn’t just grad students, or even college kids?”
“Not hardly. Some of those chicks looked like they were still suckin’ on pacifiers,” said Mike.
Sally frowned. “How old would you say the youngest are?” she asked.
“I don’t hang with them. I’m not interested in jailbait,” the boy answered. “But lots of guys are. And they’re not asking for IDs, if you know what I mean,” he finished.
“I bet that’s a big reason the cops show up,” said Sally. “Sounds like a perfect setting for date rape.”
Mike shook his head. “I’d hate to say what I’ve seen on a couple of occasions.”
“Have you been to a lot of these parties?” Sally continued.
Mike shrugged. “A few. Fewer and fewer. After last night, never again.”
She laughed and asked him if he’d ever been at a party at the building where she’d watched the eviction.
He scrubbed his face with his hands. “Who hasn’t? That place was notorious. Of course, they were only there a couple of months, but by the time they got booted, they’d acquired, uh, a reputation.”
“But that’d hardly be your crowd, Mike,” said Hawk. “You’re a fine upstanding student in an advanced degree program. You’re a scientist, for chrissake. What the hell are you doing hanging around with a bunch of little thugs and thieves whose idea of upward mobility is bigger bling-bling?”
“Not that I’d know anything about it,” said Sally, “but I’m guessing somebody in that household might have been dealing some weed.”
Mike looked uncomfortable.
“Look,” said Hawk, “I don’t give a damn if you smoke a splif every night before the evening news. I don’t actually care if you wake up every morning and fire up a big one. But if there’s somebody at that house selling dope to little kids, that’s another story. A really bad one.”
The boy squirmed in his chair.
“What’d you see, Mike?” Sally asked.
He bit his lip. Rubbed his face some more. Made his decision. “Okay. Remember I said I’d seen some things I wasn’t crazy about? Well, I was there exactly once. I was just stopping off to, uh, I mean, stopping off with this friend of mine.”
“Uh-huh,” said Hawk. “Everybody’s got a friend like that.”
“Er, yeah. So, uh, they had a big scene going on when we went to see this guy, just, you know, to purchase a very small amount for personal use, as they say. And when we found him, he was, like, getting all these little chickies baked on this bomber stuff, and his buddies were putting the moves on a couple of them. Shit, those girls looked like they couldn’t have been more than fifteen or something. And then one of the housemates comes in, this chick with all this face hardware, and she starts getting all freaked out ’cause she knows one of the little girls. So she ends up hauling off and belting this one guy, and she’s, like, screaming that he’d better get the fuck out of the house before she gets his ass thrown in jail. The guy told her to fuck off, and the little kid just sat there staring—I guess she was wasted by then. The girl with the piercings was pretty out of it herself, but she just kept yelling, and then she starts hitting the guy, and finally this other guy came in and pulled her off and grabbed the little girl too and got them both out of there. So, um, yeah. I guess you could say there was some dealing going on.”
“How do you know that the girl with the piercings was one of the housemates?” Sally asked.
“She said so. She was all, ‘This is my fucking house. And what I say goes.’ Like they gave a crap,” said Mike.
Charlie Preston. To the rescue. Of at least one young girl. Maybe Aggie Stark.
“Did the dealer live at the house?” Hawk asked. “How about the guys who were hitting on the girls?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I had the impression people were in and out.” Now he sat up, leaned over, put his head in his hands. “Fuck. I feel like somebody ran over me. Can I go home and get some sleep?”