TOLERANCE

by Tom Abrahams

Third Ward

There was something about the rain in Houston that seemed to leave a film on everything. The more it rained, the slimier it got. And when it rained a lot, like it had this week, a city built on a swamp tended to flood. That storm named Harvey had shown the world what Houstonians had long known: flooding made the slime break loose, made it impossible to ignore.

It was eleven thirty on a Thursday night.

The bitter aftertaste of Citalopram was caught in my teeth like a paste, so I sucked out the remnants with my tongue and licked my lips. I was up to forty milligrams a day. At least that’s what my hook-up told me it was. It didn’t seem to make a difference. Nothing did.

So I closed my eyes; the drum of thick, cold drops beating rhythmically on the roof of my ’95 Chrysler urged me to sleep. I hadn’t slept in a while.

A knock on the window drew me from the trance. A gray-haired man with a clean shave and a tan trench coat pressed a badge against the glass.

“Hey,” he said, “you the new guy?”

I cracked the window. “Yeah,” I said. “Unless there’s more than one new guy.”

He swiped the rain from the window and motioned past the Chrysler with his head. “The body’s down there. The sergeant’s waiting on us.”

He backed away from the car and I shouldered open the door. It creaked and hitched, but opened wide enough for me to climb out and onto the pavement. I slammed it shut with my hip but didn’t lock it. What was the point?

The detective offered his hand. “I’m Bill Waters. Homicide.”

“John Druitt.”

Waters smiled and led me from the parking lot across Allen Parkway to the aluminum statue of a kneeling figure called Tolerance that overlooked Buffalo Bayou. The milky light that glowed at its base cast an eerily judgmental form, so I looked away and trudged closer to the bayou’s muddy edge.

Waters slowed his pace, digging his heels into the mud for balance. “You were vice before?”

“Yeah. Five years. Handled sex trafficking. Takes its toll.”

Waters chuckled. “So you moved to dead people?”

My foot slid in the grassy mud and I skated a couple of feet down the embankment. “Dead people don’t feel anything,” I said.

Waters shot me a glance with a furrowed brow. His lips curled upward and his nose crinkled like he smelled something rotten. I’d seen that look before. It came from people who thought they had me figured out. He didn’t, even if he thought he did.

As we descended the slope toward the coffee-colored bayou that snaked through Downtown and Buffalo Bayou Park, I used the cuffs of my consignment-shop blazer to wipe the droplets from the swell under my eyes. The rain gave the wool blend a sooty odor that lingered in my nose.

“According the sergeant, she was weighed down,” said Waters, “but all this rain must have shook her loose. The bayou’s up a good couple of feet.”

I ran my fingers through my hair and shook free the water. “Who found her?”

“Jogger.”

“In this weather?”

“Marathon’s coming up in a week,” said Waters. “People are obsessed.”

The closer we got to the bank of the bayou, the louder the rush of water. Above us was a split bridge called Rosemont. The steel-and-concrete spans crossed the water in a V shape and resembled a train trestle more than a pedestrian bridge.

Under the bridge, within the confines of flapping yellow tape tied to a bridge piling and two young pine trees, was a hive of activity. A drenched rat of a man stood shivering off to one side. He had the narrow frame of a runner and the anxious disinterest of a man detained.

Past him, in the sloppy bank of the rising water, was a trio of wetsuit-clad divers. One was bent over, his back heaving as he worked for air. Another was on his knees next to the woman’s body. The third stood watch, as did half a dozen rubbernecking patrol officers. Dead bodies attracted flies.

I stood there for a moment, lost in the rush of the bayou. It was hard not to listen to the gurgle and wash of a swollen bayou and not wonder, in the muddy parts of my mind, if the water would ever stop rising. I’d heard others voice the same fears over bitter coffee and undercooked migas. They’d huddled close to each other, leaning on the chipped laminate of late-night greasy-spoon bar counters. They’d absently stirred their half-and-half and whispered about the rain as if it could hear them, while lightning had flashed and the feeder roads had filled with oily water.

“I called the dive team on the way here,” said Waters, shaking me from my thoughts. “Gets us a head start.”

The woman was on her back. Her dark hair covered her face. She was clothed in a torn pink dress that clung to her body in a way that would have been unflattering on a breathing woman.

Waters planted his hands on his hips and faced me. “So,” he said, “I don’t know if they told you this when you applied for the posting or when they interviewed you, but in homicide, we split the duties. One of us takes the scene, the other takes witnesses. What do you want?”

“Scene.”

Waters pursed his lips. “All right, I’ll talk to the jogger.”

He slopped over to the thin man. A uniformed sergeant wearing a wrinkled vinyl poncho waved me to the body. Angry raindrops slapped the bayou with a growing intensity. I stepped close to the sergeant.

“You the new guy?” he asked.

I knuckled water from the corners of my eyes and nodded. “New to homicide.”

“Crime scene folks are on their way,” he said.

I thanked him and moved past him to the body. Her stomach was bloated under the dress in a way that made her appear pregnant, almost. Her skin was grayish green, and something had nibbled at her bottom lip and hanging tongue.

The skin was loose at her fingers and on her feet. There was the beginning of a scar on her left shoulder—a small, partially healed burn in the shape of an X. There was a two-foot length of orange rope tied around her right ankle. The rope was knotted at one end, torn and frayed at the other.

Her neck was a different color than the rest of her mottled body: varying shades of purple, concentrated in a thick line that ran across her throat.

I pulled a wet notepad from my coat pocket, made some rudimentary notes, and pressed myself to my feet. Waters was standing behind me.

“Not much from the jogger,” he said. “We’ll have to canvas the apartments across the bayou for witnesses or surveillance cameras.”

I wiped my nose with the back of my hand and looked at the dim outline of multistory buildings through the curtain of rain. They stood watch over the bayou. A couple of the windows glowed yellow from the lights inside; rich people living above the muck, warm and comfortable in their castles. They never flooded. They never waded against the current of rising water, holding their lives above their heads in trash bags.

“She’s a hooker,” I told him. “Probably trafficked.”

Waters’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know?”

I pointed to the wound on her shoulder. “That’s a brand. There’s a group that runs a house off of White Chapel. It’s industrial and they have one of the buildings there. Maybe a block east of the Southwest Freeway. There’s a cantina in the front, girls in the back. All of them have those marks on their shoulders. We keep busting them. Doesn’t matter. They find a way.”

Like the bayous.

Waters rolled his eyes. “Lucky SOB.”

A sharp breeze swirled around us, whistling against the frame of the bridge and sending a chill from my neck to my lower back. I shivered and pulled the soaked jacket collar against my neck.

“How so?” I asked.

“You call scene,” he said, “and in five minutes you’ve got good information on who she was, who the perp might be, where we go for leads. It’s almost like you handpicked it.”

Almost.

Waters’s phone chirped against his hip. He wiped the screen with his thumb and answered the call. While he talked, I stepped back to the body and examined the rope at her foot.

The knot was good. It was a bowline, the type of knot that held its shape and didn’t shrink or expand. The other end, the frayed end, was ragged. It probably rubbed back and forth against something sharp until it gave way. The killer couldn’t have anticipated that. The local weatherman hadn’t accounted for three days of nonstop rain, the most since four feet fell in four days during Harvey. That storm was the stain you couldn’t wipe clean.

Waters slid his phone back onto his hip and crouched next to me. “CSU pulled up,” he said. “They’ll start snapping pictures, taking videos. They’ll do all the measuring. You think we need to expand the scene?”

I shook my head. “Nah. She didn’t drown. At least not here. She’s got ligature marks on her neck. She was dumped upstream. The killer didn’t think she’d break loose. We’re not going to find anything here.”

“I agree,” said Waters. “Good call. Once CSU is finished, they’ll call the medical examiner. They’ll send a team to finish up here. Then she’ll go to the morgue.”

“Then we get out of the rain?”

Waters chuckled. “Something like that. Hey,” he said, thumping me on my arm, “since it’s your first case, you get to buy me coffee.”

“Sure,” I said. “Coffee. Beer. Jack. Whatever you want.”

“I like you already, Druitt.”

* * *

Delete. My favorite key on the computer is delete. It erases all my mistakes. There should be a delete key in life, something that helps hide from the rest of the world the things you’ve done but regret. Something that masks the errors with your real intent.

I was holding down they key, racing the cursor back to the left side of the screen, when Waters sidled up to my desk. It was three thirty in the morning on Friday.

He toasted me with his cup of coffee, the Styrofoam stained brown at its edges. “You’re not going to believe this,” he said. “You need to go to Lake Charles and gamble, brother. Your luck is ridiculous.”

I’d been to Lake Charles. I’d gambled there. I’d lost.

“What?” I said. “I’m almost finished with the rep—”

“We got somebody who knows our girl. Says she saw her Monday night.”

“I thought we weren’t heading over to White Chapel until after we have cause of death,” I said. “Then going there with a warrant. Don’t want to blow our wad needlessly. Right?”

Waters sat on the edge of my desk and drew a sip of the coffee. He was slurping what had to be his fourth cup. “We didn’t go. She came to us.”

“What’s her story?”

Waters smacked his lips and set the coffee cup on my desk. “Got picked up in a sweep,” he said. “Had a scar on her arm. Mentioned White Chapel to the arresting officer. Buddy of mine downstairs tipped me. I had her moved for a Q-and-A.”

I saved my unfinished report and followed Waters to the elevator. We rode it to the floor where we do interrogations, talk to witnesses, and argue about the designated hitter and instant replay.

The woman was waiting for us in a small room with gray walls and a rectangular two-way mirror. She was rocking back and forth in her chair, one knee bouncing up and down. She was picking at her cuticles with her teeth. She had stringy brown hair that looked wet even though it probably wasn’t. There was a faded tattoo of Betty Boop above her left shoulder blade. On her arm, there was a thick X-shaped scar.

I stood off to the side and let Waters start the conversation. He spun a chair around and straddled it, leaning on the back with his forearms.

“My name’s Bill,” he said. “This is my partner John. I heard your name is Annie. I also heard that you know about a girl who went missing. One of your friends.”

The woman stopped chewing on her finger but kept it in her mouth. Her red-tinged eyes danced back and forth between the two of us, seemingly unable to focus on either. Her pupils were dilated.

“You high?” I asked.

The woman pulled her finger from her mouth and sat on her hands. She curled her lower lip between her teeth and bit down.

Waters gave a disapproving glance. I guess this wasn’t how we were supposed to start. He softened his voice and tried to hold the woman’s gaze. “You’re not going to get in trouble. We really just need your help.”

“It’s Spice, isn’t it?” I asked. I could spot a synthetic marijuana user like nobody’s business. She had the jitters, the paranoia, and the sallow skin color. “You’re using right now. I can see it.”

Waters leaned back from the table and glared at me. He swung his leg over the chair and motioned me into the corner of the room. His jaw was set. His eyes were wide with anger. He spoke through clenched teeth. “What are you doing?” he asked. “We’ve got a lead here and you’re intimidating her. You think she’s gonna talk if she thinks we’re gonna lock her up?”

I looked past Waters at the woman. She ran her fingers through her greasy hair and then picked at a small black gauge in her right earlobe. She swallowed hard and raked her teeth along her bottom lip. She couldn’t sit still.

“Good cop, bad cop,” I said. “Always works.”

Waters raised an eyebrow. “So I’m the good cop?”

“Without a doubt.”

“I don’t think that’s what we’re doing here,” he said.

He shook his head and resumed his one-sided conversation with the woman. He kept offering her useless niceties, promised her some cigarettes or coffee. Maybe a Shipley’s donut or a hot dog from James Coney Island down the street. Whatever she wanted.

“How about another hit, Annie?” I said. “That help?”

She glanced at me, checked with Waters, who was frowning, and then looked back at me. She nodded.

“No problem,” I said. “You just need to help out Bill here. He thinks you might know something about the woman we found in the bayou last night.”

Annie stared at me. Her lips were pursed. She was stuck in pause mode for a moment, fixated on me, and then she nodded again.

Waters pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut. He sucked in a deep breath of air and exhaled. “Okay,” he said begrudgingly, “you tell us what we need to know and we’ll see about getting you some of what you need. Deal?”

She nodded once more and Waters pulled his phone from his pocket. He unlocked the screen, tapped it a couple of times, and slid it across the table to Annie.

She glanced at the phone and closed her eyes. “Her name was Mary Ann,” she said. Her voice didn’t match her appearance. It was timid, almost sweetly apprehensive, the product of a life spent at the behest of others. She looked younger when she spoke. “She was new.”

“New to what?” asked Waters.

The girl shrugged. “Everything.”

Waters leaned in, his voice softer, matching hers. “Drugs? Sex?”

“She was from Connecticut,” said the girl. “New London. They brought her last week.”

“Who?”

The girl hesitated. She peered over at me, as if I could give her approval. As if I was the one holding sway over her. She bit on her cuticle, nibbling on the loose skin before working it free of her nailbed.

I nodded.

She looked back at Waters and ran her hand through her hair. “EastEnders,” she mumbled.

“The gang?”

She lowered her head and tugged at the gauge. “Yeah,” she said. “They have places where they keep us.”

“Like White Chapel?” asked Waters.

She nodded.

“How would she get out?” he asked. “I mean, if they put you in these places, they must keep an eye on you. How did you get out?”

She tucked her hair behind her ear. “They keep some tied up. But most of us, they keep us high. You know, they give us stuff. For free. So we stay close.”

“What if you try to run?”

“Nobody does,” she said. “They’d kill us. I’ve seen them kill girls. You know, give ’em too much stuff. OD ’em on purpose.”

“Did Mary Ann try to run?” asked Waters. “How’d you know she was missing?”

Annie glanced at me and then shook her head. She looked back at Waters and her eyes widened. Her head tilted to one side and she shook a finger at me. “I think I know you,” she said. “I’ve seen you.”

Waters swung his attention to me, a quizzical look on his face. He leaned back in the chair and folded his arms. “You know him?”

She wagged her finger again and narrowed her beady little eyes. “It’s the hair,” she said. “And the eyes. I know I’ve seen you. On White Chapel. You’ve been in there. Drinking at the bar.”

She was right. She’d probably seen me. She might have handed me a Jack and Coke. She might have given me more than that. Sex trafficking. Takes its toll.

“Yeah,” I said, unfazed by the accusation. “I’ve been in there. I worked trafficking for five years.”

“Drug trafficking?” Annie asked.

“Human.”

Waters, apparently satisfied with my explanation, shifted in the chair and planted his elbows on the table. “How did you know Mary Ann was missing?” he asked.

“I heard people talking. Nobody had seen her in a couple of days. They’d dropped her off. She got picked up by some dude in a beater. Never came back.”

Waters scratched his chin. “Did she run away?”

Annie shrugged. “I don’t think so. I don’t really know. We worked different spots. I’m Old Spanish Trail. She’s Third Ward.”

“You think you could show us where in Third Ward she worked?” I asked. “What corners?”

Waters nodded his approval. “That’d be great, Annie.”

“You think I could get a bump?” she asked, scratching the Betty Boop above her shoulder blade. “I’m coming down.”

“If I get you the bump,” I said, “you’ll take me there? The spots where the EastEnders drop off the girls?”

Annie checked with Waters. “Sure,” she said. “As long as nobody sees me in a cop car. I don’t want nobody seeing me with cops.”

“Not a problem.”

Waters hopped up from his seat. “Can I talk to you?”

He motioned for me to leave the room and led me into the hallway. Annie just sat there picking at her cuticles.

Waters stood uncomfortably close to me. “Couple of things,” he said under his breath. “I can’t sanction you giving her synthetic pot. I don’t know what kind of crap you got away with in vice, but that’s not what we do here. She’s already a shaky witness. You give her drugs and she’s toast. The DA will never let her testify.”

I stepped back from Waters, gaining some space. “What’s the other thing?”

“Why do you need her to show you where the EastEnders drop the girls? You know these guys, right? Don’t you already know the spots they control?”

He was right. I did know.

I knew where to find the girls, and the boys, run by Barrio Azteca, Sureños, Tango Blast, Mara Salvatrucha, Bloods, and Crips. I knew their turf. I knew their methods. I knew the legit businesses that fronted their operations. I knew their trafficking routes. I knew the EastEnders were rapidly growing, given their backing by a dominant Mexican cartel.

I also knew that no matter how much we learned about all of them, how much actionable intelligence we gained, how many resources or informants we had, we were only scratching the surface. We’d flip on the light, stomp on a cockroach, and fifty more would scramble into the dark corners where we couldn’t get them.

It had only gotten worse since Harvey. Unlike Katrina, which had drained the delta of its undesirables and sent them to Houston, Harvey clogged the city with more homeless than it could handle. Shady contractors descended on the neighborhoods piled high with Sheetrock, subflooring, and kitchen sinks. Instead of rebuilding homes, they’d spend their cash on women and drugs. The gangs, which we’d gotten better at tracking, had scattered. We’d lost our grip on informants. All of them together floated untethered and just out of our grasp. Some days, just when I thought maybe I was making a dent, I realized it was getting harder to leave a scratch.

“It changes,” I told Waters. “And it doesn’t hurt to check it out, given we have somebody who knows the area.”

Waters inhaled. He planted his tongue in his cheek, rolling it around while he seemed to contemplate the idea. “All right,” he said. “You head over there with her. I’m gonna drive by White Chapel. Kill two birds with one stone. We meet back here and hopefully the ME gives us a positive ID. Then we get a warrant and hit the place.”

“Got it,” I said. “I’ll meet you back here by sunup.”

* * *

They say it’s always darkest before the dawn. I’ve got no clue who they is, but they’re right. I’m guessing they’ve lived a life like mine, always fighting the glare of the light, seeking the shadowy quiet between midnight and the alarm clock.

I’ve never been one for daylight. It offers too much promise. I learned a long time ago that hope is nothing but a sexy woman behind the glass. You stuff your credit card into the slot, the curtains peel back, and she smiles at you. But you’re not looking at her face. And there’s nothing but the promise of a big bill at the end of the month, with an interest rate you can’t afford. It’s a nasty cycle, the sun coming up every morning. I’d just as soon it stayed sunken low.

It was five fifteen on Friday morning. That’s what the clock on my Chrysler said. I couldn’t be sure it was accurate. Didn’t matter.

The clouds had the streets darker than normal. Third Ward didn’t get the attention nicer parts of town got. Powers that be would never let the streetlights go out in Memorial or River Oaks. Hell, if a blade of grass was too long on Inwood Drive, the mayor himself would show up with a pair of scissors. But in the Tre, as local rappers called it, a dead body wouldn’t catch much glare, let alone a string of busted streetlights. Gentrification or not, Third Ward was still Third Ward.

I had my window cranked down, enjoying the musty air and fine mist that had settled over the city. Annie tugged on her seat belt, trying to get it to click. “Your car is old,” she said, “and I think my belt is broken.”

I turned onto Elgin and headed southeast. “I’ll drive slowly,” I said. “Just focus on where we need to be.”

A shirtless man on a bicycle peddled past us, riding the wrong way. His wheels were warped and he had to work the handlebars to keep from tipping over.

“Turn right up here,” she said. “Near the train.”

I tapped the brake and swung the wheel to turn onto Scott. We were parallel with the light-rail tracks. I started to accelerate, but Annie told me to make a quick right onto Reeves.

“This is one of the spots,” she said. “They like us to stay close to the train.”

I slowed to a stop, flipped the car into park, and listened to the windshield wipers squeak back and forth, barely cleaning the glass of the water that had collected on it. There was nobody here. We were alone.

I undid my seat belt. “You sure? This is the spot?”

Annie shifted in her seat, inching into the space between the seat and the door. She was facing me. “Yeah. One of them.”

She was right. This was one of the spots. Reeves and Scott. Delano and Berry streets. Milby and Tuam.

“When do I get my hit?” she asked.

“You can have it now,” I said. “Check the glove box. I’ve got a couple packets of potpourri in there. Take whatever you want.”

Her eyes lit up and she fumbled for the latch at her knee. She plucked it open and leaned toward the opening. She felt around for the drugs, but she pulled her hand back empty.

I rolled up my window.

“There’s nothing there,” she said.

“Sorry. Check under the seat, maybe I put them there.”

Annie reached down between her legs, bending forward as far as she could. I turned on the radio. It was a static-riddled AM station playing jazz. Herb Geller, I think. His saxophone cried through the blown speakers. It was like the sax was drowning.

Annie started to pull back from her search when I reached across the seat and placed my hand firmly on the back of her neck. She struggled, but my fingers slipped through the greasy tendrils of her mouse-brown hair. I wrapped them tightly and applied pressure, forcing her to stay down, while I used my other hand to manage an orange rope from underneath my seat and around her head. I pulled it tight around her throat and yanked her back toward me, where I could watch her.

Her eyes bulged, looking at me in a way that told me she either finally recognized me from the last time we’d been together, or she recognized that her sad, pathetic life was ending. The pain was almost over.

She kicked against the door, reached behind her head to grab at me with her fingers—the fingers she’d spent much of the night chewing. Annie was stronger than I’d figured. Her legs pushed. Her arms flailed. There was a determination, a desire to live I didn’t expect from a drug-addled hooker forced into the sex trade by bad men who kept her under their violent thumbs. For a split-second, I considered letting go, letting her breathe.

It crossed my mind I could give a couple of hundred from my wallet and put her on a Greyhound toward Oklahoma or Kansas. She could start clean.

Who was I kidding? There was no such thing as clean. So I pulled harder on the rope. I closed my eyes and tugged. I gritted my teeth and tightened my grip.

As I watched the life and color drain from her face, I promised her this was for the best. It was the same thing I’d told Mary Ann four nights earlier. And Liz a week before. And Cathy two months before that. And Jane. I couldn’t remember how long ago I’d helped Jane. Six months? Nine?

Annie’s body shuddered and went limp, her head dropping onto my shoulder as the rattle left her lungs. I sat there for a moment and stroked her forehead. I told her about the things I’d done, the women I’d saved one way or another. I told her she wouldn’t be the last. I couldn’t let her be the last. There were too many to help, too many to set free.

I told her how, in some ways, it had gotten easier with each of the girls. In some ways, it had gotten harder. I told her about how I’d first understood my calling, as Harvey roiled under the doors and walls of my dank first-floor apartment off the South Loop. I was neck-deep before I escaped, ducking under the water, tasting the gasoline and motor oil, the dog crap, and the grass clippings, as I’d swam through an open window and free of my home.

I’d blown the air from my lungs and surfaced next to a flooded Ford F-150. As I’d risen from the water, the distant calls for help, the sounds of sirens, and the whoosh of cars driving the wrong way on the Loop above filled the muggy air.

The lights were out. It had been dark, the sky almost milky from the storm that would not go. And yet, as I’d wiped the water from my eyes and spit it from my mouth, I could see clearly for the first time in a very long time.

The city needed this flood. It needed a cleansing. And after the waters were gone, it would need me.

I found the task itself less daunting, more automatic. It ushered in less anxiety but produced less of an artificial high. Mary Ann’s salvation hadn’t sustained me as long as Liz’s. Liz’s ascension wasn’t as satisfying as Cathy’s.

Somehow, I’d built up a tolerance.

I inched Annie off my shoulder, gently setting her upright in the passenger seat, and reached into my jacket pocket. It was still damp, but the pill bottle inside it was sealed. I uncapped it, shook the last of my Cilatopram into my mouth, and chewed.

On the radio, Geller’s sax screeched through the broken tweeter, sweetly eulogizing the girl next to me. Outside, the clouds grew too heavy and the rain started again.