Buried Prey

He didn’t for half an hour: his mind kept moving, looking for any crack that he could get ahold of, anything he could do. There wasn’t much: as long as he was pulling on the Scrape thread, he had a line to work along. But that thread ran out, and he was deadended on Fell. There had to be some other way to get at Fell, but he could feel his own ignorance there. He knew that if he’d only been working longer, he would have thought of something.

Instead, he felt marinated in ignorance.

THE PHONE SURPRISED HIM: caught him asleep, and for quite a while, he thought. He popped up on his hands, in a half-push-up, disoriented, in the dark, his shirt twisted around his neck.

He found the phone, and Sloan was on the other end of the line: “Thought you might be interested. Nine-one-one got a tip that says ol’ Scrape was seen throwing a box of stuff in a dumpster behind Tom’s Pizza on Lyndale, yesterday about dark. You want to do some diving?”

“Aw, man, no,” Lucas said. He’d gone dumpster-diving a few times on patrol. “I mean, I’d like to be there. . . .”

“Daniel’s looking for one of us to go in,” Sloan said. “You know, one of his guys. Junior guy usually does it.”

“Who’s junior if I don’t do it?” Lucas asked.

“That’d be me,” Sloan said.

Lucas smiled into the phone. “What’s it worth to you?”

“C’mon, man. I’m in good clothes, I don’t have time to change,” Sloan said. “You’re at home, you could just throw on some old shit.”

“All right, all right,” Lucas said. “I hope it’s not for nothing.”

“Bring a flashlight,” Sloan said. “Listen, weren’t you there last night when that soldier guy found the blouse?”

“Yeah, that was us.”

“Well, Tom’s is about two blocks up that alley. I think this could be something.”

“Twenty minutes,” Lucas said. “I gotta stop at Walgreens and get some Vicks.”

He changed into an old pair of jeans and high-topped hiking boots, a T-shirt with terminally stained underarms, and a year-old canvas fishing shirt, still new enough to be stiff.

His biggest fear wasn’t the filth of a dumpster; it was AIDS. The disease was exploding in the Cities, and the papers said that a major component in its spread, besides gay sex, was blood-toblood contact with needles used by junkies.

And needles wound up in dumpsters.

Five minutes after Sloan’s call, he was back in his Jeep. He made a quick stop at a Walgreens, picked up the thickest pair of yellowplastic kitchen gloves they had, and a jar of Vicks VapoRub.

TOM’S PIZZA WAS a failing storefront pizza joint distinguished by its low prices and juicy bluebottle flies. The flies looked a little too much like Tom’s pizza ingredients for the high-priced trade, though some argued that they added a certain je ne sais quoi to the cheese-and-mushroom special.

Lucas parked on the street at the side of the building and walked around back, carrying the bag with the gloves and the Vicks, and the heavy shirt, and found Sloan, Hanson, Lester, and Jack Lacey, the owner of Tom’s, standing in the alley looking up at the dumpster. The bright motion-sensor light shone down from the roof, onto the space around the store’s back entrance, half illuminating the dumpster. A stepladder stood next to it.

Lucas said, “Hey,” as he walked up, and Sloan said, “I owe you,” and Lucas said, “You really do.” Lucas made the mistake of sniffing at the dumpster and gagged and turned away: “Holy shit; when was this thing dumped?”

“They get it once a week,” Lacey said. “It goes out tomorrow. It’s been hot.”

“Maybe they ought to get it twice a week,” Lucas said. “This is disgusting.”

“Only in the summer . . .”

“Listen, it’s been nice chatting,” Lester said. “So, let’s get your ass in there.”

Lucas looked at the dumpster, sighed, pulled on the heavy canvas shirt, unscrewed the jar of Vicks, put a daub in each nostril.

“He’s a goddamned pro,” Sloan said, with false heartiness.

“Gonna ruin everything I’m wearing,” Lucas said.

Lester said, “Put in for it. I’ll approve it.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Lucas climbed the ladder and looked into the dumpster—and looking was almost as bad as smelling. The basic component of the mess inside was rotten cheese, along with rotten meat, rotten crusts, rotten grease, rotten greasy cardboard, and flies. He’d always wondered where flies went at night, and now he knew. He could see a couple of cylindrical cartons that once contained tomato sauce; and a rat, with tiny black ball-bearing eyes, each with a highlight from the overhead alley spot.

The rat saw him coming and ran up the far corner and over the side. Lester cried, “Man, look at the size of that sonofabitch,” and Hanson said, “Don’t get bit. It might have rabies.”

Hanson had his pistol out, tracking the rat. Sloan shouted, “Don’t shoot it, don’t shoot it, the ricochet . . .”

Lester said, “Remind me to bring my old lady here for dinner.”

Lacey: “Hey. There aren’t any rats inside. . . .”