Chapter 4

Officer Joe Morrison, seated on a cinderblock beside the fire pit of the homeless hotel, scratched under his armpit. After staying there for twenty hours, he was convinced that some biting thing had taken up residency inside his clothes with him. He looked over at the showers thinking that he’d love to spend twenty minutes under the water.

Slim, the care taker of the Homeless Hotel, sat down next to him and asked, “So how’s it going Blue Jay?”

“Why do you guys call me Blue Jay?” Joe asked getting irritated by the name.

“A Blue Jay is a rather irritating bird. Squawks a lot and chases off the other birds. It’s a blue colored bird. It reminds us of cops,” Slim answered with a smile. He looked over at Joe to see how he took the explanation.

“An irritating bird? Surely, we aren’t that bad,” Joe said feeling defensive. His cover had been blown within three minutes of arriving at the Homeless Hotel. He’d been shocked when a third of the men had known his name and badge number. Keeping up the pretense would have been stupid, so he didn’t deny it. His role wasn’t to police the place, but to protect them from individuals who meant them harm.

“Well, you guys tend not to see us as people. You chase us off about the time we find a place to sleep. You’re always making us move so that the fine upright taxpaying citizens don’t have to see us. Yeah, I’d say that you guys are a little irritating,” Slim answered.

The past twenty hours had been surprising for Joe. He had expected that most of the homeless would avoid him on general principles, but they hadn’t. Knowing that he was actually there to protect them had tempered their normal distrust a little. The stories he’d heard about how different people had ended up in the street had tugged at his heart. Some of them were so unbelievable that he wasn’t sure they could be true. He said, “Well, it is not so much the person as the appearance. Dirty and slovenly tends to be frowned upon by people who work.”

“A lot of us work,” Slim said.

“Day labor?”

“No. We work as salves to guilty consciences. Some guy who just ripped off a thousand dollars on some dirty deal hands us a quarter and feels all better about himself,” Slim said. There was a certain amount of bitterness in his voice that suggested there was more to the story than he was telling.

“That’s not true. People who give change to homeless just want to help,” Slim said.

“Yes, it is true. I used to be one of those bastards who was always ripping people off. I used to give out change to bums like you’d give candy to kids on Halloween. Then one day, my scheme fell through, I went to prison, and then I ended up out here on the street.”

“You’ve been in the big house?”

“Yeah. Now I run a homeless hotel,” Slim answered. He had a few tattoos from his stint in prison. He stood with a groan and said, “Better get the stuff out to feed the folks before they get testy.”

Joe was looking forward to breakfast. After all he had earned it. Slim wouldn’t let him eat without working for his food. He’d spent a good percentage of the day picking up around the Homeless Hotel to earn dinner and breakfast. At least he didn’t have to work for the coffee.

Men were starting to line up in front of the food shack in anticipation of Slim opening it. Joe stood and stretched. A large Roach Coach moving down the street caught his attention. Smiling, he realized that it meant Happy Harry was stopping by. Rather than walk to the food shack, he changed directions and headed to where Harry would park.

Harry was singing a song while he whipped the Roach Coach into the open area of the Homeless Hotel. Ling was looking a little green around the edges. Her knuckles were white from gripping the arm rest so hard. When Harry came to a stop, she said, “I think I’m dizzy.”

Harry laughed and said, “That’s all part of my seduction scheme. I get you so dizzy that you don’t know which way is up and then I put the move on you.”

“Harry, you are a real piece of work.”

Pointing over his shoulder, he said, “Why don’t you check out that building across the street? I came here first because it is set up just like the spot yesterday.”

Ling looked around the area noticing that Harry was right. She slipped out of the Roach Coach and headed across the street. Harry stepped out and looked around. Spotting the haggard looking police officer dressed in rags, he headed over to talk to him. He greeted the policeman, “Hello, Blue Jay.”

“How’d you know they are calling me Blue Jay?” Joe asked.

“They call all cops that,” Harry answered with a grin. He looked around for a moment and said, “Kind of like how most cops call all of my folk street trash.”

“Point taken,” Joe admitted. He had changed his mind about the people to a significant degree. He had come to understand why Harry had thrown his partner against the wall. He was sure that his partner had probably come to the same understanding.

“So how were things around here?”

“Quiet,” Joe answered. At least it had been quiet until it was time to sleep. He couldn’t believe how loud some of the men snored. It had kept him up half of the night. The uncomfortable section of sewer pipe that served as his bed had kept him up the rest of the night. It was hard to believe that most of the men appreciated staying there.

“How’d you sleep?”

“Didn’t sleep much,” Joe admitted. He ran a hand over his rough beard and wished that he had a razor and a toothbrush.

“You’ll sleep better tonight, I’m sure.” Harry laughed at the look of despair on Joe’s face and looked around at the men gathered at the food shack. Winking, he said, “It’s easy to sleep when you get tired enough.”

Some sixth sense caused Joe to turn and examine a man who was shuffling by the Roach Coach. There was something wrong about the man, but he couldn’t put his finger on it right away. He asked, “Do you know that guy?”

Harry turned and looked at the man Joe was pointing at. The man’s face was sweaty and he was dressed in clothes that weren’t quite right for the street. He was mumbling something to himself in a language he couldn’t understand. Harry looked at the direction the man was headed and shouted, “Bomber!”

To Joe, it seemed as if time had slowed down and the world was moving in slow motion. He watched Happy Harry take off towards the man. The homeless slowly turned to watch what was happening behind them with looks of fear on their faces as Harry’s warning registered. Joe stood up, feeling that he was moving too slowly. Harry grabbed the man and carried him into the open door of the Roach Coach. There was a loud explosion and Joe could see a piece of shrapnel headed towards him.

Even as the shrapnel hit him, the blast struck him. Joe flew backwards from the blast. The majority of the blast energy had been directed out the open door. Even as he flew backwards, he could see the homeless standing frozen in place. Their faces turned to horror at the realization that Harry had been blown up saving them. Joe lost consciousness about the time he bounced off the ground for the second time.

Across the street, Ling had just finished tapping the sniper on the back of the neck. He was out cold. Looking out the window, she was just in time to see Harry carry the man into the Roach Coach. Shaking her head in dismay at the violence of it all, she asked, “How did William know?”

Working quickly, she stripped the assassin removing an explosive vest as well as his clothes. She tied him in place and squatted nearby to wait for him to revive. She knew there hadn’t been anything she could have done to save Harry, but there was a lot she could do to avenge him. She unpacked a pad of paper and pen from her purse and waited with calm assurance that she would learn everything that the man knew.

After twenty minutes of waiting, there was a sound behind her. She turned her head to check it out. Jimmy Lee, wearing a red robe, was standing behind her. He looked at the scene before him and said, “Close the window. You don’t want people to hear his screams.”

“Right.”

“Let me know what you find out,” Jimmy Lee said as he glared at the man on the ground. As he reached the door, he said, “I’ll suggest to the police that they check out this building in about six hours. That should be time enough for you.”

“Thanks,” Ling said and turned back to stare at the piece of filth on the floor. Shaking her head, she asked, “Why would they kill the sweetest guy in the world?”

“Evil,” Jimmy Lee answered. He knew that he should probably keep Ling from doing what she was about to do, but he just couldn’t do it. He said, “Don’t take his evil into yourself.”

“I won’t,” Ling replied even as Jimmy Lee left the room. Considering his advice, she got up and closed the window. She returned to where she had been and squatted. She hugged her legs with her arms and rested her chin on her knees. It was a position that she hadn’t adopted since she was a child.

The time passed slowly. She thought about what she wanted to do to the man. She thought about Happy Harry and what he would want her to do. There were all kinds of ways to break a man and Ling knew most of them. Some were painful while others required tricking the mind into believing the worst. Despite her desire to inflict pain, she knew it was wrong.

It took Ling less than two minutes to break the man once he regained consciousness. Using one of the most successful interrogation techniques ever invented, she had him telling her everything that he knew. She even had to slow him down so that she could write everything down.

It was a sad twisted tale of evil perpetrated by a small isolated group of Islamic terrorists. They had wanted to kill Harry in revenge for all the terrorists who had been killed by the Druids. They believed that killing infidels was Allah’s work, but allowing infidels to kill the warriors of Allah was an act of evil. Those who killed warriors of Allah had to be punished. They had selected Harry as their target because they believed he was the most popular Druid of them all. His death would serve as the first of many punishments to come.

Once she was done with him, she left him tied up on the floor. Five hours of lying there before the police came over to check out the building would be good for him. Looking down at him, she said, “You are nothing but a piece of shit on the bottom of my shoe.”