City of the Dead

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“And you say the man wore a uniform?”

“Yes, sir. A Salvation Army uniform.”

“People saw him?”

“At least four people claim to have seen him.”

“Going in and out of this awful place you describe?”

“Yes, sir. Just a shack, really.”

“Sort of a crash pad for derelicts and outcasts?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Poor devils. What a ghastly business.”

“Business?”

“What they do to each other.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And the chap in our uniform,” says Major General Henry Pierce, Division Leader, Salvation Army, Eastern District, “he’s a suspect in this grisly business?”

“Yes, sir,” Flynn says in quiet awe of the tall, elderly gentleman sitting in uniform across the desk from him. “I’m afraid so.”

“You know, of course, Sergeant, it’s not at all difficult to come by one of our uniforms.”

“Yes, sir. I know most Army-Navy stores carry them.”

“And will sell them to just about anyone. They’re not supposed to without written authorization, but they do.”

“Yes, sir, I know that.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve had people posing as officers in our Army, supposedly doing the Lord’s work but actually out hustling money for themselves.”

“Yes, sir. I can appreciate that. All the same—”

“—the possibility still exists,” General Pierce muses quietly, “that the chap seen going in and out of that shack was actually one of our people. I quite agree, Sergeant.”

“Yes, sir,” Flynn murmurs awkwardly, his eyes straying out the window, where the head of a pigeon has suddenly appeared, bobbing along the length of the ledge.

General Pierce catches Flynn’s preoccupation and smiles. “Pretty soon you’ll see his friends come along and join him out there. We put crumbs out along about this time.”

The General rises, hobbles stiffly to a closet at the back of the room, then disappears within it. In the next moment he’s back out carrying a plastic bag of stale rolls and bread. “You can almost set your clock by them. Four-twenty, four-thirty, they’re here, cooing, making an awful racket, looking for their crumbs.”

In the next moment the General flings open the window. Suddenly, Flynn sees an explosion of feathers just outside on the ledge. The noise of the cooing mounts till it sounds like the hum of a single huge generator, and the upper half of the General’s body at the open window merges joyously with his feathered flock.

Shortly after the disbursement of crumbs, he closes the window, hobbles back to his desk and sits. “Still”—he resumes his thread of thought now, as if he’d never paused for a moment—“it’s extremely improbable that this person is one of our people.”

“How so, sir?” Flynn asks, leaning forward.

“Well, for one thing, we no longer run a shelter in that area. Used to have one on the old South Street pier until about ten years ago, before the area underwent this big urban-renewal transformation. In those days you’d see a lot of lost souls down that way—derelicts, drunks, runaways, aliens avoiding fhe immigration people, sailors who’d jumped ship. Old neighborhood then, full of elderly people and artists who could rent cheap space down there. Quite charming in its way. Colorful. Now the place is full of glass skyscrapers. Bankers. Brokers. Wealthy merchants. And now, of course, the old seaport’s a tourist attraction. Can’t have a lot of these poor souls lurching all about the place bumping into people. The police have understandably chased them all out. So there was no further need for us to run a shelter down there. No flock to minister to. Those people have crept into different areas of the city now and we’ve followed them.”

“I see,” Flynn says quietly. Part of him is still out there on the ledge, wondering where all the pigeons have gone. “What happened to the people who used to run that shelter for you?”

“The old South Street shelter? Oh, they’ve all been reassigned. Some of them, I imagine, are dead.”

“Yes, sir,” Flynn muses on. “Still, I wonder if you keep a record of the names of people who did staff that shelter.”

“We keep a duty roster for every shelter in the city. Still, it’s been ten years. That’s a long time.”

“Is it still down there?”

“The shelter?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Oh, yes. We still own the property and the building. Probably sell it soon. Real-estate market is booming down that way. We’ve already had a number of inquiries on it.”

“I don’t suppose I could go down and have a look around the place.”

Mildly astonished, the General looks up. “Can’t imagine what you’d find. Place’s been locked up for years.”

“Probably just a lot of roaches and rats.” Flynn shrugs. “But I’d like to have a look anyway.”

The General’s long, finely tapered fingers roll a pencil mindlessly across the blotter of his desk. Then he smiles. “Why not? I’ll arrange to get you a key.”

“That would be fine, sir.”

General Pierce rises suddenly as if to signal the termination of their meeting. “Now you wanted the duty roster for the old South Street shelter too?”

“Yes, sir.” Flynn bounces up, falling into step behind him. “If you’ve got one.”

“We’ll never know till we look.” The General turns and beams back at him. “Right, Sergeant?”