Portland Noir - Kevin Sampsell [63]
“You know CopStalker?”
Jacob nods, Of course. A band of “concerned volunteers” whose goal is to hold police accountable for their actions—or that’s how it started. CopStalker now mostly consists of bike messengers, anarchists, and indie media activists who need something to do while sober. They follow Portland’s Finest on their bikes, documenting every traffic stop and harassment of the homeless, then post the accounts on a website whose cluttered design and abbreviated text make it nearly impossible to decipher.
Fifteen years ago, Jacob would have been one of them.
“My girlfriend shot the tape,” the kid says. “She’s scared shitless—jumps every time the phone rings or someone knocks. I told her I’d take care of it.”
“So you blackmail cops. Brilliant.”
“Not for myself,” the kid says, sounding hurt. “For the victims. They’re too injured to work, they barely know English, and they’re terrified to leave their apartment. This is all they got.”
Jacob stares into the kid’s eyes, searching for a tell. The slightest hint he’s being lied to. If the kid isn’t giving him the truth, he’d make a killing in the World Series of Poker.
Jacob Black doesn’t possess what can be called a sense of civic duty. Nor much empathy. But years ago he had a badge, and then he didn’t, and the circumstances that cost him his badge suddenly feel too familiar.
He takes the bundle from the kid. “I sense the slightest fuck-up, I walk. You’ll never see me again.”
“Fair enough.”
Jacob takes his time going back. He glances at the journals tucked into the Mezzanine, then lingers in the True Crime section of the Purple Room. Little memories bobbing to the surface like bodies in the spring thaw. When he dated the woman who worked here—what the hell was her name?—he’d wait for her shift to end in a different room. Can’t recall if he made it to every room in the store before things ended.
Mostly they’d just fucked. Sometimes they smoked a joint in bed afterward and she told him stories about all the weird customer incidents at Powell’s. Mainly junkies in the bathrooms. Though there was the time someone found a homeless guy who’d climbed up one of the twenty-foot bookcases in the Purple Room and fell asleep on top until a manager heard him snoring. And the time a crazy woman tried to abduct a six-year-old girl, so the store went into total lockdown—no one allowed in or out—while the employees combed top to bottom, front to back, until they found the girl in a restroom stall.
When he heads back up to the gallery, a paunchy, bushy-haired cowboy in snakeskin boots is reading a poem about the desert being both his mother and his lover.
The black cop has never looked more out of place. Long, muscular arms draped across the seat backs to each side, he bounces one leg impatiently—a leg almost as thick as Jacob’s torso.
Jacob takes the seat next to the letterman jacket. The leg stops bouncing.
Shoulders keeps his gaze fixed on the dais, trying to appear interested, but his senses have clearly zeroed in on the man in the wrinkled T-shirt and khakis who dropped into the hot seat.
Jacob listens through another stanza. Pretends to glance at the art on the gallery walls, peripherally spotting Mustache as he crosses from the remaindered books to the info desk. A perfect spot to cut Jacob off from the stairs.
He waits. They wait.
The Poet Laureate of Somebody’s Backyard declares his yearning to make love to a cactus, and Jacob makes the switch. Scoops up the letterman jacket and in the same movement drops the Members Only one in its place. He’s up and away from the seats and heading for the stairs before he realizes what his hand knew at a touch—there’s no money under the jacket.
Mustache comes right behind Jacob, following him to the top of the stairs, when Jacob wheels around so suddenly they almost collide. Their eyes meet, and for a moment neither is sure what the other will do.
Jacob says, “Excuse me,” and steps around the cop. Walks across the floor, past the info desk with its narrow-eyed employee typing on a computer, and enters