X-Ray Vision Ch. 01: Discovered

"So it's a business strategy? I hope she's paid well."

"She owns the shop, takes care of her grandfather like a good Vietnamese granddaughter. It's how they want it, and it works for them."

Jill smiled a warm smile, glad to be introduced to these interesting people. She'd not any people to call her own, and this vignette pleased her.

I stopped. "Here."

Jill stopped, followed my gaze to the second floor of an office building with a restaurant below.

"Busy office, phones ringing, enough folks to answer them and do business. But each call, they take a slip into the owner? Anyway the lady in back. She gets interrupted, takes the slip, looks something up, makes some notations in a book. Goes back to what she was doing.

With more observation I could know what they do. But it's clear, they need a floor manager to do the bookwork, look up the data, record. Leave the owner to get on with it, the desk jockeys to take the calls."

She smiled, glad to know the job, sure she could make it work.

"Lets go up!"

Nodding, "Sure, but we make no contact yet? Just scope out the business, see if it's legit, and something you want to do. Maybe they're a bookie, or an escort service arranging 'dates' for clients."

Jill was scandalized but excited. "I might want to do that! I wouldn't know until I tried."

I nodded. "But you'd want contacts in case they were raided, and money for a lawyer. A risk at the moment, perhaps more than your pocketbook would support. Anyway we don't know anything yet."

We went to one of three elevators, the one that was on ground floor, of course. Rode it up, examined the business register on the wall there. I'd seen it from the ground, but it helped to wait for a companion to see too, then talk.

"I think this is it. Bail bondsman! Those must be lawyers calling, arranging a bond or a payment. The boss would be vetting the charges and the amounts."

She considered. "It might be risky, working with people with their back to the wall, folks needing bail. But I'd just be an office worker, right?"

"I don't know that business. You're probably right, but it's something to consider. Anyway, that's one on your list?"

She nodded. "I'd be happy to work here. Especially with the Thai restaurant below! I love Thai food."

We went back down, continued on the street.

Jill noted me looking at a passing woman, saw me dart to intercept her, give her a flyer. Saw the irritated response.

I returned, saw the question in her face. "Breast cancer. I gave her a flyer, screening clinic. I think she'll ignore it, but I have to try."

This stunned her. She stood still, staring back, the woman already lost to the pedestrian traffic, a tragic look on her face.

"How do you manage? Knowing all the small tragedies, seeing all the pain?"

I was used to it, that's how. Not easy to convey a hardened heart in words.

"You know it's there too, in your heart? How do you manage?"

She shook No! "But you see it; you know when it's a just sad and when it's really sad. It has to be hard."

I decided to open up to her; to tell her something I'd never had reason to tell anyone.

"I saw my mother die of cancer, the tumors growing, destroying her from the inside, bursting her organs.

I saw my father die of liver failure, drink himself to death, saw his liver just give up, the poison spreading through him.

After that, maybe I'm a little calloused."

Shocked, she reached for me, hugged me, held me for a long moment.

When she was able she let go, said "I'm sorry."

"So am I. I was a little kid, didn't know what I was seeing, didn't know what to do. But I can do something now, even if it's too little or too late, I try."

We walked on, each with our own thoughts. Then,

"Let's go exploring! We don't need to look more this morning, that was enough."

"Where do you want to go? What will we do?"

"Tell me about the world! Like only you can see. Show me all the hidden wonders."

I agreed; what else did I have to do with my days? But I warned her,

"It's not all pretty. Some of it is a little scary, or just sad."

"I want to know it all!"

The enthusiasm of youth. I used to have that, but it seemed a long time ago.

We went to the park. Start small, some history, some nature. Nothing too disturbing here. Well, one thing, I would not mention that.

"This park was built by some famous architect in the 1800's. There's a statue of him somewhere...over there." I pointed into the distance, but it was behind a screen of trees.

"Is it just as it was before folks settled here?"

"Oh my no. All this dirt was brought in, the whole place levelled. There are layers below, history."

"Tell me."

I looked around, just relaxing, seeing the ages spread out.

"Over there? Under the arboretum, there's the foundations of the original frontier fort. A stockade, the old wooden posts still in their holes, or the ends of them anyway, the posts long rotted away."

"How far down?"

"Only a few feet. With a shovel, we could uncover them in a few hours."

"How big was it?"

I tilted my head, looking, thinking. "I read that Andersonville was half a mile wide. But this one, a little frontier fort, was maybe 300 feet on a side. The gate was over there, facing the river."

She looked in wonderment, imagining wild Indians and French traders.

"The cemetery was nearer the river, probably because the ground was softer. It's mostly washed away when the river changed course at some point, long before the park was built.

There's just a couple markers and graves left, below the hot-dog stand, maybe 20 feet down."

"Anything recognizable?"

"Hard to see from here. Some leather from the boots, by which I assume a soldier was laid there and not a native. A rusted bit of crossed metal, perhaps from a cavalryman's hatband. Primitive stone markers, a name scratched in but obliterated by time."

"Sabers! Cool." She was getting into it, staring into the earth like she could see it.

"Later they had a fair here, after the fort and stuff was covered by silt from a flood. Only open ground for miles. A pavilion tent, some of the stakes still down there.

A wooden building for displays of industry, which burnt 50 years later. Lots of charred wood there, some metal fixtures. A radiator; a boiler. Glass from windows, the old-fashioned wavy kind, blackened by the fire."

"What next?"

"Civil war assembly point, soldiers off to war. Horseshoe nails, dropped cartridges, even a sabre somebody lost in the brush, probably saying goodbye to their fair lady."

She giggled, imagining a gaily-uniformed officer banging a young woman in her hoop skirt.

"Next!"

"The fill dirt for the park was taken from a dump. Lots of bottle caps, shoelace eyelets, broken medicine bottles from the late 1800's. Stuff that won't rot away.

Used to dig here in High School looking for dump-treasure."

"You always used to find the best stuff."

"I always found the best stuff, yeah. What there was - unbroken bottles and stoppers, inkpots and so on."

"Then there's today!"

"Yes, endless quarters in the sod, dropped by happy youngsters going to buy cotton candy or soda. Plastic rubble, but that's pretty much everywhere, the background noise of modern society."

She frowned at that. "What if you go deeper?"

He smiled, glad she'd asked.

"You go deep enough, there are dinosaur bones!"

"You mean like T-Rex?"

"Yes! Littler, raptors, therapods, like T-Rex but smaller. I used to play dinosaurs when I was a kid. My mom thought I had a great imagination, another kid fascinated by dinosaurs.

But I was just seeing them down there, pieces and even whole skeletons, nearly."

"Here? Where?"

"Oh everywhere. This place was home to them for millions of years. You dig deep enough pretty much anywhere around here, you'll find something."

"You could be the world's best archeologist! Find the greatest skeletons ever!"

I smiled fondly. "Well, if I had mining equipment and an unlimited budget. Not much budget for the average bone-digger."

She frowned, her dreams of Indian Jones punctured.

"Anything else?"

He prevaricated. "Nothing worth mentioning. Shall we move on to the city center?"

She led the way, chattering about history and treasure and whatnot.

What I hadn't mentioned, the thing that always troubled me when I came here, was the array of haphazard potholes dug in a sod layer, contemporaneous with the fort. Some distance outside, away from the river, near the old civilian settlement.

In each pothole, a nest of tiny bones. Human bones. The final resting place of many infants, more than fifty. It was unlikely so many infants had died close together in time. Infant mortality was severe back then, but not that severe.

And loved infants, wanted infants, got buried with more care than a hole chipped through the sod. No, these were the unwanted babies of the old brothel, the bastard offspring of a quarter century of randy soldiers with no care for the results of their wild oats.

The whores could not have cared for them, not have the resources or support to raise them. So they got put in a hole and buried, unwanted, forgotten.

Murdered.

It was the sort of history nobody wanted to hear, or even know about. Not part of the pretty old-west pageantry. Ugly, deeply sad, unfair.

I was glad to leave the park for the relative comfort of city life where the bodies were of adults, gangsters or victims of gangsters.

The bank was a fruitful stop on my gruesome tour.

"Under the bank, in the cement foundations of the vault, lie skeletons of three people, men I think. Hands bound behind their backs, legs hobbled. Maybe wrapped in a sheet, hard to tell now.

But alive when they were thrown in, by the contortions of the bodies. Drowned I think, when the cement was poured over them."

"Who could they be? Why did no one report them missing?"

"Perhaps they did. That bank is pretty old, dating to the original city center development. A century ago this port city was a pretty wild place, people arriving from all over via ships of foreign ports, up and down the coast. Pretty easy for somebody to get in trouble, get thrown in a convenient hole, get lost."

"Are there any identifying marks?"

"The flesh has rotted away. They have some dental work, but any records likely long gone. Rings, scars are no use without someone alive to recognize them!"

She digested this, nodded, content to let the sleeping dead lie.

"Are there secret tunnels? False compartments? A priest-hole?" She didn't know what that last was, but had heard it in a detective show and it sounded exciting.

"More of that sort of thing in the old brewery district. During prohibition they'd tunnel under the street from the brewery cellar to the saloons, simply roll barrels under the street that way undetected. The brewery was supposed to make only near-beer, but nobody was really checking."

"What's below that?" She had learned that there was always something 'below', layer after layer into history.

"First, the old water and sewer tunnels. Brick, collapsed here and there, no longer navigable."

"And then?"

"Well, far as I can tell, an Indian burial ground, spread all over this rise." The downtown had been built above the river valley, to keep valuable buildings safe from flood. The same sort of place the natives had buried their dead.

"That's exciting! Maybe the curse of the old Indian burial ground haunts the bankers to this day!" She was just kidding, but it was fun to tell tales.

"If that's the case, then pretty much all of America is cursed. The country is built essentially on one continuous Indian burial ground. They lived here for ten thousand years. That's a lot of burying."

That hit home; it was strange to think of all that history, hundreds of generations of people, all under her feet.

"What else can you tell me about the bank?"

"The vault is full of cash, that's to be expected. The deposit boxes are more interesting. Guns, lots of guns. Everybody seems to want to own one, then puts it away and never uses it. I can never figure that out."

"Are there diamonds? Looted painting from World War Two?" She was hoping for more juicy details.

"Lots of jewelry, but from the look if it mostly costume. I'm no expert but they don't seem very shiny. Easy to fool folks, and when they figure it out they just dump it in the bank vault rather than admit they've been duped.

There is one sort of interesting painting, in one of the larger boxes. It's been cut from it's frame, rolled up. Hard to tell exactly, but I've been looking at it this way and that for years. I think maybe an old master. Probably stolen, else why cut it? Why hide it?"

"What's it of?"

"Some old guy, strange triangle hat, maybe some kind of necklace. It's rolled up, no easier to figure out what it is for me than for you!"

"What's the strangest thing in there?"

That was easy. "One of the boxes is booby-trapped, a hand grenade wired to the lid, Vietnam War era. Nothing else in there, just the grenade. Must hate his relatives, want them to follow him to hell immediately after he dies and they inherit."

That was cool, sort of.

"Any other booby traps around town?"

He nodded. "Quite a few! Folks love to fool around with that sort of thing. There are any number of basement doors rigged to explode. Mostly the explosives are old, wet, probably won't do anything any more. A leftover from the gangster era, or prohibition?

One abandoned apartment, furniture looks like 1800's, bed made, table set, a barrel of black powder attached to the door. But the door has been walled off long ago, just a blank space on a hallway now. Probably be some trouble when they eventually tear the building down.

And my personal favorite! An unexploded mine, probably from the Civil War, embedded in a curve in the river, a big ball with prongs all over. The oxbow of the river shifted since then, now it's embedded under a park shelter, deep enough to cause nobody any worry."

We walked on, past a building with a forgotten sub-basement, full of stacked tables and chair, a hotel storage room? It was a school now.

A church with another church under it, the rubble of one anyway.

A small cemetery with a larger one beneath, coffins below lined with lead, sealed against some dread plague.

Crossing the river on the old bridge, chambers within the piers mostly filled with rubble but one intact, a plan still tacked on one wall, a brass lantern on a table, sealed and forgotten for eternity.

The river itself was a marvel of trash, firearms, valuables, keepsakes, religious offerings, bottles empty and full, cars and scuttled boats all buried in layer after layer of mud.

My favorite: a safe, still sealed and dry inside with a bundle of confederate cash, a locket containing human hair, a wedding ring with a sapphire stone, some naughty photographs and a Civil War Era sex toy.

She giggled for a while at that, her imagination running wild.

On the other side of the river, on the 'wrong side of the tracks' the alley walls were covered in layers of graffiti.

"How far back does it go?"

"Oh, years, all the way to when it was built I imagine. The lowest layer is an advertising sign for Browns Beneficial Liquor, whatever that was. The building must have stood alone back then, for the sign to be seen at all."

"Any secret criminal lairs?"

"Not that you'd want to visit. Mostly squatters have taken over. The upper floors are filled with ratty mattresses and broken drug paraphernalia. Pretty disgusting.

Oh! The old hotel penthouse is still there. Only way up was an elevator, removed years ago."

"What's it look like?"

"Art deco floor tiles, wall paper. Covered in dust but still bright under all that. Brass fixtures, crystal chandelier. Gaslights converted to electricity. Art on the walls but I don't know the artist. Abstract, not my style.

Bookcase full of dusty law books. Complete set of Playboy in the closet, from the original issue up to April 1972."

She was impressed. That stuff was valuable, particularly the Playboy collection.

I didn't mention the cuffs, straps, whips in the drawer by the bed.

Continuing, "The amazing thing is, all that wealth, but they had only two sets of dishes in the cupboard, two sets of silver in the drawer. Before consumerism took over I guess."

She shaded her eyes, looked at the penthouse windows high overhead. They were coated with grime and age, opaque. Forlorn.

She was done marveling, the sense of time and age starting to press in I guess.

"Let's go home. I'm tired. Thank you for the tour! You are wonderful." She gave me a one-arm hug, pecked me on the cheek. All sisterly.

I was thrilled. Home! She'd called my place home. I was strangely pleased by that.

We picked up a lobster roll, two bottles of beer, shared that for lunch. After a nap, each in our bedroom, it was time to return to the tailor Mr. Nguyen and his granddaughter Khang.

Phuong lit up like a lantern when he spied Jillian.

"Miss! It is genuinely a pleasure to see you again. Miss Khang!" his voice rang out imperiously, but she was already coming through from the back, the suit on a hangar.

"You will allow Miss Khang to confirm the fit?" He ushered Jillian back, and she joined Miss Khang, heading for the fitting. Jill was smiling, into the new-clothes thing now.

Mr. Nguyen made some comments on the local ball team, their recent defeat by a rival. He had a weakness for sport betting. Never more than he could afford, just a fiver now and again, always local games.

I wasn't up on the latest games, not a sport fan, but knew enough to cringe at the rival's victory. It was a famous matchup, done every year as a sort of exhibition game, trying to fill the stadium.

The fitting was going well. Jillian fit into the suit like a glove, hardly any gap between skin and cloth. Yet it moved wonderfully on her young frame as she bent, twisted, reached.

I could get used to having her around.

Miss Khang was pleased, complimented her. I saw her eye was perhaps taking in more than the clothing. Miss Khang enjoyed pretty girls too! A good job for her then, lots to look at.

In a minute they returned, Jillian still running her hands over the lines, feeling the fit. Feeling fine in her first bespoke suit, clothes that really fit her.

She glowed, happy. Spun around for me, showing off, hands on hips, a power executive pose.

For my part I'm afraid I simply stared. I saw women day and night, could not really un-see them, always somebody somewhere, from dress to bone and everything in between.

But never had I seen one showing off for me like this. Primping, turning, posing, smiling right at me. Glad to see me and look good for me.

I found my voice. "Miss Khang! You are a marvel, you have done a perfect job. As usual!" Phuong beamed at me, pleased. Miss Khang remained aloof.

Jillian stepped up, put her hands on my shoulders, stood face to face, eyes locked on mine, up on her toes and kissed me. Gently, definitely not sisterly.

"Thank you. You've saved my life."

Letting go, to Mr. Nguyen, "This suit is a joy to wear! So beautiful! So professional! Thank you! Thank you!" Impulsively, she took the incredible liberty of kissing him on the cheek briefly.

He smiled, always the gentleman of course, but clearly pleased at her enthusiasm. "You are entirely welcome Miss Jillian. Any friend of Mr. Greg will of course receive our best hospitality!"

She twirled again, showing off, and we all smiled, even Miss Khang. She did look very good.

I noticed in the jacket pocket, a note, folded twice, in a calligraphic hand. Interesting. For later.

We left the shop, Jill no longer concerned about paying, too happy to think much beyond the present. She wore the suit, as she'd be having her first interview soon. Her old outfit was wrapped in brown paper and string, under my arm.