Page 4 of The Family Cross

Her face clouded. “Pop-pop. Don’t just agree with me, man. What do you know?”

I sighed. “I know you’re hungry, Anna, and so is everybody else in line, so I should go finish making the eggs so we can open on time.”

She glared at me as I turned away, hoping she wouldn’t explode into a tirade.

A phone rang, and I glanced back to see Anna answer a battered cell. “Talk. Talk.”

I was shutting the kitchen door when she screamed, “Pop-pop-pop! Mr. Detective! I told you it was bad under the bridge!”

4

I WATCHED THROUGH THE grate as Anna Bananas cursed at me and then everyone else before fleeing from the basement. I admit I felt relief at her departure. I picked up the mixing bowl and the whisk and finished preparing the eggs.

“Anna Bananas does have a point,” I said to Sampson as I poured the eggs into a hot cast-iron skillet. “The way people at the bottom of the ladder are treated is the true measure of a society.”

“Society is scoring pretty low by that measure,” Sampson said, taking the pan of bacon from under the broiler and setting it on the stove. “Something has to give on that front.”

“I hear you,” I said. It was part of why we did the work here.

Soon we had piping-hot scrambled eggs in a large serving tray and a second tray piled high with John’s special bacon and toast. We threw up the grate and pushed the trays forward.

“Appreciate it,” the big shaggy guy in the army jacket said as we doled out the food. “Tough night for some of us out there.”

“Glad we could help,” I said, smiling. “Hope your day is drier.”

He laughed, showing a missing lower canine. “We can only hope.”

The rain let up around twenty minutes later. As Sampson predicted, there was a doubling of the hungry, and it was all we could do to keep up until the next shift arrived and helped us over the peak of the demand.

“This continues, we’re going to need a bigger kitchen,” I said to Sampson at a quarter to eight.

Sampson’s phone rang before he could reply. He answered, listened, and said, “Where was this?” After a pause, he said, “I have Cross here with me.” After another pause, he said, “We’re on our way.”

He hung up and took off his apron. “We’ve got a body in a burned car under an abandoned off-ramp down by the Anacostia River.”

“I know where that is,” I said, taking off my own apron. “Behind the lumberyard. Big encampment of homeless people there, I think.”

We quickly had a bubble flashing on top of Sampson’s new F-150 and our siren wailing. We drove over the bridge to Anacostia and then south along the river until the off-ramp came into view behind a screen of brush that separated it from the lumberyard. It was a quarter past eight by then and the sun was breaking through, glary and hot for May.

John parked behind a patrol car blocking the alley-like way ahead.

We got out to talk to the officer, whose name badge said DENNISON. He and his partner had taped off the area, but he told us the ground had already been trampled by people from the encampment who’d gone down for a look after the flames died.

“When did all this happen?” I asked.

“A little before six, we guess,” Officer Dennison said.

“Guess?”

“The trolls don’t like to talk.”

“Trolls?” Sampson frowned. “We’re talking about humans down on their luck, Officer.”

Dennison put up his hands. “That’s what a lot of them call themselves, Detective. Trolls. And PUBs. You’ll see.”

I said, “PUBs?”

“Stands for ‘people under the bridge.’ I’m telling you, it’s real tribal back in there.”