Code name, p.16
Code Name, page 16
Ten minutes later, Mark heard footsteps approaching. “Agh! What is that smell?” a rough voice growled.
“I dunno, man,” came the reply. “Smells like garbage to me. Dumpster must be full of rotten stuff.”
“Yeah, well it didn’t smell like this when we stopped.”
The truck doors opened, then slammed shut and the engine roared to a higher level of life as the 18-wheeler headed off into the early morning traffic.
Mark smiled at their comments. He had to admit that he smelled like garbage. It was a noxious blend of fetid fumes, and he was pleased because this had confused the dogs that were now miles away engaging in a futile chase of a vanished trail in the pre-dawn forest.
Morning was only half an hour old when the truck pulled into a warehouse district in Washington D.C. Loose trash lined the street. Dumpsters with their lids open overflowed with refuse. Papers blew along the ground, stirred by the wind created as the truck drove between what appeared to be vacant buildings.
“This is as good a place as any,” Mark muttered.
With a firm grip on the strap, he slid down the tarp until his feet touched the solid bed of the trailer. The truck downshifted, belched black smoke and slowed to a crawl as it swept into a turn. When the truck straightened out, Mark was gone.
The warehouse district appeared empty but wanting to take no chances Mark ducked into an alley as the truck disappeared around another corner.
****
“If I hadn’t known better,” Mark said, “I might have thought I’d landed in some decayed part of Eastern Europe. The buildings were old and colorless, with graffiti scrawled as high as a man with a can of spray paint could reach. The pavement was broken and littered with garbage.
“With my collar pulled up around my face, and my shoulders hunched like an old man, I began walking the dead streets. If I stayed around here, I would be noticed when the warehouse workers showed up for the day, and that was the last thing I wanted.
“What I needed was to lose myself in the bowels of the inner city, where street bums are invisible as long as they stay out of trouble.
“I gazed at the bleak scene and thought how contradictory the nation’s capital was. In some regards it was a showplace for America, but its inner city was among the filthiest and most crime-infested places in the country.”
****
Ironically, only a short distance separated the glamour from the grime. Virtually in the shadow of great monuments, abandoned buildings served as places of shelter for the homeless and hopeless. Burned-out shells of once-elite hotels, now awaiting the wrecking ball, provided rude housing to the part of humanity that existed at the bottom link in the human chain.
As Mark shuffled along the still-idle sidewalk, he thought about the homeless. Somewhere along the line, these people had fallen off the path. They turned to the streets where they wandered without aim, seeking only to live through the day and find some form of shelter for the night. They picked through trash cans, searching for scraps of food discarded by those who could afford the luxury of throwing away what no longer pleased them.
He had read about these people, but had never met any. Some of them had once been successful, had families who loved them, had lives with purpose and meaning. But something happened – perhaps it was the loss of a job and the inability to find another, perhaps a devastating divorce, perhaps the death of the only remaining loved-one. Often, it was the result of overwhelming addiction. Whatever started it, the result was the same – loss of self-esteem, loss of purpose in life, loss of hope.
A man without hope often turned to one form or another of escape mechanism. A way to leave the pain behind and lose one’s self in a blurry existence while waiting only to die. But the escape was nothing more than a painful prison – an addiction to drugs or alcohol. If those were beyond reach, there were other ways to numb and destroy one’s brain cells.
Abandoned doorways and alleys were the refuges of addicts, slumped in heaps with paper bags or well-worn hypodermic needles clutched possessively in one hand. The bags might hold a bottle or a squeezed-out tube of airplane glue. It made no difference, the result was the same.
In the early light, Mark wandered empty streets not far from the warehouse district, then turned a corner into a trash-filled dead-end alley that separated two dilapidated brick buildings. He walked slowly into the gloomy recess of this brick canyon.
“Oh man, you stink!” The accusation, spoken with a heavy Latino accent, came from a pile of cardboard boxes next to an overflowing dumpster.
“Thanks for noticing,” Mark replied to the unknown voice.
Among the boxes, he could see a frail old man. Matted black hair speckled with gray framed the deeply creased dark skin of his face. Most of the old man’s teeth were missing, and those remaining were yellow with age and rotted from neglect. His clothes were ragged and dirty. But Mark had to admit that as bad a shape as this fellow was in, he still didn’t stink as much as he himself did.
“No, I did not mean anything by it,” the man apologized. “It is just that … whew!” he held his nose. “We need to do something about that.”
“How about if I sleep downwind of you?”
“Yeah, okay, I guess.” The man pointed to a pile of loose papers across the alley.
Mark nodded, walked across and dropped into the pile. He pulled some newspapers around him as a covering and felt the tension go out of his muscles. The sounds of morning in Washington D.C. slowly began to echo off the brick walls of the alley as the city came to life, but Mark never heard any of it.
It was nearly noon before he awoke, warmed by the sun that was now directly overhead. Humidity was high; it would be a miserable day, hot and muggy. Rolling out of his newspaper bed, Mark walked slowly across the alley to a shady spot next to the dumpster. The man in the cardboard was lying dead still.
“This seems like a good place to hide out for a while,” Mark thought. “Nobody pays any attention to the homeless, as long as they’re quiet, stay out of sight and cause no trouble.”
He reached into his cargo pocket and pulled out a C-ration can, opened it and spooned out the military version of scrambled eggs and ham. His mouth appreciated the taste of food, and his body responded to the input of calories, but now he needed water to drink. Near a side entrance door on the building across the alley he spotted a spigot. Mark struggled to his feet, walked to the hose bib and turned the handle, but nothing came.
“That one does not work.” The voice called from the pile of cardboard. “If you need water, you will not get it there.”
“Where then?”
The old man motioned to Mark, “Come, I will show you.” Then he suddenly reached out his hand and said, “I am Carlos.”
Mark looked at the hand, then at the man’s grizzled face. He reached out and the two men shook hands – a formal introduction between gentlemen of the street.
“What is your name?” The question caught Mark off guard.
“Uh …” he thought a moment, “… you can call me Matthew.” It was the only thing that came to mind – the name of the gospel writer in the Bible that just preceded Mark.
“Okay, Matthew,” Carlos said, “In my old country that would be Mateu. So, Matthew, I will show you around my neighborhood.” The two men stood in the shadows at the alley entrance and watched traffic and pedestrians moving on the street.
Mark noticed that nobody looked at them or paid them any attention. In their rush to carry on in their own lives, or perhaps out of embarrassment or disgust, it is the nature of people to step right over a fallen man in ragged clothes. They’ll keep right on going, never thinking that they had just passed a fellow human being who might need help.
“Water is over there.” Carlos pointed across the street to another alley. “That water works. But do not go there until late at night or they will run you off and call the cops.”
“Cops I don’t need.”
“Ah, you on the run?” It was an innocent question.
Mark just looked at Carlos and managed a weak little smile. “Nobody needs cops.”
“Um …” Carlos thought about that for a moment and then nodded. “I think you are right. They do not come to help us. They just hassle us.”
The two men turned and walked back into the depth of the alley. “We need to get you different clothes,” Carlos exclaimed. “You stink awful bad.”
Mark just laughed. “New clothes?”
“Well, not new, but different. What did you fall into anyway?”
“Garbage.”
“My friend Matthew, you are supposed to sleep on the outside of the dumpster, not the inside.” Carlos chuckled.
“Okay, I get the point. I’ll stay downwind until we can find something else for me to wear. But how am I gonna do that?”
“Tonight I will show you.”
Mark reached into his pocket and pulled out a foil-wrapped disc of chocolate that came from one of the ration boxes, and held it out for Carlos.
“Ooeee, where did you get that?”
“Some place.” Mark shrugged and dropped it in the old man’s hand.
“Thank you, my friend Matthew.”
Ordinarily, a man on the run didn’t want to make contact with anyone. According to Blake, avoidance of people is a key to successful escape and evasion. But Mark decided that Carlos was not likely to pose much of a threat. At least he hoped he wouldn’t.
In NIA’s search for Mark, hundreds of people were being interviewed, shown Mark’s photograph and asked if they had ever seen him. He was betting that Carlos, and the rest of the street community, would not be among them. And if they were, that they would not cooperate with authorities. Still, if possible, he must limit contact to Carlos alone.
But who was this fellow, Carlos? Where was he from? His speech was clearly that of a man from South America, but the accent was not Spanish – Brazil then?
Mark knew nothing about this man, and that could be dangerous. Still, he must be very careful of what he said. He needed to develop a cover story, in case this homeless man asked more questions.
For those on the run, a cover story is essential. Actually, he planned to create several plausible histories to use as he moved around.
“Today, Matthew,” he made a mental note. “Next time maybe, Steve. It’ll help break the trail, slow the pursuit.”
Curled up in his pile of newspapers, pretending to sleep, Mark put his mind to work on a story for Carlos, if that became necessary. In the early afternoon, he heard Carlos stirring.
“Time to go to work,” the man called.
That was a surprising comment.
“What?”
“Go to work,” Carlos said matter of factly.
“Exactly what do you do for work?”
“Pedindo esmolas,” the Brazilian said with a smile. Then in English he added, “Begging.”
He lifted the darkly discolored leg of his trousers to display a huge running sore on the side of his calf. “I show them this, I ask for help, and they give me money.”
Mark winced. “What happened to your leg?”
“Ah, you like it?”
“Like it? It’s horrible! You must get some medical attention for that.”
“Oh no, my friend Matthew, I have worked many years to get it looking this good. Wait, I will show you.” Carlos walked back to his pile of cardboard, fished around and came up with a blood-stained wire brush. “With this, I keep the wound open.” He made scrubbing motions with the brush, and Mark felt his stomach turn. “Now, time for work. I see you tonight?”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Good, tonight we clean you up a bit, so this place does not stink so much. Right?”
“Right.” Mark laid back into the pile of papers, the vision of Carlos scrubbing his calf to keep the wound fresh troubling his imagination.
Late that night, Carlos returned, stumbling drunk, fell into his pile of cardboard face first and lay deathly still. In the dim light, Mark could see a bundle tucked under the old man’s arm.
Curious, he rolled to his feet, walked over and pulled the package free. It was a brown paper bag with the word ‘Goodwill’ printed on it. Inside was a denim shirt and a pair of blue jeans. Both were clean but showed a lot of wear. Mark pulled the folded clothes to his face and inhaled – they smelled so fresh.
Then he looked down at Carlos. This generous soul had spent the day on a street corner with his wounded leg on display begging for money so he could buy some new clothes for Mark. From the look of him, apparently, the day had been successful enough that Carlos had money left over for a celebration. A few dollars at Goodwill and a few more at a liquor store. For this, Carlos scrubbed his leg with a wire brush. It was touching beyond belief, and a lump crept into Mark’s throat as he stared down at this pitiful little man with the big heart.
“Well, Carlos,” Mark whispered, “I won’t stink the place up so much anymore.”
With the new clothes in the paper bag, he walked across the vacant street. There, in the deep recesses of the other alley was the spigot Carlos had mentioned. Stripping everything off, he took a soapless bath, washing twice.
In the warm night air, Mark stood naked until he was dry. Then he took the new clothes from the bag and dressed. He pulled on his socks and boots, then emptied all the C-rations from the pockets of his old clothes and tossed the fatigues in a trash can at the end of the alley.
From the faucet, he drank deeply. When he was finished, he scooped up the rations and walked back across the street to the pile of papers that was now his home. Carlos had not moved an inch. As he passed the unconscious man, Mark whispered a thank you to the Brazilian and then went to his own spot and turned the papers over so he wouldn’t lie where his old clothes had soiled the bed.
Now that his need for water had been satisfied, he grabbed a can of rations, opened it with the P38 and ate. Afterward, he divided the remaining C-rations into two equal piles. One pile was his, the other was for Carlos. He stacked Carlos’s cans near the old man’s head, so he would see them as soon as he woke up. He wanted to surprise the old man. With what was there, the two of them could have a meal together in celebration of the improved atmospheric conditions in their alley.
It was late in the morning before Carlos stirred. A choking cough jerked him from his sleep, and a flailing arm scattered the C-ration cans with a clatter. Bloodshot eyes slowly blinked open and squinted at Mark. “Hey, you look good,” the old man sputtered. Then he inhaled. “And you smell good, too.”
“Thank you for your kindness,” Mark said humbly.
“Ah,” Carlos stammered, “it was really for me. I could not breathe.” He laughed, and that set off a coughing fit. Then, seeing the C-ration cans, “What is this?”
Mark nodded, “For you.”
Carlos picked up one of the cans. “Food?”
“Sort of. It’s the army’s excuse for food, but it beats starving.”
“You buy food at an army surplus store?” the old man asked.
Mark thought about it for a moment and decided not to answer. “Actually, it’s not too bad. I wanted you to have some. We can have a feast together.” Mark laughed. “Celebrate the clean air.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
The old man’s face tightened. Mark thought Carlos was about to burst out laughing. Then came a flood of tears; Carlos’s whole body shook with emotion, and he silently wept.
Mark’s smile faded. “What is it, Carlos?”
“Nobody has ever done anything so nice before,” the old man whispered convulsively, then he cried some more.
Minutes passed before either of them spoke; then Carlos broke the silence. “Your feet stink.”
Mark laughed out loud. “What do you mean?”
“Your feet stink. I will get you some shoes today.” Carlos dug through the pile of cardboard and came up with the wire brush, displaying it proudly for Mark to see.
“No! Please, Carlos, don’t do that.”
“It is for me. So I can breathe better.” He pulled up his pants leg and scrubbed the old wound until it bled freely.
The process was shocking to see. “Carlos, please,” Mark begged.
“Oh, my friend Matthew, do not worry. This does not hurt anymore. I learned this from my mother. She spent her whole life on the streets of Rio de Janeiro pedindo esmolas … begging. It is the only thing I know.” He put away the wire brush, fanned the calf with one hand, then struggled to his feet and announced, “Time to go to work.”
“First, our banquet,” Mark suggested.
“Ah, a good idea.” Carlos sat back down and watched Mark open the cans. “Today is trash day. Today, the trucks will come. We must put away our beds so they will not take them.”
Carlos ate enthusiastically, but Mark picked at his food as he watched the old man’s trouser leg darken with absorbed blood. Moments later, Carlos set aside the empty can and stood up. “Thank you, Matthew. Now we must take care of our beds, and then I go.”
Mark threw the most foul-smelling newspapers in the dumpster, then folded and stowed the rest in the far corner of the alley. “They will be safe here,” Carlos said.
“How long have you been here?” Mark asked.
“Here in the United States, twelve years. I learn the language well, do you think?”
“Yes, and I think your brain is smart enough to learn to do something besides pedindo esmolas.”
Carlos beamed at Mark’s attempt to speak a little Portuguese. “Ah, you learn my language quickly. You must be a smart man, too.”
Mark held his forefinger and thumb slightly apart, as if pinching a bit of air. “A little.” He smiled. “But tell me about you.”
“I have been in Washington D.C. many times, but I stay for only six months. Springtime here is beautiful. The summer is hot and humid, but where I come from this is nothing. I will leave before winter and go to Florida. I hate the cold.”
