*****
The Duncan Street Clinic surprised and impressed Tracy. Instead of the ramshackle, thrown together storefront she expected to see, the clinic proved to be quite the professionally run establishment. Housed inside of a small, four story renovated warehouse it was anything but ramshackle. Nurses and what she took to be actual doctors went about the task of triaging and interviewing the many patients in the huge waiting room.
“This is quite the operation here,” Tracy said to Kelly as they walked through the clinic.
“It’s funded by most of the wealthy Negro citizens of Sovereign City. Whatever Dr. Farr needs we try and get it for him. Besides himself he’s got four other doctors on staff. They volunteer their time but the nurses are on full time and they get a salary. Most of them are almost as good as the doctors.”
“I can believe that.”
“Ah, here’s Dr. Farr now. Glen! Glen! Come on over. There’s someone I’ve brought with me that you should get to know.”
Dr. Farr broke his conversation with an extremely pretty nurse who plainly was miffed that she no longer had Dr. Farr’s attention. And Tracy couldn’t blame her. The mustached, tall Dr. Glen Farr was quite the handsome man, with wide, sincere eyes the color of varnished wood and amber skin. He shook her hand firmly yet delicately as Kelly introduced them.
“I’ve heard of you and Mr. McCall, of course,” Farr said. “But then again I don’t think there’s anybody in Sovereign City who hasn’t heard of Fortune McCall and his crew by now. You’ve taken this city quite by storm.” Farr smiled and Tracy smiled back.
“Miss Scott is investigating the recent arson you’ve been plagued with down here in Marcy Village. I wanted her to meet with you and maybe give her some insight into the situation.”
Farr’s eyes narrowed in anger. “If I knew where the people lived who were doing this I’d go after them myself. The victims were all brought here, Miss Scott. People who had no business dying like that. We’ve got more than enough of people dying from everything else. Now they have to worry about being burnt to death in their beds.”
“Is there a lot of disease here?”
Farr ticked them off on his fingers as he named them. “Tuberculosis. Measles. Mumps. Chicken Pox. Asthma. Congenital syphilis. Rubella. Diabetes and nutritional deficiencies like you wouldn’t believe. You’d expect to see this kind of health crisis in underdeveloped countries, not in an American city. And certainly not here in Sovereign.”
“What’s the city’s Board of Health doing about it? Aren’t they helping?”
“As much as they can. I’m not saying that they’re ignoring the problem. But the Village isn’t the only underdeveloped neighborhood in Sovereign that needs medical care and assistance. What we really need is a brand new fully equipped and staffed hospital to ease the overworked, understaffed, and underfunded city hospital that besides this clinic is where most folks here in the Village go for their health care.”
Tracy sighed and looked around. Hard as her exterior was, one thing she hated to see was unnecessary suffering. And then an idea suddenly occurred to her. “Have there been any recent deaths before the fires started?”
Farr frowned slightly. “People die here in Marcy Village every day. I don’t see-“
“It occurs to me that maybe somebody is grieving over the death of a loved one and that’s why they’re burning down houses. Don’t you kill disease with fire?”
Farr looked at Kelly who shrugged wide shoulders. Farr looked back at Tracy. “I don’t know, Miss Scott…that seems like kind of a stretch-“
“Dr. Farr, I’ve got precious little to go on. I can’t find a financial motivation for burning down those houses. So it’s not being done to collect insurance. There’s no other connection I can find. Now, I did run into a man and woman at the scene of a fire last night and I believe they were the ones who set the fire. If they are setting these fires to get some kind of twisted revenge, couldn’t it be possible they’re grieving over the death of a child? Their child?”
Farr nodded. “I’m not completely sold but you’re a persuasive young lady, I’ll give you that. If you’ll give me a couple of hours I’ll prepare a list of children who have died from disease recently. How far back do you want me to go?”
“Make it a week before the fires started.”
Farr nodded. “Come on to my office and make yourselves comfortable while I get that list together.”
“Do you really think you’re onto something, Miss Scott?” Kelly asked as they followed the fast walking Dr. Farr.
“I don’t know, Mr. Kelly. But I have to start somewhere, don’t I? And maybe the best way to draw these arsonists out is to let it be known publicly that I’m looking for them. Could be just that alone will cause them to do something stupid.”
“Such as?”
“Such as come looking for me.”
4.
Armed with the list provided by Dr. Farr, Tracy started the next day with a positive attitude and dressed in clothing more suitable to the day’s activities: Black riding boots, jodhpur pants, khaki shirt, and leather aviator’s jacket. She tucked her hair neatly and out of the way under a black leather aviator’s cap. She had her usual weapons secreted in special pockets in her jacket and pants. A .45 automatic went under her left arm. And thus she set forth.
A dozen names were on her list of children who had died before the arson started. Tracy was appalled at the illnesses they had died from. There was no reason for children to be dying from these diseases. Not in this day and age. Tracy drove to Marcy Village and started her interviewing of the parents. She made no secret of the fact she was hunting for the arsonists and made it well known, even going so far as to offer a reward for information.
Her third stop, with a woman named Sadie Everdeen took longer than she wanted but Sadie Everdeen insisted that Tracy sit and have a piece of homemade apple pie and tell her how it was living on such a grand and glorious ship and how it was travelling all over the world. Tracy saw the excitement and longing in the woman’s eyes. She claimed to be only thirty but she looked twenty years older. Sadie giggled like a teenager as she explained why she looked older than her actual age. “You bury two husbands and two chirren and it’ll age you some!” She still had two other children, both boys. As Tracy ate her pie she asked what school they went to. Sadie shrugged. “Them boys don’t go to school. Prob’ly runnin’ the streets somewhere. Hustlin’ or stealin’.” The careless way she said it troubled Tracy. This was a woman who had long ago made her peace with the life she lived.
And so Tracy sat and ate her pie and spent an hour telling Sadie Evergreen about life of The Heart of Fortune. She listened without interrupting, her eyes wide with amazement. She wrapped up another huge wedge of apple pie that she insisted Tracy take with her. “An’ God bless you for what you’re tryin’ to do, Miz Scott,” Sadie said with honest gratitude as Tracy went down the steps.
Three young men in their late teens stood on the sidewalk, admiring her Alfa Romeo.
“This yourn?” One of them asked. The leader no doubt from the way the other two hung back, grinning at Tracy in anticipation of what they thought was going to happen.
“It is.” Tracy attempted to step around him but he effortlessly blocked her.
“Dat’s too much car for you, baby. You needs a man to drive it for you. Let’s have dem keys.”
Tracy smiled sweetly up at him. He towered over her. “I will ask you one time to please move.”
“Gimme dem car keys, I said!” He reached out a hand-
-and went flying through the air to land on the pavement five feet away. His yowl of pain and the snap of something breaking inside his body caused windows to open and heads to stick out.
Tracy showed her .45 to the other two. “Run. And pass along the word that I’m not to be interfered with.”
The two teens left dust trails in their haste to get as far away from Tracy as they could. And they did indeed pass along the word to anybody who wo
uld listen.
Tracy continued on her list, interviewing families, looking for any signs that perhaps any one of those families could be behind the arson that had destroyed so many lives. And what she found were people for whom despair was an everyday thing they were too busy dealing with themselves to inflict on another.
It was at her eighth stop that she finally found a bone with some meat to chew on. Miss Heather Lang lived in a fourth floor walkup with five children and two men. She had lost a little girl to asthma and Tracy could see after just two minutes of talking to her that she couldn’t be the arsonist. First of all, the arthritis in her knees was way too bad for her to have run with the agility displayed by the woman Tracy had seen the night of the most recent fire. Secondly, Miss was still too chewed up by grief to have even talked somebody else into firebombing those buildings for her.
One of the men asked Tracy; “Did you talk to Bill and Maisie yet?”
“Bill and Maisie?” Tracy scanned her list as she asked, “What’s their last name?”
“Roberts. They live on the first floor. They lost they chile to the whooping cough ‘bout three weeks or so ago.”
“I don’t have them on my list. Did they take their child to the clinic?”
The man shook his head. “They wouldn’t. They awful religious. Say that Jesus was gon’ heal their chile.”
Heather Lang nodded in confirmation. “When they on a roll they do some powerful prayin’. You can hear them all the way up here and they live on the first floor.”
“Maybe I should talk with them, then. On the first floor you say?”
“First floor, rear apartment on th’ right.”
Tracy walked downstairs and went to the first floor rear apartment on the right and knocked on the door. No answer. She knocked again and a harsh female voice called out, “Who is it?”
“My name is Tracy Scott. You may have heard of me. I work with Fortune McCall. I’d like to talk with you for a few minutes if you have the time.”
“No! I don’t! I’m busy!”
“Mrs. Roberts? I understand you had a child that died suddenly recently and I’d just like to-“
That was when the door vanished in a solid sheet of flame that forced Tracy backwards. She threw her arms over her face to shield herself from the intense heat. She uttered curses in her native language as she turned and ran back up the hallway and out the front door. She ran around to the narrow alleyway between two buildings, heading for the rear of the building. Already she could smell smoke coming from inside and hear yells and screams of “Fire!”
She reached the backyard and saw two fleeing figures climbing over a wooden fence. “Stop!” Tracy yelled and fired a shot that missed. Not that she hadn’t been aiming at them. Tracy didn’t believe in warning shots. But with her running at the same time she was shooting, it threw her aim off. She jammed the still smoking .45 automatic into the side pocket of her jacket and scrambled over the fence.
The man and woman were climbing over another fence and she did likewise. By the time she got over that one they had reached the sidewalk and were running flat out. Idiots. They should have split up. Not that Tracy was complaining. She took off in pursuit. They were in fairly good shape, no doubt about it. But by the time she was twelve years old, Tracy was running five miles a day. She closed the distance between herself and her quarry the way a jaguar closes the distance between it and the jaguar’s intended dinner. The shocked faces of men and women on the sidewalk were a blur as she went by, a pint sized streak.
She made a slight, sharp detour to snatch up the lid of a metal garbage can and flung it at the two. It didn’t matter to her which one it hit as long as it hit. The lid struck the woman in the back of her knees and she collapsed to the pavement with a cry of “Bill!” as she tumbled over and over to bang up against a parked car.
The man, Bill, stopped his flight and turned around to help the woman. By now, Tracy was close enough to jam her gun in his side. “Don’t you-“ she started but never finished. Bill roared as one muscular arm came up to swat Tracy as if she were an annoying bug. The action took her by complete surprise. So much so that she didn’t even fire her gun. The .45 went flying one way, she another.
Bill bent down to help the woman but by then Tracy had recovered and leaped on Bill’s back. She threw herself backwards and he came with her. It seemed like magic to onlookers that this small woman could yank such a big man off his feet with seemingly so little effort but Tracy knew how to use her weight and she knew that most people, even if they thought they were solidly planted on the ground, weren’t. Most people had no idea of how to use their balance but Tracy did.
She let go and rolled free as Bill hit the ground, the breath leaving his body in a loud whoosh. By this time the woman had gotten to her feet and she rushed at Tracy, screaming and hissing. One solid right cross later and the woman lay stretched out at Tracy’s feet.
Bill lumbered to his feet and even as Tracy readied herself, she felt somebody putting something in her hand. She spared a look. An elderly man held her .45, which he jammed into her hand. “Here you go, daughter.”
Tracy whipped the .45 around and aimed at Bill’s head. “Don’t force me to kill you in front of these people.”
Bill looked around at the onlookers. Many of them were children whose eyes appeared to as big as dinner plates. He looked at the faces of the men and women. All of the joints in Bill’s body seemed to loosen at the same time. His shoulders noticeably drooped and his knees wobbled as he slowly sank to the ground on them next to the woman, who struggled to a sitting position.
“Damn you!” the woman howled. “Damn you to hell!”
Tracy said nothing. She listened to the crackling of flames. To the sobbing and screaming of yet more families being burned out of their homes. And she kept her gun trained on the man and the woman as she heard police sirens coming closer.