Lonesome Men

Chapter 1-2

“I’m never going to like doing this even if it is the law now,” Darren muttered, surveying the entrance to one of the downtown alleys. “It’s hard telling them they can’t sleep here when we know all the shelters are full.”

“Yeah, I agree,” his partner, Zach Young, replied, shining his flashlight on the closest dumpster. “Blame it on the stores and restaurants. Their owners are the ones who pushed the ordinance through.”

“Them and the hotels, for God’s sake. It’s not like the homeless were crashing in the hotel lobbies.” Then Darren chuckled. “Well except for Pete. Gotta give him points for chutzpah if nothing else.”

They started down the alley, checking around the dumpsters, in doorways, and under loading docks. When they came across anyone curled up in a sleeping bag or blankets, they did what they had to, waking them with a warning that they needed to move on if they didn’t want to end up in jail.

Not that we’d arrest them. There’s less room in jail than in the shelters at this point. Darren shook his head in disgust. We should be looking for trouble, not causing it.

They did look for lawbreakers as well, of course, being cops. They’d already picked up two men dealing drugs in the shadows behind one of the local bars. Then there was the young woman who none too wisely was hooking on the corner by a hotel at the edge of the downtown area. They’d also responded to a breaking-and-entering call, arresting a man as he walked out of the back entrance of a shop with an armload of small electronics.

All in a night’s work and we’ve only been out here for three hours.

Darren stopped at the bottom of a fire escape, signaling to Zack that he was going up to check the rooftops. Zack nodded, heading to one on the opposite side of the alley. Darren grinned when he heard Zack mutter “I’m getting too old for this” as he started up. It amused Darren because his partner was only thirty-eight as compared to Darren’s forty-five.

At the top of the fire escape, Darren paused, scanning the roofs. Most of them were flat with no way onto them other than fire escapes or a trapdoor. Only two had actual huts covering an exit, and one had a large swamp cooler. Darren checked the huts to be certain their doors were locked, then moved down to the cooler. As he came around the side, he shook his head.

“I wondered if I’d find you up here,” he said to the man who was leaning against the cooler’s housing. The guy was thin, with dark hair, a short, scruffy beard and mustache, and fine features, although it was obvious his nose had been broken at some point in his life.

“No hiding from the long arm of the law, huh?” the man replied with a grin. “How you doing, Darren?”

“Better than you from the look of it, Rob.”

Robin Wright, aka Rob, was a veteran of the Iraq War. He was forty-two and had been on the streets since leaving the military seven years previously, right before the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’. While he hadn’t said that DADT had been part of the reason he hadn’t re-upped, Darren had the feeling from a few offhand comments Rob had made that it was.

Strangely enough in Darren’s opinion, he and Rob had become friends, with Darren doing his best to convince Rob to find a job and get off the streets. Rob resisted, pointing out the fact there were damned few, if any, jobs for a veteran with no real job skills and PTSD. “Not that my PTSD is that bad,” he’d said, the first time he’d told Darren a bit about himself. “I just tend to fly off the handle pretty quickly if I’m stressed.” He’d smiled then, adding, “Living the way I do now, the only stressors are where I’m going to crash without cops like you rousting me, and how to get my next meal. Luckily, I don’t mind dumpster food too much, since I know which ones have the best offerings, and I do make a bit of cash panhandling so I can hit up a fast-food place sometimes.”

The first time Darren had run into him that was exactly what Rob had been doing. Panhandling. When Darren had told him to move on, Rob had stared at him for a long moment then sighed and with a quirky grin, mostly hidden behind his beard and mustache, he’d replied, “Damn, you’re not susceptible to the Jedi Mind Trick.”

“No really,” Darren had said, laughing. “So you’d better do as I said. I don’t think the guards at the jail are either, meaning you won’t be able to influence them to let you go.”

Rob had picked up the battered Starbucks cup he’d been using to collect change, dumped the money in the pocket of his well-worn coat and pushed off the wall between the windows of a clothing store and a tourist shop. “Don’t suppose you have fifty cents you could loan me. Then I’ll have enough for fries with my burger.”

“Loan you?”

“Well, yeah. I’ll pay it back when I can. Hell, I see you around here all the time, even if you don’t see me.”

Darren had shaken his head. “You seeing me is no surprise. It is my beat.”

“Yours and that beefy blond’s. Say, Officer—” Rob had looked at Darren’s name badge, “—D. Cameron, what’s the ‘D’ stand for?”

“Darren. And while we’re trading names, what’s yours?”

“Rob.”

“Just Rob?”

“Until I trust you, yeah.”

“Okay, Rob.” For whatever reason, one he couldn’t put a finger on, Darren had dug a couple of dollars out of his pocket, handing them to him. “If I find out you spent this on booze or drugs,” he’d cautioned.

“Naw, not my thing. Thanks, Darren. I’ll see you around I’m sure.”

“Undoubtedly,” Darren had replied, watching Rob shuffle off.

He had found out later the shuffle was only one of the many ways Rob tried to gain sympathy when he was panhandling. He also had a sling he put on, on occasion, When he was outside the bus station, claiming he only needed a couple of dollars more to pay for his ticket home, he carried a battered messenger bag and wore the only decent jacket and jeans he owned.

After their first meeting, Darren saw Rob at least once a week. Usually it was when he and Zack were doing alley patrols late at night. Then one evening, when he was off duty and had gone to a movie downtown, Darren had run into Rob while returning to his car.

“Hey, Darren,” Rob had called out from his post by Joe’s Diner. “Buy a guy a cup of coffee?”

“I’ll make you a deal,” Darren had said, going over to join him. “I’ll buy you supper, if you promise to go to the Tenth Street Shelter afterwards. I know for a fact they’ll find a place for you if you mention my name.”

“Got friends in low places?” Rob had asked with a grin.

“Yep. My ex brother-in-law volunteers there sometimes. You might end up on the floor but still…”

“Beats sleeping under the stars tonight.” Rob had pointed up at the sky. Not that either of them could see the stars since dark clouds covered them. “I’m betting on rain. So yeah, you have a deal.”

The meal had proved interesting. Rob was naturally gregarious, although up until then he’d been reticent to talk much about himself. That evening he’d opened up a bit. Darren had figured it was the result of having some decent food and enough of it. Plus the fact that, like many of the homeless, Rob knew to eat slowly when he had the chance so he could enjoy the food and not lose it afterward because his stomach wasn’t used to having so much in it. Therefore, Rob had talked between bites.

“So I bet,” Rob had said as a preamble, “you wonder how a good looking guy like me ended up living on the streets.”

Taking a stab at it, having a feeling he was right, Darren had replied, “Like a lot of returning vets, you came back to a lousy job market.”

“Good guess. I had a place for a while, but they really like it if you pay the rent on time. I did find a couple of jobs but I’d fly off the handle too easy, at least back then, so…” He’d shrugged.

“PTSD?”

“That’s what they told me. Not that I saw an army doc, but when I ended up at a shelter after getting kicked out of my place I talked to a counselor. She said, from what I told her, I probably do suffer from a mild version of it. Hell, I was always pretty easy going before I ended up in Iraq.”

“No family?” Darren had asked.

“Yeah, but we aren’t really on speaking terms. Part of the reason I joined up.”

Darren had resisted asking what had prompted that. He’d figured if Rob wanted him to know he’d tell him. Since he didn’t, Darren had left it alone. One thing he had picked up on, although he’d sort of doubted Rob realized it, had come from Rob’s comment, “War’s bad enough. Having to face harassment from your buddies because you didn’t come up to their ‘standards’ made things even worse. Not,” he’d added quickly, “that I ever did, but I saw it happen.” Darren had been fairly certain that if Rob hadn’t been hassled it was only because he followed DADT to the letter. Presumption, yeah, but I bet I’m right.

“But enough about that,” Rob had said. “I got back here, honorably discharged by the way, and found out things weren’t going to be as great as I hoped. Like I said a couple of minutes ago, no one was clamoring to hire me to make the big bucks. I found a cheap apartment, worked as a short-order cook and a sales clerk in a dollar-store. Tried construction but I’m not exactly the brawny, beefy type.” He’d shrugged. “Not that you have to be I guess, but with the job I managed to get it would have helped. So anyway, I lost my apartment, slept in my car for a while until it got impounded because I didn’t have insurance, up-to-date plates, and a legal place of residence. So here I am, a denizen of the streets. Before you start feeling sorry for me, it isn’t all that bad. Not great, but—” Rob had smiled, “—I’m my own man and it keeps me from going to fat.”

That evening had been the only time Rob had talked openly about himself to Darren. When they met on the streets or in the alleys they might, if Darren had time, talk a bit about their day, and occasionally Darren met him at the diner to buy him supper, but that was all.

“So you gonna kick me off the roof?” Rob asked now, not moving from his spot by the swamp cooler.

“Technically I should,” Darren replied after glancing around to make certain no one, especially Zack, could see them. “But I know all the shelters are full, even if you’d deign to go to one.”

“Even your brother-in-law’s?”

“Yeah, even his. He told me there’s been a forty-four percent raise in homeless people in the city in the last few months and there’s no more shelters than there were a year ago. We were lucky to find you a space the first night we had supper at the diner.”

“So why the hell are the cops cracking down on us? Never mind, I know. We look bad to the damned tourists and the folks coming in from the subs for dinner and a movie.”

“Got it in one,” Darren said dryly. “Okay, I’ll let you stay here. Just keep out of sight and if anyone else comes up here, send them away with their tails between their legs.”

Rob rolled his eyes. “I don’t think I’m the scary type, but I’ll do my best.”

“Thanks.”

With that said, Darren handed Rob a five and went back down to the alley. From there, he and Zack continued patrolling until their shift ended for the night.