The Losers. David Eddings
however. The lobby was filled with stained and broken couches, and each couch was filled. The men were old for the most part, and they smoked and spat and stared vacant-eyed at a flickering television set. There were crutches and metal-frame walkers everywhere. Each time one of the old men rose to go to the bathroom, a querulous squabble broke out among those who stood along the walls over who would get the vacant seat. The smell was unbelievable.
Raphael fled.
“Just what are you lookin’ for, man?” the cabdriver asked when Raphael climbed, shaken, back into the cab again. “A place to live.”
“You sure as hell don’t wanna move in to that dump.”
“How can they live that way?” Raphael looked at the front of the Pedicord and shuddered.
“Winos,” the driver replied. “All they want is a place that’s cheap and gets ‘em in outta the cold.” He stopped and then turned and looked at Raphael. “Look. I could drive you all over this downtown area—run up a helluva fare—and you’re not gonna find anyplace you’d wanna keep a pig in—not if you thought anything
about the pig. You’re gonna have to get out a ways—outta this sewer. I’m not supposed to do this, but I think I know a place that might be more what you’re lookin’ for. How much do you wanna pay?”
Raphael had decided what he could afford the previous night. He rather hesitantly named the figure.
“That sounds pretty close to the place I got in mind. You wanna try it?”
“Anything. Just get me away from here.”
“Right.” The driver started his motor again. They drove on back down Riverside. It was raining again, a misty, winter kind of rain that blurred the outlines of things. The windshield wiper clicked, and the two-way radio in the front seat crackled and hissed.
“You lose the leg in ‘Nam?” the driver asked.
“No,” Raphael replied. “I had a misunderstanding with a train.” He was surprised to find that he could talk about it calmly.
“Ooog!” The driver shuddered. “That’s messy. You’re lucky you’re still around at all. I saw a wreck like that out in the valley once. Took ‘em two hours to pick the guy up. He was scattered half a mile down the tracks.”
“How far is this place?”
“Not much farther. Lemme handle it when we get there, okay? I know the guy. You want a place where you can cook?” “No. Not right away.”
“That’ll make it easier. There’s a pretty good little restaurant just down the street. You’ll wanna be on the main floor. The place don’t have an elevator.”
The cab pulled up in front of a brick building on a side street. The sign out front said, the barton, weekly-monthly rates. An elderly man in a well-pressed suit was coming out the front door.
“Sit tight,” the driver said, climbed out of the cab, and went inside.
About ten minutes later he came back. “Okay,” he said. “He’s got a room. It’s in the back, so there’s no view at all, unless you like lookin’ at alleys and garbage cans. He’s askin’ ‘bout thirty-five a
month more than what you wanted to pay, but the place is quiet, pretty clean, and like I said, there’s that restaurant just down the street where they ain’t gonna charge you no ten bucks for a hamburger. You wanna look at it?”
“All right,” Raphael said, and got out of the cab.
The room was not large, but it had a good bed and an armchair and a sturdy oak table with a few magazines on it. There was a sink and a mirror, and the bathroom was right next door. The walls were green—every rented room in the world is painted green—and the carpet was old but not too badly worn.
“Looks good,” Raphael decided. “I’ll take it.” He paid the landlord a month’s rent and then went back to the Ridpath to get his luggage and check out. When they returned to the Barton, the driver carried his bags into the room and set them down.
“I owe you,” Raphael said.
“Just what’s on the meter, man. I might need a hand myself someday, right?”
“All right. Thanks.”
“Anytime,” the driver said, and left. Raphael realized that he hadn’t even gotten his name.
The weather stayed wet for several weeks, and Raphael walked a little farther each day. Quillian had told him that it would be months before his arms and shoulders would develop sufficient strength to make any extensive walking possible, but Raphael made a special point of extending himself a little more every day, and he was soon able to cover a mile or so without exhausting himself too much.
By the end of the month he could, if he rested periodically, cover most of the downtown area. He considered sending for the rest of his things, but decided against it. The room was too small.
Spokane is not a particularly pretty city, expecially in the winter. Its setting is attractive—a kind of basin on the banks of the Spokane River, which plunges down a twisted basalt chute in the center of town. The violence of the falls is spectacular, and an effort Was made following the World’s Fair in 1974 to convert the fairgrounds into
a vast municipal park. The buildings of the downtown area, however, are for the most part very old and very shabby. Because the city is small, the worst elements lie side by side with the best.
Raphael became accustomed to the sight of drunken old men stumbling through the downtown streets and of sodden Indians, their eyes a poached yellow, swaying in bleary confusion on street corners. The taverns were crowded and noisy, and a sour reek exhaled from them each time their doors opened. In the evenings hard-faced girls in tight sweaters loitered on street corners, and loud cars filled with raucous adolescents toured an endless circuit of the downtown area, their windows open and the mindless noise of rock music blasting from them at full volume. There were fights in front of the taverns sometimes and unconscious winos curled up in doorways. There were adult bookstores on shabby streets and an X-rated movie house on Riverside.
And then it snowed again, and Raphael was confined, going out only to get his meals. He had three or four books with him, and he read them several times. Then he played endless games of solitaire with a greasy deck of cards he’d found in the drawer of the table. By the end of the week he was nearly ready to scream with boredom.
Finally the weather broke again, and he was able to go out. His very first stop was at a bookstore. He was determined that another sudden change in the weather was not going to catch him without something to read. Solitaire, he decided, was the pastime of the mentally deficient. He came out of the bookstore with his coat pockets and the front of his shirt stuffed with paperback books and crutched his way on down the street. The exercise was exhilarating, and he walked farther than he ever had before. Toward the end of the day he was nearly exhausted, and he went into a small, gloomy pawnshop, more to rest and to get in out of the chill rain than for any other reason. The place was filled with the usual pawnshop junk, and Raphael browsed without much interest.
It was the tiny, winking red lights that caught his eye first. “What’s that thing?” he asked the pawnbroker, pointing.
“Police scanner,” the unshaven man replied, looking up from
his newspaper. “It picks up all the police channels—fire department, ambulances, stuff like that.” “How does it work?”
“It scans—moves up and down the dial. Keeps hittin’ each one of the channels until somebody starts talkin’. Then it locks in on ‘em. When they stop, it starts to scan again. Here, I’ll turn it up.” The unshaven man reached over and turned up the volume.
“District One,” the scanner said, “juvenile fifty-four at the Crescent security office.”
“What’s a