Sam Vega accompanied Greg to the nameless tent city.
The place sprawled for what seemed like miles. Greg was amazed and not a little appalled. "I had no idea it had grown so much," he said as they approached it.
"The city's grown, too," Sam pointed out. "More people, more poverty. This place has been around for more than a decade, but it's never been this full before. There are shelters in the city, but they've had funding issues, and most of them are at capacity. The economy has really done a number on Vegas. We were one of the fastest-growing cities in the country, and as long as we were booming, the construction jobs, tourist-trade jobs, even high-tech were booming, too. But when things skidded to a stop nationally, they slowed here, big-time – worse than in most places – and tipped a lot of people over the edge. More houses in foreclosure, more personal bankruptcies, more jobs lost, more families living in tents here."
They're not just tents, Greg realized. People there lived in tents, in parked cars, in shacks thrown together from cardboard, sheets of galvanized aluminum, carpet scraps, and whatever else they had been able to get their hands on. Some lived in cars or vans, sometimes with a piece of tarp propped up on posts or rods as a sunscreen. The homes – they were homes, Greg knew, however raw, however mean; they were occupied by human beings, and he didn't want to lose sight of that – were packed close together on a vast plain of bare dirt, arranged along pathways big enough for a small truck to travel. Some of the places had trash piled up around them; others were neat, as tidy as their residents could keep a thrown-together hovel in a field of dirt.
He couldn't see any source of running water. Someone, probably Las Vegas city officials, had put up some portable outhouses, but Greg guessed that anyone who wanted a shower had to find one at a shelter, a truck stop, or some similar public place.
In the space of a few hours, Greg had gone from a luxurious estate in one of the city's most expensive neighborhoods to a swath of ground where probably several hundred people lived. Some of the homes appeared to be occupied by individuals and others by families. Here and there, he could see signs of children: a doll in the dirt, a plastic play structure with one of those two-foot slides for toddlers, probably sturdier in a high wind than the blue tarpaulin lean-to it stood in front of. The combined wealth of all of the residents there probably wouldn't buy the land on which the Cameron house stood. From the city's richest to the poorest, Greg thought, in a matter of a few miles. Practically neighbors. With a pang of self-criticism, he realized he had felt more at ease at the Cameron estate than he did at the tent city, even though someone at the estate had just shot a man. As far as he knew, violence in the tent city was nonexistent.
He and Sam didn't have a specific destination in mind, and they couldn't see anything like a central meeting place, a town hall, or any real community organization. It appeared that if someone wanted to move in, all he did was pull up a square of dirt and erect shelter of some sort. There had been that agreement, the rules Greg had found, which were mostly commonsense behavioral issues for people living close together: no loud music after nine p.m., no fighting, no drug dealing, prostitution, or other illegal activity. But that had been from years ago, and for all he knew, whoever had instituted those rules and tried to enforce them had long since found a job and moved away from there.
So they walked from Sam's car up what appeared to be the main road in and out, dirt hard-packed by constant travel. People were out of their homes, sitting in small clutches talking, a couple openly drinking, some just walking without apparent purpose or destination. They spotted Sam and Greg, though, and most of them stared with suspicious frowns or downright hostile gazes.
"Didn't take long for us to be made," Sam said.
"I guess we don't exactly blend in." Even as he said it, though, Greg saw what looked like a middle-class white family, sitting on folding lawn chairs around a Jeep, drinking lemonade. Those people didn't seem to fit, either, but the more closely he observed the residents, the more he saw others who didn't seem as down-and-out as he would have expected. "Looks as if some of the locals don't like the police very much."
"Cops represent the system," Sam said. "Anyone living here, the system has failed."
"I guess that's true."
Sam and Greg approached one resident near the front entrance – entrance being a vague term in a place with no fences around it and little in the way of organizational structure but defined in this case by an open space around the dirt path. The man gave them a frank but not unfriendly gaze. He was an African-American guy, wearing clothes that had seen better days but were at least neat and mended. He had long hair, which years of exposure to the elements had turned mostly gray, and he was sitting in a faded and worn outdoor chaise-longue in front of a tent that appeared to be well cared for, reading a book.
"What's shakin', Officers?" he asked as they neared him. He put the book down gently on the chair and stood up. "Welcome to our home."
"Thanks," Greg said.
"I'd like to ask you a favor, sir," Sam said. He pulled a photograph of the dead man from the Cameron estate out of his pocket and showed it to the guy. "Do you know this man?" he asked.
The man shook his head. "Just 'cause a dude looks homeless don't mean he lives here."
"It's not that," Greg put in. "He had this, like a rental agreement from here. Who would have had him sign it? Is there some sort of hierarchy here? A controlling authority of some kind?"
The man showed a big smile. "You mean, do we got a government? I remember that agreement you're talking about. I signed it, too. That was with the mayor."
"The mayor of Las Vegas?"
"The mayor of the Happy Hunting Ground. That's what he called this place, anyway, but the name never stuck. And he's the one called himself mayor. Nobody else objected, though, so pretty soon everybody called him mayor." He nodded toward one of the tents with a trash pile behind it, flies buzzing around. "'Course, not everybody abided by the rules on that piece of paper, then or now."
"Can we see the mayor?" Sam asked. "Maybe he remembers this man."
"Wish you could," the guy said. "But he died, what, three years ago now. Hit by a city bus, you believe that? He had lived here almost nine years by then. Lived on in the hospital for three days after he was hit, and some folks said it was the cleanest they had ever seen him."
"This city, I believe anything," Sam said. "I'm sorry to hear it, though."
"And there's no new mayor?" Greg asked.
"Plenty of people wish they were the mayor. Some folks like to make others run through hoops, right? Walk some kind of line. But there's nobody like the mayor anymore. Everybody loved him, most folks wanted to make him happy, so they went along with things like that agreement and his rules."
"So if someone wanted to move in here now…"
"They'd find a space and fill it. There are social workers coming around all the time. They try to keep track of who's here, keep some sort of inventory, I guess you'd say. But lately, even they're coming around less. Some of them got fired, I guess, and the ones left got too many cases to follow up on."
"There's a lot of that going around," Sam said.
"Are there any of those social workers here today?" Greg asked. "Someone we might be able to ask about this man? It's important."
"I haven't seen any. Could be some around later, or not. Can't really tell, one day to the next."
"Do you have any other suggestions for us?"
The guy smiled again, shrugging at the same time. "Keep asking around, I guess. Watch out for knives while you do. Some here don't much like the law, but most of us are respectful, decent folks."
"We'll keep that in mind," Sam said. "Thanks for your help."
"Hope you find your man," the guy said.
"Yeah, we're like the Mounties," Greg told him "We won't give up until we do."
Most of the residents they met were less helpful than the first. Some gave them the cold shoulder, ignoring them altogether. Others simply scowled or spat curses at them. A few turned away at their approach, ducking inside a tent, shack, or van with sheepish expressions, as if embarrassed to find themselves reduced to such a lowly standard of living. Greg suspected he would feel the same way, even if, as was no doubt true in many of these cases, it was entirely bad luck that had landed him there and no personal failing on his part. He supposed if it came to that, he would rather live there than on the street, and he would eventually get past the humiliation he felt. But it would take time to reach that point, and it wouldn't be easy. There was, he reasoned, no shame in making do in whatever way one had to. That didn't mean, however, that he wouldn't feel shame anyway.
Some people were willing to be engaged, though, and they were finally directed to a woman called Crazy Marge. "Crazy Marge, she knows, like, everybody," a kid told them. He was probably ten or eleven, slightly built, with sandy blond hair and a coating of grime over almost every inch of him. He should have been in school, but Greg wasn't about to start in on that when the boy was being helpful. "Talk to her."
The kid pointed out Crazy Marge's home, an almost palatial fifth-wheel pop-top tent trailer with guy lines extending from its corners and bits of colored fabric tied to the lines, creating the effect of pennants. A soft breeze blew through the tent city, making the pennants flutter cheerfully. For someone living in meager circumstances, she made the most of things.
Sam announced them as they neared the trailer. "Hello? Excuse me…? Marge?" he said. "We're with the Las Vegas Police Department. Nobody's in trouble, we're just trying to identify someone and were told you might know him."
"I don't know nobody," a woman said from in side. "Not till you call me by my right name."
"Your right…" Sam trailed off.
"Sorry," Greg took up. "He meant to say 'Crazy Marge'."
She threw back the trailer door and stepped out side. "That's better," she said. "Now, who you tryin' to find?"
Greg was glad they weren't trying to identify Crazy Marge, because he could hardly get a sense of her. Her race was indeterminate, her skin dusky and leathery, but whether that was from sun exposure or racial identity was anybody's guess. Her hair was dyed a vivid pink and cropped short, blunt at the edges, and uneven around the sides. She might well have done it herself with scissors. Maybe with out the benefit of a mirror, Greg thought. Her smile was huge, her mouth glinting with gold. She was pear-shaped, narrow above the waist and wide below, and she wore tight-fitting pants, yellow with a bright floral pattern, that accentuated her figure. She also wore jewelry, lots and lots of it, bracelet upon bracelet, necklace overlying necklace, pins and brooches all over her red smock top, what looked like dozens of earrings clipped to or stuck through her ears. None of it looked expensive, but taken all together, it certainly made a statement.
Sam started to show her the photo, but she didn't even look at it. "Someone probably told you old Crazy Marge knows everybody. They all say that. 'Cause it's true." She laughed, throwing her head back, and Greg spotted more gold. If she sold all the gold in her mouth, she could probably afford to buy a house.
"Thing is, I'm one of the originals. Only but a few people been living here longer than me, and most of them's passed on. You stay someplace long enough, and you look like I do -" She shot a hip at them and lowered her eyelashes, looking sideways in what Greg supposed was meant to be a coquettish pose. "People get to know you."
"I'll bet they do," Sam said. There was no malice in his tone; clearly, he was enjoying Crazy Marge's performance just as much as she was.
"Ain't nobody like Crazy Marge, that's what they all say. So of course they wants to be my friend. And some of them menfolks… they wants to be more than just a friend, if you know what I mean." She gave an exaggerated wink.
"Who could blame them?" Sam asked, playing along.
Crazy Marge tched at him. "Well, you ain't gettin' any, so don't get you no ideas!"
Sam made a disappointed face and laughed along with her. Greg was beginning to feel like a fifth wheel himself.
"Now, who is this person you're lookin' to find?" she asked. Her face had gone suddenly serious. Greg didn't think there was anything crazy about her, except maybe for the persona she adopted. But it worked for her, as she said – people remembered her, and she had made herself a kind of celebrity among her peers.
Sam showed her the picture, and this time she perused it intently. "He's met with an accident," Sam said. "We're trying to find out who he is, so we can let his family know, if he has any."
"He's dead." Crazy Marge said it flatly, as if it was an acknowledged fact.
"That's right," Sam said. "He is. Does he look at all familiar to you?"
"I know him."
"Who is he?" Greg asked.
She tapped the picture with a long nail. Fake, Greg was sure, with a glittering rhinestone stuck on near the tip. "That's Crackers," she said.
"Crackers?"
She lowered her voice almost to a whisper, dropping the stage act for the moment. "My real name is Lurlene," she said. "But if you asked anybody around here about Lurlene, they wouldn't know who you meant. Most of us old-timers, nobody here knows us by our given names. I'm called Crazy Marge because… well, you figure it out. He went by Crackers because that's what he was always eating, always had a box of crackers, or else he was scrounging money to get crackers. Sometimes I didn't know how he survived on nothing but crackers, but maybe when I wasn't looking, he ate a salad or two."
"So he's Crackers."
"That's right," she said, slipping right back into character. "Always had him a cracker in his hand and one in his mouth. Surprised there ain't no cracker crumbs in his beard in that picture."
"When was the last time you saw Crackers?" Greg asked.
She tapped her chin with that same studded fingernail. "Maybe four, five days ago. He kinda kept to hisself. Some people said Crackers really was crazy, but you know, I don't judge people that way. Crazy is as crazy does, right?"
"Did he have any close friends here?" Sam asked.
"Like I said, kept to hisself. Some folks, you can't relate to 'em the way you do to others. He's like that. That's why people thought he was crazy, you know? You couldn't really reach him. He was always in his own head. And I tell you what, there was some scary shit in that head. For a while, my place was close to his, and I heard some screams, when he was sleepin'? Like to curdle my blood. Made me worry about him, wonder what he had been through. Or was goin' through in his own mind."
"Well, can you show us where he lived most recently?" Sam asked her. "Maybe one of his more immediate neighbors can help us."
"You can try," she said. "They all just know him as Crackers, I'm pretty sure, but you give it a shot." She beckoned them to follow. "Come on, you. I gots stuff to do, don't have all day to be directin' y'all around."
Greg felt like part of a floor show as he and Sam followed Crazy Marge, who sashayed through the tent city, waving to some, winking to others, offering a word or two to just about everybody they passed, and usually getting a friendly greeting in return. In her company, he and Sam were more readily accepted by those they encountered.
After about ten minutes, she stopped outside a ragged olive-drab pup tent. It looked like military surplus, maybe from the First World War. There were tears in it, some stitched up, some covered in duct tape, a few just open and catching the breeze. "This is it," she said. "This is Crackers's house."
"You said he's an old-timer,' Sam said.
"That's right, like me. Maybe not quite as long. Six, seven years, though, easy. Could be more, I guess. It ain't like I marked it down on a calendar. You know how it is. Some people move in, others move out. Sometimes you don't really notice who's come and gone until it's been a while."
Greg squatted down and pulled aside the tent flap.
Crackers was not one of the tent city's better housekeepers, which did not come as a shock considering how he had looked when he died.
The other thing that didn't come as a shock was that the tent was littered with paper scraps, most apparently written on again and again and again. The ones in his pockets had been just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
"I'm going to have to get my kit," Greg said. "And process this place. It looks like I'll be at it awhile."
"I'll have a uniform come over and keep an eye on things," Sam said. "I was hoping this would be easier."
You and me both, Greg thought. He didn't bother saying it. Some things were just understood.
Anyway, he would need to save his breath for the task ahead – from the whiff he'd gotten when he stuck his head through the flap, he was sure he would be holding his breath a lot while he worked this scene. The reek clinging to the John Doe's body had nothing over the smell he'd left behind in his tent. Processing the tent would require him to breathe that air for a long time, a task he looked forward to without enthusiasm.
And once Greg got all of those paper scraps collected, the people in the QD lab would have enough work to keep them busy for years.