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Each unit, once completed, cost $1.1 million to build. Subsidized housing would be available for the homeless and those living below the poverty line—benefiting only 170 people. Two hundred million dollars wasted.
All I could think about was how far two hundred million dollars would go if the city spent it on actual affordable housing, real rehabilitation to help people not only get clean but stay clean. Job training, mental health screening, teaching people who had been living on the street for years real skills so they were empowered over their own lives. It was clear that the city could construct a far greater number of units at a much lower cost, but doing so would not benefit the personal interests of campaign contributors, politicians, contractors and the bureaucrats who served them.
It made me sick. I knew what was happening and felt like David battling Goliath, but I didn’t even have a rock for my slingshot.
I was doing something, but it never seemed to be enough. Each week I came closer to figuring out how to locate the files deleted in the computer crash. I would find them, but would it be soon enough? I feared that Craig Dyson and the others were becoming frustrated at how slow and laborious the process was. I had given them details on the nonprofits involved, but didn’t have the financial documentation between the city and the nonprofits.
Craig assured me that his office was digging into the publicly reported financial records of each entity and that everything I had provided was a piece to the puzzle. But we still couldn’t see the whole picture.
Will was talking civilly to one of the protesters who started swearing at him. I didn’t know how he could remain so calm, so reasonable. How he could tolerate being yelled at by people who disagreed with his solution. I didn’t see them picking up trash; I didn’t see them talking to the homeless. I doubted they even knew the name of one person who lived on the streets.
I continued to pick up garbage. I didn’t like confrontations. Will came out here often, but I didn’t. I didn’t know most of the people living in this park. I introduced myself, asked them if they had any garbage they wanted me to take away. Some ignored me. Some helped me.
“Do you have an extra bag?” a familiar voice said.
I turned to face Colton Fox. He was filthy, but his teeth were still too clean. He got away with it because he didn’t smile, didn’t show people he had a complete set of straight, white teeth. Sunglasses shielded his eyes.
I handed him a bag. “I haven’t seen you all month.”
“Busy,” he said. “I gave some stuff to Will when he got here. Good stuff. Go through it. Pictures. People I don’t know. Some documents I found in the trash.”
Somehow, I didn’t believe that. Not that he hadn’t found documents, but I wondered what rules—what laws—he might have broken to get them.
I realized then that I didn’t care. I didn’t care if Colton Fox broke every law if he found evidence of what these people were doing.
“The woman in the blue tent over there,” he said and jerked his head to the right, “between the two palm trees?”
I glanced over. “Yeah?”
“Her name is Sissy. She knows your mom. She won’t tell me anything, but she knows her. Maybe you can find out where she went. I’ve been here a week and haven’t seen her.”
I swallowed nervously. “Thank you.”
I waited until the other volunteers left, then told Will what Colton said. He was tired, angry with the protesters, frustrated that they had impacted his work. But he still went over to the tent with me, and I was grateful.
“You talk to her,” Will whispered as we approached. “I’m here for you.”
Sissy was sitting on a broken chair next to the tent in the shade of a short palm tree. She watched us suspiciously. She appeared to be in her midthirties, wore heavy pants and a flannel shirt over a T-shirt. Her short, frizzy red hair stood up in tufts, her scalp mostly visible.
“Hi, Sissy?” I said. “My name is Violet, and this is my friend Will.”
She eyed us, chin up. I could hear her breathing, a raspy, shallow sound. Her pupils were pinpoints and she had hollow cheeks, as if she were malnourished. Several square foils littered her space, all of them burned through the center. A fentanyl addict.
My heart broke. The drug was going to kill her if she didn’t stop.
“You from the gov’ment?”
“No, ma’am,” I said. “We’re with First Contact, a volunteer group. We helped clean up the park today, helped some of your friends here with whatever they needed.”
“You have some blues?” Blues, fenty, dragon, jack, TNT—fentanyl went by dozens of different names.
“No, I don’t.”
“Then I don’t need your help. Come back with blues.”
“One of your friends here—”
“I don’t have no friends. No one here is my friend. You lyin’ to me.”
