Hard Rain

by Waverly Fitzgerald

  Everyone on campus was talking about them. It was exhilarating. It was exhausting. They were never arrested; they never even saw a cop. Not until the night they threw a grenade into the ROTC building and killed a fifty-year-old janitor. Silvia thanked the Blessed Virgin Mary who had kept her home throwing up in the bathroom in the throes of her second pregnancy. Otherwise, she might have been the one on trial. Instead of Ellie. Of course, that was when Ellie and Marty got involved. So maybe it was not such a blessing.

  Chapter 4

  “What is this about? Why are you asking these questions? Why now?” Silvia turned on me, her eyes flashing.

  I thought about which question to answer and finally decided to say: “I’m writing a story about her.”

  “You’re not a writer,” Silvia said. Her eyes narrowed. “You’re a PI.” She had never approved of my choice of profession. “Did someone hire you to find her?”

  I shook my head. “You know I can’t talk about my cases,” I said. “But, no, I’m not looking for her.”

  “Then what?” Silvia began pacing. “I bet it’s your father! Is he trying to find her?”

  “I told you I’m not looking for her.” I could be as stubborn as my father. And as cavalier with the truth.

  “Rachel, you have no idea how dangerous she can be!” Silvia said. She grabbed my arm. Her perfectly shaped, French manicured nails dug into my flesh. “Wherever this woman goes, trouble follows. I’m warning you to stay away from her.”

  I twisted away. “Mom, you can’t tell me what to do any more.” I rubbed my arm.

  Silvia said: “I’m just trying to protect you. I wish someone had warned me about her.” Jill approached with a new pack of cigarettes and a new flute of champagne. Silvia held up her hand, stopping her a few yards away. She leaned closer to me. “If you pursue this, you are going to regret it!” she said, before heading back into the house, with Jill trailing behind.

  On my way out, I helped myself to two of the stuffed mushrooms from one of the silver platters in the kitchen. They were delicious.

  Most people don’t understand what I do for a living. Being a private investigator sounds dramatic. It evokes images of sneaking through foggy alleys, dressed in a trench coat, or being summoned to the mansion of an eccentric millionaire whose silent butler ushers you into a conservatory full of orchids. Actually if I am in an alley, I am probably going through the dumpster. I meet most of my clients in coffee shops and spend eighty percent of my time in front of my computer doing research.

  Luckily, I love doing research, chasing through long lists of data, poking around in bits of information, skimming past fascinating and irrelevant details, until that moment when I hit the sweet spot—that piece of the puzzle that brings the whole picture into focus.

  Back at home, I made myself a cup of tea and let out my ferrets. I have two: Bandit, a traditional brown ferret with a black mask over her face, hence the name, and Trixie, a cream-colored rescue ferret I adopted to keep Bandit company. The ferrets bounced out of their cages and began chasing each other around the living room.

  While the ferrets wrestled, I booted up my computer and typed the names of the guys in Matt’s old platoon into the databases to which I subscribe. I got a few positive identifications but most of the names were unremarkable. What are you going to do with a name like James Smith? My database said there were at least 1,151 men named James Smith currently living in the United States.

  I thought I could narrow the search a little by age—most of the men who were in Matt’s platoon were probably in their late teens or early twenties when they enlisted—but that wasn’t conclusive. Older men enlisted as well. Without some more identifying details, like place of birth or current residence, I was just wasting my time.

  The only other clue was the name of the platoon, which I typed into a search engine. I ended up at a reunion website for members of the Second Platoon of A Company. I had to lie and tell them I was family to get into the private area where messages were posted, so I said I was Matt’s wife. I already knew his social security number from a previous case.

  On the message board, messages were flying fast and furious—apparently a lot of these guys were home during the day—but they seemed to be riled up about something. Reading down the posts, which were mostly memories of a guy named Hank, I finally found a post indicating that Hank had committed suicide the previous day.

  I looked over at my fax machine and saw that I had received a fax. It was the platoon list Matt had promised to send. Running my finger down the list of the men who had served in the Second Platoon, I saw, with a chill, that there was a Henry Baker on the list and his name was checked off.

  I picked up the phone and called Matt. He didn’t sound too good. He said that they had found another dead guy.

  “Baker?” I asked.

  “No,” he said it hesitantly. “I’m pretty sure I would recognize Baker. This guy was a stranger.” There was another long pause. “Why did you ask me about Baker?”

  “Let’s meet and I’ll tell you then. How about at noon at the Dilettante?” That gave me enough time to print the results, find the ferrets and get them back into their cage.

  The Dilettante was only a few blocks from my house. It was the place I usually suggested for first dates—a chocolate shop that also offered coffee, tea and some food items, like borscht. I was never quite sure why the borscht. I didn’t think it would go with chocolate, but who knows. I had never tried it. Everything else I’ve tried does go well with chocolate.

  Matt was late as usual. I ordered a croissant and a latte while I waited. Matt finally rushed in, about 12:20, wearing a baseball cap, a pair of worn jeans and a faded maroon t-shirt—Matt’s sartorial sensibility came from back in the Seventies. The baseball cap was supposed to hide his thinning hair.

  “You should have one of these,” I said, waving my croissant at him, before taking a bite. “They’re fabulous.” And it was: flakey and melt-in-your-mouth delicious.

  “Don’t you think it’s redundant to put butter on a croissant?” Matt asked, pointing to the little jar of whipped butter that accompanied the croissant.

  “Is that a crack about my weight?” I know I need to lose at least fifteen pounds.

  Matt looked me up and down. I could tell by the sparkle in his eyes and the grin on his mouth that he was pleased with what he saw.

  “You always look great,” he said, taking a seat. “How’s your case going?”

  “Everyone seems to be suffering from paranoia. If I start acting all weird, and telling you I think my phone is tapped, will you take me to a shrink?”

  I meant it as a joke but Matt looked somber. “That’s the last place I’d take you, Rachel,” he said. I had forgotten how much he hates shrinks.

  “So where would you take me?” I asked.

  Matt contemplated that with a big grin on his face. “Tahiti?” he suggested.

  I smiled. The thought of hanging out with Matt on a tropical island had some appeal. But I didn’t think either of us would be able to relax. We both like to stay busy.

  The waiter came bustling over and Matt ordered a cup of drip coffee.

  “That’s all you’re having?”

  “Good cup of coffee’s all I need to go with whatever good news you’ve got for me.” He took a sip. “Either that or it will wash down any bad news.”

  “I have both,” I said. “Let me give you the good news first.” I pulled out the papers she had printed off. “Luther Brown was easy to find. He’s quite a prominent guy—a city councilman in Oakland. Lots of news articles about him.”

  “A public official? You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Luther Marcus Brown. That’s the name on the personnel roster.” I waved the fax paper under his nose.

  “Yeah, well, I knew him better as “Magic.” Then he changed his name to Shabazz. Said he was going to join Elijah Mohammed’s Nation of Islam as soon as his tour of duty was up.”

  “I don’t know if he bec
ame a Muslim or not, but the guy I found goes by Luther Marcus Brown. He’s been on the Oakland City Council for eight years. Co-chair of the Republican committee. Pretty high up in the party. And he’s a prominent businessman, worth millions.”

  Matt shook his head. “I can’t believe that’s the same guy,” he said. “What business is he in?”

  “Investment banking. Apparently he started off with a single bank in the inner city in the mid-Seventies. He offered high interest rate mortgages to minorities in areas that were red-lined by the major banks. He did so well he was able to expand. Now he owns a chain of banks.”

  “From radical to Republican,” Matt said, taking another sip of his coffee. “I guess stranger things have happened. So is that the good news?”

  “Pretty much,” I said. “Oh, I did find an address for Jack Rivers.” I handed over a piece of paper which showed Rivers living at an address on Ambaum Way in Burien, a working class town south of Seattle.

  “That’s great,” Matt said. “How’d you find it? I looked him up in the phone book and he wasn’t there.”

  “He seems to have lived under the radar,” I said. “I couldn’t find any work history or credit history. I got this from a utility record. He was paying the electric bill at this address.”

  “So what’s the bad news?” Matt asked.

  “Hank Baker,” I said.

  Something shifted in Matt’s face. “What about him?”

  “He’s dead. It happened a few days ago. I got the information off a reunion site for your platoon. Did you know that you could still be in touch with those guys if you had a computer?”

  “Skip it, Rachel,” he said. His tone was weary. “How did Baker die?”

  “Apparently it was a suicide,” I said as gently as I could. “He jumped off the roof of an office building in Milwaukee.” I handed Matt a printout which contained the messages about Hank that had been posted on the web site. Maybe it would serve as a subtle reminder of everything he was missing by refusing to get a computer.

  Matt glanced at it but his thoughts were obviously far away. “This is great work, Rachel. Thanks.” He took one last swig from his coffee cup and set it down. “Will you keep on working on the other names?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Let me pay you for the work you’ve done so far,” he said, reaching into his back pocket to grab his wallet. Matt still operates on a strictly cash basis. I don’t think he owns an ATM card, while I couldn’t survive without my plastic.

  “Forget it,” I said, waving him away. “You can return the favor by doing some work for me later.”

  With a quick hug, he was gone. I stayed and had a salad; after all it was lunch time.

  Knowing Matt, he was probably off to Burien to prowl around Rivers house, maybe even break in and go through the guy’s stuff. I headed to the Seattle Public Library to do my kind of detective work, sitting in front of a microfilm reader and scrolling through old copies of the Seattle Times. Now you can view them online but in the year 2000, microfilm was the only option.

  I was the only person in this section of the library on a sunny summer day. The machine whirred as I advanced the reel and watched the pages of newspaper scroll by. I decided to start with the ROTC bombing as I wanted to understand the forces that shaped Ellie Foley’s life. Plus I wanted to learn more about my father, the district attorney. The headline jumped off the page when I got to the right date: “Janitor Killed in Campus Bombing.”

  The text was short and the details unclear at first but as I scrolled through subsequent pages and days, a more detailed story developed. A woman had called the ROTC office at four PM and told them to clear the building. The secretaries had left in a flurry, evacuated under the supervision of the campus police. A quick search of the building revealed no sign of a bomb so everyone went home early. But no one thought to tell the cleaning staff. Around seven PM, an incendiary device was thrown through a window into the stairwell. It set off a fire that burned up the wooden stairs and burst through the roof. A custodian who was working in the basement was struck by a shard of flying glass when the fire blew out a glass door. It severed his jugular vein and he died almost instantly. The underground paper, the Freebie, received a note from a group called the Amazons, apologizing for the death but pointing out that over 500 civilians were killed every day in Vietnam.

  I wrote down the name of the custodian, Kirby Jackson. He was a black man who lived in the Central District and was the sixth son of a large and grieving family. A feature article focused on the victim’s long service, both to the UW where he had worked as a custodian for twenty years and to the United States, for he had served in the Army during the Korean War. He was given a full military funeral. A photograph showed his young nephew accepting the flag from his uncle’s casket.

  The police identified the grenade as a standard issue to ground troops in Vietnam. The speculation was that a veteran had brought it home with him as a souvenir, even though bringing live ordnance back to the States was illegal.

  Another article listed everything that was known about the Amazons, which was not much. Several students described seeing a group of women who ran through campus, bare-breasted and painted in war-paint, screaming slogans. But their previous actions had minor consequences: a broken window, spray-painted slogans on buildings.

  The lights in the library began to flicker, indicating it was closing time. With a jolt, I realized it was six PM. I needed to get home. Every Tuesday night, I hang out with my five year-old god-daughter, Taffy, while her mother, my best friend, Ginger, goes out dancing.

  Chapter 5

  Back at home, I let the ferrets out for their second play time of the day and checked my phone messages. There were three. Gus Holliday had called, telling me he wanted to meet to discuss my assignment: writing a story about Ellie Foley. The second was from Joel Wiseman, saying how much he enjoyed meeting me and would I like to have dinner on Friday night? He would let me pick the time and place. I shook my head. I had told him to wait at least a day. Calling the same day made him look desperate. On the other hand, I found it somewhat flattering. If someone was listening in on my phone calls, I hoped they were impressed by my obvious appeal. The third was from Ginger saying she was running late. Nothing surprising about that. Ginger is always late.

  A quick look at the refrigerator did not suggest anything I could serve Taffy for dinner. But she’s a cosmopolitan kid and loves sushi and Thai food. So I picked up the phone and ordered my usual from my local Thai restaurant. Tom-kha soup. Red curry with fried tofu. And shrimp fried rice. It was ready in twenty minutes. I put the ferrets back in their cages and strolled down the block to get the food. I was just returning with two plastic bags full of take-out containers, when Ginger and Taffy arrived.

  Ginger didn’t seem like herself. She was wearing one of the vintage confections she likes to wear for swing dancing: a stylish black and white top with tuxedo-like tails over a swingy black skirt. Her hair was flame-red, as usual, and pinned up in a French twist, and she wore her signature red lipstick. But her usual smile was forced and her eyes looked puffy. We’ve been friends a long time. I know when something’s wrong.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Can’t talk now,” she said, setting Taffy down.

  Ginger lets Taffy dress herself and since Taffy has Ginger for a mother, her choices are much more creative than most kids. Tonight she was wearing black and white striped tights, a purple tutu and a lime-green t-shirt, plus pink fairy wings.

  “Ben’s usual partner is out of town and I’m supposed to his teaching partner.” If it bothered me that Ginger was teaching dance classes with my ex-boyfriend, well, I wasn’t going to let her know. “I’ll tell all when I return.”

  She gave us both a kiss, and was off in a whirl of her skirt, racing towards her little forest-green Geo Metro which was parked in the nearby drug store lot. There’s never any parking in my neighborhood.

  My evenings with Taffy have a somewhat
predictable pattern. After dinner, we walk the ferrets around the block. I usually keep firm hold of both leashes though I let Taffy believe she is handling Trixie on her own. But I know too well how easily a ferret can get lost. After all, that’s how I got Bandit, who I found slinking around the parking lot of a local fast food restaurant, scrounging for French fries under parked cars.

  After the ferret walk, I bring out some kitchen pots and pans and we “cook” together, combining ingredients to make real cupcakes or magic potions. Or we play dress up. Taffy likes to try on my clothes and shoes and tromp around the apartment. I’m not sure why she likes my stuff. My clothes are tame compared to the room full of fabulous clothes at Ginger’s loft, left over from when Ginger owned a vintage clothing store in downtown Seattle. But that’s the way it is. Something new is always more intriguing than something familiar.

  At around nine PM, I fill the big clawfoot tub upstairs with bubble bath and let Taffy draw on the tile wall with bath paints. We know it’s time for her to come out when we do what we call: “the raisin check,” looking at the pads of her fingers to see if they are wrinkled. Once dried off and in her pajamas, I wrap her in a fuzzy blanket, plunk her down on the sofa, and read to her until she falls asleep or Ginger arrives, whichever comes first. If Taffy falls asleep first, I get to have a cup of tea and catch up with Ginger. Which is what I was hoping for.

  But it never works out the way you plan. Taffy was restless and couldn’t be pleased by any of the usual amusements. She ate the shrimp but nothing else. She whined when I wouldn’t let her walk Trixie on her own. She didn’t want to play dress up; she didn’t want to make cupcakes. I finally put her into the tub full of coconut-scented bubbles earlier than usual and that’s when it became clear what was bothering her.

  I keep a collection of toys for Taffy to play with in the bathtub. Things like rubber ducks and little fish that squirt water out of their mouths and bath paints. (OK, I admit it. Sometimes I play with them too.) Taffy grabbed the Daddy Ducky and the Mommy Ducky and started quacking, first in a low-pitched voice, and then in a high-pitched one.