Wren leaned back against the rail. “Here I was sure you were going to ask me a sex question.”
“That would be too easy for you.”
“You’re right.” She folded her arms. “I’m scared of playing things too safe. Of never knowing what’s around the corner, because I didn’t dare see it for myself. You know the Kipling book, with the mongoose and the cobras? There’s a line from that: The motto of all the mongoose family is, ‘Run and find out.’ I loved that story.”
“So you move around a lot.”
“So I move around a lot.” Wren nodded. “Your turn, Donovan Shaw. How’d you rejoin impolite society?”
“By seeking professional help.”
“That’s a cheat. I wasn’t talking about your therapy.”
“Me, either.”
It took her a second. “You . . .”
“Hired a girl. Yeah. It was down to two days before my next deployment and I couldn’t face going out to a bar again. I went online. Found a woman in the classifieds and wrote her about me, so she’d know what she was dealing with, wouldn’t run away screaming. We met at a hotel a hundred miles from Benning, just to make sure no one I knew would see us.”
“And how was it?” Wren looked more entertained than astounded.
“Businesslike. But she was kind. That’s what I needed more than anything. It got me—”
“Over the hump.”
“I was not going to say that.”
“Sure you weren’t.”
“By the time our battalion rotated back again, I was more myself. Or at least I cared less what people saw when they looked at me.”
Wren raised her glass. “Here’s to remedies.”
“And understanding. Thanks.”
“My pleasure. You want another round?”
I surely did.
Thirty-Three
I spent part of Saturday morning on the phone. It took a few calls to track down the person I was looking for, but fewer than I’d imagined. Even with a hundred other options there are still phone books, real and virtual, and plenty of people, especially of an older generation, still have their landlines listed.
My last call was to a retirement home in Mill Creek called Highland Hearth. The receptionist assured me that visitors were more than welcome between the hours of eight and four. I told him I’d be there within the hour. It took me less than half that before I was knocking on the open door of a room on the ground floor.
“Mr. Lindhoff?” I said.
The orderly behind me tapped my elbow. “You have to speak up. Mebbe go there in front of him, so he can see.”
I took his advice, pulling the wicker guest chair from beside the narrow bedstead with its safety rails to a place in front of Milt Lindhoff’s recliner. His eyes worked from behind his glasses to gain a focus on me. In the thirteen years since I’d seen him the lenses had widened and thickened, as if to balance the thinner, heavily creased face behind it. This close to him, a nostril-stinging smell of analgesic was strong and mixed with a sweeter note, like overripe fruit.
“You’re not Louis,” he said. His voice was husky, perhaps age or just from dryness. I didn’t remember what it had used to sound like.
“I’m not,” I said, louder than before. “My name is Van Shaw. I was a student at Watson High.”
Lindhoff cleared his throat. Looked out the window of the little room at the path and kidney-shaped patch of lawn with its single crab apple tree, leafless now in winter. Single tree to match the room’s single bed, single dresser, single recliner with attached folding tray where Lindhoff could take his meals when he wasn’t up to joining the other residents in the dining room. On the walls and tucked up against the mirror on the dresser were paintings of people, all from the shoulders up, all on ten-by-ten prestretched canvases without frames. The paintings weren’t sophisticated but were still intriguing. All of the people looked back at you with something like misgiving in their gaze.
“I got a lost quilt back for you once,” I said. “You and Ms. Nasgate.”
“Della.”
“Right. Della.” This had been a mistake. Lindhoff was not what he once was. “Sorry to have disturbed you.”
“The tough boy,” Lindhoff said. “The quiet one.”
I eased back onto the thin pillow of the chair. “Do you remember me?”
“Sure. The only kid Harshbarger wouldn’t yell at. Little creep was scared’a you.”
Harshbarger had been the composition teacher. Short and short-tempered.
“My memory’s slow. Not gone,” Lindhoff said. “But I can’t hear for a damn, son, so don’t be afraid to rattle the windows. How’d you find me?”
“Ms. Nasgate’s sister. You and Ms. N. got married, I found out.”
“Second time for both of us. Ten good years ʼfore she passed on.”
“I’m sorry.”
He waved the sentiment away. “Whatcha here for?”
“My mother, Moira, went to Watson before I did. That would be thirty years ago. Around the time you started.”
“Jesus. If you say so. Thirty years ago I could still run marathons.”
“Do you remember her at all? Dark hair like mine, very pretty. She was good at English and wanted to go to college before I came along. When I was a student you told me you’d talked to her about community college, and—a friend of mine remembers dropping off what might have been tuition later at Seattle Central.” I held out my phone with the image of Moira from the yearbook.
Lindhoff peered at the phone. I wasn’t sure if his cataracts allowed him much of a view. His hand, gnarled but clear of liver spots or lesions, worried at where the crease of his pants might have been.
“No,” he said finally. “I know the girl you mean. Got pregnant.” He waved it off again. “With you, I know. That kind of thing didn’t happen so often I wouldn’t remember. But I don’t know her face. Central, you said?”
“Yeah.”
“Then it’s Shelly Rudkin you want. Shelly was the rep for the Seattle community colleges, came around to Watson twice every year. Usually stopped for dinner with me and Della. Call Della’s sister June back. She’ll have Shelly’s number in the book.”
He motioned for me to comply. I did. June Nasgate, perplexed but willing, looked up the contact information. I copied it down.
“Shelly’s a good saleswoman,” Lindhoff said once I’d hung up. “I expect if your mom went to Central, they would have had a talk at some point before that.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“I may not remember her, but I remember you some,” he said. “The talk that went around the teachers’ lounge about you. Odds on whether you’d wind up in jail before long. Didja?”
“Army,” I said. “Right after graduation.”
He grunted. “Good. You might be suited to that. Your mother finished her senior year at Watson, is that right? Pregnant and all?”
“Yes.”
“Thought so. That kind of thing didn’t happen often, girls expecting and staying in school. I already said that.” The hand fluttered again and pointed at me. “Hell. That must have been a lot for her to handle. She wouldn’t have sacrificed so much if she hadn’t thought it worth the fight.”
“Guess not.”
“That quilt,” he said, as if remembering for the first time. “One of Della’s projects.”
“Yes. My mom had worked on it.”
“Della loved those sorts of undertakings. Said people working together to create something good was our highest calling. Art especially. You do any art?”
“Nope. You?” I already had the answer, of course.
“Painting, when the brush’ll stay in my hand. I like portraits, but mine never look like the subjects much. Doesn’t matter. I just say I’m capturing their inner self, like the brush is possessed or something. Nine times out of ten they buy it.” He shook his head. “You believe that? Angels and all that horseshit?”
“Not anymore,” I said.
Lindhoff cou
ghed, and it took me a second to realize he was laughing.
“Not anymore. Isn’t that the living truth?” he cackled. “Isn’t that just true of everything?”
Shelly Rudkin still worked for Seattle Colleges, and she was dedicating her Saturday afternoon preparing for the new quarter starting the next week. She told me over the phone that if I could make it to her office off Harvard Avenue within the next hour, she would speak with me today. The address was barely two blocks from Bully Betty’s. I knew exactly which lights to run to make it there with time to spare.
“Your question put me right into the Wayback Machine,” she said once she’d let me into the building and we’d shaken hands. “The high school circuit was my very first job with the district. By the time Moira contacted me a few years later, I had transferred to Admissions. Good timing for her, I must say.”
I had to stretch my stride to keep up with Rudkin; she walked like she was trying to keep pace with her words. She had pale hair and paler skin, but her eyes were nearly as dark as mine, in a face shaped like a generous heart.
“Do you remember Moira?” I said.
“I do. We only spoke a few times, but I processed her application. The school hasn’t transferred all our backlog from twenty-five years ago to the new system, but transcripts and student registrations? Those we have. Schools prioritize money and credits. Here we are.”
She sidestepped through a shared office crowded by at least one more desk than the room had been intended to hold. Rudkin had stacked copier-paper boxes on her desk to elevate the monitor and keyboard, creating a standing workspace. The absence of a chair gave her another foot of elbow room. I hovered to one side as she typed ferociously with two fingers, then swiveled the monitor to show me. It was Moira’s transcript, with columns for dates and course codes and grades and credits earned.
“She completed two quarters and had registered for a third,” Rudkin said.
I looked at the span of dates. Moira had died before the spring quarter began. To have something else to think about, I pointed to the list of codes. “What are these classes?”
“The course IDs are out of date, but that one was Intro to Public Policy. And that one in the second quarter is Group Counseling.”
“Like what, psychology?”
“Social work. Moira was on a track to eventually earn an MSW. I know because of this.”
She scrolled down to show a scanned document. A letter of recommendation, addressed to SCC Admissions, from the director of something called New Road Outreach. It was a lengthy letter. Moira had been volunteering her time, and the NRO director had written two paragraphs about her empathy and aptitude and resilience in dealing with some of the tougher cases in their program.
A program for the children of prison inmates.
Rudkin hummed thoughtfully. “That’s unusual. My guess was that Moira was applying for grants for her education, and the letter was to help make her case.”
Grants. Maybe Moira hadn’t been comfortable having Dono pay her freight. “Do you know these people? New Road?”
“I used to. It’s defunct, has been for at least twenty years. A victim of budget cuts and competition for charity and who knows. Their director left for Austin or someplace not long after. New Road served at-risk kids, most of them in foster care or stuck somewhere else in the system. Some in juvenile detention. Or kids just needing counseling with one or more parents incarcerated.”
Kids from criminal families.
Just like Moira. Just like me.
“Would you make a copy of these?” I asked. My voice more hushed than I’d expected.
Rudkin spun the monitor back and got to typing. “Normally there would be a formal request and a fee for a transcript, but honestly, who has more right to it than you?”
A printer in the hallway between offices hissed and buzzed. I followed Rudkin out to take the papers off the tray as they appeared. Each sheet warm from the rollers.
“Hope this was what you were looking for,” she said.
I looked at the copy of the letter, sent by a long-shuttered charity on behalf of a woman who had been killed only a few weeks after. Both more and less than what I’d imagined I might find here. An idea of what Moira had wanted to do with her life, and the dead end I’d known would come eventually.
Thirty-Four
It had been a full week since I’d been to work at Bully Betty’s. The crowd placid enough now that the holidays were over that no one on either side of the bar was moving at more than half speed. A-Plus granted me a half-lidded gaze of curiosity at my unexpected appearance, showing off her brilliant blue eye shadow, as I walked behind the counter to take over the taps and the menial work.
As my hands got to cleaning, I thought back to what Milt Lindhoff had told me. That Moira wouldn’t have sacrificed so much if she hadn’t thought it worth the struggle. The it being me, her baby boy.
His implication was clear enough: Did you grow into a person worth everything she gave up?
Those concerns passed the time, going around and around in my head, until late in the evening, when my phone rang with a blocked number.
“Shaw?” a man’s voice said. I waited. “This is the guy who met you at the airport lot. Yeah?”
Yeah. I grasped the voice now. Rick Martens, the ATF Fed. Working very late, apparently.
“I remember,” I said.
“Let’s meet. It’s good news.”
Sure it was. “I’m busy.”
“No bullshit. This is something you want to hear. I’m on Queen Anne at a place called Uncle C’s. You know it?”
A cop bar. “Pass.”
He chuckled. “Guess you do know it. Okay, then where?”
Martens’s insistence annoyed me. And I had to admit, I couldn’t guess what he thought was so urgent that he needed to find me after midnight.
“You know where I work,” I said. He probably had my file open in front of him, including Betty’s W-2 filing for employee taxes.
“Uh, yeah. Cap Hill, right?” Martens must have transferred to Seattle from another division. I’d never heard anyone call it that.
“I’ll be here for another hour.”
Out in the main room, a dozen night owls roosted in the booths. Two other birds of undefined gender made out at one of the center tables while their friend went on with their story, seemingly oblivious. The Fed would stand out like a terrier here, and perhaps be just as skittish.
I stuck my head out the door to wake up Mo.
“You’ll see a white guy here before long, looking like he just strolled off the driving range.”
“Should I hiss at his spikes?”
I grinned. “Just let him in. Even if we’re past last call.”
Martens made it before that. I’d taken over dishware duties for closing, letting A-Plus finish stocking the stirrers and toothpicks and parasols with hasty dexterity, before gliding away with the entourage that always materialized to greet her when she went off duty. She blew me a kiss, as Martens turned sideways to gawk at the passing bevy of magazine-gloss perfections.
“Holy shit. Who was that?” he said, taking a stool at the counter.
“The most beautiful bartender in Seattle, according to the Weekly. And the Stranger.” Though the Stranger had tactfully called A-Plus their “Favorite,” probably to avoid accusations of objectification.
“And she’s—uh—here?” Martens glanced around at the bar’s late-night menagerie and the ceiling beam with its line of human hair braids and ponytails, souvenirs of the old location. I set the tumblers out of the dishwasher in rows to dry overnight. The middle-aged Fed was attracting a few baffled looks himself. Maybe it was the Brooks Brothers tie. So uptight it was almost ironic.
“When I learned you worked at a bar, I was picturing something different,” he said. “MGD on tap and MMA on the screen.”
“We got a regular here who’s seven-and-one in her pro fights, if that’s your type.” I took a last pull off the bottle of Reuben’s
Porter I’d been nursing and tossed it into the recycling bucket with a clank.
“Sorry I said it. Can I get a cola? So damn cold outside I need some caffeine to get my blood going.” As I drew one from the soda gun, Martens took off his blue jacket and folded it neatly to place it on the counter. “And get yourself whatever you want. On me.”
When cops are this polite, start sniffing for the trap. Mo flicked the lights to signal last call. Quiana at the other end of the bar made a couple of dirty martinis for the lovebirds while a few customers made half-hearted moves toward the exit. Martens fetched a paper napkin from the rack A-Plus had just filled. There was no one within hearing range of us.
I finished with the dishware and poured myself a healthy shot of Redbreast. “Once this is empty, I’m gone.”
“Fine, fine. Here’s what it’s about: Podraski and I pulled you in the other day because you were spotted in Bitter Lake.” He held up a hand. “I won’t rehash our debate from the other day, I promise. But can we at least agree that Podraski and I were told that you were seen? Whether or not it was really you?”
I waited.
“So let’s build on that,” Martens continued. “Let’s say that if someone was in Bitter Lake that night, breaking into a particular house, then perhaps that wasn’t a random burglary. Perhaps this very skilled dude was hired to do that job.”
He took a sip of his Coke while looking pointedly at my shot of whiskey. “I don’t have to tell you how these things work. We aren’t interested in the hired hand in this scenario. We want his boss, the guy at the top. Especially if that boss has a lot of other activities rolling that pique our interest.”
“You want a snitch.”
The agent’s mouth twisted in a rueful frown. “A snitch squeals on everything and everyone, hoping to shake himself loose from jail time. We’re looking for a man on the inside. If his information is gold, he might write his own ticket. Immunity from prosecution. Perhaps a few dollars in his pocket, too. You aren’t drinking.”
I sipped at the shot, taking a few ticks to think about Martens’s setup. He followed the progress of my glass all the way back to the counter. My radar pinged Recovering Alcoholic. No one else was so focused on another man’s booze.
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