by G. M. Ford
Ralph saved me. His unconscious body got between me and the final concrete wall where we came to rest. Even with Ralph as a buffer, the blow rattled my teeth and swam my vision. Ralph licked his lips and snored quietly.
The voice came from the top of the stairs. "Where the fuck you think you're goin'?"
He was short. Some sort of Pacific Islander. Coffee, no cream, complexion. Dark. From Fiji, someplace like that. Maybe five-three, no more, his hair grown out into an illtended 'Fro that blocked the hall light from his face. He held a bent tire iron with both hands.
I reached into my jacket pocket. Quickly I patted the other. My throat tightened, and I began to sweat. I rolled off Ralph. Keeping my eyes on the tire iron, I felt around the area immediately around where we had come to rest. Must have bounced out during the fall.
He came skittering down the stairs diagonally in a series of small, mincing steps, the tool held out in front of him like a lance. I was still pulling the sap from my pocket when he was on me. As the iron descended, I stood upright and stepped inside, taking his forearm on the top of my head, jamming my neck down into my torso. Grabbing the arm with my left hand, I pinned his elbow on my shoulder while I pistoned my knee at his groin three times.
He was quick, getting one leg in front of the other and taking my knee harmlessly on the side of his thigh. With a grunt, he wrenched his arm free and stepped back. This time I was ready.
In a panic, I forgot all the simple-flick-of-the-wrist stuff Baby G had taught me. I hauled off and smacked him squarely between his eyes with the leather-covered egg. Gave it all I had. The sound was reminiscent of the time my aunt Sonja lost control of a standing rib roast back when I was fourteen or fifteen. The hollow, sickeningly wet smack, followed by the absolute silence. The old man had risen, spread his downturned palms dramatically to the sides, and pronounced the beef to be safe. Sonja, as I recall, had been significantly less than amused.
The little guy never even twitched. He lay there as if he'd been poured into the spot and allowed to dry. I started to reach for Ralph, but stopped short as the light at the top of the stairs blinked.
This one was no midget. A wiry six-two in a pair of soiled boxer shorts. He held a glass crack pipe in his right hand. His thinning hair stood out in all directions. Even shadowed, the face had that corrugated quality so often found in smallpox victims. An angry red scar ran diagonally across his chest from just under his left nipple to just above his right hip. All that interested me, however, wa| the hand at the end of his long left arm.
He stood the way knife freaks often do, with his knife arm totally relaxed, his hip canted to that side. This both gave the impression of street-corner nonchalance and allowed the hand to dangle out of sight behind the knee. If you weren't paying attention, it was a deadly combination.
I'd just caught a glimpse of it before it disappeared. An oversize linoleum knife, its curved blade worn bright from constant honing, resting out of sight now behind his leg. My insides moved in upon themselves, converging toward a single spot like a dying star.
"Ralph and I are leaving," I said, as much to myself as to him.
"You think so?"
He dropped the pipe to the floor and spread his arms for balance. I could see the knife's wooden handle between his fingers.
I let go of Ralph's collar, slipped the loop over my wrist, and pulled it tight. Despite the knife, I liked my chances. I outweighed him by at least thirty pounds. Anything I hit with the sap I was going to shatter. "Come on," I said up the stairs. "You anxious, buddy? You want some like your little friend here? I wobbled the sap up and down. "Come and get it, fuckface."
I couldn't see his eyes, but his body language said he wanted no part of anybody who was going to fight. I grabbed Ralph's collar again, making sure I had a hold on everything he was wearing, and began to drag him toward the next flight of stairs.
Hooker started down the stairs toward me. I let go of Ralph and stepped around to face him again. He stopped on the first step. Uncertain. His scar seemed to glow in the dark.
"Where's he goin' with Ralph?"
The voice took us both by surprise. It was a moment before I realized that the thin voice had come from behind Hooker. From the fourth-floor hall. Hooker wasn't so dim. In one swift motion, he turned, grabbed the kid by the hair, and hauled him down onto the stairs. The kid squealed, whooping in and out like a siren as he fought for breath. I could hear movement within the hotel. We were beginning to wake the two-legged rodents.
Hooker had the kid by the hair, pulling his head back at an ungodly angle. From below, I was looking directly up the kid's widely distended nostrils. His high-pitched wail filled the stairwell. I grabbed Ralph again.
Hooker reached all the way across and put the tip of the blade at the corner of the kid's eye. "You toss that headknocker up here or I'll take his eye."
"Take it," I said. "Ralph and I are leaving."
I told myself not to look back, but as usual myself was a poor listener. When Hooker dug the tip of the blade into the far corner of the kid's eye, the screaming went up three octaves. A single stream of blood flowed down the side of the kid's face.
"Stop. Stop," I screamed.
Hooker sneered at me through widely spaced teeth.
"Toss it up here."
I unwound the sap from my arm and underhanded it past him down the hall. Before it ever hit the floor Hooker had tossed the kid aside and launched himself toward me like Superman taking off.
I saw a small red poppy bloom in his armpit before I ever heard the flat crack of the little revolver. The bullet took him just under the left arm. He landed face first on Ralph, then, groaning, rolled on his back to the floor. I stepped forward and pinned his wrist with my foot. He was still strong enough to resist a bit as I pried the knife from his spasming fingers.
Selena stood at the bottom of the flight of stairs in the combat position, feet spread, the gun held in both hands before her.
"Where's the nigger?" she asked. "Upstairs. I think I busted his head." "One apiece," she noted.
"I thought you were watching the old lady," I said. "You didn't sound like you was doing too good." She had a point. "We better get the hell out of here," she said.
"There's no running on this one. They'll have us both in the county lockup by noon."
She set the gun on the carpet and turned to leave. "Not me. I ain't talkin' to no cops."
"We'll not only walk," I said, "we might get a medal."
She eyed me suspiciously. "A medal?"
"All you got to do is two things."
"Like what?"
"First, you have to clam up when the cops get here. Tell them I'm arranging an attorney for you and that you want to speak to your attorney before speaking to them. Can youdo that? They're going to try to scare the shit out of you, but you can't let them."
"Like what are they gonna scare me with, man?" she said. "What are they gonna do, put a roof over my head? Give me three meals a day? What's the other thing I need to do?"
"Go call nine-one-one. Tell 'em we need multiple ambulances and the cops."
"You want me to call the cops?"
"It's what good citizens--innocent citizens," I added, "do at a time like this."
She favored me with a second of that lopsided grin and then backed down the stairs.
4
Detective Sergeant Gogolac and I got off on the wrong foot.
They left me cuffed to a bolted-down chair in a fifth-floor interrogation room, hoping I'd soak up some of the fear embedded in the pale green walls. About a half hour later, he showed up. Calm. Officer Friendly. We were just going to have a little relaxed chat. Nothing to get excited about. Just a couple of good old boys shooting the breeze. Not to worry.
He was short for his weight. A grown-out gray crew cut, combed straight up, gave him the appearance of being constantly startled. The pockets of his soiled blue plaid jacket sagged like mail pouches. From the right pocket he produced a small black Hitachi tape r
ecorder.
"You don't mind if we record our conversation, do you?"
"Go for it."
He set the recorder between us on the table. In a low, paternal voice, he assured me that this was a mere formality, foisted upon us by a sincere but somewhat overzealous legal system. When I seemed to agree, he pushed the recorder's red button, recited the time, the location, and the date, and then read me my rights from a small blue card he kept in the case with his shield.
"Do you understand your rights as they've been read to you?" "Yes, I do," I said. "And thank you for reading them to me, Detective Gogolac. I'd like to call my attorney now, please."
"Just a sec. I want to "
I interrupted him. "Perhaps you didn't hear me," I said louder, scooting closer to the recorder. ' 'I want to call my attorney now. I have nothing to say until my attorney arrives."
"Come on now, don't be an "
I half rose, moving as far as the cuff would allow, and put my mouth directly above the recorder. "Are you telling me, Detective Gogolac," I shouted, "that you are not going to let me call my attorney? Maybe you ought to read me that part again about my right to an attorney. I'm not the brightest guy in the world. Maybe I misunderstood."
Detective Gogolac took his toy and went home. A uniform showed up about five minutes later with a phone, which he plugged into the wall and banged down in front of me. He backed to the door and stood there with his hands crossed over his fly, like he was holding himself up by the balls. I called Jed at home.
Forty-five minutes later, Gogolac made another appearance. He strolled in, hands on hips, seemingly amused.
"We don't need anything from you, Waterman," he trumpeted.
"We're on our third box of Kleenex next door. We know what went down back there. Your girlfriend's giving them everything but a blow job."
He might have made me a bit edgy without the Kleenex part. The Kleenex was definitely overkill. I grinned right back at him.
"My girlfriend? What the hell are you talking about? I thought she was your mom."
He strolled around behind me. He leaned in and spoke over my shoulder. "They told me downstairs you think you're pretty funny."
"You sure they didn't just tell you I was pretty?"
He stepped around to the front, resting his big hands on the arms of the chair. He pushed his face into mine. He had pores the size of dimes and enough nose grease to lube a locomotive. I held his gaze.
' 'Hell of a crop of nose hairs you got going there, Detective. You ever think about maybe training them into something decorative?"
"Don't fuck with me, Waterman."
"Jeez, Sarge, I never even realized that was an option."
He levered himself back up to perpendicular. "You want to make this hard, don't you? That what you've got in mind?"
"What I have in mind is conferring with my attorney." There are few more pathetic sights than a grown man flouncing from a room in a full snit. It was another twenty minutes before the door opened again and Selena came shuffling in. A beetle-browed matron with an Elvis hairdo and a stiff brown shirt cuffed her to the chair directly across from me and then waddled out. Selena gave me a wink and a smile. I could hear Jed's voice through the wavy frosted glass.
"Perhaps I haven't made myself clear, Officer Gogolac. I will confer with my clients in any goddamn way I see fit."
"Detective Gogolac," the cop corrected. "That fearsomely unfortunate fact merely validates my longstanding contention that this department needs a complete standards and promotion criteria review."
"I don't have to take that," Gogolac declared.
"What you have to do, Detective, is provide me access to private consultation with my clients. Singly--together-- balls-ass naked, if we feel like it. Am I making myself clear, or should we mayhaps get a supervisor down here? Why don't you call the great Sanders himself? Tell him I'm down here and you refuse to let me speak with my clients. Trust me, Sparky, he'll come down here and strangle you with your own sac. If any," he added as an afterthought.
The Seattle law enforcement community viewed Jed James as a worst-case scenario come true. It was rumored that Norm Sanders, the DA, had expressly forbidden the utterance of Jed's name within the confines of his departmental offices and had decreed that Jed be referred to as simply "that man." Jed's ten years as the ACLU's chief litigator in New York had given him a political stance only slightly to the right of Ho Chi Minh and an exaggerated, abusive oratory style seldom seen this far west. No cause was too unpopular. No infringement too slight. To my knowledge, if you counted appeals, he was undefeated.
He strode into the room and closed the door. The overhead lights were reflected on his freckled pate. He wore a blue blazer and gray slacks, no tie, no socks. He nodded at Selena.
"Evening, Leo," he said amiably, sitting on the table next to me. "You want to tell me about it?"
I kept it short and sweet. When I'd finished, he left without a word. Twenty minutes and he was back. This time he addressed Selena.
"You're going to have to give them a name."
"You didn't even tell them your name?" I asked.
"You told me not to tell 'em nothin'. I told 'em nothin'. 'Sides that, they're a bunch of assholes. 'Specially that bull dyke they kept leavin' me with. Kept tellin' me about how you was spillin' your guts over here. How nobody cared about what happened to an old drunk like me. How I was gonna take the whole fall 'cause you was a guy with connections."
"Where has this woman been all our lives?" Jed asked.
"Kind of makes you wonder, don't it?" I agreed.
"What's your name?" Jed asked.
She scowled and folded her arms.
Jed persisted. "No matter what I do, they won't turn you loose until you give them a name they can link to a social security number."
"Social security my ass," she muttered.
She folded her arms tighter and looked from Jed to me and back.
"Selena Dunlap," she said finally. "Selena Dunlap. Five-four-one, eight-two, six-threesix-seven."
Jed headed for the door. "An hour," he said over his shoulder.
Twenty minutes later, the uniform who'd brought me the" phone came in and took the cuffs off both of us. He was back in another five with two Styrofoam cups of industrial waste coffee, which we left untouched on the table. Selena had wandered over to the bench at the far end of the room and was shuffling and smoothing the remnants of yesterday's Seattle Times. When I got sick of watching the steam rise off the coffee, I wandered over and sat down next to her. Her prominent cheekbones were flushed, seemingly about to break through the skin.
"We'll be out of here soon," I said.
"Good," she said. "This place is gettin' me down, man.
I'm no good cooped up. I get all goofy if I don't got some room to get around in. Makes me feel... weird ... you know ... weird."
"When Jed says an hour, he means an hour. Maybe a half hour to go now."
"They treat ya like shit in here," she announced out of the blue. "Like I'm not even a person or somethin'. Just because I'm on the streets like I got no rights or nothin'. Like I'm some kinda goddamn animal." She was moving like she was knitting in a rocker.
I tried to calm her. "Soon," I said. "We'll be out of here soon."
Her eyes were full of water. She picked up the Arts section of an old Sunday Times and held it in front of my face. A color picture of the late Lukkas Terry filled the center of the page, the boy next door with purple hair. "That's my boy, you know," she said, rattling the paper in my face. "Even if I ain't done nothin' else, I done that."
The door opened. Jed came in.
"You're sprung," he announced as the uniform uncuffed us both.
"Me too?" Selena asked.
"For you, I'm pushing for a city whistle-blower commendation."
"Goddamn right," she said.
"What about Ralph?" I asked.
"He's up at Providence. They took him to Harborview, but I had him sent up to Providence on my empl
oyee account."
"Thanks," I said.
"No word on his condition except that he had regained consciousness about twenty minutes ago. I've got Harriet in the office early, keeping track of his condition. If anything changes, she'll page me."
"And the hotel?" I inquired.
"They've got three full squads down there. I guess it's a hell of a mess. A whole collection of ambulatory stoners. Some handicapped kid threw himself out a window. It's a tragedy. Every camera and every elected official in town are down there."
Before I could speak, he went on. "That's how come you two are walking. I agreed that your names weren't going to come up as part of this ongoing investigation."
"What ongoing investigation is that?" I asked.
"The one where SPD, through diligent, dedicated, dogged police work, has sniffed out and subsequently smashed a virtual den of drugs and degradation down in Chinatown, thus preventing further tragedies like the one we face this evening and ensuring the continued dominance of the ruling class. To Protect and Serve, you know."
' 'Oh, that investigation."
"That's the one."
"What next?"
"As your attorney, I advise you to buy this woman breakfast. As you and I know only too well, my friend"-- he patted my shoulder--"women of this mettle are few and far between. I recommend the standard introductory patter, followed by a whirlwind courtship."
I turned to Selena. "You heard him," I said. "Only a fool disregards the advice of his attorney."
Selena Dunlap did not require further prompting. Jed and I followed her vapor trail to the street.
5
She ate like my ex-wife used to pack a suitcase. Methodically, almost ceremoniously, stuffing every obscure compartment with its ordained freight. Over the past forty-five minutes she'd gone through two eggs up, two eggs scrambled, a short stack, an order of bacon, four link sausages, and now two orders of toast. She'd washed it all down with five Rainier Lites. Watching her weight, I supposed. Her recent call for hash browns and another beer suggested that she had a few compartments to fill.