by G. M. Ford
"I done it," he announced.
He was about ten, maybe sixty pounds, in an oversize Oakland Raiders pullover, a pair of black canvas pants that would have fit Orson Welles, and Reeboks with no laces. "She say she send it right up."H >;
"Good job," I said. I pulled a five-dollar bill from my pocket and held it out. The kid snatched the bill and began to skip backward, as if I were going to change my mind and try to take the money back. When I didn't move, he stopped. "You a spy or somethin', man?" he asked.
"Bond," I said. "James Bond."
"My ass," he said with a grin and turned and left.
I retrieved the Fiat and fought the traffic north, up Third Avenue with the buses, sliding down to Mercer, facing the bobbing web of lights now, as the late-afternoon flow of the interstate began to swell in the deep cuts along the side of the hill, where a bazillion highways, state routes, arterials, just plain roads, and maybe even cul-de-sacs parceled out their meager portions of the swell and began to move it toward home and the dubious promise of another morning commute.
I followed a new black Jaguar up Eastlake, where the uneasy tension between tradition and the profit motive hung in the air like diesel smoke. The new Seattle has for twenty years been chipping away at the rough-handed, old-time commercialism that surrounds the city's downtown lake. Wedging fancy eateries in along the shore, cheek to jowl with the commercial fishermen, the shipyards, the smalltime maritime fabricators who stubbornly cling to their soiled lots like fifth-generation barnacles. Unable to either muscle or buy them out, the city now sought to displace this tawdry blue-collar enclave by making the whole damn thing a park. Someplace nice for the kiddies and the cocker spaniels, you know. Fuck the jobs. We'll put it on the ballot. Progress is, after all, our most important product.
For the second time this week, I could hear my phone ringing through the door. This time, though, I didn't hurry. I hung my jacket on the oak stand in the hall and my keys on the hook by the breakfast bar. Thus organized, I ambled toward the phone. No matter. It kept ringing.
"Leo Waterman," I said.
"I seem to have forgotten the part of the meeting where they opened their files to us."
"The ravages of advancing age," I suggested.
"Can they be traced to you?"
"Only through rumor and innuendo. Nothing that will stand up in court," I assured him.
"You're sure?"
"Positive."-
A lengthy silence ensued. "Why am I overcome with the feeling that a similar level of commitment to finding Karen Mendolson just might produce similarly startling results?" Jed said finally.
"A jaded and churlish nature?" I suggested.
"I'm serious, man," he snapped.
"That makes two of us," I said. "I'm doing everything that can be done. This girl kept to herself. She's not using her credit cards."
"You heard from Paul?"
"I stopped by his office after I saw the boys. We did lunch."
"Shit."
I tried to cheer him up. "The boys took the bed back."
"I know. I called."
"Ye of little faith."
"Shit," he repeated. "I was hoping--goddamn it, Leo, you said--"
"It was always a long shot. I was just covering our bases," I interrupted. "She's a bright woman. She reads a lot. She knows the score. She's got a nearly unlimited supply of cash. As long as she keeps her head down and doesn't leave a paper trail, not me, not the cops, the friggin' FBI, nobody is going to find her ass." Now it was my turn to get nasty. "If you've got somebody you think can do a better job, maybe you better trot them out now, because other than this Internet thing, I'm fresh out of ideas."
I spent the next minute or so listening to the static on the line.
"Close of business Friday," he said sullenly.
I changed the subject. "You get a chance to look at that paperwork?''
"It'll be tonight before I have time. For obvious reasons, I'm not going to be able to farm it out to one of the kids."
"Thanks for filing the order."
"No problem."
"Heard from any of them again--Prowell, Conover--?"
He wagged his big head. "Nary the peep."
"We may be losing our touch." "Sorry about before," he said suddenly. "I know you're doing the best you can. I'm getting a lot of pressure from the mayor's office, that's all."
"Don't worry about it," I said.
"Actually, fucking around with these music types is fun."
"Ain't it, though."
"Later."
Five-twenty. A little over an hour and a half until I was scheduled to pick up Rebecca for dinner. Freezing in here. I turned the thermostat up to eighty, punched the red button on the surge protector, and headed for the shower, where, due to the special acoustic qualities of my glass-walled stall, I was able to simultaneously warble all four parts of the Dell Vikings' doo-wop masterpiece "Come Go with Me," melting the seemingly disparate parts into a sonic stew of such harmonic richness and tonal quality as to surely warrant professional archiving.
Five-thirty-five. The place was a sauna. I lowered the heat to sixty and opened the office window. After configuring my PPP, I checked my Email.
I pulled the little West Bend timer from the top drawer of my desk and set it for an hour. Rebecca had bought me the timer for my last birthday. It was all she'd bought me for my birthday. I was fresh out of mistakes. No more innocent faces about how I'd gotten involved on-line and lost all track of time. Absolutely none of that shit was going to float anymore. I was ready.
Twenty minutes later, right at the beginning of the second part of the digest, nestled between a rave review of an L.A. detective novel called Violent Spring and a call for mystery titles involving sleuths who were also gay exercise therapists--I made a mental note to check back on this one--Karen Mendolson got her two cents' worth in.
DATE: Mon, 19 Feb 96 18:21:42-0600 FROM: J. P. [email protected]. SUBJECT: Sayers' Values
In a recent posting by Jeff Meyers he quoted Tracy Sheen as saying "The writer has an obligation to rise above the petty prejudices of his or her time". I would be much obliged if he or Mrs. Sheen would give me a list of precisely which current social attitudes will be deemed incorrect sixty or seventy years from now and a complete list of the reasons why this has transpired. How could anyone doubt that the reason anti-semitism is now unacceptable is because of the Holocaust and the lessons people have (hopefully) learned about the ends of prejudice.
J. P. Beaumont (J. A. Jance's Seattle Detective.) J. P.Beau @magic.net.com.
I copied her address into my address book and then read the rest of the digest. Good thing. Right near the end, the handwriting showed up on the wall. It was now or never. Karen's pet issue was about to become a thing of the past.
Date: Mon, 19 Feb 96 15:13:41 EDT From: "Kara L Robinson"
Okay My loyal DorothyLers,
The time has come to put an end (as in halt, desist, stop already) to this Sayers thread. It is time to agree that we will never all agree on the issue of Dorothy L. Sayers and her purported anti-semitism, so it is time to put down our keyboards and move to other issues.
Thanks a ton for your cooperation in murdering this thread:)
Danger Mouse AKA Kara L. Robinson Co-Listowner: DorothyL
I clicked and scrolled my way back to Karen's message and put together a pithy reply. This was going to be the only chance I got.
DATE: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 18:21:42-0600 FROM: [email protected]
SUBJECT: Sayers Thread TO: J. [email protected].
JP,
I couldn't agree with you more; hindsight is always twenty-twenty. I can't believe some of these people. Alas, perhaps Danger Mouse is right. This particular issue does seem to be particularly contentious. It doesn't seem to be bringing out the best in any of us. As she suggests, this might be best discussed off line.
Leo Waterman
I wa
sn't at all sure about the alas, but the rest of it sounded pretty good. Send. I followed Carl's directions. Leave the computer on-line. Unpack the SuperFinder. Click the installer. Wait. Make sure the program completely loads. Okay. Clicking find produces a dialogue box. The directions say to type my own E-mail address. [email protected]. Click OK. Another dialogue box. Type "all," lowercase. Click OK. Big black letters moved across the screen like marching soldiers:... R ... E ... A...D... Y...R...E...A...
The timer went off. I took the machine at its word and went in search of some clothes.
20
1 dipped (he twisted end of my napkin back into my ice water and went to work on my shirt. Just to the left of the fourth button, a jeering glob of barbecue sauce the size of a fingernail had welded itself to the fabric and was worming its way into the heart of each tiny fiber, where it would surely dwell and stain forever. Arrrgh.
"I wish you'd told me you wanted to eat here," I whined. "I'd have worn old clothes."
"You're such a slob," she sympathized.
"It's not that I'm a slob," I protested. "It's merely the luck of the draw. Some people are just born to stay clean. Some aren't. That's it. End of story. You"--I pointed with the wet napkin end--"could snort a bowl of chili and not get anything on you." I rubbed harder. "I, on the other hand, am destined to always wear my lunch. That's just the way it is." The deep blue of the shirt had begun to come off on the napkin. Not surprisingly, however, the glob of sauce remained unscathed. ?
Willie's Taste of Soul was, if food was the sole criterion, perhaps the best restaurant in Seattle. If the location at the top of the hill off the Swift-Albro exit in South Seattle was a bit out of the mainline, the mouthwatering beef brisket more than compensated. Whatever the small dining area may have lacked in ambience, Willie's homemade Louisiana Hot Links would make you forget about in a hurry. By the time you'd choked down a piece of his legendary sweet potato pie for dessert, you were way past thinking about restaurants; you were thinking about cardiologists and dry cleaners.
I gave up on the shirt, leaned back in my chair, and watched the thin line of traffic making its way down Beacon. From the corner of my eye, I could see Rebecca was studying me like a lab specimen. Instinctively, I knew it was one of those moments. The ones where you don't get the test results until years down the road, when, smack-dab in the middle of some seemingly innocuous and totally unrelated conversation, she throws back a shawl, tosses her hair, and says, "And then there was that time my mother was thinking about moving in with her sister, and you '' God help you then.
I decided to take the initiative. "So," I started. "What do you figure are the chances of the old girls actually moving in with each other?"
"I think time doth make cowards of us all," she said, eyeing me.
I figured she probably didn't want me to tell her how the Vince Lombardi quote really went, so I said, "All? Us too?"
She held my gaze. "Us especially."
''You really think they'll do it, huh?''
"I've got a feeling they will."
I took a deep breath, cleared my throat. "Okay, I'll jump right in here. If that happens are you in favor of making some, like, major adjustments in our ... our... current relationship?"
"Are you?"
"You're not going to let me palm this one off on you, are you?"
"Not a chance."
I was ready. "I think we ought to talk about it."
Worst-case scenario. "All right. Let's talk about it," she said.
We were still talking about it thirty minutes later as we cruised under the green lights of the Washington State Convention Center, tacking back and forth through the hazy heart of Seattle.
"I was just saying that first we ought to analyze whether we want anything to change before we go plunging in and screwing up a good thing," I wheedled. "I never once said I was or was not in favor of making any changes of any kind."
"What is it you're not satisfied with?"
I was barely holding my own. A babe in the woods. Each statement, no matter how closely couched, seemed to tip some cosmic scale further against me, leaving me naked and defenseless against unimaginably Florentine translations of my own seemingly simple phrases. Mercifully, my beeper went off. I checked my hip. The pay phone in the Zoo.
In spite of being no more than two miles away, I nearly killed us both as I cut across two lanes of traffic, leaving a white Mercedes weaving in my wake. An angry blast of a horn followed us up the Olive exit, left, and up to what used to be a Red Robin burger joint but had recently transformed itself into a more egalitarian Boston Market. Good Hearty Fare. Fair being the key word.
The restaurant and its parking lot sat on a little disconnected triangle of land where Olive, the aptly named John, and Summit all came together to form one of the busiest intersections in the city. I cut left on Summit, rolled the forty yards to the rear point of the triangle, and doubleparked below the phone booth. I flipped the emergency flashers on and pulled the door handle. "Be right back," I said. No response. "I'll leave it running. In case, you know ... a cop." I swear she growled. I kept moving.
The line was busy. I waited and dialed again. Still busy. Third time was the charm. I punched the buttons and spoke into the grimy mouthpiece. "It's Leo."
"Leo," George's voice rasped, "ya gotta get down here."
Through the smudged plastic of the booth, Rebecca appeared to be passing kidney stones. I gave her my best smile.
"It's not a good time, George."
"It's Selena," he whispered. "She come here to the Zoo. She needs to see ya bad."
"Okay." I sighed. "I'll " I slouched back into the corner of the booth, rummaging around for what I was going to tell Rebecca. No need. She must have read my mind. She was all the way out of the Fiat, running in that highknees style of hers, pointing at me, a round mouth shouting my name. Prison-break lights swept across the apartment building behind her. I turned toward the source of the lights.
The gray-primered van, its left front grillwork smashed and swinging below the bumper, bolted down the sidewalk at me like a headlong drunk. Its dual antennas wildly whipped side to side as it careened directly at the booth, right wheel on the sidewalk, left wheel in the parking lot, straddling what was soon to be two levels, the single headlight beginning to move above the body as the left wheel rose dramatically. Too late to get the right wheels up, the driver jerked it right, pulling the left wheels down from the shelf, bouncing hard. Fishtailing wildly, the rear panel of the van sideswiped the booth on its way down. I had the door handle in one hand and the receiver in the other when the booth snapped loose and began U.S. West's first pathetic attempt at manned flight. I could tell right away that the booth was short on lift.
I'd like to say that the world suddenly went into slow motion, that the impact of the van tore the breath from my body, leaving me gasping at the horrid hissing sound the booth made as it slid along Summit Avenue and bounced to a rough stop against the far curb. I'd like to tell you all that, but it wouldn't be true.
Truth be told, the whole thing was over before my tiny brain showed even the slightest glimmer of recognition of the extreme seriousness of my circumstances. Next thing I knew, I was lying facedown in the street with a half inch of scuffed plastic between my drooling lips and the pitted pavement, the inside door handle causing me a type of profound discomfort that can generally only be reproduced by urologists and certain Argentinean sadists. The phone seemed to be ringing.
Someone was yelling at my shoes. "Leo! Leo, can you hear me?"
"Arrrgh," I said.
"Don't move," the shoe screamer shrieked. "You're lying on the door; I'll pull you out from the bottom." Strong hands encircled my ankles. I can't be sure. I may have whimpered. Wedging my hands along the sides, I levered myself off the handle and rolled a quarter turn to the left, thus making my weight easier to pull and retaining my future propagation possibilities.
The aluminum bottom molding clipped my chin, gnashing my teeth together as I
slid into the street. My toes hit the pavement. I rolled over on my own. Rebecca stood, brushing off her hands, looking down at me.
"Holy shit," I said.
She knelt by my side, looking hard into my eyes. "Lie still," she whispered, putting a hand on each side of my head. "Lift your head." *'"
I lifted my head.
"Can you put your hands together?" I nearly missed, grabbing my left thumb with my right hand.
"Wiggle your toes." I did.
She stood back up. "Holy shit is right," she said with a sigh.
I sat up and extended my arms. Rebecca reached down and pulled me up to one knee. I looked around, expecting to see the sidewalks filled with gawking onlookers. Nothing. Not a soul.
"Let's get the hell out of here," I said, rising, unsteady.
"You mean flee the scene?"
"A lot like that, yeah," I said.
"What about the cops?"
"Did you get a license number?"
"No. It all happened so "
"You were there for the whole schmeer with Tommy's car. What do you think? You got a couple of hours you want to donate to that kind of crap tonight?"
She checked the street in all directions. Checked the apartment windows. The street again. A careful woman.
"I can't believe nobody's come out to see what happened," she groused. "In my neighborhood "
"It's Capitol Hill," I said. "You could cut the seat out of your pants and not attract attention up here."
She pointed at the booth. "It's right here in the street somebody might--an accident."
"More likely, in this neighborhood, somebody will move into it."
The phone began to ring again. I looked down stupidly at the booth.
"It's your pager, Leo," she said impatiently. I smiled a thanks and tried to push the button. My hand didn't work.
"Maybe you ought to leave that here," she droned.
Six inches of cord dangled from the receiver locked in my right hand. I willed my fingers open. The receiver clattered on the pavement as I pushed the little red button. The Zoo. George again.