by G. M. Ford
"Like what?" Jed demanded wearily.
"Like about how this institution has no regard for the people it's supposed to serve. Like how they put people out into the ice and snow because it's too hard on their precious landscaping. Like how public rest rooms aren't really public. About how people are forced to do not only their own work but also the work of people who quit, because the library always tries to circumvent the legal hiring guidelines for as long as possible. Like how half the administration are away half the time on these half-assed conferences which always just happen to be somewhere where the sun happens to be shining. Like how "
Jed wasn't listening anymore. I could practically see the wheels turning in his head. Worst-case scenario. A zealot. An articulate zealot, no less. God help us. Bring on the hemlock.
" and how departments, at the end of the year, spend the last of their money on any old thing. Just anything. Whether they need it or not. Whether they know what the hell it is or not. We've got closets full of equipment nobody knows how to use. Not only doesn't anybody know how to use the stuff, but nobody even knows what some of the stuff was supposed to do in the first place. They spend it just to spend it, because if they don't spend it, they'll lose it in next year's budget. They do this while people are starving and freezing to death right outside the building. And how ''
"Stop!" Jed bellowed in the voice that regularly stopped courtrooms cold. "And when all of that is done when you have disgraced and discredited everyone you can think of, you, my good woman, are still going to jail for grand theft." He cut a line in the air. "Unless "
Karen Mendolson gazed down at the bat beneath my feet and then over at Jed. "Unless what?"
"Unless this matter can be handled both legally and privately. Like adults, shall we say."
"Save it," she said. "There's no way they're going to "
"But there is," he interrupted. "Hear me out."
She wandered back into the kitchen and leaned on the counter. "Go ahead," she said as if bored. "Spin-doctor away."
"As you so astutely have reasoned, Miss Mendolson, we I speak here, I think, for the entire board would prefer that this matter be settled privately. Out of the glare, so to speak."
"Politics," she sneered.
Jed admitted it at length and then went into soothing mode.
"You have been at large now for the better part of three weeks with a substantial amount of the county's money. Is that correct?"
"A hundred ninety-three thousand, six hundred and twelve dollars even," she said with some pride.
"With a clean record, and complete restitution ''
It was Karen's turn to interrupt. "I spent some of it," she said.
"How much?" I asked.
"About thirty-three thousand dollars. Give or take."
Jed's mouth gaped. "In a month? Thirty-three thousand? In a month? What? Did you buy a yacht or something?"
She heaved a sigh. "I gave it away."
"To who?" I demanded.
"Whom," she said. "And I gave it where it was needed. I gave it to that downtown food bank that had the fire. That was five thousand. I gave some to a senior meals program in the International District. Twenty-seven hundred and fifty dollars, as I remember. Oh, and the literacy program over here. I gave them five thousand too."
"And the rest?" Jed prompted.
"I gave that to the Eternal Mission for mattresses. So people wouldn't have to sleep outside when the weather was--" She hesitated.
"Like Earl," I said.
Her eyes went elsewhere. "Yes," she said distractedly. "Like Earl."
"Who in hell appointed you the champion of justice?" Jed demanded. For the first time, he was annoyed.
"I did," she shot back.
"For God's sake, why?"
"Why not?" she said. Then, "If not me, who? If not now, when?" She spit it out quickly, as if she had been chewing it for a long time.
"Nobody, and never," said Jed.
She bobbed her head up and down as if to say, "I know, I know," and was pulled in a full circle by her thoughts.
"It got out of hand," she said sadly. "I was really pissed at the library for removing the homeless from the windows. Earl, and you know--that was very painful." She paused. "I was pissed about having to do two jobs." She took a deep breath. "I was depressed about my life." She turned up her palms. "Once I started, it just snowballed. Next thing I knew, I'd already cashed the check and given away money that didn't belong to me. By then it was just--" She searched for a word.
"Too late," Jed suggested.
She didn't hear him. "And you know what?" she continued. "I never really had a plan. I just moved in here because I didn't know what else to do." She looked around the dingy interior as if seeing it for the first time. "But that's not the strange part," she continued. "The strange part is that I've never felt better. Never felt like I was getting more done or being more useful. Since I started," she mused, "this has been the best time of my life. I've never "
"Earth to Karen. Earth to Karen!" Jed shouted. "What you better be thinking about is how you're going to beg, borrow, or steal enough money to give the county complete restitution."
She gave a short, derisive laugh. "I don't have that kind of money. I gave away all of my own to the Capitol Hill Senior Center. That's why I started to you know "
"Let's get this over with, then," he said quickly. "Perhaps Mr. Waterman and I can get back to our beds. The question, young lady, is this. Are you or aren't you prepared to do prison time?" Jed asked flatly. "I'm not going to bore you with those film noir stories of women in prison. You're an intelligent young woman. You make up your own mind. But do it damn quickly, because I'm about at the end of the line with you. I'm working my way up to the politics-be-damned stage of things."
She thought her response over. Turning it several times.
"No," she said quietly. "I don't want to go to jail."
"Well, then, what you're going to do is this. You are going to move back into your regular apartment so that it does not appear that you are atempting to flee prosecution. I am personally going to see to that. Right here, tonight. All right?" He waited for an answer. It took quite a while, but she agreed.
"Next, you are going to call everyone you know. Your father and brother up in Michigan, everybody, and you are going to beg for money."
She started to protest, but Jed cut her off.
"Cousins you haven't seen in years. Maiden aunts. All of them. You are going to raise every dime you can raise. Then you're going to go to your bank and borrow every dime they'll give you. Ransom your body on Pacific Highway South if necessary. Do you understand what I'm telling you? If you are going to avoid incarceration, you must make complete restitution. Period."
For the first time, she seemed to deflate slightly. "I understand."
Jed wasn't through. "As I understand it, you siphoned this money off electronically. Is that true?"
"Yes."
"If you removed the money electronically, does that mean you are equally capable of putting the money back in by the same means?"
"Well, if they haven't changed the codes. But by now "
"By noon tomorrow, the codes will be the same. Can you do it?"
She was reluctant. "Yes," she allowed.
"As you get more money, you must put that back into the acquisitions account."
She nodded silently. "What if I can't get all the money?"_
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it."^
"I'll still need an attorney, won't I?"
"Indeed you will," he answered. "Indeed you will."
He leaned on the opposite side of the counter from Karen and examined his nails. "My options are extremely limited," he announced. "I'm already on shaky ethical ground." Raising his head, he looked at Karen. "Give me a dollar."
"What?"
"You heard me. Give me a dollar."
Karen Mendolson leaned back, opened the drawer in front of her, and rummaged about. "Will four quarters do?"
As she counted them out, my beeper went off. I crossed the room and dialed the number.
"Leo. It's George." He was slurring, full-scale twisted.
"We found that old Charlie Boxer," he mumbled proudly. "Holed up just as snug as a rug in a jug." I knew what he meant.
24
Charlie Boxer had been talking for a full half hour.
"I can still see the pair of them. Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Just like it was yesterday. They were firemen for Dave Beck and the union. The teamsters, you know." Charlie gave me a meaningful glance, as if I needed reminding. "That's what they used to call themselves. Firemen. You started blowing any smoke"--he took a quick drag from a Kent and a long pull from his drink--"and those two would put your fire out in a hurry."
His eyes clouded. "Your old man, big as a barn, with these hands the size of hay rakes." Charlie shook his head. "In those days, he never could find a suit that fit him quite right. Always a couple of inches too much arm sticking out. Not like later when he had his own tailor and all. That little Eyetalian guy--what was his name?''
"Hugo DeGrazia."
Another swallow. He waved with his cigarette, as if scratching something into the air. "Always wanted to handle everything peaceable if he could. Always wanted to talk first. Shoulda known he was gonna turn out to be a politician."
As he laughed at his own joke, the laugh suddenly became a phlegmy hack that slid in stages into a tubercular coughing fit of truly epic proportions. He pounded his chest, which sounded as if it were full of Vaseline. I pulled my drink out of range and held on.
His arm flapping, whooping and wheezing he eventually became sufficiently animated to distract the crusty quartet from a spirited game of dollar-bill bullshit at the far end of the bar. George, Harold, Norman, and Ralph were medicating themselves from a second bottle of peach schnapps that I'd tried to buy from Charlie. As with the first one, Charlie wouldn't hear of it. It was on the house.
"Go, go, Charlie, go," George sang to the tune of "Johnny Be Good." This, of course, led to an inevitable round of hip-thrusting Elvis-the-Pelvis impressions. Charlie, meanwhile, was still sucking air and flailing about like a stroke victim.
"Sounds like he's got a hairball," suggested Harold when they'd finally calmed down. This one reduced them to jelly. Fist-pounding, backslapping, knee-buckling jelly.
"Here comes a lunger," intoned Nearly Normal above the din.
Beet-red, teary-eyed, but no longer gasping, Charlie Boxer whipped a soiled blue handkerchief from his rear pocket, lifted it to his lips, and deposited within its folds whatever deeply rooted matter he had just so exhaustively excavated from his lungs.
After returning the hankie to his pocket and mashing it with his right cheek possibly to forestall an escape he picked up the still-smoldering Kent and scrutinized it closely.
"Gotta quit these things one of these days," he announced. He took a long pull on the butt and continued.
"Him and that friggin' Tim Flood. They were partners back then. Little bastard could keep right on smilin' at a fellow while he slipped the blade between his ribs. Damnedest thing. Never got anything on him, neither. I hear from reliable sources that back in the early fifties he slit a guy's throat ear-to-ear in a warehouse over on Fourth and just walked off clean as could be. Didn't even have to wipe his hands."
I made a mental note to remember this for Rebecca. This was firsthand proof of the validity of my born-to-squalor theory.
I lifted a glass to the old man. "Like that old toast says: May you be in heaven before the devil even knows you're gone," I said.
He tipped a glass my way. "Thank you, Leo. Have no fear about it. I'll say a few kind words to your old man about you when I get to the promised land."
"You figure that's where he is, huh?"
"Couldn't say for sure, but I'll tell you this, wherever he is, is most definitely where I'll be going, my lad. I'm damn well sure of that. Wouldn't have it any other way," he added with a smile. "If I went any other place, I wouldn't know anybody."
He looked a little better but a lot older than the last time I'd seen him. His hair was pure white and going thin. His trademark mustache, once lustrous to behold, was stained a sickly yellow and singed in places. His puckered hands looked as if they'd been boiled.
It was three-thirty a.m. After hours. The Red and Black Lounge had been closed to the public for the better part of an hour. I'd watched and sipped while Charlie shot the bolts, turned off the neon beer signs, counted the till into the little zippered bag, and poured himself four fingers of Maker's Mark.
Charlie and I sat at the center of the bar, looking over the sink at a bronze hula-dancer lamp whose undulating hips and key-chain skirt caused the fringe on the fancy shade to tremble. Anticipation, I figured.
It was a cute little neighborhood joint up on Phinney Ridge, directly across the street from Woodland Park. It didn't take a detective to see that the place had recently been refurbished. Four black Naugahyde booths, their decorative silver tacks still shiny, ran down the right side of the room, across from the twelve-seater bar. Little kitchen with a delivery window behind the bar. Unless he'd stashed the bag in the freezer, there was probably an office somewhere behind that. At the back, several small tables and a gaggle of chairs competed for space with a new pool table. Behind that, the bathrooms. One on each side. Buoys and Gulls, no less. Blue handicapped stickers on the doors.
"How long has this place been here?" I asked.
Charlie lit another Kent. "Oh hell, fifty years or so," he said. "Helen's old man Ben " He waved the Kent at me. "Helen she's my we "
"Your main squeeze," I offered.
Charlie liked that. "Yeah, my main squeeze," he wheezed, staring off into space. "Helen, she can't hardly work the place no more. Got arthritis real bad. All her joints. Specially the hips." He caught himself. "Anyway, her old man Ben Cleveland built this place back in the middle forties, right after the war. He was a bricklayer by trade. Helen was just a kid. A war bride. Her parents had the property for years. Couldn't find work right after the war, so he built this place. Turned out real good for him."
"Nice little place" seemed to be what he wanted to hear.
Charlie Boxer sat with both arms resting on the bar circling the bar towel. He was wearing a Philippine dictator shirt, cut square at the bottom, worn outside the pants. Two solid lines of green leaves embroidered lengthwise down the front. Without moving, he looked at me out of the corner of his eye and said, "I take it, Leo, that you and the Pioneer Square Protection Association here"--he inclined his head an inch toward the boys, at the far end of the bar--"aren't just up here in this neck of the woods by chance. I mean, 4 much as I'd like to think this was a social call--" He let it hang and grinned.
"I've had them out looking for you."
"For me? For old Charlie the Boxer?"
"I need to know about what you were doing for Lukkas Terry"
He lit another Kent. Probably wanted to keep the one burning in the ashtray company. A cigarette's lot is, after all, a lonely one. "Poor kid," he said. He looked like he was going to get mushy in that maudlin way endemic to drunks, so I pressed.
"What were you doing for him?"
Charlie took a minute to calibrate his position. "Lookin' for his momma," he said through the drifting cloud of smoke that encircled his head. "He wanted to find his momma."
"How in hell did the kid hear about you?" I asked. He looked hurt. "Not that you aren't a legend in the business --" I added quickly.
"Damn right." He chuckled.
"But you haven't been in the business for years," I finished.
He gave me a look that said I'd pay for that. "Tubby Moran. You remember Tubby, don't ya?" Tubby Moran had spent forty years as a low-level grifter and confidence man all over the Northwest, sandwiching brief, publicly mandated vacations around the usual collection of cons and scams that kept people like him alive. Murphy games. Pigeon drops. Kited checks. Aluminum siding. Driveway repairs. Gutter an
d downspout replacement. All of it.
"Tubby Moran?" I said incredulously. "Tubby the Touch?"
"Works for his son-in-law's janitorial company. Doin' real good. They got the contract over at the Moore. The kid was running all over the theater, telling anybody who'd listen that he needed somebody to look for his momma. Claimed he seen her out back in the alley. Said she looked like a bum. Wanted her found."
"I can't believe you still see Tubby."
"Hell, Leo, he don't live but four blocks north of here. Can you believe it? Comes in all the time. He figured, you know " He gave me a sly look that said old habits die hard. "Rock-and-roll star. Big bucks, and all that jazz. I figured, you know, what the hell. Maybe a little nest egg; it was worth a try." He gave a dry laugh. "Kid didn't even own a checkbook, for pity's sake. No cash to speak of neither. Had to drag me over to his manager's house so's he could get me some expense money." He snorted. "A real high roller, that one."
"Have any luck finding her?"
"Nah. I dragged my ass all over the city for a week. Hadn't worked that hard in years. Nobody knew dick. Never got the rest of the cash, neither," he groused. "Wasn't so bad, though. Got to see a lot of people I hadn't seen in years. And, hell, it was good to be back on the streets." He gave me a little slug in the arm. "Hell, I don't have to tell you, do I?"
When I allowed that he didn't, he went on.
"Helen was having a hell of a time running the place by herself. You know, you hire help in a cash business like this, they steal you blind. She needed me. I needed to get back. About the time I give it up, that goofy bastard booted himself into never-never land, and that was the end of it."
"That's it?"
"That's it," he said with a shrug. "The whole ball of wax."
I swirled the dregs of my drink in the glass. "Glad to see things are working out as good as they are for you, Charlie," I said.
He sat up and looked around. "Best gig I had in years. Helen's a good woman. Steady." He slipped off the stool. "I'm damn lucky to have her," he pronounced.