Red Tide

by G. M. Ford

  “Jesus…I hope not,” Corso said.

  A shout echoed through the silent streets. The sound of scuffling feet filled their ears like static. The new Seahawks Stadium loomed ahead, its metal brows arching a question into the gauzy night air. They angled across King Street, turned left onto the disjointed arm of Occidental and suddenly they weren’t alone. Two blocks ahead, a couple dozen other stragglers moved south toward the bright lights on Royal Brougham. Seemed like everyone had a cell phone glued to his ear.

  Halfway down the block, Safeco Field came into view; the field lights had been turned on, casting an eerie halogen glow over the herds of buses and cabs that filled the streets. The wail of a train whistle seemed to come from everywhere at once. Once…twice and then, after an interval…a third time. Ahead in the distance, the giant spoked locomotive wheel that opened and closed the stadium’s retractable roof seemed to take kindred comfort in the sound.

  “What can you spill in a tunnel?” Corso groused. The long shadows of their fellow refugees swirled around their legs. “There’s no trucks, no tankers, no railroad cars. Nothing in there but buses. How do you get a haz-mat spill from a bus? I don’t get it.”

  Half a block to go. The refugees began to fan out. Corso could hear people wishing one another well as they wandered off in all directions at once.

  The cops had been correct. A herd of Metro buses lined up two deep along the north facade of the stadium. Corso read the signs as they walked along: Montlake Terrace. Kent via Southcenter. Northgate. Bellevue. Most were about two-thirds full. The acrid smell of diesel fumes now mixed with the mist, leaving the skin feeling oily and unclean. Inside the buses, people seemed more animated than usual. Looked like everybody was talking at once, instead of hiding behind newspapers and Walkmen. “Amazing what it takes to bring people together,” Corso thought as he hurried along.

  “See you guys.” The guy in the green jacket waved good-bye and made a beeline for the number thirty-eight bus and the University District.

  Corso and Dougherty cut in front of the buses, crossed First Avenue and made their way toward the line of cabs along the curb. As they approached, here and there along the line, cabs peeled off like yellow leaves blown south by the wind, rolling away from the city, toward the next freeway entrance five blocks down the road.

  The three nearest cabs all cut their wheels and started down the street before Corso and Dougherty got there. The fourth was empty. Corso put his hands on the side of the cab and leaned down. The window slid open a crack. Driver seemed to be holding his breath. “Need to go up on the hill and then down to Eastlake,” Corso said.

  The crack in the window disappeared. The locks popped. Corso pulled open the door and ushered Dougherty inside. He waited while she scooted over and then put one leg into the cab. That’s when he heard the voice. From across the street. Right away, Corso knew who it was. He stifled a shudder and pulled himself upright.

  The voice was tentative. “Mr. Corso?” it called again. Corso looked around.

  “Close the door,” the cabby said. Corso did so.

  His eyes found the figure. Standing alone in front of the first pair of buses. Slobodan Nisovic. Black raincoat. Long red scarf, looked to be hand-knitted, wound around his throat. Corso started across the street.

  In his mind’s eye, he could see them both. Walter Lee Himes and Albert Defeo. Two of the most disgusting human beings Corso had ever met. First time Corso saw Walter Lee in person was the week before his scheduled execution for a series of rapes and murders known as “The Trashman Killings.” Ten young women savaged and then left lifeless in trash containers all over the city. Walter Lee Himes had been convicted of the crimes and was sentenced to die by lethal injection, when Corso got wind of another murder, same MO…same demeaning ovine ear tag hanging from the victim’s ear. Much to nearly everyone’s chagrin, turned out Walter Lee wasn’t guilty. At least not of the murders for which he had been convicted. Turned out a skinny little gun nut had been getting back at his dear departed mother by raping and killing young women like Petra Nisovic. Made him feel better, he said.

  Slobodan Nisovic was thinner than Corso remembered.

  “You look well,” Nisovic said.

  “You too,” Corso lied.

  “Anna…” he said, naming his wife, “would want me to give you her regards.” He looked down at his shoes. “We owe you a debt we can never—”

  Corso cut him off. “How’s the boys?”

  “Nicholas entered high school, this year. Serge…” he smiled a little. “Serge is at that awkward age.”

  A moment passed. “I guess you saw the news about Albert Defeo,” Corso said.

  Nisovic nodded. Shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

  Little less than a year ago. McNeil Island Penitentiary. Another inmate had beaten Albert Defeo to death with a mop handle in a dispute over a deck of cards.

  Didn’t much matter to Slobodan Nisovic, though. Either way, his only daughter was dead, and, no matter what else happened, life was never going to hold the bright promise he had once imagined. A refugee Croatian dentist, whose foreign credentials would not allow him to practice his profession in the United States, he’d risen from sweeping the floors in Doc Maynard’s bar to owning the place. He ran the Seattle Underground tours out of a box office in the bar. Half a million tourists a year paid Slobodan Nisovic six bucks a head to stumble through the maze of dank cellars running beneath Pioneer Square. That the business was a gold mine…that he’d risen from the outhouse to the penthouse…that he was the living embodiment of the American Dream…none of it mattered anymore. He’d have traded it all for an hour…hell, a minute…with his beautiful daughter Petra, whose raped and sodomized body Albert Defeo had left decorating the top of a flower-strewn Dumpster behind Freddy’s Flowers on the Ave.

  Like Corso, Slobodan Nisovic was famous in a way he’d rather forget. In front of his wife, his mother, the five hundred or so people who packed the hotel ballroom for the press conference and a national TV audience numbering in the millions, Nisovic had pumped four bullets into Walter Lee Himes, as Walter Lee was explaining that in his worldview “them bitches that Defeo fella had kilt” probably deserved to die anyway. Just for being bitches. If’n you knew what he meant.

  Fortunately or unfortunately, depending upon one’s outlook, Himes had not only survived his wounds but had eventually extracted a four-million-dollar wrongful prosecution judgment from King County, a princely sum with which he had returned to his ancestral home in Husk, North Carolina, from whence, in a recent interview, he claimed to be “livin’ high on the log.”

  After some deliberation King County decided it couldn’t have people taking the law into their own hands and commenced to prosecute Nisovic for attempted murder, aggravated assault and reckless endangerment. Problem was it proved impossible to find a jury of his peers who were similarly disposed. The first two trials ended in hung juries. Convinced that the emotional climate in Seattle had poisoned an otherwise open-and-shut case, the prosecution requested and was granted a change of venue.

  The third trial was moved twenty miles north to Everett. A blue-collar jury of seven men and five women, after being admonished at length by the judge…told that another hung jury could well lead to charges of contempt of court being filed against each and every one of them…thus chastened, deliberated for a full nineteen minutes before unanimously finding Slobodan Nisovic not guilty of all charges.

  “Hell of a mess,” Corso said.

  Nisovic nodded agreement. The wind swirled around them, lifting the tails of Nisovic’s overcoat, prompting Corso to raise his collar.

  Corso cleared his throat and said, “Well, hey…I gotta go…Dougherty’s…” he inclined his head toward the line of cabs.

  “Please give Ms. Dougherty my regards,” Nisovic said. “And those of my family.”

  Corso assured him he would. Nisovic turned and started for the bus. Corso’s brow furrowed as he stood on the sidewalk and watched N
isovic walk away.

  “Mr. Nisovic,” Corso shouted.

  The little man had one foot on the bus. He stopped and then stepped out of the way so the Chinese woman behind him could board.

  Corso hurried over. “You got the key with you?” he asked.

  “The key?”

  “To the Underground.”

  Slobodan Nisovic looked Corso over as if he were breaking in a new set of eyes. “They say it’s a very hazardous material,” he said finally.

  “I know.”

  “Is it so important to know?” he asked.

  “It’s my nature,” Corso replied.

  Nisovic thought for a long moment and then dropped into a squatting position. He set his briefcase in the street, popped the locks and pulled out a monstrous ring of keys. With great deliberation, he selected one and separated it from the others. He looked up at Corso. Offered the key. “Take the master key. I have another at home.”

  He began to close his briefcase. Stopped and again reached inside. He pulled out what looked like a brochure. “You want a map?” He got to his feet. “We give them to the tourists.” He shrugged. “Mostly it’s too dark to read.”

  “There’s a Groucho Marx joke in there somewhere.”

  “Excuse?”

  “Don’t suppose you’ve got a flashlight,” Corso said with a smirk.

  “We keep it lit all the time,” Nisovic said, with a touch of annoyance. “Insurance insists.”

  “Thanks,” Corso said.

  Nisovic bowed stiffly at the waist before crossing the sidewalk and mounting the bus. Corso watched as he found a seat up in front, against the far window, then strode back across the pavement to the taxi. He pulled open the door, leaned down and spoke to Dougherty. Her face told him she knew what was coming.

  “I’m gonna run a little errand.”

  She rolled her eyes and grabbed the door handle. Corso jerked his head back just in time to avoid losing his face to the slamming door. He walked up to the driver’s window, peeled off a hundred-dollar bill and waved it at the driver. The window opened just far enough to accommodate the cash. Corso said, “Take her anywhere she wants to go.”

  5

  “Her new boyfriend plays the saxophone in one of those Vegas shows,” the cabdriver said. “I haven’t seen my kids since July.”

  “Must be tough,” was all Dougherty could think to say.

  “Specially around the holidays,” the guy said. “Talkin’ to them on the phone was almost worse than not hearing from them at all.” He took one hand off the wheel and waved it in the air. “They’re telling me all the stuff they’re getting for Christmas…like you know they’re all excited and all…and I’m like…” He shook his head sadly. Checked the rearview mirror. “You got kids?” he asked.

  She emitted a short, dry laugh. “Me? Kids? No…not me.”

  Her tone caught his attention. “Never too late,” he said. “Nice-lookin’ lady like you. I bet you got lotsa—” The look in her reflected eyes stopped the words in his throat and sent his attention scurrying back out over the hood.

  She checked the side window. The mist had cleared. Traffic was beginning to thin as they inched steeply uphill on Cherry Street.

  The cabdriver snapped the radio on. War doing “Lowrider.”

  “Where on the hill?” he asked above the rhythm.

  “Thirteenth Avenue East and Republican.”

  “Nice neighborhood,” he tried.

  She flicked her eyes down at the laminated plastic ID card hanging from the back of the seat. His name was Steveland Gerkey. He’d grown his wiry black hair out since the picture was taken. “Steveland, huh?” she muttered.

  “My mom named me after Stevie Wonder,” the driver said. “She named all of us that way. I’ve got a brother Marvin and a sister Diana…named after Marvin Gaye and Diana Ross. Mom was real big into Motown.”

  Dougherty let herself sink into the seat. Only a couple of cars at a time were getting through the intersections. She sat in silence for five minutes as they inched forward, and then suddenly she leaned closer. Put her hands on the back of the seat.

  “You happy with what you’re doing, Steveland?” she asked.

  His eyes fixed on the mirror again. Trying to tell if she was serious. “Stevie,” he said. “Everybody calls me Stevie.”

  “You happy with what you’re doing, Stevie?”

  “You mean like driving a cab?”

  “I mean like with your life.”

  He thought it over. “Depends on what you mean,” he said after a minute. “You know…it’s not like this was what I was planning when I was a little kid or anything.”

  “What’d you want to be when you were a little kid?” she asked.

  “A cowboy,” he said. “I really wanted to be a cowboy.”

  “What about later? After you grew up.”

  He twitched his shoulders but did not speak. His long-term aspirations were not a subject upon which he allowed himself to dwell. Not because they were in any way bad or bizarre, but because he had come to realize he didn’t have any. Nothing specific anyway. He’d never pictured himself as anything in particular. Just a situation where he made enough money doing something…anything…enough to have whatever he wanted. A nice new Dodge pickup. A boat or maybe a little house someplace. The kind of things people wanted.

  He looked in the mirror again. “What about you?”

  “A ballerina.”

  “I was gonna go to community college. They got a real good culinary arts program at South Seattle,” he volunteered. “But then…you know…I met Janie…we ended up getting married.” He seemed to shrink slightly in the seat. “Next thing you know we got two kids and there ain’t no going back to school after that.”

  “How long you been driving a cab?”

  “Last coupla years. Ever since they laid me off at Boeing.”

  “What’d you do at Boeing?”

  “Worked the tool crib…up in Everett. Janie’s dad…Harvey…he got me on. Harvey’s been with the Busy B thirty-two years. Knew the foreman.”

  He slid the car forward three car lengths. They were second in line to cross Broadway. “Got my pink slip in the first big wave of layoffs.” He checked the mirror again to make sure she was listening. “That’s when it all started to come apart for Janie and me. I look at it now…you know like in hindsight…it was mostly about money, but, you know…at the time…seemed like we couldn’t agree on anything anymore.” He caught himself rambling and changed the subject.

  “Whata you do?” he asked.

  “I’m a photographer.”

  “You mean like for one of the papers or something?”

  “Freelance,” she said. “I work for myself.” She read the question in his eyes. “Sometimes I work for a famous writer. I take the pictures for his books.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Frank Corso. He writes—”

  “The crime books,” he interrupted her. He smiled for the first time and flicked on the overhead light. Opened the glove compartment. Rummaged around inside. Came out with a battered paperback copy of A Blind Eye, which he held up like a trophy. “I read all of ’em,” he proclaimed. “Soon as they come out in paper, I’m right there.”

  The light changed. He kept the cab about four inches from the blue Volvo in front as they crept through the intersection and began to roll downhill, along the north side of Seattle University. A blinking yellow light marked the walkway leading from the university’s parking garage to the main campus. They stopped and waited as a solid line of chattering students crossed in front of the cab. While they waited, he thumbed his way into the center of the book, found the photos, turned the book sideways.

  “Margaret Dougherty,” he read.

  “Meg.”

  That’s when it hit him. He moved his eyes upward for a second and then buried them in the book. She’d seen the expression so many times before there was no mistaking the look. That combination of palpable pity and carnal
curiosity her story seemed to inspire. Especially in guys. They always seemed torn between offering their condolences and begging for a peek.

  “They ever catch the guy?” he asked. “You know, the one who…”

  She had the answer ready. It was like a part in a long-running play. A part where she never forgot her lines. “He left the country. France they think.”

  He opened his mouth to speak, but, mercifully, changed his mind. The last student passed in front of the cab. He lifted his foot from the brake, allowing the cab to roll downhill, where they made the light and turned north on Twelfth Avenue. The meter read six dollars and ninety cents. An idea nearly brought a smile to her lips. She’d give Steveland Gerkey the rest of Corso’s hundred bucks as a tip. Make his whole damn day. Because Corso was such a goddamn fool and because Steveland had a well-developed sense of when to shut up. The song changed to Norah Jones. “Don’t know why I didn’t call…” Dougherty sat back in the seat and closed her eyes. The singer’s husky voice tickled her insides.

  She kept her eyes closed, rolling around inside the music until she felt herself pressed back in the seat by the steep slope of East Republican Street.

  “Left at the top of the hill,” she said.

  He eased the cab over to the curb and brought it to a halt. “Which building?” he wanted to know.

  She scooted forward in the seat and pointed out over his shoulder. “The little house with the gate,” she said.

  He took his foot off the brake and the cab began to roll forward. “What gate?”

  “Between the apartment buildings,” she said, pointing again. “See the white sign above the gate?” He peered out through the semidarkness. GRAVEN IMAGES, the sign said. PHOTOGRAPHY BY M. DOUGHERTY. BY APPOINTMENT ONLY, and a phone number.

  “Jeez,” he said. “All the times I been down this street and I never noticed that little place way back in there.”

  “Most people don’t,” she said. “It’s what I like about it.”