by G. M. Ford
"Interesting," I offered.
"And her file. She took it with her. After I talked to the electricians I went back to see if, you know, maybe I couldn't get a line on her. Gone. Her license. References. The whole thing. Gone."
"Did you run your suspicions by the local authorities?"
"They didn't want any part of the idea. Still don't. They've got their villain. Twenty-odd years of doing business in this town, and now they spit on him. Took his picture off the wall over at the Rotary. You can still see the light spot on the wall where it hung for all those years."
For the first time, anger began to push sadness aside.
"I'm still a hundred and seventy thousand in the hole, but I'm going to pay off every last dime of it if it takes the rest of my life. And when I do, I'm going right back in there and hang his picture up where it was. Then I'm gonna put this town in my rearview mirror once and for all."
"I believe you will," I said earnestly.
"Do you know where she is?" she demanded.
"No. I don't even know who she is."
"Where did you get that picture?"
I gave her the abridged version. The missing aunt story. No sense raising any false hopes in her. As she'd said, her plate was already full. When I'd finished, she was quiet for a long time. Rebecca shuffled uncomfortably behind me.
"Then it's finished. Good. And I don't mean good she's dead. I won't allow myself that sort of bitterness. I wasn't raised that way. Dad wouldn't want that. I mean good, I can stop wondering, thinking that maybe this is all just some sort of bad misunderstanding. Part of me kept thinking that maybe she was going to walk back in the door with the money or something. Isn't that stupid?"
"It's not stupid. I'd say it was a pretty natural reaction to all you've been through."
Self-conscious now, she gazed down along the length of herself.
"What a mess I am. I'd better change my clothes. I keep some clothes ..." She gestured awkwardly toward the rear of the building.
I put a business card on her desk.
"In case you think of anything else. Or maybe just
She nodded absently. "Thanks," I said.
She started back. Rebecca and I found our way out.
"Why didn't you tell her what's going on?"
"Because I don't know what's going on."
"But you've got a feeling, don't you? I can tell."
"What I'm thinking is too ugly for words."
"She lives back there, you know," Rebecca said, as I accelerated out onto the two-lane highway. "There's a little Hide-a-Bed. Her clothes are all in back there hanging on a rope. And all her shoes."
We passed the forty miles back to the airport in silence.
13
I remember next to nothing of the plane ride from Wenatchee to Seattle and even less about the drive home from the airport. Later that evening is mostly blank too, as if the proximity to the recorded message had so tainted the memories and sensations as to make recall impossible.
A flat, professional voice I didn't recognize. No name, no number.
"Mr. Waterman, I have been requested to inform you that Henry Sundstrom died at nine seventeen last evening. Services for Mr. Sundstrom will be held at eleven o'clock a.m. on Wednesday, November eighth, at Gethsemane Lutheran Church, nine hundred eleven Stewart Street in Seattle. In lieu of flowers, the family requests remembrances to the American Cancer Society." Click. Hiss.
I poked the play button hard. Listened again. Same message. Then again. Tomorrow. Eleven in the morning. Oh, goddamn. I pounded the offending phone with the flat of my hand, sending the receiver down toward the floor, where it bounced twice, then danced just above the surface, spinning on its spiral spring. Feeling foolish, I first bent to retrieve it, then, as rising blood burned the tips of my ears, instead used my forearm to sweep the rest of the phone from the table; a muted tinkle announced its arrival on the carpet
where it lay motionless, its tightly curled neck now arched like a fossil bird.
I paced the apartment, breathing hard, the air in my lungs suddenly cold. As I passed each window, I pushed back the curtains and raised the blinds. Spears of sunlight herded the newly airborne dust into illuminated schools of swimming crystals. After several complete circuits, the apartment was awash with the kind of slanted late-afternoon light so favored by Dutch painters, but Heck was still dead.
These days, every death sets me adrift. Even the smallest change in my delicate web of connectedness is enough to loosen my slim purchase, to set me bobbing about like airborne dust. The phone began to make insistent noises. I blocked it out. Surrounded by a crystalline moat of floating slurry, I stood in the single remaining shadow at the center of the apartment and wept.
Much later, when the receding light had allowed the dust to settle, I resurrected the phone and dialed. Marge's home number got me the maid. Mrs. Sundstrom was unavailable at this time. When charm, reason, and guilt failed to elicit further data, I called the Sea Sundstrom offices. Same deal. Mrs. Sundstrom was not available. No, they did not know where she could be reached. No, they had no idea when she would become available. Click.
I tried McColl's office. Mr. McColl was away from his desk at this time.
"That's kinda vague, don't you think?"
"Excuse me, sir?"
"That phrase—'away from his desk,'" I said testily. "There's a pretty wide range of possibilities in 'away from his desk.' People serving lengthy prison terms could be said to be 'away from their desks.' Technically speaking, the dead are 'away from their desks.'"
"They are indeed sir," she said evenly.
I was suppose to go away now. I wasn't in the mood. A lengthy silence ensued.
"Well?" I said finally.
"Well what, sir?"
"Well, where is old Howie?"
Rather than lightening the atmosphere as I'd hoped, my cavalier use of McColl's first name had precisely the opposite effect.
"I'm sorry, sir. I only know where Mr."—heavy emphasis on the Mr.—"McColl is not."
"Which is ..." I countered.
"At his desk," we said in unison.
Another silence.
"Howzabout a hint, then?" I suggested. "A hint as to what, sir?"
"Well, maybe a hint as to approximately which end
of the 'away from his desk' spectrum Mr. McColl
might be closest to. I mean like has he left the country
or something, or is he just off takin' a leak?" Click.
Hummmmm
Gethsemane Lutheran church was packed to the rafters. They had come, nearly seven hundred strong, to pay their respects, packing both the surrounding parking lots and the pews. Arriving a half hour early had gotten me a seat in the third row of the balcony. I could make out the families up front. Marge was hunched between her parents on the inside and the ever-attentive H. R. McColl, who occupied the aisle seat in the front row. Her extended family of aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, nieces, and nephews filled the better part of six rows on the left-hand side of the church. On the right, about an equal number of solid Sundstroms strained the seams on seldom-worn suits. I recognized few others. Martin Henry and Artie Klugeman from the old days at the marina sat together center left. A cadre of minor political figures were hard up behind the Sundstrom contingent. The rest were strangers.
I absently crushed and twisted the small pink program that I'd been handed on the way in. Thanks from the families. Address for remembrances. According to the wishes of the deceased, no funeral home viewing. No graveside service. Closed casket. Cremation. Coffee reception to follow. Lutherans always had a coffee reception.
What Lutherans were was not Catholic. Where the Catholics poked presumptive spires toward heaven, the Lutherans built square brick earthbound sanctuaries. No miracles, no saints, no gothic arches. Instead, a rock-solid house of worship. A wine-red carpet bisecting twenty-five double rows of light oak pews leading to an unassuming altar covered today with black vestments. The light poured in, not ref
racted through stained glass but rational and clear, through high sets of twelve-panes fifty feet tall. I reluctantly moved my gaze to the front, where the draped coffin rested slightly to the right of the simple altar. A single blaring note from the massive pipe organ signaled the start of the service, "Excuse me." An elderly woman stood at my left shoulder.
I stared dumbfounded at the rest of the people in my pew, who now inexplicably wanted out. The church was filled with whispers and moving bodies. I focused out over the church. The front rows had emptied. A solid line of mourners shuffled toward the back of the church. The service was over.
"I'm sorry," I said, quickly stepping out into the aisle. They filed past me.
Downstairs, the crowd seemed to be evenly divided between those turning left for the reception and those heading out onto Ninth Avenue. I waffled.
"That you. Leo?"
He was small, indigenous, and leathery, with thick gray hair and a wide, expressive mouth that broke into a smile as I turned. He read my confusion.
"It's me, Rudy," he said. "Jesus," I stammered. "Naw, just old Rudy." The grin got wider. I stuck out a hand. Rudy filled it with a fist. His roughened fingers were contorted nearly into a ball. I I held on.
f "Hands are about gone. Arthur-itis, big time," he said. "Too damn many years pullin' at them froze-over nets."
Struggling to recover, I released his hand.
"You look great," I said with conviction.
"Us old Aleuts, we just dry out like racked salmon."
"You hear from Angel?" I asked.
"Moved up to Sitka to be near the grandkids back around eighty, eighty-one, someplace in there. Went overboard crabbin' in eighty-five."
"Oh," I managed.
"It's how he woulda wanted it."
I nodded unwilling agreement.
"You ain't goin' in to pay your respects?"
"I was ... I thought maybe . . . I've been ..." I hedged.
"She done good by him, Leo."
When I didn't respond, he went on.
"She got him in off the water, Leo. You stay out there on the water you end up like me and Angel. You either go down or you end up so stove up you ain't good for no kind of work. She got him off the water. Made him into a big man."
"He was already a big man."
"You know what I mean."
I nodded again.
"You going in?" I asked.
"I'll see her later "
"Oh?"
"I work for them. Her now, I guess. You know, in the warehouse . . . Foreman. Heck ... he was . . . you know how he was."
"I know."
"I don't know how he found out about my hands, but he did. Tracked me all the way to my sister's place down in Ukiah. Wouldn't leave. Wouldn't take no for an answer. I been there damn near nine years now. You go in and pay your respects. She's had a lot of sorrow, what with the boy and all. She'll be glad to see you."
"I'll go," I promised.
"Gotta run. Gotta loada fish to get out there. Damn near everybody's down here today. Fish don' wait. Nobody's mindin' the store. Nice to see ya again, Leo."
"Nice to see you too, Rudy."
We stared at each other for a long moment before he turned and walked out the door with that crabbed sideways waddle that old fishermen never lose.
I headed in to pay my respects. I didn't get far.
Four strides into the reception room, my elbow was pinned by H. R. McColl.
"Ah, Mr. Waterman," he said. "I was hoping I'd see you here. Beautiful service, didn't you think?"
"Beautiful," I lied.
He applied pressure to my elbow in an attempt to turn me back toward the door. I held my ground. He tightened his grip.
"My office will be handling Mr. Sundstrom's affairs," he said, leveling his gray eyes at me. "If you'll submit time and expenses to date, I'll instruct payable to cut you a check immediately." He leaned in closer. "And, of course, a handsome bonus for your stalwart efforts."
He tried to turn me again. I looked down at his hand on my sleeve.
"Please take your hand off my arm," I said.
McColl checked the room around us without removing his hand.
"Let's not have a scene, shall we, Mr. Waterman?"
"The only scene we're going to have, McColl, is the scene where I beat the shit out of you right in front of all these people if you don't take your hand off me."
H. R. McColl released my elbow and stepped back one pace.
"Raymond," he said quietly.
Raymond stepped forward. Nice dark blue three-piece suit. Shaved head, glistening like a giant black egg. Probably forty-five by now. Six-two, probably two-forty in what passed for his prime, no more than a couple of biscuits from three hundred now.
"Show this gentleman to his car, Raymond. Firmly but quietly, please." "Hi, Ray," I said. "Leo," he replied.
For once, Mr. McColl was taken aback.
"You two are acquainted?" He directed the question at Ray.
"We're acquainted," Ray confirmed.
Ray Townsend had had a short, flamboyant career back in seventy-seven as a third-string offensive guard on the original, expansion Seahawks. An eleventh-round choice out of North Texas State, he'd demonstrated so little athletic acumen and so much heart that he'd become the guy the fans chanted to see when the score had gotten out of hand. An entire generation of Seattle football fans had forever etched in their brains the image of Ray Townsend the wedge-breaker, obscene in tight football pants, limbering downfield after a kick-off. Images of the fearsome plastic shattering licks he'd absorbed, but most of all of the strange, good-natured determination that dragged him immediately back to his feet and propelled him inevitably forward, toward the next crushing blow. Coach Jack Patera had been every bit as unmoved by Ray's ability to absorb punishment as he had been by the incessant chanting. Ray hadn't quite lasted that first year.
Unable to generate any interest whatsoever in his services as a football player, Ray used his local notoriety to start his own private security firm. Initially, the business had taken off. Townsend Security's yellow windbreakers had been everywhere. Once in a while I'd see Ray himself on the tube, opening the car door for some visiting rock star or waiting in the wings for some long-winded politician. A couple of years later, when the whole local economy sank in the last big Boeing bust, Townsend Security went down with it. To his credit, Ray had done whatever it took to support a wife and four kids. When I'd first met him, he was working as a collector for a small-time Portuguese loan shark named Gregorio Enos.
"We went to thug school together," I said. "Thug U."
"Remove him," McColl sighed.
Ray shot me an exploratory gaze. I cut him no slack. He turned to McColl.
"Won't be quiet if he don't wanna go, Mr. McColl."
"And I definitely don't wanna go," I added quickly.
"Remove him now, Raymond," McColl fumed.
"Excuse me, Mr. McColl, but you pay me to prevent the kinda ugly scene we're gonna have here if me and Leo get to rollin' and scufflin' about the floor. Leo here ain't some wino or college boy, sir. He's good. Not near as good as he thinks"—he pinned me with his most serious stare—"but he sure as hell isn't gonna go quiet."
"If you're not up to the task, Raymond, I know of a number of people who are."
"That's entirely up to you, sir. I may get him out. I may not. Either way, they ain't gonna be a whole piece of furniture in this place by the time we get done. I'm not sure that's what you got in mind, Mr. McColl. But"—spreading his feet for balance, he rolled his thick shoulders—"you say the word and we'll get down to it."
Ray now treated me to his most baleful and terrifying scowl.
McColl turned and checked the crowd while he thought it over.
"Perhaps you're right, Raymond," he said finally. "You and I shall have to discuss this at length at some later time." It was McColl's chance to glare.
Ray reluctantly returned his gaze. McColl dismissed him with a wave.
"Go see to Mrs. Van Curen, Raymond; it appears she could use some assistance in getting to her car."
With a nearly imperceptible bob of the head, Ray Townsend waded off through the crowd. McColl regrouped. Without turning back my way, he said, "Surely, Mr. Waterman, you can't expect to continue this little charade of an investigation, now that Mr. Sundstrom is gone. I assure you that as Mrs. Sundstrom's close confidant I shall advise most strongly that we terminate this little sham of yours immediately. It's all rather moot now, don't you suppose?"
"Not to me it's not. Nothing's ever been less moot."
Ray Townsend came by leading an aged hawk-faced woman nearly buried beneath a mound of dead mink, smiling earnestly as he steered her out onto the street.
"You'll have to excuse me while I pay my respects," I said.
Marge saw me coming. She disengaged from a small
group of well-wishers that included her parents and pulled me over to an unoccupied area beyond the refreshments. She looked tired and drawn, her eyes slightly unfocused as if sedated.
"Leo. I was afraid you hadn't gotten the message. I'm so glad you could come. Heck would have wanted you here."
"I'm sorry," was all I could think to say.
"He—" she started.
"Please," I said.
We embraced as if among the assembled throng only the two of us fully understood the magnitude of the collective loss.
"I'm going to Wisconsin later this afternoon," I said into her shoulder.
Her hug tightened. Finally, she released me, looking uncomprehendingly into my eyes as if I had suddenly been speaking in tongues.