by G. M. Ford
"Mr. Waterman here is from Seattle. He's a private investigator."
Like many suburbanites, Swogger spoke of the city like it was a distant planet, rather than twenty minutes from his front door.
She perched on the edge of his desk. "Really. I thought those were just in the movies," she said.
"He's here to investigate us on a personal matter."
She smiled as best she could and gently picked lint from her husband's shoulder. "Are they on to us at last?" she said in mock despair.
"I'm afraid so," he said. He turned his attention back to me. "You were saying—"
"I was saying—" I started. "I. . . oh hell. Excuse me, I—"
He waved me off. "Not to worry. I am familiar with the word."
She left her hand on his shoulder as they waited. I rummaged about for an opener, failed, and started babbling.
"Nineteen eighty, the University of Wisconsin fall sports banquet. The girl who—" I blurted.
"Oh dear," she said. "That crazy girl."
"Has something happened to her?" he asked.
"I don't know," I answered.
For the first time, the Reverend Swogger seemed mildly annoyed.
"I don't mean to be rude, Mr. Waterman, but could you perhaps start at the beginning? I'm afraid you've got me completely confused."
I did. I gave them an abridged edition, starting with Allison Stark and moving backward, through Lake Chelan, all the way to Madison. Leaving out the possible murder and mayhem, making it sound like a routine skip trace. She absently rubbed his shoulder as I laid it out.
When I'd finished, the Reverend Swogger unlaced his fingers and asked, "And your friend didn't believe that she was killed in the boating accident with his son?"
"No, he didn't."
"And you?"
"I'm keeping an open mind."
"You said the police are treating it as an accident."
"Yes, they are."
"And after investigating, you think otherwise?" "I think it's possible."
"You think all of these people, over all that time, with all of these different identities, are the same person."
"Also a possibility."
"Now that sounds like the movies," Katherine Swogger said.
"I can't disagree with you there," I said. "But it's all I've got. I'm hoping that maybe if I can find out who she started out to be, I can fill in some of the blanks arid maybe put this thing to rest once and for all."
"What can we do to help?" he asked after a moment.
She began picking lint again.
"I've gotten as far as nineteen eighty and that night at the sports banquet. That's as far back as I've gotten."
He placed his hand over hers on his shoulder and nodded.
"I'm afraid we're not going to be of much help. I've thought about that night many times since then. I do quite a few high school functions, convocations, banquets, you know, that kind of thing. Every time I do one, I wonder what I might have done differently that night and whatever became of that poor girl. I mean"—he spread his hands—"the road not taken and all of that."
"It's not the kind of thing a person forgets," I offered.
"Most assuredly not.'
"Had either of you ever seen her before?"
"Never," they answered together. "And since?" "Never," he said again.
"And you have no recollection of seeing her or running into her or anything back when you were playing high school football?"
"I played B-8 football, Mr. Waterman. For Hamilton, in the North Cascade League. That's a long way from the bright lights."
I had to agree. My parents had, for most of my childhood, maintained a summer getaway another twenty miles up the Cascade Highway at Ross Lake. Every August, the old man would tool the Buick up from Seattle for a glorious week of watching my mother clean the cabin. Just about the time she got the place what she considered to be fit for human habitation and had finally stopped mumbling, it was time to go back to the city. The joys of youth.
A hint of nostalgia surfaced now in him.
"This was places like Lyman and Hamilton, Birds-view, Concrete, Rockport, and Marblemount. A six-team league. Ten games. We played everybody twice. Believe me, mostly it was just our families in the stands."
"You must have been pretty good to have gotten a major college scholarship from a B-8 school."
"I had my fifteen minutes of fame," he admitted.
"Oh, don't be so modest, Jeffrey. You made All-State," she scoffed. "Everybody knew who you were. You were a star."
"In Skagit County maybe, but that was about it." He turned to his wife. "What was the most people you ever saw at one of our games?" he asked quickly.
Katherine Swogger thought it over.
"He does have a point, Mr.—"
"Waterman "
"If she'd been at his games, I'd surely have seen her," Katherine Swogger said. "I never missed a game. On a good night, there were maybe three hundred, if both towns showed up in force. Sometimes when the weather was terrible, it would be more like fifty people total. I don't see how she could have developed such an obsession about Jeffrey without me seeing her."
Swogger nodded agreement. "Believe me, my high school football career was no big deal."
"She seemed to think so."
"All the more frightening," he said.
"Is that why you stopped playing?"
He considered this at length.
"I suppose—with the aid of hindsight—that's probably part of it," he hedged. "I didn't realize it then, but I suppose that's true. At the time, it seemed like it was more of a matter of having another set of priorities."
He smiled up to his wife, who returned his gaze.
"But there's no denying it, Mr. Waterman. Even with other factors at work, that night at the sports banquet had a major effect on my decision to give up football. It certainly wasn't my fault or anything, but. . . somehow, just the fact that it worked out that way—that scene happened at all—left a taste in my mouth that I just couldn't get rid of."
"You were the victim," I insisted.
He wagged his curly head.
"I don't believe in victims, Mr. Waterman. I believe that people are responsible for their lives. Not just for what they intended to happen but for what happens. Somehow, wittingly or not, I was part of that moment. I had engendered something that I had not intended and which I could not control. All I could think of was not to put myself in that position again. I'm at a loss for words."
"Interesting," I said again.
"Oh, the tea," said Katherine the tea."
She turned to me. "Could I offer—"
"No. No thanks," I said. "I've got to be going."
Katherine Swogger wheeled the rattling cart across the room and began fussing with the service, laying out cream and sugar cubes in cut crystal, setting a steaming amber cup before her husband, pouring a cup for herself, and then hovering with the pot. I put my hand over the third cup.
"Thanks anyway," I smiled.
I pecked away at them for another couple of minutes. Prying, looking for any dimly remembered fact. Like the others, however, that night had not skulked off into the gloom but was still bright in their minds. No help there.
"I'm sorry you've come for so little, Mr. Waterman. I wish there were more I could do for you," he said when I ran out of gas.
"One does what one can, Reverend."
"Are you sure—" She reached for the pot again.
I pulled myself from the seat.
"I'd better be going."
She leaned in close to me. I could smell Ivory soap.
"You will keep in touch with us, won't you? We'd very much like to know if you find out anything about that poor girl."
I lied and said I would.
19
I Kept moving around the kitchen, trying to stay warm. As Jed had predicted, the city was shutting them out. Yesterday the phones, today the gas. Words became steam in the cold morning air. I kept my hands
in my pockets as I paced.
"Who found the place?" I asked.
"The Speaker," said George. George sat, arms akimbo, impervious to the cold, bolt upright in his customary chair, wearing only a yellowed sleeveless undershirt, a wadded pair of plaid boxer shorts, and black Reeboks.
"How in hell does a guy who doesn't talk find anything?"
"He talks," said Harold, who had the oven on full-blast, door open, leaning close, wrapped head to toe in a green army blanket.
"When?" I asked. "I've known the guy for ten years and never heard him say a word."
"He used to talk to Buddy," said Ralph, whose ribbed neck protruded from the folds of a thick, red-velvet bathrobe.
"Now he only talks to George," said Harold.
"I inherited him," George sneered.
"Like the house," added Ralph.
"Only him we get to keep," Harold said.
Unaccustomed to participating in this part of the day, they were slack-faced and sullen. I'd spent the last half hour rousting them out of bed, handing out cash, and making it clear to them that the jig was about up on the house. Sometimes I admired their ability to ignore nearly anything, to put anything they didn't want to think about completely out of mind. Not this morning. This morning, I'd gotten finger-pointing nasty with them. This time they listened. They didn't like it, but they listened. They were pissed at me and not volunteering anything.
"So, what's the story?" I prodded.
"No story," said George.
"Don't make me drag this out of you. I'm not in the mood."
"Nothin' much to tell, that's all," said George. "She had a little room on First Avenue, down the hill from the market, upstairs over that pawn shop by the museum. You know where I mean?"
I said I did.
"A buck and a half a month. A single. Dirty. Real piece of shit. Like something the city puts you in. That's the story."
"Small," said Ralph.
"Real small," affirmed Harold.
"You could raise veal in it," added George.
"How'd she pay?"
"Cash. The day she moved in."
"How long had she been there?"
"Not even a whole month."
"Any line on where she came from?"
"Nothin'," said George. "All we found out for sure is that she knew she was leaving."
"How do you figure?"
"She gave the super all her stuff."
"Really? Just gave it to him?"
"Yep. Told him she and her family was going to the land of milk and honey and wouldn't be needing it any more. She told him she was going to get new and
better stuff "
"Milk and honey?"
"That's what he said," said Harold. "Milk and honey."
"He also said she was a retard," said George.
"Challenged," corrected Ralph.
"Who the fuck appointed you to the political correctness patrol, huh, birdbrain? Who?" George snapped.
This time of the morning, they could get nasty in a hurry.
"I've got an out-of-town assignment for you guys." "Like out of town where?" George asked. "Like out in the country. Up north." "Country? You mean like with trees and stuff?" asked Harold. "Like that, yeah," I said.
"We don't do country, Leo," said George. "I don't smell bus fumes, I get real nervous. I break out. Besides that, Ralph starts doin' his flop act on log trucks he's gonna get killed. Naw. Thanks but no thanks. No country."
"I always end up in a cell with some guy named Bubba," groused Harold.
"Da—da—da, da, da, da, da, da—daaaaa—" George doing Deliverance theme.
"They never like me in the country," said Ralph.
"Don't worry, they'll like you just fine in that dress," snapped George.
"It's not a dress; it's a robe," Ralph protested weakly.
"They'll bug your eyes out like a frog." "Stop it," I said.
"Fucker thinks he's Tallulah Bankhead." "It's warm," Ralph insisted. "Don't worry, shitforbrains. They'll have some-thin' even warmer for ya." I tried money again.
"Four guys. Seventy dollars a day. Two days at least. Plus I'm good for all motel rooms and food." No answer.
"You guys are about to hit the streets again. I'm sure you can use a little extra money."
“We got some money. We'll get more from the house,” said George. "Yeah, in about two years when the lawyers get through picking -the bones, you'll be able to split a bottle of Mad Dog."
Still no answer. I tried again, this time with enthusiasm.
"A couple of nights in motel rooms. Good meals. You'll have a stake in your pockets. Huh? Waddaya say?"
"And treats after we get done working," said Ralph.
Treats meant booze. Vast quantities of cheap booze.
"Only," I said, waving a finger in a wide arc, "after you get done working. Otherwise no booze. I hold all the booze until we're done for the day. Swear to God, you get drunk on this job, I'll leave your ass out there with the hicks. I swear. You can find your own way back. I'm serious. This thing we're gonna do is the last chance I've got. If we don't turn something here, I'm going to have to bag it."
The prospect of seven or eight consecutive hours of mandatory sobriety produced a pathetic wave of foot shuffling and head wagging.
Harold tried to hedge. "Maybe just a bracer in the—"
Left to their own devices, with money in their pockets, the Boys' day followed a strict pattern. They liked to have a little eye-opener before attempting anything more serious than getting out of bed. Something light. A couple or three beers maybe. By ten or so, were they going to be required to actually venture outdoors, they would concur on the advisability of a
stiff mid-morning bracer. Thus suitably fueled, they would immediately begin the search for just the right place for lunch and a few modest cocktails. Apres lunch, predictably feeling somewhat sluggish, they would further medicate themselves with an afternoon pick-me-up or four, which, remarkably enough, segued neatly into happy hour, where, as the name implies, all restraints were temporarily rescinded. No day, of course, could end without a final nip to help them sleep. Any unanticipated drinking need could be dismissed as merely a phlegm cutter. You had to admire guys who had their bases covered.
"That's how it's gotta be, fellas. No ifs. No buts. That's it. You hear me?" Nothing. "Is it understood? Somebody tell me they understood."
I laid the big lumber on them. "If you guys can't manage that, I'll find some guys who can."
Each man looked at me hard. This mention of mythical other guys was pure heresy. They were my guys, and everyone knew it. It was their single remaining claim to fame. It was their entitlement to preferred bar stools and sunny park benches. They worked as detectives. They'd been in the papers. One of them could always produce a caked, yellowed copy of some old Times article. Now that they knew I was serious, a long silence ensued.
"You promise no more than two days?" asked Harold.
"I promise."
He looked to George. George sat with his thin arms folded over his chest, again refusing to make eye contact with me.
"We bring the Speaker," he said finally.
"No way," I howled. "I'm not paying a mute to canvass for me."
"The Speaker," he repeated.
"We'll take Norman," I countered.
"Norman needs to watch the house."
"The Speaker found the girl's place," said Harold.
"We'll assume that was his moment of lucidity for the nineties. I'll take Norman, or maybe Waldo or Big Frank, but I won't take the Speaker. That's final."
"Waldo could come over and watch the place," said Ralph.
Harold and Ralph looked to George for a sign.
"Okay, okay, Norman," he huffed. "How we gonna get there? That little tub you drive sure ain't gonna get all of us anyplace, not to mention our stuff. You got a plan for all that crap, Leo?"
"Sure do, George. I know just where I can borrow us some transportation."
I saw him before
he saw me. He was glad-handing a tall young redhead in an ankle-length black leather coat when I walked in the showroom door. He was working his way from little tweaks on her elbow to an exploratory pat on her ass when he caught sight of me, and froze in his tracks. Without missing a beat, he guided the woman to the nearest salesman and headed my way.
Tony Moldonado stood in close. He was wearing a blue suit with a wide pinstripe, red carnation in his buttonhole, paisley tie, freshly shined shoes. He smelled of Old Spice.
"I knew it," he said.
"Knew what?"
"I knew you'd be coming around to shake me down, and I'm tellin' you right now you ain't getting nickel one—"
"I'm not here for money," I said quickly.
"You're not?" His eyes narrowed. "What then?"
"I need a favor."
"How much?"
"It's not a how much; it's a what." "Okay then, what?" "I need a van."
"Wadda you, crazy? You think I'm gonna give you a van? You think vans grow on trees?"
"This is a community-property state, Tony. Keep that in mind."
In disgust, he paced a full circle around me, ending back where he'd started. I decided to make it easy for him.
"I just want to borrow a van for a couple of days. Nothing fancy. Used would be fine."
Kindness was a mistake. "Our insurance doesn't permit—" he started.
"I've still got the camera."
"What camera?"
"The one with the pictures of you holding your cock in that cheap motel room. You remember? The room with Bo Peep with her drawers down around her ankles, and the big bad wolves? That room."
He gave me a dumb look.
I playfully bopped him on the shoulder. "You remember. The room down there by the airport where you'd been poking anything and everything that walked or crawled in. You remember that room, don't you, Tony?"
He shrugged. "Maybe we got a parts van."
"Just for a couple of days."
"The seats aren't in it."
"Have you still got the seats?"
"Sure."
"Howzabout you put them back in," I suggested. "We could do that." "And clean it up."
He shrugged again. As long as I had him on the ropes, I threw a couple more jabs. "Oh yeah, I forgot. Have your guys fill it up and check the fluids, will you? Thanks."