Thicker Than Water (A Leo Waterman Mystery)

by G. M. Ford

  He shrugged my hand from his shoulder. “Get the fuck outta here,” he said.

  I’m not making excuses for myself, but I’d had a tough coupla days. The person I most cared about was missing under very scary circumstances and I’d made precious little progress finding her. I was tired; I was beat up. I’d ripped my pants getting back over the fence at the boatyard and, I’m sorry to say, I wasn’t in the mood for this guy running his street-person power trips on me. This was one of those guys who waits for the light to turn yellow and then sashays through the crosswalk at one-nineteenth of a mile an hour, because making the fat asses in the fancy cars wait was as much power as he ever got to wield.

  Feeling pretty certain he and I weren’t going to be Facebook friends, I grabbed him by the lapels, hoisted him out of the booth, and sent him sliding across the floor like a red plaid bowling ball. Somewhere mid-slide, his beer glass skittered off under the snooker table, but didn’t break.

  As they say in Brooklyn, “Ya coulda hoid a pin drop.”

  Louie’s pouring arm poised in midair. The knot of hip-checking revelers at the bar looked like they were playing freeze tag. They gawked in silence as the guy righted himself, and, without a threat, a remonstration or a backward glance, staggered the length of the bar and disappeared out the front door. The stoic manner of his departure suggested to me that this gentleman had considerable prior experience being thrown out of places and had learned to roll with the flow.

  “Woooweee,” somebody whooped and then it was over. As I slid into the booth across from George and Ralph, the normal buzz of the place began to rise from the floorboards.

  George was bleary-eyed but still in possession of his faculties. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Why does something have to be wrong?”

  He smirked. “Haven’t seen you that testy in a long time, kid.” He pointed at my ear. “Looks like that smarts.”

  “Shaving mishap,” I claimed.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked again.

  “I got some work for you guys,” I said.

  “Detective work? ’Cause that friggin’ landscaping shit…”

  “Detective work,” I assured him.

  He smiled and poured himself a fresh beer.

  Sounded like a cat was purring, but it was just Ralph, leaning against the wall, taking a short siesta between rounds. I slapped the photocopies of Brett Ward’s picture on the table and gave George the complete rundown. When I’d finished talking, I took out my notebook and wrote down the addresses of the condo in Madison Park where Brett and Rebecca lived, as well as the address of the Shilshole Marine Yard.

  “I need to know if he shows up at either place,” I said. “Buy each team a prepaid cell phone. I need to know right away.”

  I threw a handful of cash on the table. “Take cabs. Do what you have to.”

  George looked horrified. He and Rebecca were quite fond of one another. “Ya just gotta find her, Leo,” he said.

  Ralph snorted and bumped himself off the wall. He looked around. “Find who?” he asked.

  I pushed myself to my feet and walked over to the bar to settle up with Louie.

  I called the SPD East Precinct looking for Marty Gilbert. The desk sergeant told me Marty was in a meeting until about eight and wanted to know if he could take a message for him. I told him I’d call back later and broke the connection.

  No doubt about it, I needed to get the police involved. Every minute made a difference in missing person cases. The longer it went on, the less chance of seeing the person again. Things were every bit that simple and every bit that desperate.

  I was hoping that the Rosemary De Carlo impersonation story would be eerie enough to spur the SPD into action. God knew it was giving me the willies. Besides which, I figured I had a small edge with the cops as Rebecca was one of theirs, and they really don’t like people messing with theirs.

  It was full dark as I strode up the sidewalk toward the Tahoe, making the blinking red light on my voice mail hard to ignore. I stopped in front of the Fourteen Carat Café and checked my messages again. Three more calls from Iris Duval and another from that local number I didn’t recognize. Same thing in voice mail. On the off chance that there’d been some sort of recent development, I forced myself to listen to Iris’s most recent message and was treated to a minute-and a-half harangue regarding my lack of character and, if possible, my even more dubious genetic heritage.

  Always nice talking to Iris, it was.

  That left the other number. It was ironic that now I found myself in the same position as people who hired private eyes. For the sake of my own sanity, I had to make sure I left no avenue unexplored and no stone unturned, so I tapped the mystery number and waited to see who answered, fully expecting one of those riveting one-way conversations with an automatic telemarketing machine.

  But no. Somebody human picked up on the second ring.

  “Rachel Thoms.”

  I cleared my throat. “This is Leo Waterman,” I said. “My phone seems to think you called.”

  She even rustled over the phone. “I think we need to talk.”

  “I’m out and about,” I said. “Just tell me when and where and I’ll show up.”

  “You know a place called Tini Bigs?”

  “Martini bar down at the bottom of Denny?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Fifteen minutes.”

  I made it in twelve, but she was already there when I arrived, sitting at a little round two-person table along the west wall with what looked to be an iced tea sitting half empty in front of her. Four thirty-something business suits at the far end of the bar were knocking back martinis and eyeing her like a Rottweiler contemplating a pot roast.

  “You look quite a bit worse for the wear,” she said as I sidled over to the table.

  “And here I thought you were in the nurturing business,” I joked as I took off my jacket and hung it on the back of the chair.

  “I’m in the reality business,” she said without a trace of humor.

  “Wouldn’t look good on a business card,” I said as I seated myself across from her. I drew a straight line in the air with my finger. “Rachel Thoms, realist. By appointment only.” I shook my head in mock solemnity.

  She almost laughed. She was that much prettier up close. God help me if she ever full-on smiled at me. My head might explode.

  The waiter made an appearance. I slipped him a ten and asked for the biggest glass of ice water the premises could muster. Her body language told me she thought the tip was excessive.

  “It’s how I assuage my inherited money guilt,” I explained.

  She did that shrink thing again, watching my body language and searching my face. I felt like a giant reader board, and she wasn’t much liking the message.

  “I tried to google you today,” she said.

  “And?”

  “And all I got was your father,” she said. “Pages and pages and pages about him.”

  “He cut a wide swath,” I offered.

  “And not an altogether legal swath at that.”

  I shrugged. “He operated the way movers and shakers operated back then. In those days it was a patronage system. You did for him. He did for you. One hand washed the other. As long as he sat on the city council, you always had somebody to call when you needed the potholes in your street fixed, and he always had your vote on Election Day.” I showed my palms to the ceiling. “Quid pro quo.”

  “He apparently did a rather good job of feathering his own nest.”

  “Hence the inherited money guilt,” I said with a grin.

  She wasn’t buying it. “Really?” was all she said.

  “I mean…what’s the point of revisionist history?” I asked. “Things are what they are. Why does the past have to conform to the present? That was then; this is now. The rules were different then.” I wanted to shrug again, but stifled it. Instead, sensing that I might be getting a little too worked up on the subje
ct, I closed my trap and looked away. An uncomfortable silence settled around the table.

  Thirty silent seconds later, the waiter slid a man-sized water tumbler in front of me. Rachel waited until he’d moved two tables down and was completely out of earshot and then leaned across the table. Very proud of myself for maintaining eye contact despite the considerable cleavage surge this occasioned in my periphery.

  “I’ve done some soul-searching since we spoke yesterday,” she said.

  “And?”

  “And I think perhaps these are special circumstances,” she said.

  “You have no idea,” I assured her.

  My response troubled her. She frowned and asked, “How so?”

  I told her about Rosemary De Carlo. She was suitably appalled.

  “Rebecca knew he was having an affair,” she said.

  “Bunches of them,” I corrected. I told her about Brett’s little love nest and the collection of DVDs and recording equipment I’d found behind the wall.

  “I should have told her,” she said.

  “Told her what?”

  “He came to two of our sessions. He was…” She hesitated, as if she was choosing her words carefully.

  “He was what?” I prodded.

  “I thought he was a classic psychopath,” she said.

  “Really?”

  “Not like Hannibal Lecter or anything like that. That sort of serial killer psychopath is very rare. The kind of psychopath we deal with day today is…” She stopped again. “He was just so glib,” she said after a moment. “And he had all his props in place. The car. The hair. The clothes.” She looked me in the eye. “He had no center to him,” she said. “It was all a show. The whole time we were together, he was just going through the motions. I could feel it.”

  She could tell I agreed with her and went on, “A famous psychologist said that psychopaths know the words, but they can’t hear the music. They know what to say from listening to other people. They know when to be happy and when to be sad, but they don’t actually feel any of it themselves. They’re too busy using other people to get what they want to feel anything. They have no conscience. No empathy.”

  “I’ve never been able to see what the attraction was,” I admitted. “I mean, he looked great and everything, but that guy was a petri dish in the ocean of life.”

  “That’s exactly right,” she said.

  “How did Rebecca know Brett was dogging her?”

  “He left his phone lying around. One day while he was taking a shower, the thing kept beeping, so Rebecca picked it up. A woman was in the process of leaving a message. Cooing at Brett, wanting him to get together with her later. So she checked the phone’s memory and found dozens of calls from the same number.” She leaned closer. “As I understand it, a friend in the police department got her the woman’s name and address.”

  “Which was?”

  She shrugged. “She didn’t say.”

  “And that’s why she took a leave of absence?” I asked.

  “Among other things.”

  “What things?”

  She thought about it. “She was under a great deal of stress.”

  A dry laugh escaped my throat. “You ever met her mother?”

  “Excuse me?”

  I waved her off. “Could I ask a favor?”

  She looked me in the eye. She’d heard that one before. “Depends,” she said.

  “How about you tell me everything you know about what was going on with Rebecca, without me having to pull it out of you one question at a time.”

  She did the RCA dog thing again, tilted her head and looked at me with new eyes. “I guess I’m still a bit conflicted about my professional priorities.”

  “That pesky ‘sacred trust’ thing?”

  “I realize it may seem a bit abstract to you Mr. Waterman, but…”

  “It’s not abstract at all,” I interrupted. “It’s just that I’m tired and frustrated and scared to death. Everything that’s happened so far suggests this thing is going to come to a bad end. I’ve got a voice screaming inside me that says that if I don’t find her pretty soon, I’m not going to find her at all, and it’s tearing me up, so please excuse me if I seem a little impatient. I don’t mean to be rude or anything.”

  She sat back in her chair and looked me over like a lunch menu. “You’re exactly like she said you were,” she said after an interval.

  I chugged half the ice water and wiped my mouth. “And how would that be?” I asked.

  “Big and smart and maybe a little bit loopy.” She started to say something else but caught herself and swallowed it.

  “What?” I pressed.

  She moved her head in a way that said, “Okay, you asked for it.”

  “A tad adolescent perhaps.”

  “It’s my immaturity that keeps me young,” I said.

  Her bemused expression said I’d just proved her point. “Is that what you always do?” she asked.

  “What’s that?”

  “Misdirect a serious question with a joke.”

  “It’s always worked so far,” I said.

  A laugh escaped her—an unladylike bark. “You sure of that?” she asked, shutting down both laugh and smile, but it was too late.

  I was attempting to come up with another joke when it hit me: Christ, what was wrong with me? Rebecca was out there, and here I was panting after her therapist. “So anyway…you resolve your ethical conflicts enough to help me, or not?” I asked.

  She must have, because after taking a moment to organize her thoughts, she opened up. I could tell that she was editing herself as she went along, giving me what I needed as far as facts went and leaving out the details of Rebecca’s inner life, which, she’d quite rightly decided, I didn’t need to know.

  The phone calls weren’t the beginning of it. They were just the capper. The birthday Strip-O-Gram was the beginning. What Ricky Waters hadn’t known when he gave Brett the heads-up about the dancer coming to the office was that the young lady was the daughter of one of Rebecca’s friends, and that the first thing the young lady did when she got back from Millennium was to call Rebecca and tell her that Brett didn’t work there anymore, and offer to give the money back. Said she’d made out pretty well on tips and felt bad about not being able to do what she’d been hired to do. That was the beginning of the unraveling.

  “Did she confront him about it?” I asked.

  “Absolutely.” She’d told Rachel how Brett spun this long involved story about how he’d been trying to surprise her with his new enterprise. How he figured he’d get the business up and running before he told her about it.

  I was incredulous. “And she went for that?”

  She put on her professional face. “People believe some ridiculous things when they’re trying to save a marriage. Things that they’d normally dismiss out of hand, they choose to believe, for the sake of being able to tell themselves they tried to make the relationship work.” She shrugged.

  “What then?”

  “Then the phone calls.”

  “And that tore it.”

  She nodded. “That’s when she decided to take the leave of absence.” She took a sip of her iced tea. “She said she needed to find out exactly what was going on in her life. The uncertainty was very hard for her to deal with.”

  “She likes to be in charge of things,” I said.

  “Which is why she decided to look into this on her own. She wanted to see for herself exactly what was going on with her husband and…” She stopped and thought about what she was going to say next.

  “And what?” I pressed.

  “We talked about it the last time we met,” she said.

  “When was that?”

  Rachel had seen her only once after Rebecca went on leave. Eight days ago, in her office, which, as far as I knew, made her the last person to see Rebecca Duval alive.

  “Did…did she…” I hesitated. I didn’t want to ask the question because I was afraid I might not like th
e answer. “Did she say anything to you that might indicate that she was…you know, scared or apprehensive?”

  “Do you mean scared as in physically threatened?”

  “Yes.”

  “If Rebecca had felt physically threatened, she’d have immediately gone to you.” She gave me a long, steady look.

  Instinctively, I knew she was right, and felt marginally better for knowing it.

  We sat in silence, each of us lost in our own thoughts. The waiter made another pass and when neither of us wanted anything, he left the check.

  “What are you going to do now?” she asked finally.

  “I’m going to try to get the police involved.”

  “If there’s anything I can do…” she began.

  I thanked her for sharing. “I know that wasn’t easy for you. If I ever get my head shrunk, I hope the shrink takes that ‘sacred trust’ stuff as seriously as you do.”

  She nodded, pinched her lips against a smile. “You ever need a referral…”

  “You got a team you could suggest?”

  That bark again, and I had to get the hell out of there. Talk about ethical conflicts.

  The sky was starting to spit rain as I hiked up First Avenue toward my car. I tried Marty again, but he was still otherwise occupied, so I decided to make another run by Rebecca and Brett’s condo over in Madison Park. What the hell, you never knew.

  I beat the rain to the car, buckled up, and drove Denny straight up the face of Capitol Hill, wandering through neighborhoods and around traffic circles until I got to Broadway, where I hooked a right and rolled north for half a mile to Madison. Madison Park wasn’t on the way to anywhere. If you found yourself in Madison Park, you either were lost or that’s where you were going.

  The ride down to the water was longer than I remembered and Madison Valley more gentrified than the last time I’d been in this neck of the woods. Wall-to-wall salons and shops and restaurants on the same sidewalks where fly-by-night body shops and barbecue joints used to be.

  Not many years ago, the streets on this side of the city were one of the few places I’d ever seen where the very rich and the very poor lived cheek to jowl. At the tops of the hills the well-to-do looked out at Lake Washington and counted themselves lucky. Quarter mile away, down in the valleys, it was strictly “the ’hood,” where, as in so many urban areas, the poor were slowly being displaced by an ever-growing middle class in need of new and less-expensive places to live. Columbia City, Georgetown, Sodo, the Central District, it was all the same. Everywhere you looked, what had once been poor and run down and industrial was in the process of becoming hip and trendy and residential.