Last Ditch

by G. M. Ford

  The little car buzzed and wobbled on the metal grating as I crossed the Ballard Bridge. On either side of the roadway, a tangled maze of boat rigging and antennas trembled gray and gaunt like a drowned forest. I used my sleeve to clear the windshield, put on my signal, said a silent prayer and moved one lane to the left.

  The traffic fight at the comer of Western and Northwest Market swung in the wind like a lantern as the rain fell in volleys, line after silver line blowing in from the west. All around me, the rush of traffic created a moving shroud of mist which slid along above the sodden street, reducing visibility to dim taillights in a half-erased pencil drawing.

  Northwest Fifty-eighth Street was a middle-class neighborhood. Small postwar homes, one and two bedrooms, no two quite alike, their well-tended lawns and hand-painted mailboxes separated only by narrow concrete driveways. I rolled down the window. The driving rain splattered my face as I eased up the narrow street, looking for numbers. Even numbers on the left. Odd on the right. It was the kind of neighborhood where nuclear families used to five, before Seattle became Uncle Bill's land of latte.

  Thirty sixty-four was halfway up the block, a neat little one-story house, freshly painted white with forest-green trim and shutters. To the right of the front door, a seasonal arrangement of colorful gourds and Indian com was being guarded by a brown ceramic squirrel, while all along the front of the house, a hardy bed of red and white impatiens defiantly shook the last of its colorful blossoms in the face of the storm.

  I slid the Fiat to the curb and turned the engine off. I sat for a moment counting my breath as it fogged the windshield, listening to the pounding of the rain and hoping for a break in the weather. Yeah. Sure. Sometime late next May. I took a deep breath, shouldered the door open and went sloshing across the street and up onto the porch.

  I pulled open the green screen door and knocked on the solid white one underneath. It wasn't latched and opened a crack as I struck it

  "That you, Amy?" a voice called.

  "No," I said.

  A gust of wind blew the white door all the way inward and I could see him sitting in a leather rocker over on the far side of the living room, over by the picture window on the west wall. His aluminium canes hung from the windowsill, next to his glasses. The white walls of the comer were covered with an array of framed photographs. Even from where I stood, I could pick out my father in most of them. I closed both doors behind me and stepped into the room.

  The years had sunken Bermuda's thick chest pushing whatever remained down beneath his wide black belt leaving his upper torso nearly childlike. It looked as if, with no effort at all, he could rest his chin on his silver belt buckle. His hair was white and disheveled, kind of that Einstein at Princeton look. He wore a blue cardigan sweater over a loud flannel shirt His left hand groped about the windowsill, searching for his glasses. He found them and brought them to his face. Larry King glasses, huge and black, with lenses so thick that from my side, they reduced his pupils to pinpricks.

  "I thought you were Amy," he said.

  "Whoever Amy is, Bermuda, I hope for your sake she's a lot better-looking woman than I am."

  "Does things around here for me ..." he started.

  He pushed his glasses up on his nose, blinked several times and then broke into a huge grin.

  "I'll be goddamned. Look at you, kid," he exclaimed. "Damn shame you got so old. How'd that happen?"

  I stood on the rose-colored carpet and looked myself up and down.

  "I don't know what happened, Bermuda. Last thing I recall, 1' was twenty and gonna set the world on fire. Remember?"

  "Oh, I remember." He tapped his temple. "Nothing wrong up here, kid. I remember real good. Legs don't work anymore, but the rest of me is working just fine."

  "Glad to hear it," I said.

  I checked out the room. In the main section, a brown leather sofa and matching chair surrounded a glass-topped coffee table. Several color-coordinated floral prints adorned the walls. A fireplace dominated the east end, its green tile front reflecting the blue gas flames out onto the floor. From where I stood, the area seemed foreign and unused, as if a decorator had stolen in at night, leaving Bermuda only the comer by the window to call his own.

  By the time I looked back, he was staring out the window.

  "Where did it go, kid? Where did it all get to?" "I'll tell you, Bermuda, I had any idea where it went, I'd go there and bring it back for the both of us." A rueful smile bent his lips. "Would that we could, kid."

  "Somebody once said that life is what happens while you're busy making other plans."

  "John Lennon," he said quickly. "John Lennon said that"

  His head swiveled my way and his eyes narrowed. "I knew somebody'd find me," he said. "Soon as I saw the papers. Figured some bright young media type would do his homework and find his way to my door. Didn't imagine it would be you though."

  I crossed the room and sat down in the ladder-backed chair which had been pushed over next to his rocker.

  "The papers are making like my father killed him. Like it's cut and dried. No question about it."

  He rolled his eyes. "It's what they do," he said. "They sell papers."

  '"The SPD has officially reopened the investigation." "So I heard."

  "The Price family is going to bring big-time pressure. They're gonna play this one for all it's worth."

  "No doubt about it," he said. "So the question becomes how're you gonna handle it?"

  He was leading me down a familiar and unwelcome path.

  "I can't stand around and do nothing, Bermuda. It may be the smart thing to do, but it's not the Leo thing to do. One of the things I've learned along the way is to recognize what I can and can't live with, and I've got some serious doubts about living with doing nothing here."

  He showed another grin. "Then you do what you gotta do, Leo."

  He reached over and put a hand on my shoulder.

  "You always hung in there, kid. It was your gift. Didn't matter whether your team was way ahead or way behind; you were always givin' it your all. Full bore till the final bell." He licked his lips. "With you, it never had anything to do with the score. It's why I liked watching you play."

  I put my hand on top of his hand and then leaned over and gently rested my forehead on his. We stayed that way for a moment.

  "Thanks, Bermuda," I said. "For all of it."

  "Don't mention ft, kid. It was my pleasure. Not everybody gets the pleasure of watching somebody that hardheaded."

  I sat back. "So you know me, man. You know, I'm gonna have to thrash around in this a bit. Like you said, it's my nature."

  He folded his arms across his narrow chest. "Which is, I presume, how come I am now blessed with the honor of your company . . . after all these years."

  I ignored the dig and plowed on.

  "I figured if anybody would know anything it would be you, Bermuda. You guys spent most of your waking hours together."

  The rain ticked like gravel on the window. As he turned his head toward the sound, the light streaming through the glass highlighted the wispy texture of his hair and the indefinite line of his profile. He spoke without turning my way.

  "And what if I did know something, kid. What then? Suppose I could say to you that I knew how Peerless Price ended up planted in your father's backyard." He leaned back in the chair and caught my eye. "Are you sure you'd really want to know? You ever think of that? What if the truth was something you didn't want to hear about?"

  "Like what?"

  He put his index finger to his temple and cocked his thumb. "Like how about if old Peerless pissed your father off one time too many and how about we took him down in the tide flats and put one in his ear." He dropped his thumb. "What about that?"

  "Is that what happened?"

  "Nope," he said. "I'm just trying to make a point here, Leo."

  "What point is that?"

  "That what's done is done. Peerless Price is gone. Your father, God rest his soul, is gone.
Even if I knew something, what could I do now? You think I'd show your father so little honor as to violate his trust?" He spread his hands in disbelief. "After all these years?"

  "No. I don't figure you would."

  He smiled. "I worked for the man for eighteen years, Leo. It wasn't for him I'd have ended up on a creeper selling pencils." He swept a hand about the room. "He had a part in everything I got, kid. I got nothing but good things to say about. Bill Waterman."

  "And you've got no idea how Peerless Price ended up in my old man's backyard?"

  "None," he said. "Damnedest thing I ever heard of." He wagged a finger at me. "Tell you one thing, though, kid . . ."

  "What's that?"

  "Your old man had wanted to pop a cap on somebody, believe you me, he'da done it right. Whoever it was sure as hell wouldn'ta ended up planted in Bill's own backyard, and wherever he was planted, they wouldn'ta found him." He cut the air with the side of his hand. "Not ever."

  "That's why I came to you, Bermuda. I never for a second thought you'd sell my father out. No way. But this thing doesn't make sense to me, either. Like you just said, nobody pops his worst enemy and buries him in his own backyard."

  Bermuda shook his big head.

  "Peerless Price had a lot of enemies, kid. So did the Boss . . . your father. But Price, now, that son of a bitch had a real knack for making enemies." He straightened himself in the chair. "Could be somebody was looking to kill two birds with one stone. Everybody knew about the bad blood between them. Everybody seen that picture they ran yesterday in the PL The one where your dad rearranged Price's mug for him. Wouldn't take a genius to put two and two together, pop Price and try to pin it on Bill Waterman."

  "So why not wait a month and then call the cops? How come the body ends up there for almost thirty years?"

  "You got me, Leo. I knew that ... I'd sell it to the National Enquirer. Move to the Bahamas."

  The old house creaked and groaned from the onslaught of the wind. Somewhere in the back of the building, a tree branch was sweeping back and forth across the roof like long fingernails.

  I sat back in my chair, ran a hand over my face and pulled my notebook from my pants pocket.

  He had a faraway look in his eyes as he began to speak. "Your father . . ." he looked over my way. "Now there was a man, Leo. When I first met him, I was . . ."

  I tuned him out. I'd heard all the stories before and none of them sounded like anybody I knew. The way I saw it, either they were exaggerating everything or they weren't making people like they used to anymore. I sat back, set the notebook on my knee and waited for him to finish. It took him about ten minutes to work his way up to the present

  "I was going through my father's daybooks for nineteen sixty-nine," I began.

  "Among the finest pieces of fiction ever penned."

  "Everything?" I asked. "None of it's accurate?"

  He smiled. "Well, must be some of it's the truth. Only a fool would he when he don't have to."

  "It's about the car mileage."

  He chuckled. "How he hated having to keep track of all that shit" He spread his big hands. "But what was he gonna do? Price had every city agency running audits on him. Didn't want to go down for something stupid like expenses."

  I flipped open the notebook. "If I'm reading this right" I began, "you guys operated pretty much like clockwork. You'd drop him off at night and then pick him up every morning before eight."

  "Seven forty-five sharp. Monday through Friday."

  "Except..." I flipped back a couple of pages. "Except for May eighteenth and June first nineteen sixty-nine."

  He looked confused. "Except what?"

  "According to his daybooks, on those nights he gave you cab fare and took the car himself."

  He answered quickly. "If you say so, irid."

  "What's interesting is that those are the only nights in the whole year when he took the car home." "If you say so," he said again. "You mean you don't remember?" He jerked his head back and pulled off his glasses. "I told you, kid, I remember just fine." "Well?" I prodded.

  "Well what? Like I'm supposed to remember what I was doin' on a specific night thirty years ago? Gimme a break here, Leo."

  "If you don't remember, you don't remember."

  He slid his glasses back onto his face and pinned me with a stare.

  "I hope that's not as subtle as you get, kid."

  I smiled. "Like you said before, Bermuda, subtlety's not my strong point. I'm more the balls-to-the-wall type."

  "Your father always had an angle."

  "I've got one too. Straight ahead."

  "I mean, you know, kid . . . you and me ... we gonna get into that amateur psychology stuff, we gonna have to stomp around in that Freudian crap about you spendin' your life trying to fill your father's shoes." Behind the thick lenses, his eyes nearly disappeared.

  "I'm not trying to fill his shoes, Bermuda, I'm just trying to scrape a little shit off them."

  He folded his arms over what remained of his chest and rocked all the way back in the chair. "You sure?" he asked finally.

  "Believe me, if I hadn't given up trying to live up to other people's expectations, I'd be dead by now."

  He thrust his lower lip out onto his chin and nodded.

  "He did cast a hell of a shadow," he said.

  "Don't I know it, man. I spent about ten years getting myself twisted so I wouldn't have to look at it."

  "And look at what a fine figure of a man you've become."

  His-Lips formed a thin smile, but his tone invited me to take his words any way I wanted. "Thanks," I said.

  He pushed his glasses back up on his nose.

  "Old men like me . . ." he started. ". . . we're always stuck in the past, lookin' at the world in the rearview mirror, 'cause there's not much highway left out in front of us no more." He sighed and waved his hand. "No point in it for you, though. Your future is all out in front of you, kid. Only good thing about the past is it's over."

  I shook my head. "It's over for him. Maybe it's over for you. But it's not over for me."

  He turned his face toward the window and began to rock. A spring somewhere inside the chair groaned every time he moved forward. Above the squeaking of the chair and the hissing of the gas fire, a car door slammed and then came the sounds of feet slapping the water in the street and the screen door groaning open. A head poked into the room.

  "Hey, Ed," she yelled.

  She was about twenty and very fair. A thickset girl in a bright yellow raincoat, she stepped inside and pulled the yellow hood from her head. She had thick, wiry blonde hair and a mouthful of bad teeth. She spotted me.

  "Oh . . . I'm sorry . . ." She looked over at Bermuda. "I could come back, Ed. No prob ..."

  "Amy," he said. "No, don't go. This is Leo Waterman."

  She shook the water from herself and came my way. I stood up and offered a hand. "Nice to meet you, Amy."

  Her grip was damp but strong.

  "I come over to make Ed some lunch." She eyed me. "Waterman . . . Waterman . . . Wasn't that the name of the guy Ed used to work for?"

  "My father," I said.

  She kept pumping my hand and nodding. "Cool," she said. "I think we got some turkey and some pita bread left. Got some chips, too. How 'bout I make you a sandwich too, Leo? Won't be no trouble."

  "Thanks, Amy, but I'm gonna run here in a minute."

  "You sure?"

  "Thanks anyway."

  Satisfied, she ducked through the swinging door into the kitchen beyond. I heard the rubbery suck of the refrigerator being opened and the clink of glass before he spoke.

  "I don't know what he was doing with the car, Leo. .All of a sudden he just had a bug up his ass that he needed the car. Both times on a Friday night, too, so I was stuck taking the bus all goddamn weekend. Seemed like every Friday night there for a while, he'd tell me to pull over on First Avenue in front of the old Chase Hotel. He'd slip me a fifty, tell me to take a cab both ways and that he'd see me on Monda
y."

  "He went into the hotel?"

  "Nope. I know that for sure 'cause that's where I always went to have a drink and call a cab. Only place in the neighborhood." He closed his eyes. "Place had a real nice bar those days. Real money. City tore it down back in the early eighties. Tore down the whole block. Put up a damn parking garage." His eyes opened. "Your dad, he drove off."

  "Which way?"

  "He'd go up one block to Marion and then go down the hill. Toward Alaska. Same thing both times." I knew he meant Alaskan Way, not the state. "And you have no idea . . . ?"

  "Wasn't none of my business, Leo. Wasn't like I was gonna ask him or anything. The Boss wants the car, he gets the car." He sat forward in the chair. "I'll tell ya something else, kid. Whatever he was doing cost some scratch. He always had a roll on those nights."

  I opened my mouth but he waved me off. "He never carried no money, Leo. The Boss . . . your dad, he didn't need money. This was his town. Wasn't hardly nobody would take his money from him in this town. Those nights, though ... he had a pocketful of coin."

  Amy backed through the swinging door carrying a metal folding tray which she set over Bermuda's legs. She looked my way.

  "Last chance," she teased.

  "I'm watching my girlish figure," I said.

  She gave it about twice as much laugh as it was worth and bustled back into the kitchen.

  I pocketed my notebook and got to my feet.

  "Great to see you again, Bermuda. Thanks for the help."

  "Wish there was somethin' more I coulda done for you, kid."

  "You already did more than your share for me, Bermuda."

  Something in me wanted to make a speech. I didn't know what it was I wanted to say, but I knew it concerned the past, and I knew from experience that I was the only one who'd end up feeling better for its having been said, so I shut up.

  A fresh fusilade of rain raked the window. He put the fingertips of his left hand on the pane, tracing the drops. I pulled a business card out and walked over and put it on the windowsill.