On a hike up in the Cascades he and Ellen once had come upon a couple of teenagers trying to climb a hill so steep it was a virtual cliff. Halfway up, one of them lost his grip and began to slide back down, frantically grasping at small outcroppings of rocks and scrub bushes and clumps of bear grass. But nothing held, and he continued his hapless slide until he finally reached the bottom, bloody and bruised and scared, trying not to cry.
That was how Baird felt now, only worse—as if he were sliding to his death and every rock and bush he grasped at, every hope, came away in his hand. As terrified as he was, he felt that he could not even think clearly, at least not cold sober. So he drank with considerable thirst, smoking and munching popcorn and watching the ballgame on television. Occasionally Leo would park in front of him, commenting on the game, pointing out wherein this year’s Huskies were not quite the equal of the previous year’s team. Happily, he seemed oblivious to Baird’s mood, apparently seeing nothing unusual in an old friend holding onto his glass for dear life.
Sally, always more perceptive, would occasionally give Baird a look of rueful curiosity, as if to say that she knew something was wrong in his life but that she couldn’t be bothered at the moment, not with big Leo still chained in her doghouse. Finally, though, serving him a fourth or fifth drink, she came around the bar and sat next to him.
“You want to tell Mama all about it?” she said.
“Would it help?”
“Always.”
“I’ve grown old and stupid.”
“Well, who hasn’t? The question, Jack, is how you’ve grown old and stupid.”
“In strange and wondrous ways,” he said.
She smiled. “Why do I doubt that?”
“Because you’re so smart?”
“That’s for sure.”
When she left him, he went back to his vodka and the television, where a second game was already in progress: Notre Dame and whoever, nationally televised. After the first quarter he went to the men’s room and then came back to his stool and pushed his empty glass at Leo once again. And again Leo dutifully filled it. Baird lit a cigarette and absently looked toward the front of the bar, where someone had just come in. For some reason, he was not surprised to see that it was Lee Jeffers, quite alone this time and looking predictably sexy in stonewashed black jeans and a black-velour vest over a green blouse. Hanging from a strap over her shoulder was a small handbag, probably the repository of a gun—a gun she might use to arrest him with, he reflected. He picked up his drink and stood.
“We’ve got to talk,” she said.
“Okay.” He started toward the restaurant side.
“No, not here. Some other place. Outside.”
Baird turned and looked at her. “No one will hear us over there. It’s private.”
Giving a shrug, she followed him then, on the way telling Sally that she would not require anything. One other couple was on that side, having either a very late lunch or an early dinner. Baird led Lee to a corner booth at the front, as far from the couple as he could get. He took the wall side, so he could see into the bar, above the row of plastic ferns that ran along the top of the dividing wall. If Lucca or one of the other members of the Metro Squad suddenly wandered into the bar as backup for Lee, Baird wanted to know it, for he was still sober enough to suspect that she was there as a cop, not as a lover, or at least an ex-lover. For all he knew, she might have been “wearing a wire,” as they described it on TV cop shows.
Sitting, they both immediately lit cigarettes.
“I phoned your house a while ago,” she said. “But your wife answered. Like a jerk, I hung up.”
“She must’ve loved that.”
“I can imagine.” Lee started to say something, then broke it off, shaking her head and smiling, her eyes unexpectedly moist. “God, it’s good to see you again,” she said.
The words lifted him, opened him. Afraid his own eyes might fill, he looked down at her hands on the tabletop and enclosed them in his own. “I didn’t know where we stood, Lee. I mean, after what happened. After what you said.”
“Oh, listen, I’m so sorry about that. You just threw me, that’s all. You were so cool.”
“Numb is more like it. I was just numb.”
“I know. I know you couldn’t have done it.”
He did not respond to that. He was wondering what her reaction would be if and when the truth came out. More than ever before, he realized how much he wanted her in his life.
Glancing at the bar, she gently pulled her hands free. “We still have to be careful, Jack. We can’t go back the way we were, at least not yet.”
“No, I suppose not.”
She took a deep breath then, as if she were under considerable pressure herself. “Listen, Lucca called me this morning. He said there’s been a break of some kind in Slade’s case, and that it looked bad for you. He wanted me to come in, but I begged off. I told him I had a date. I didn’t mention it was with you.”
“Yeah, he told me about this ‘big break’ too,” Baird said. “He stopped by around noon today. Tried to talk me into giving myself up—I guess because of this new development, whatever the hell it is. I told him I didn’t even care what it was, because I hadn’t done anything.”
Exhaling smoke, Lee sighed. “The very next morning he was on your case. Some little fag designer came in and said you were with Slade again the week before the murder. But by then I think Lucca already had you picked out as the perp anyway—sorry, the perpetrator. Later he asked me to start seeing you on my own and find out what I could. He practically ordered me to sleep with you.”
Baird smiled. “He’s a little late.”
“Exactly. And that’s the main reason I’m here, Jack. Do you have any idea what kind of a fix I’m in because of this? Because of us? Here I am, sleeping with a guy who suddenly turns out to be my boss’s hot new murder suspect. The boss calls up and says, ‘Come on, let’s go to work,’ and I beg off, whining about it being Saturday and bullshit like that, because I can’t very well tell him the truth, can I? ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Sarge, but I’ve been fucking Jack Baird for about a month now, and that sorta compromises me, don’tcha think?’ ”
Baird wasn’t very sympathetic. “That’s real tragic, Lee—considering my own predicament. You won’t mind if I worry about me first?”
“I know, I know.” She looked embarrassed. “It’s just that I don’t know how to play this thing. I have to know what you’re going to do—or already did. Like today—did you say anything about us to Lucca?”
“No.”
“Do you plan to?”
Baird thought about it. “No, I don’t see any reason why I should. I can’t see what difference it would make, unless you turn out to be my alibi. But Lucca says Slade was killed on the night of the twenty-fourth, and our first night together was after that, wasn’t it? I can’t remember dates lately. Too much vodka, you think?”
She didn’t respond for a few moments, just sat there looking at him, her eyes filled with doubt and anxiety. “Jack, it could ruin my career,” she said finally. “They probably wouldn’t take my shield or anything that drastic. There’s no law against having an affair. But this would ruin me with Lucca. I’d be out on my ass as far as the Metro Squad is concerned. And career-wise, that’d be the kiss of death. They’d have me out tracking down parking violators.”
“Would that be so bad?”
“Don’t be funny.”
“Sorry,” he said.
“I just have to know what to expect, that’s all,” she went on. “Otherwise I won’t know how to play it with Lucca. If it’s going to come out about us anyway, I should tell him up front and minimize the fallout. But if it isn’t going to come out, then I’d just as soon pull back and go through the motions, you know? On your case, I mean. The investigation.”
Baird didn’t know what to say. If the last few months had taught him anything, it was that a man could lose control of his life in a matter of seconds, in no more time t
han it took to fire a gun. He had no idea what the future held, whether Lucca was just fishing or truly had him by the throat, in which case Baird knew he would have to do what he could to save himself. But he couldn’t see that there was anything to be gained by telling the sergeant about his affair with Lee. And anyway, as he was beginning to realize, he cared for her more deeply than he had thought.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I won’t tell Lucca or anyone else. It’s our business.”
She reached over and laced her fingers into his, suddenly indifferent to their audience at the bar. “I do miss you, Jack. What’s it been? Eight, nine days?”
“At least.”
“But for now—”
“I know. We have to go on not seeing each other.”
“I’m afraid we don’t have much choice, at least until this case is resolved.”
“Unless we see each other in an official way.”
“I hope not. I really do.”
“I don’t know,” Baird said. “If it’s the only way I’ll get to see you…”
She smiled ruefully. “Don’t even think it. No, this will end. One of Slade’s johns or a fellow dealer—somewhere, some low-life is going to start bragging, and we’ll be in business.”
“That would be nice.”
“It will happen. Don’t worry.”
Again she started to pull her hand away from his, but this time he didn’t let go of it. She seemed puzzled for a moment, but then, seeing his look, she smiled at him, a sad, lovely smile.
“I really have to go now,” she said.
Baird nodded. “I know, Lee. But I just wanted to say…I love you.” The words seemed to surprise her even more than they did him.
Gathering up her purse and sliding out of the booth, she had an odd, anguished look. “I guess I’d better be on my way,” she said.
Baird got up as she left. “Take care,” he said.
Given his nature, he couldn’t help watching her, the way she moved in the tight black jeans. Most of the men on the other side craned to look at her too as she made the turn and came back along the bar, heading for the door. Nearing it, she smiled at Baird across the plastic garden, a smile that made him want to run after her.
The rest of that day Baird continued to feel as if he were slipping helplessly down some sandy slope to hell and there was nothing he could do about it. After he left Leo’s he picked up some fast food at McDonald’s and drove to Northlake Way to eat it, parking outside the small marina where he had kept his last boat, the Reinell. The parking lot was nothing more than a single row of angled parking spaces facing a chain-link fence, beyond which were the docks and boats and the lake, with the downtown skyline in the distance, some of the high-rises already lighting up for the night.
As he sat eating and listening to the radio, a yuppie couple docked their sailboat and eventually came walking up the main pier to the fence. After they passed through the gate, heading for their Beamer, the man detoured over to Baird.
“Hey, friend,” he said, “this isn’t a public parking lot. We’re a private yacht club now. You can’t park here.”
He was in his thirties, a slim blond man with a no-nonsense haircut and rimless glasses. He was dressed all in white, which was a serious gaffe for a true Northwest mariner.
Baird smiled. “Are you a yachtsman?”
“I’m a member here, yes.”
“I thought maybe you sold Eskimo Pies.”
The young woman called for the man to hurry up, but he stood his ground. “Very funny,” he said to Baird. “But you still can’t park here. I just might call the tow people from my car.”
“The tow people?”
“That’s right.”
“Your boat’s too small,” Baird said.
The man frowned. “Too small for what?”
“To be a yacht. It has to be thirty feet to be a yacht.”
At that, the man turned and went back to his car, throwing his hand down and out, as if he were brushing bugs away. But Baird was not quite finished.
“Maybe a popsicle,” he said. “You got any popsicles for sale?”
After the couple roared away, Baird finished his meal and tossed the wastepaper over the fence, something he would never have done in the past. And it occurred to him that he was probably beginning to understand the criminal mind. Once a man began to think of himself as a lawbreaker, perhaps all laws became suspect.
It was dark when he left the marina, driving back around the west side of the lake again, as if it were time to go to work instead of home to bed. But he was afraid that Kathy would still be up, and the thought of talking to her now—answering her questions, lying to her yet again—seemed at the moment a greater trial than anything Lucca could throw at him.
He drove downtown and bought a ticket at the only remaining porn theater in the city, figuring that the place would not be crowded and that he would not see anyone he knew. He took a back seat and watched a few minutes of pedophilia, a sexy-looking young woman sucking the big toe of an aging male porn star, a sexual practice Baird never had been able to understand. He would just as soon have had his elbow sucked; he couldn’t imagine that it would have felt much different.
He closed his eyes for a few moments, and shortly—actually a half hour later—he was shaken awake by the usher, a little old man with wispy hair and a single visible tooth, which made him look a bit like Oliver Dragon, a lovable, obstreperous hand puppet on a TV show from Baird’s childhood. The man wasn’t as funny as Ollie, however. Spraying the area with spit and vapors of muscatel, he told Baird to either watch the movie or leave the theater.
Baird left. And by now he was feeling as if the whole world automatically knew him for what he was, could see it as clearly as if he had a Day-Glo “M” stitched to his lapel. Why else would he suddenly be banished from parking places and tossed out of theaters? He never had been before, and in truth, it unnerved him, made him wonder if he wasn’t giving off an aura as unmistakable as that of the old wino usher. A jury wouldn’t even have to deliberate his case. “Guilty,” they would say. “Just look at the man.”
It was a thought that forcefully reminded Baird of how essentially sober he still was, not nearly as paralyzed as he needed to be later at home in case Kathy had stayed up and was waiting for him. So he stopped at Bramante’s for a few peaceful drinks in the gloaming and then went down the street to a fashionable yuppie bar, where he divined the essential difference between people, the two basic categories being those who looked at your eyes first and those who looked at your clothes. Since he was still wearing old jeans and a baggy sweatshirt, he understood that he was underdressed for the bar, that he should have been wearing either an expensive jogging suit or gray Dockers and the subtle, smoky colors of an Irish-wool sweater. Then too it would have helped if he’d known something about computers or hadn’t found himself pushed up against a young couple quarreling over the rights of the homeless.
He had two more drinks there, then made his way to what he thought was just an average cocktail lounge, located next to a motorcycle-repair shop, that being the reason for all the Harleys parked along the curb. Once inside, though, he thought he had stumbled upon a reunion of the Goths and Vizigoths, thirty or forty men running the gamut from emaciated orange-haired types to ones more like Leo, only bearded and tattooed, with great hairy bellies spilling over studded belts. They wore heavy boots and vests of sheepskin and black leather, decorated with signs and totems and other undecipherable symbols. Some were playing pool. A half dozen were at the bar. For the most part, though, they were just lounging around, yelling and drinking beer out of bottles. When Baird came in and walked to the bar, they fell silent and watched, as if he had just arrived from another planet.
The bartender came over to him, and Baird forced a laugh. “Hey, this is a beer bar, ain’t it?” he said. “My mistake. I been drinkin vodka all night and I figure I better stick with it, ya know?”
But as he started to leave, the bartender
snapped the cap off a bottle of Australian beer and set it in front of him.
“Here, this won’t hurt ya,” the man said. “Put some lead in your pencil.”
“Well, that’s what I need, all right,” Baird agreed, sitting down finally and taking a pull on the bottle.
Reluctantly he acknowledged the bikers on either side of him, both of whom were carefully looking him over. He gave them a nod and a smile of sorts and got back to his beer. The one on his left, a young man, looked uncomfortably like Slade, even down to the greasy ponytail. The other, a man probably in his fifties, looked more like Father Time, his sad, gaunt face framed by a cowl of long white hair and a wispy beard. His eyes watered and he kept clearing his throat. And something about him, either his old sheepskin vest or his open armpits, gave off the tangy odor of a wet dog.
Over the next hour these two told Baird their stories, the one picking up his own sad tale every time the other paused to drink or make a run for the toilet. They kept touching him for emphasis, and there were times when they each had a possessive hand on his shoulder. As they went on and on, he thought of the Three Stooges and how Moe would have handled them: hitting them simultaneously in the nose, then beckoning them close for the sharing of a secret and banging their heads together. But he was not Moe. So he drank and he smoked and he listened, probably because their stories were not all that common.
The old biker was none other than the man on the grassy knoll, the long-sought second gunman in the assassination of President Kennedy. He was tortured by guilt and wanted desperately to turn himself in but was afraid that the media would make a great circus out of it. All the famous men in the conspiracy—Oswald, Ruby, Giancana, Garrison—were to him Lee and Jack and Sam and “Gare.” While the young man wasn’t in the same league, he was nevertheless “one of the very finest” stage actors in America, as even his enemies would attest. He’d had supporting roles in two local off-Broadway productions and had “blown everybody away.” But there was a cabal of local theatre critics, every one of them a flaming queer, and they simply couldn’t stand the thought of a great young straight actor coming out of Seattle. So they had singled him out for special attention, had crucified him, butchered him, vilified him. Now he couldn’t even get a non-speaking part. The queers ran everything. Even the governor of the state was queer, did Baird realize that?
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