by Stan Jones
Grace’s head was still down, the bill of the purple cap blocking his view of her eyes. “Wendy is my roommate.”
Everything he could think of saying sounded wrong, so he just said, “Uh-huh.”
“She takes care of me.”
He stifled the impulse to say, “I gathered,” and managed to get out what he hoped was a non-judgmental “I see.”
“You don’t see, but I don’t have to explain anything to you.”
“Of course not.”
She was silent for a moment, wiping her eyes with her fingers but not, for some reason, with his handkerchief. She just sniffed it and passed it back to him. “You smell nice. Safe.”
He studied the handkerchief, sniffed it, and smelled only clean linen. He returned it to the pocket.
“Plus Angie could still get Oil Dividends and I couldn’t.”
Another swerve. Where had they been before Wendy came over? Oh, yes—--directing traffic, and Grace’s decision to borrow Angie Ramos’s identity.
“Yeah, I remember your dividends were seized to pay for the broken windows on Four Street,” he said. “It was in the police records.”
“Sure. I couldn’t get a job, I couldn’t get a dividend. There wasn’t much way out for Grace Palmer. The dividends were just going into the mail when Angie got hit and all the street people were waiting for them. So I picked hers up at the Creekview and took it to one of those check-cashing places and I had myself a little grubstake.”
She glanced at his watch, which was covered by his right hand at the moment. “How long?”
He uncovered the watch and looked at it. “A minute to go.”
“So I took Angie’s dividend and got myself a room in a flophouse in Spenard, where people didn’t know Amazing Grace, and I started applying for jobs where they can’t be choosy—hotel maids, dishwashers, janitors, that kind of thing.” She stopped and closed her eyes for a moment. “I didn’t have my looks back yet, or maybe I would have hired myself out to adorn some lawyer’s front office. But I think this was a better transition. Is it time?”
He nodded and handed her a cigarette. The janitor came up as she lit it and stood silently by the table. “What is it, Joseph?” she asked gently.
“I should lock up sometime.” Joseph didn’t meet her eyes.
“Oh, God, I’m sorry.” She looked at Active, then back at Joseph. “Can we have five more minutes?”
Joseph nodded and shuffled away. “A Yup’ik,” she said. “Fetal alcohol syndrome, I think.”
Active looked around the cafeteria. The two other diners were gone—how had he not noticed them leave?—and now it was just himself, Joseph and Grace Palmer.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“You saw my police file, huh?”
He nodded. “You left quite a trail.”
“I wasn’t really a prostitute, you know.”
“You don’t have to explain anything to me.”
She went on as if she hadn’t heard. “My price was a bottle of Bacardi if the guy seemed right. But that vice cop had mean eyes so I told him I wouldn’t give him a blow job if he paid me a thousand bucks.” She laughed. “I guess that pissed him off, because he beat the shit out of me. And then he arrested me! But a thousand dollars for a blow job was so ridiculous even the judge didn’t buy it, so I got off.”
“I know. It was in the file.”
She laughed again. “Soon as this cigarette’s done, so are we.”
He still had questions, more perhaps than when they had begun, such as what about the cell call the police had missed. “Maybe we could go … well, go somewhere.”
“Nope. I’ve said about all I can for one night. Five minutes more, that’s all you get. You can come back tomorrow night if you want to talk to me again. Same time.”
The thought of another empty day in Dutch Harbor burning through his savings made him wince, but he said, “OK.”
“So, I got a job at a 7-Eleven in Spenard. Slurpees, Slim-Jims, Unleaded or Premium, Bacardi, Everclear, whatever it takes to get you through the night. My friends, they’d come in and steal food sometimes. I’d let them, those places always have a certain amount of shoplifting. If they took too much, I’d just pay for it myself so the company wouldn’t know.” She inhaled, held it, blew out a cloud of smoke, and waved the Marlboro at him. “They stole a lot of these things, too. Not good for them, but it makes life on Four Street a lot easier. Maybe even more than liquor.”
“You were able to quit drinking just like that?”
“Of course not. I went through the Twelve Steps and everything, I still go to meetings down here. But I did find that I could control it enough right away to hold down my little 7-Eleven job, which was one of the things I wanted to know. Made me realize even more that I was just self-medicating and liquor wasn’t my real problem.”
“What was it, then?”
She smiled, a tight, joyless grimace. “Not tonight. Maybe tomorrow night if you come back.”
The ensuing silence was so gloomy, he felt compelled to lighten things up. “So the Oil Dividend and 7-Eleven saved you?” It didn’t sound light at all, just forced.
But she laughed a little, and not the angry bark like before. “Yep. Angie Ramos, young urban professional. When my looks came back a little, I even went into Nordstrom’s and got some decent clothes with the last of her Dividend.”
“And the tooth?” He was ashamed the moment it was out, but she didn’t seem to mind.
“Oh, I had it fixed after I got down here and saved some money. What do you think?” She bared her teeth like a dog snarling.
“Perfect. I can’t even tell which one it was.”
She tapped a lower front tooth and smiled. “It’s an implant. They screw a new tooth right into your jawbone.”
In his mind he went back to the stack of police reports and tried to sort through the dates, hoping to ease her around to the cell-phone question.
“That business at the bingo parlor when you jabbed the guy in the eye—wasn’t that around the time Angie died?”
“Yeah, that was about the last time we ever went out together.”
“You could really memorize forty-eight bingo cards at once?”
She laughed again. “Impressed?”
He shrugged.
“Like I said, I was thinking of leaving Four Street, trying to cut back on the drinking, even before Angie got hit. One of the things I wanted to know was, was there anything left of my brain? So I’d go down to Aurora Bingo to see if I still had the photographic memory. Turned out, I did. But I guess some of the other Native ladies thought I was being bossy.”
“I gather.”
“I have other remarkable talents, too.”
“I’m sure, but why are you in Dutch - -”
“Got a business card?”
“Business card?”
She nodded, eyes wide and merry, expectant.
He pulled one from his wallet and handed it to her. She studied it for a moment, then looked at him.
“You put your home phone on your business card? Don’t the drunks and warpos call you up in the middle of the night?”
“Not as much as you’d think. And besides, as our secretary pointed out, they all know where the Trooper cabin is anyway. If I didn’t publish my phone number, they’d just come over.”
She grinned and began to whistle. It was delicate and airy, anchored by a short musical phrase that sounded vaguely familiar, but not enough so that he could name the song. It lasted about two minutes, he guessed.
“Recognize it?” Her eyes were still gay.
“I don’t know, Mozart? I’m not very good about classical music, I’m afraid. And what does it have to do with my business card?”
“It’s your song. Nathan’s Song.”
“What?”
“Look.” She pointed to his home phone number on the business card and whistled the anchor phrase again. “See? That’s your phone number.”
He had to close his eyes and tap the
digits out on an imaginary keypad on his palm before he was sure, but, yes, she was right. Her anchor phrase was the sound of his number being punched into a phone. “You can do this with any telephone number?”
“Except 9-1-1.”
“Somebody tells you the number and you can make up a song from it?”
“It’s a piece, not a song, if it doesn’t have any words, but I could hardly call it Nathan’s Piece, could I?” She stopped and gave him the merry, expectant grin again. “Anyway, this is a piece and, no, I didn’t exactly make it up. First I hear the number in my head, then I listen for a bit more, and then I hear the piece itself. Then I just whistle what I hear in my head. Or I can play it on the piano.”
She pulled down the bill of the purple cap and hunched her shoulders and played a little air-piano on the dining table, the Marlboro dangling from her lips making her look like a jazz musician. Then she grinned up at him and stubbed the Marlboro out in the mashed potatoes. “One more question and that’s it for tonight.”
Should he try the cell-phone question? Maybe not, she was pulling away already. Maybe tomorrow. “Why Dutch Harbor?”
The grin vanished and she looked around the cafeteria and out the window at the gray drizzle of what passed for a summer evening in the Aleutians. “Lots of reasons. It was risky doing the Angie thing where so many people knew Amazing Grace. Plus I needed to get farther from Four Street than I could in Anchorage. Plus this pays better than 7-Eleven and there’s no place to spend your money. Maybe I’ll need a couple more tours on Four Street to get it all out of my system, but right now I think the Illusions is where I belong.”
He thought of asking again what it was she had to get out of her system, but figured she’d just tell him to wait until tomorrow night. “What are you saving for?”
“Sorry, you used up all your questions.” She smiled and pushed the Marlboros toward him. “You bring these back tomorrow night at seven and I’m your girl.” Then she winked and stood and left so quickly that he didn’t have time to answer. He just followed her out of the room with his eyes. He picked up the Marlboros and matchbook and pocketed them as Joseph came to the table to clear away her tray.
“Will you hurt her?” the boy said.
“What?”
“Will you hurt her? Too many people hurt her already.”
“Not if I can help it.” But he thought of Dennis Johnson and the APD Homicide unit and had the feeling it was beyond his control.
He went down the hall to his room, wondering which door Grace Palmer had entered and what he would do if he knew.
There was still no sign of his roommate, except that the duffel bag was now open with underwear spilling out, two white T-shirts and a pair of boxer shorts adorned with red hearts.
He looked at his watch. He felt like the conversation in the lunchroom had gone on for hours, but it was not even eight yet. More than twenty-three hours before he would see Grace Palmer again, more than twenty-three hours to kill in what—garbage-eating eagles aside—was surely the most claustrophobic town in Alaska if you didn’t like rain or bars.
He peered out the window. It was still light out and would be for several hours more in the long summer twilight of the North Pacific. Maybe he’d take a walk. The rain had dwindled from a horizontal torrent to an almost-vertical drizzle. He’d walk to a bar or a cafe, maybe even up to the Royal Islander, drink a Diet Pepsi, and watch TV. Maybe a hockey game would be showing.
He pulled a rainproof anorak from his bag and left the room. He was passing the pay phone in the lobby when it hit him, the thing undone that had been tugging at the edge of his consciousness. He had not called Lucy Generous.
Not last night, after playing in the hockey game that left him with the headache now starting to throb again, and not the night before, when Dennis Johnson had derailed his scheme—how stupid it seemed now—to seduce Lucy over the phone. Lucy had been chased out of his head by the news that Angie Ramos, Grace Palmer’s friend and possibly her killer, had surfaced in Dutch Harbor.
He stopped at the pay phone and started to pull his calling card from his wallet, then thought better of it. How could he tell her he was in Dutch Harbor with Grace Palmer?
No, better to take his walk, think of what to say, perhaps call from a restaurant, from space not occupied by Grace Palmer.
He went back to the room for some aspirin, left the bunkhouse, picked his way between the buildings of the Triangle complex and out to Captain’s Bay Road, the music of his own phone number now stuck in his head. The drizzle was thinning but the peaks he had glimpsed as Captain Ross slipped the 737 into the airport between squalls were still veiled intermittently by shifting curtains of gray. He pulled up the hood of the anorak and started north along the road, crunching along the gravel shoulder.
A pair of headlights swam out of the mist. He watched as they grew into a white stretch limousine throwing up a bow wave of gravel and water. He realized too late the wave reached to both shoulders of the road, and so his legs were drenched below the raincoat as he leapt the ditch. He scrambled up a little bank to a footpath alongside the road and started walking again. Limo drivers were the same everywhere, apparently.
The limousine continued south, presumably bound for the Triangle complex behind him. What resident of the Triangle bunkhouse would travel by limo?
Ten minutes later, he heard tires on the gravel behind him and realized even before he turned that it was the white limo headed back to town. He stepped a few feet off the footpath to avoid another drenching, but this time the limo crunched to a stop beside him. “Nanuq” was painted on the fender in black letters. The window on the passenger side slid down with an electric whir.
“Want a lift?” rasped a female voice that sounded vaguely familiar.
He leapt the ditch again, leaned in the window, and studied the driver. “You’re from the gift shop at the Royal Islander. What is it? Sheila?”
“Hey, you’re the young fella with the Marlboros.” The driver stuck a ring-encrusted hand across the seat. “It’s Stella. Stella Quintano. Get on in.”
He shook the hand. “No, thanks, I’m on a budget. Anyway, I need some air.”
“Marlboros didn’t work, huh? I told you you’d need something stronger.” The lock button beside his left hand popped up, Stella wheezing at her own wit. “Anyway, get in, this one’s on the house for dousing you back there. Just put that raincoat on the floor in the back is all I ask.”
He thought it over, then shrugged out of the anorak and tossed it into the back. Then he slid onto the passenger seat across from Stella. The window whirred up, the lock snapped down, and she dropped Nanuq into gear. They sped off in a shower of gravel and mud, Active reflecting that it was far better to make such a shower than to receive one.
The limo was warm and steamy inside and Stella was drinking something from a wide blue plastic insulated mug with a Big Dipper of gold stars printed on the side, like the Alaska flag.
“Want some coffee?” Stella waved the mug at him, then used it to tap the top of a green metal thermos on the seat beside her. “It’s on the house, too.”
“I could, I suppose.” The walk in the rain had cooled him off more than he expected. He opened the thermos and poured coffee into the stainless steel cup that served as the bottle’s cap, then drank and studied the driver. She was wearing a baseball cap with “Quintano Enterprises” lettered on the bill.
“You own the Nanuq, do you?”
“Oh, yeah.” Stella waved a hand around the interior as though she were taking in an empire, not just a lone limo squelching along a gravel road in the Aleutian drizzle. “The gift shop at the Royal Islander, too, a coupla cabs, and a B&B.”
He whistled. “You’re a busy girl.”
“Ah, you gotta have three or four things going to stay afloat in Dutch.”
He studied her again, something tugging at a corner of his mind. “Quintano. Why is that name familiar?”
She gave one of her wheeze-laughs, then turned
and studied him. “You from Nome? You look like a Nome Eskimo to me.”
“My father was. My mother’s from Chukchi.”
“Ah.” She turned her attention back to the road. “Is that where you’re from? Chukchi?”
Was it? He liked to think he was from Anchorage, but he was well into his second year in the Arctic now. “At the moment, yeah, I’m from Chukchi. But how would you know what a Nome Eskimo looks like?”
Stella wheezed again. “I’m proud to say I was run out of Nome by the city council and the League of Arctic Churches.”
“That’s it.” He stared at his benefactress with new appreciation. “You made the news even on public radio in Chukchi. Something about prostitution from a limo?” He stopped and looked around the interior, thinking that any number of lewd puns could be made from the name Nanuq. “This limo?”
“This limo, but no prostitution. The police chief’s brother owned a cab company and he didn’t want any competition from old Nanuq here, so he started those rumors about me.” A telephone clipped to the dash trilled. Stella picked it up and rasped “Quintano’s,” then listened silently. “You bet, Sweetie, I’ll be there in a jiffy.”
She hung up and turned his way. “Some fish guys going out on Alaska Airlines. We gotta pick ’em up at the East Wind. What was I saying?”
“I think you were telling me how nobody ever turned a trick in your limo.”
“Right, right. Well, when the rumors didn’t work, this guy gets his brother the police chief to make it official. Next thing I know, there’s ads in the paper and posters around town signed by the police chief and the church council saying Stella’s Limo Service is engaged in—what the hell did they call it?—‘illicit commerce.’ The city council yanked my permit without a hearing and there I was!” She shook her head and wheezed out a laugh.
“So what did you do?”
“What could I do? I loaded Nanuq here,”—she patted the white leather of the limo’s dash—”on the first Herc out of Nome. Stopped in Anchorage to get my lawyer after the Nome city council and he told me Dutch didn’t have a limo and here I am, fat and happy. There’s nothing a fisherman hates more than having a big wad of money in his pocket.”