by Paul Moomaw
“You do it,” she says, and huddles down as low as she can get.
I maneuver myself to the rear and grab the tiller. The little outboard has died, but it starts again immediately. I swing the bow around and head across the channel, and after a few minutes we are out of the worst of the waves and into calmer water. We make it the rest of the way without incident and tie up along the small pier at Cap Sante. One of the workers spots us and sprints to the little office building. He comes back out with two wool blankets and carries them down the ramp to the boat.
“You got a little wet,” he says.
We wrap ourselves in the blankets and follow him back to the office. It is warm inside, and there is coffee. We sit for close to an hour, getting warm and at least a half dry while the boat is hoisted out of the water and towed to its storage area.
Most of the way back to Seattle we do not talk, but at one point Katherine says, “You could have let me go back there.”
“I could have,” I say.
“Eddy would have been happy.”
“I’m not your brother’s keeper.”
“But now your mine,” she says. “I read once that when you save a life or spare a life you assume responsibility for it. I’m not sure how I feel about that. Now it’s almost as if I have to stay alive for you, even if I need not to. What if I can’t carry that load?”
Suddenly I am afraid of losing her, of having to watch her slip away from me, and of not being able to do anything about it; and with the fear comes a bottomless sense of loss and abandonment. For a moment I feel like a small child, three feet tall and afraid. When I reach the next highway exit I pull off and stop on the shoulder. I reach over and grab her hand, hold it is tight as I can. She does not resist, but turns her head away and looks out the window.
“Look at me,” I say. She does not move.
“Please, Katherine.”
She turns to face me, but her eyes continue to avoid mine.
“I will help you carry that load. As long as you need me.” And then, into her continuing silence, “Will you let me do that?”
Katherine lets my eyes hold her briefly, then looks away again and removes her hand from my grasp.
“I don’t know.”
I have no idea what else to say, so I pull back onto the highway.
Katherine says she wants to be alone, so I drive to my house and get out of the car. She slides under the wheel, nods and offers a small half-salute, and drives away. I watch her go, a tangle of emotions picking at me. Then I go inside, relieved, if anything, that I can slip into the cocoon that is my house and stay there for a while. In the movies a near disaster brings people closer, but ours has only created more uncertainty. Part of me is astonished that I said the things I said to her; but deep in my center I feel a growing conviction that our lives have become attached in some subterranean way that I cannot begin to fathom. I want to be with her, and I suddenly am afraid that if she vanishes from my life, I will understand for the first time in my memory what it means to be lonely.
Inside, I change out of my damp clothes and then lose myself in the kitchen putting together a meal that is more elaborate than I would usually bother with when I am alone. I take the food to my table and eat it slowly, savoring every bite, while the sound of Nathan Milstein playing Bach’s partitas and sonatas fills the air. I finish with a brandy, and when I go to bed I am asleep almost right away. Some time in the night I wake up. I have had the dream again, and the afterwash of the red light is still there. I am in a room again, with a huge human figure silhouetted against a door that reaches so high I can almost not see the top, and someone is making a noise, but I cannot tell who or what. I lie in the dark for a long time, counting my breaths and trying to wrap myself in soft black emptiness, and sleep finally comes.
Chapter 43
I wake up in the morning grumpy. I feel out of touch with myself, as if I am not really here. I make coffee but it does not taste right. My body is hungry, but nothing I can think of to eat appeals to me. I fill my cup again and add a splash of milk. I have no idea why. I do not like milk in my coffee. I take a sip and make a face, and add in a spoonful of sugar. It does not help, but I decide to drink it anyway, for the caffeine.
The envelope from New Jersey is still on the coffee table. I know that I have ignored it as long as I can, so I pick it up. I always use a letter opener on my mail. It is one of those habits of neatness I have developed. I start to hunt for the opener, then shake my head and tear the envelope open with my thumb.
The note inside is the one I expected. It says to call Mr. Harris; but underneath, scrawled in red ink, the sender has added, “Call right away. This is important.”
I throw the note back onto the table and take another swallow of coffee. Now it is lukewarm as well as ill-tasting. I take it to the kitchen and have to catch myself from hurling the cup into the sink. I shake my head and scold myself silently. Obviously I am the paradigm case of out of sorts this morning. I place the cup into the sink, stare at nothing for a few moments, then sigh and go to the telephone to dial the number I have been asked to call.
When the other end picks up, a voice says immediately, “You were supposed to call before now.”
“I was tied up.”
“We got a problem,” the man on the other end says. I wait silently for him to continue.
“You messed up in St. Louis. The boss is unhappy.”
My immediate impulse is to tell him the boss can go fuck himself. I did not mess up in St. Louis. I cleaned up their mess. But getting into an argument with someone who is only the messenger boy would be a waste of time, so I keep my thoughts to myself.
“What happened?”.
“Gordini got busted.”
“So?”
“He was driving the car you used, and your tool kit was still in the glove compartment. He was supposed to deal with the car right away, but I guess he decided to go see his girlfriend and let business wait until the next day. He took her to a bar, and they got a little drunk, and on the way back he got stopped. Fucking DUI, you know? And it turns out that when you visited our friend,” he pauses, then says, “You know the one I mean?”
“I know who you mean.”
“Well, the guy at the gate takes down all the license numbers of non-residents, and the cops did their job for a change and put the numbers on a lookout list. So when Gordini got popped, the traffic cop checked his list, and there the fucker was. So of course they search the car and find the stuff.”
“It sounds like Gordini is who messed up.”
“It don’t matter. You started the job, so you got to finish it.”
“Am I supposed to slip into his jail cell and break his neck?”
The man on the other end snorts. “He’s not in jail. They couldn’t charge him with anything yet, except the drunk driving thing. He made bail, but they’re on his ass, you know?”
“I still don’t see how it’s my problem. I did my job.”
“How it’s your problem is this. Our friend was running a tape when you visited him, and you mentioned a name you shouldn’t have mentioned. The boss says you fucked up big time, and now upstairs is on his ass. If they lean on Gordini, who knows what might happen? He’s not made, you know? He may try to make a deal. The boss says that can’t happen. So you have to take care of it.”
“It seems to me that the last thing your people need is for my pretty face to show up in St. Louis again.”
“Gordini ain’t going to be in St. Louis,” the man says. “He’s already on his way someplace else.”
“I still don’t see why I need to be involved.”
“The boss says you were careless. You lost his respect. Now you have to earn it back. He says to tell you he’s sure you will understand.”
I understand only too well. This is as close to a threat as I have ever received from the Mob. After all these years, I am suddenly on probation, and I am being told clearly that if I don’t make the grade, I face termination.
“We’re going to meet you half way on this little problem,” the man says. “Gordini is traveling right now, all the way to Montana. We’re going to tuck him away in a cabin in the woods. He’ll be there Friday. He thinks it’s his safe house for now, and he knows he needs to stay there until he hears otherwise. Just to make sure, he won’t have a car. The cabin is twelve miles from the nearest town. That’s some place called Thompson Falls. And we made sure he knows he’s going to be in bear country.”
In spite of my bad mood I smile at the picture of a dumb Italian from St. Louis sitting in the wilds of Montana wondering what will happen next. He has to be frightened, and not just of the bears. He cannot be so stupid that he does not understand he is expendable.
As if he read my mind, the man on the other end of the telephone says, “You probably ain’t got a lot of time. He’s going to have nothing to do but sit there and think. Sooner or later he may decide to haul ass.”
“So I have to do this,” I say.
“You have to.”
“How do I find him?”
“We’re going to send you a map. You’ll have it by Wednesday. Thursday at the latest. Like I said, he’ll get to the place Friday. The boss says this has to be done before the weekend is over.”
“The boss says.”
“That’s right.”
I hang up without saying good-bye. I slam the handset down, in fact. Not hard enough to damage it. I would never do that. But enough to vent some of the feelings that are building inside. I woke up this morning in a mood, but not knowing what the mood was. Now I know. I am in a bad mood. No, not bad. Black. Dark as the abyss. Once again I wonder if I have been in this work too long. All things have to end. Perhaps that is happening to me now.
My mood continues to darken, and I decide I have to do something active. I find myself thinking of Angwin, who is the other side of my current problem. I remember Katherine telling me that her brother spends all day Monday at the Veterans Hospital in American Lake.
I look up the hospital number and dial it. I am usually cautious about using my home telephone, but this time I decide that even if the hospital has caller ID, my call will just be one of dozens they receive in a day. The hospital switchboard operator answers and I ask for Angwin. I do not intend to talk to him. I want to know if he is really there today. The operator says she will put me through to his extension. After a short wait Angwin answers and I hang up. He will undoubtedly assume it was a glitch in the system. Even if he doesn’t, he is not likely to rush home. He needs the work.
I go to my closet and stare at the hangars. Finally I pull out a pair of worn coveralls embroidered with the logo of a local electrical repair business. I put it on, add a pair of work shoes and a Seattle Mariners baseball cap, and head out the door.
Chapter 44
Angwin’s apartment is in a small building perched on the hill above Lake Union. There are three apartments, each taking up a full floor. Angwin’s is the lowest. I park up the street and walk to the building. There is no main entrance, just a door that opens into Angwin’s place and a stairway leading to covered balconies that extend the length of the two upper stories. There is no one around, which does not surprise me. This is not a family neighborhood. Most of the people here are young, single, and at work this time of day. I examine the lock on Angwin’s door. It is a fairly simple affair, a brass Schlage with a w-shaped key slot that tells me it has a wafer tumbler, a step up from the basic lock, but not much of one. I have been struck over the years by how many expensive houses depend on the same lock for security. There is a peephole at just below eye level, but the door itself is flimsy and a rap of my knuckles elicits the echo of hollow-frame plywood construction.
I pull out the black case that holds my pick set and select a special skeleton key that will slide into the keyhole but that has a bare shaft except for the very end. These locks have a series of eight wafer tumblers. The rearmost one, the master wafer, is the target of the key, which will push it back and disengage it without touching the other tumblers. After that it is a simple matter to manipulate the other tumblers while the key does double duty as a tension wrench. I begin counting seconds as I insert the key. I consider it a failure if it take me more than half a minute to pick a lock like this one. At the count of fifteen the cylinder clicks and turns, and I am in the door.
The apartment is wide and shallow, no more than twenty-five feet from the front door to the windows that line the far wall. On the right is a kitchen and dining area, with a half wall separating it from the rest of the space. The center is furnished as a living room with a long sofa, a reclining chair, coffee table and television set. The TV is a giant screen of some kind and stands between two speaker towers. On the left side of this space is a wall with three doors. The door closest to the windows is open. I look through and see a king size bed, a dressing table with a chair, and a full length mirror. A big window in front would offer a good view of the Olympics if the weather were better. A shirt and a pair of shorts lie in a wrinkled pile on the chair, and a pair of socks perches on the dressing table. A five-drawer chest stands in one corner of the room and sliding doors in the rear wall probably announce a closet.
When I open the center door I find a bathroom, and the third door reveals a smaller bedroom. I stand in the middle of the living area for a moment and then walk into the main bedroom. The dressing table has no drawers, so I turn to the chest. I open each drawer and rummage through. I do not have to worry about making a mess. The drawers appear to be stuffed at random, and nothing is folded. Angwin is not someone who worries about wrinkles. Other than his slovenly habits, however, the drawers have nothing to reveal. I turn to the closet and open it. It is filled with hangers, some empty and some in use. A shelf runs across the top, covered with sheets and blankets. None of them is folded either. I push them around to see if they hide anything interesting, but again I find nothing. The floor of the closet is covered with shoes and nothing else.
I turn to the main rooms. The kitchen has a neglected look, and I decide Angwin is no cook. That is at least one thing he and his sister have in common. The cupboards have a minimum of foodstuffs, mostly in cans. The dining room has a medium sized table that is covered with papers. I begin to sort through those. There are a lot of bills, including one from a Leo Lampman Investigations. I assume that is the man who got me on film. The envelope has been opened, so I pull out the contents. The account shows a large balance, and PAST DUE has been stamped on it in red. There is a larger envelope from Lampman as well. It contains a stapled stack of paper with the heading, Final Report. I read through it quickly and discover that, among other things, Lampman has checked out my address, and tells Angwin that the owner of record is one Daniel Harms.
“Damn,” I mutter, and put the report back into its envelope. I realize more and more that I have fouled my own nest by having anything to do with Angwin. I feel my bile rising but I push it back down. There is nothing I can do right now, and this is the time for a cool head. One thing at a time. I file Lampman away for future reference.
I toss the report back onto the table and go through the other papers. There is nothing of interest. Then I turn to the back bedroom. It contains a small mattress that lies directly on the carpet, a small mirror on the wall, and a brass coat rack. Against one wall is what I take at first for a wardrobe, but wardrobes are not usually made of metal. I examine it more closely. It is a gun safe. I have seen the type before. Strong but not that secure, with two small cylinder locks near the edge of the door. They open with a tubular key, and a key that will open one will open all. I have just such a key in my pick set. I take it out, press it into the upper lock, and twist clockwise.
The lock turns and I can hear the latch release. I open the lower lock and use the key as a handle to pull the door open.
There are no guns inside. Instead I see stacks of video tapes and DVD’s, and what look like photo albums. I open one of the albums and
almost drop it. The first picture I have turned to is of a small boy, perhaps five or six years old, with a huge, hairy penis in his mouth. I take a deep breath and begin turning pages. The album contains close to fifty photographs, all of them of little boys being sexually abused. There are scenes of fellatio, anal rape, adult tongues licking and sucking their penises and assholes, and bondage.
I drop the album to the floor and pick up another one. The story is the same, except that this time the children are girls. In the third album, children are having sex with each other.
The safe has an upper shelf that contains two large manila envelopes. The first is filled with more pictures of little boys, but this time it is clear that their sexual partner is Angwin. He is facing the camera in most of the shots, a broad smile on his face.
I feel a combination of disgust and elation. Disgust at what has been done to these children, and elation at having been wrong when I thought the gun safe contained no guns. I have found a whole pile of smoking guns, and all of them are aimed at Edward Angwin.
I open the other envelope, start to look at the first picture and then snap my eyes shut. I begin to shake, and the stack of photographs slips from my hand and falls to the floor. I stand there a little longer with my eyes closed and then, reluctantly, bend down and pick the pictures up. I look again at the first one. It is of a little girl, perhaps five. She is staring at the camera. She smiles, but her eyes are horribly sad, and I have seen those eyes before. It is a photograph of Katherine. There is no doubt. I put the picture back on top of the stack and stand there, frozen by my ambivalence. I do not want to see these pictures, and at the same time I am drawn to them, fascinated. I take them out to the dining area, sit at a chair, and begin to go through them. They form a progression, starting with that youngest Katherine in the first picture and moving through several years as she grows older. In the last ones she has developed breasts and pubic hair, and she sits facing the camera with her legs spread wide. The little girl’s smile is gone, and so is the sadness in her eyes. Instead they are filled with hate.