Black River

by G. M. Ford

  “What do you mean?”

  “You have a car?”

  “Sure. A rental Chevy.”

  “Then start with the cops,” Corso said. “Contrary to rumor, they’re real good at what they do. Go see them first thing in the morning. See what they’ve come up with so far. While you’re there, get a copy of your father’s financial records.”

  Downs started to ask a question, but Corso cut him off. “If it’s not about sex, it’s probably about money.”

  “But my father didn’t have a—”

  “Let’s eliminate the obvious, and then we can work from there.”

  “Okay.” Downs sighed. “First the police.”

  “Get an official death certificate,” Corso said. “Somewhere down the line you’re going to need it.”

  “Then?”

  Corso reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a business card.

  “When you get that done, call me and we’ll go down to the school district where he worked.”

  “Oh, listen, you don’t have to…. I didn’t meanto—”

  Corso held up a moderating hand. “Mr. Downs,” he said, “if you knew me at all, you’d know my offer’s got nothing to do with charity. With you or without you, I’m going to find out what happened to my friend and why.” He turned the hand palm up. “If, somewhere in the process, I can help you to come to grips with a father you never knew, all the better. What’s true is that I think you can be of use to me.”

  “How so?”

  “You’ve got the bona fides. You’re his son and heir. The cops are going to give and tell you things they wouldn’t tell anybody else. School districts are the most clamped-down, tight-mouthed organizations in the world. Other than admitting that somebody did indeed work for them, they generally won’t divulge a thing.”

  “What makes you think they might know something worthwhile?”

  “Your father spent a third of his life at work. As far as I’m concerned, that makes it a one-in-three chance that whatever your father got mixed up in was work-related.”

  “But what about…I mean, I saw it on TV. You’re covering that gangster trial, aren’t you?”

  “Tomorrow’s the day they try to tie Balagula to his businesses. Eight hours of charts and graphs, all of which I’ve seen before. If I’m going to miss a morning, tomorrow’s the one.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Good.”

  Thursday, October 19

  8:21 p.m.

  Lake Union lay flat and still, its surface gleaming like black oil beneath the full moon. Corso felt the unseen eyes the minute he got out of the car. He slowed down, allowing his vision to adjust to the darkness as he scoured the shadows for movement, looking for that slight vibration of line that separates blood from blackness. He whistled softly as he walked back up the line of cars toward the street. A Metro bus hissed by on Fairview Avenue, its bold advertising placards inviting folks to visit the Experience Music Project. Nobody between the cars. Nobody out on the sidewalk. He walked over and checked along the fenceline. Nothing.

  He gave an exaggerated shrug, lengthened his stride, and began walking quickly back toward the dock. And then stopped dead, held his breath, listened. No doubt about it: He heard the click of heels. He was still working on what to do next when the sound of voices snapped his head around.

  They were coming up from C dock. In the dim purple light, they seemed almost to emerge from the asphalt as they climbed the ramp to ground level. It was the couple from Grisswold, a Hans Christian forty-seven, about a quarter of the way down the dock. Marla and Steve Something-or-other from Gig Harbor. They used the boat maybe twice a year. When he’d left this morning, they’d been standing on the dock with Marty Kroll. Looked like Marty’d been giving them an estimate on refinishing the brightwork.

  Marla tried to work up a smile and failed. “Hi, Frank,” she said. She was pushing fifty. Tall and dark, she moved with a girlish grace that belied her years.

  “Hey, how’s it going?” Corso said.

  “It’s going to cost the better part of fifteen grand,” Steve growled.

  Steve was a big beefy specimen, red-faced and loud. Prone to sandals and Hawaiian shirts regardless of the weather. He sold something.

  “Without new sails,” Marla added.

  “Which is at least another ten.” Steve said.

  Sympathizing about the cost of boat repairs with other owners was de rigueur. Especially on those fateful days when day-trippers find out why you can’t let sailboats sit around for years.

  “Those kinda boat units will kill you,” Corso said.

  “I’m gonna put her up for sale,” Steve announced. Over Steve’s shoulder, Corso thought he saw movement among the dark pillars that supported the marina office.

  “We’ll still have to do the work,” Marla said. “And we won’t have the boat.”

  Steve looked to Corso. “Whoever buys it’s gonna want a survey,” Corso said. “She’s right. Nobody’s going to give them a loan unless everything’s in order.”

  “Shit,” Steve spit out into the night air.

  Marla tugged at his elbow. “Come on, honey. We’ll get a bite and you’ll feel better.”

  “Better be Burger King or something cheap,” Steve grumbled as she moved him along. “I just wanted a place we could stay in the city,” he groused. “Hell, we coulda flown over. Stayed at the Four Seasons. We coulda…”

  Corso had seen it before, but it was always a little sad to see a grown man finally come to understand the folly of boat ownership. He wondered if Steve had ever uttered the much used line about how a boat is a hole into which you throw money. Now he knew what all real boaters know. Every minute of every day, your boat is rotting away beneath you, and all you can hope to accomplish, with all the sandpaper and Cetol, the brass polish and bottom paint, is an uneasy stalemate with the elements.

  He watched as they got into a gray Cadillac Seville, backed out into the lot, and drove off. He stood still for another moment, waiting until the Cadillac’s taillights were nothing but a red smear at the end of Fairview Avenue, before he turned and started down the ramp.

  He used his key on the lock and then let the spring swing it shut with a dull clank. The line of boats sat silent and slack in the water as he hurried toward Saltheart, moored at the far end. He was halfway there when his hands, as if acting on their own, reached to raise his collar, and he realized that once again he could feel unknown eyes on his back.

  19

  Friday, October 20

  10:34 a.m.

  She’d become the body electric. A flesh-and-blood software application. An extension cord for millennial medicine. Her heart reduced to a series of green electronic waves, her brain functions to a skittering red line on a bright white screen, her lungs to the rise and fall of a small black bellows. Tubes going in, tubes coming out, everything stimulating, and simulating, and yet she lay as still as death, her fingers relaxed, her eyes motionless beneath the lids.

  Corso found himself thinking funeral thoughts. About the nature of life and how precious little what we call the body has to do with the person we are. How the body is little more than a container for the spark that makes us alive, that makes us unique, that makes us divine, and is ultimately no more meaningful or permanent than the red velvet box that delivers the diamond ring.

  The soft whoosh of the door diverted his attention: the day nurse, a tall no-name-tag no-nonsense African-American woman of maybe thirty-five.

  “There’s a young man upstairs,” she began.

  “The boyfriend?”

  She nodded. “He seems to feel—”

  “Yeah,” Corso said. “I know. I’ll be going.”

  “He objects to you being here.”

  “We got off to a bad start,” Corso said. “He’ll get over it.” He fetched his coat from the foot of the bed and shouldered his way into it. “You’ve got my number?”

  “Yes, sir. Both Ms. Taylor and Mr. Crispin were ve
ry explicit. Any change in Ms. Dougherty’s condition, you’re to be notified immediately.”

  The look in her eyes said she was vaguely annoyed by the extra instructions and wanted to know what the hoopla was about.

  “Thanks,” Corso said. “I appreciate it.”

  She headed for the bed, Corso for the door. In the hall, he turned right and made for the elevators at the far end of the corridor. At the moment he pushed the UP button his cellular phone rang softly in his pocket. He pulled it out, raised the antenna.

  “Corso.”

  “Mr. Corso, it’s Robert Downs.”

  “Where are you?”

  Downs told him.

  “You’re finished with the cops?”

  Downs said he was.

  Corso gave him directions to the hospital. “I’ll meet you out front,” he said.

  Friday, October 20

  10:53 a.m.

  Corso shuffled through the pile of papers in his lap. Pulled out a 1040 form.

  “Last year, your father made thirty-seven thousand dollars.” He pointed out over the dashboard. “Take the next exit. Stay left.”

  Downs put on his turn signal and moved to the right lane, running up the steep exit ramp onto Martin Luther King Way South. Doubling back over the freeway, running south alongside the northbound freeway.

  “Thirty-seven thousand dollars netted him just over two thousand dollars a month.” Corso shuffled some more papers. “From what I can see, he lived on eight hundred and spent the other twelve on your education.”

  Downs swallowed hard but kept his eyes on the road. Corso found a bank statement. “At the time of his death, he had a hundred thirty-nine dollars in his savings account.” Corso scanned the bottom of the form. “His average savings account balance for the past two years is one hundred fifty-three dollars and twelve cents.”

  “I don’t understand,” Robert Downs said.

  “Don’t understand what?”

  “How his average balance wasn’t higher.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Early last year, maybe a year and a half ago, my last year of med school, he missed a bunch of payments. I started getting letters from Harvard saying I better make other arrangements for payment or I was going to be dropped.”

  “And?”

  “I called him. He was never there, so I kept leaving him messages.”

  “How long did this go on?”

  “Three or four months. I’d already been to my bank. Signed the papers for a loan.” Robert Downs looked over at Corso. “I was going to tell him it was all right. I had a loan. It was no problem.”

  “And?”

  “He paid it off. Out of the blue. All of it. Not just what he was behind but the whole rest of the year.”

  “How much was that?

  “Forty-something thousand.”

  Corso sat back in the seat. “Really?”

  “Not only that, but the last time we spoke—”

  “When was that?”

  “A couple of months back.”

  “And?”

  “I was telling him how I was probably going to have to go to work for an HMO. How private practice was so expensive I was going to have to spend a few years saving my pennies before I could even think about going out on my own.”

  “And?”

  “And he told me to hang in there. Not to commit to anything. He said he might be able to help set me up on my own.” He lifted one hand from the wheel and waved it around. “How could a guy with a hundred-fifty-dollar average balance be thinking about helping me get into private practice?”

  “Beats me,” Corso said. “Turn right at the bottom of the hill.”

  Downs did as he was told, making a sharp right, rolling the rented Malibu along an access road between a Fred Meyer store and an apartment complex.

  “How much would it take to get yourself into private practice?”

  “A hundred thousand, minimum.” He threw a pleading glance at Corso. “That’s why I always assumed he was…I assumed he had…”

  “Means,” Corso said.

  “He made it sound like it was no problem. Like he just had to move some money around and it would be okay.”

  Corso ruffled the stack of papers. “If he had a portfolio he’d have been paying taxes on it.” Corso turned the tax form over. “He claimed nothing but his salary and twelve dollars in interest income.”

  The haunted look on Robert Downs’s face said he was as confused as Corso was.

  “Take a right at the light. That’s Renton Avenue. The school district building should be somewhere up the road on the right.”

  Half a mile up Renton Avenue, the Meridian School District was housed in a sleek modern building across from South Sound Ford. Robert Downs eased into a leaf-strewn parking space marked VISITOR and turned off the engine. He sighed and looked over at Corso. “What now?”

  “Same deal,” Corso said. “We’re following the money. Did he cash in his retirement fund last year? Did he have an insurance policy he could borrow on? Was he into his credit union big-time? We’re looking for any explanation of how a man with an average balance of less than two hundred bucks could come up with better than forty thousand dollars in a pinch.”

  Downs grabbed the door handle. “You coming?” he asked.

  “They’ll just make me wait outside,” Corso said. “You better handle this one on your own.” Downs heaved a sigh and got out of the car. As he stood for a moment with the door open, Corso could hear the rush of traffic and the car lot’s colorful pennants snapping in the breeze.

  Robert Downs was gone for thirty-three minutes. By the time he returned, carrying a thick manila folder, Corso had been through Donald Barth’s financial records twice.

  “Anything?” Corso asked as the younger man settled into the driver’s seat.

  Downs dropped the folder on the seat between them. “Nothing,” he said. “He’s got thirty-three thousand dollars in his retirement fund and a ten-thousand-dollar insurance policy, neither of which have been touched.”

  “You the beneficiary?”

  “Yeah,” Downs muttered, looking away.

  “Nothing to be sad about, kid. It’s how he would have wanted it. And you’re damn near halfway to private practice.”

  Downs leaned his head against the window. “It doesn’t seem right.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That I could occupy such a huge part in his life, when…you know.”

  Corso remained silent. Downs rubbed the side of his face.

  “It’s like he aimed his whole existence at me, and—you know—to me he was just an afterthought. This distant creep my mother talked about. And all the while he was toiling away so I could—”

  He stopped talking and looked over at Corso.

  “Listen to me,” he said. “I sound like something off a soap opera.”

  “Fathers are tough,” Corso said. “There’s a lot of built-in baggage.”

  Downs silently agreed, turned the key, and started the engine. “The school district has a maintenance shop. He had a locker.” He reached down, opened the manila folder, and came out with a small piece of yellow lined paper. “I got directions,” he said.

  Corso took the paper from his hand, studied it for a moment, and then pointed toward the opposite end of the parking lot. “Take the far exit. Turn right out of the lot.”

  “You find anything?” Downs asked.

  “It’s what I didn’t find.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like any records pertaining to medical school payments.”

  “Really?”

  “He’s got everything from your four years at Harvard. Every bill, every letter, every invoice.” Corso spread his hands. “Then, for the past two years, nothing.”

  “You suppose the police…?” Downs pointed the Chevy up a steep hill, into a seedy suburban neighborhood.

  “Soon as we get back to town, you’re going to check with them again. Make sure they didn’t miss
something.”

  “Maybe they’re holding out on us.”

  “Maybe,” Corso said, without believing it. “And then you need to call Harvard. Get a complete copy of your payment records. College, med school, the whole thing. Have them overnight it to you.”

  20

  Friday, October 20

  11:47 a.m.

  “I’ll tell you the same thing I told the cops. Donald Barth’s been with us fifteen months. A model employee. Never missed a day.”

  Dennis—call me Denny—Ryder was foreman of the West Hill Maintenance Shop. Age was turning his thick blond hair the color of dirty brass, but it hadn’t stopped him from plastering it back into a duck-tailed pompadour that would have made Elvis proud. A black Harley Davidson Road King Classic rested lovingly along the rear wall. Corso was betting it was Denny Ryder’s.

  Ryder wiped the corners of his mouth with his thumb and forefinger and then flicked a glance over at Robert Downs, who was holding his father’s uniform shirt up in front of his face, studying the fabric as if it were the Turin Shroud.

  “Nice quiet fella. Did his job. Kept his mouth shut.”

  “Where’d he work before?” Corso asked.

  Ryder’s eyes took on a furtive cast. “Before what?”

  “Before fifteen months ago.”

  “Musta been somewhere else in the district.”

  “You don’t know for sure?”

  “He transferred in with his seniority intact, so he must have worked somewhere else in the district.”

  “Must have?”

  “I don’t do the hiring and firing,” he said disgustedly. “The eggheads up in Human Resources do that. I just keep ’em busy when they get here.”

  Again, he flashed a quick look over at Robert Downs, who had folded the two uniform shirts over his arm and now stood, staring dejectedly off into space.

  “Like I said. I really didn’t know the guy very well.”

  Corso turned to Downs. “You ready?”

  Downs looked startled by the question. “Oh…yes, sure.” he seemed to shudder slightly as he started across the floor. He stuck out his hand. “Thanks for your help, Mr. Ryder,” he said. Denny Ryder mumbled the obligatory condolences and then followed Corso over to the door, where he once again managed a furtive smile and a clumsy testimonial on the subject of Donald Barth. Hell-of-a-guy, good-bye.