by G. M. Ford
"Who in hell is Beaumont Knox?" he demanded.
"Buddy."
"The old guy who - you mean - "
"Yup."
"Somebody offed him?"
"Yup."
"While he was working for you?"
"So it seems."
"You know who?"
"If id did, I'd be there."
Jed thought it over. Finally he asked, "Can you work around these assholes?" tilting his head toward the hall.
"That's what I've been doing. It's getting hard."
"Then we better answer their questions."
"You sure?" I asked.
"Have you come up with anything substantial?"
I started to answer, but he cut me off. "Never mind, don't answer that."
He paced about the little room, finally coming to rest at the far end of the table. "Sit here," he said. I walked over and deposited myself in the chair. Jed slid one cheek up on the table and leaned in close.
"Listen, Leo, just because they're incompetent doesn't mean that they can't eventually stumble upon the proper paperwork. Even a blind pig will get an acorn once in a while, if you catch my drift."
He glanced derisively over his shoulder.
"The only way to get these guys out of your hair is to at least partially cooperate, so here's what we're going to do. I'm gonna invite the Three Stooges back in here. Out of the goodness of our hearts, we're going to help them out. I'm going to stand right behind you. I'll hold on to the chair like this." He bounced off the table and walked around to my back, slipping his fingers between my back and the chair. "If they ask you anything you don't want to answer, just lean back against my fingers, and for Chrissake be subtle. Don't have a grand mal or anything. You got it?" I said I did.
"Tell me about it. Just the facts, none of your suppositions. Nothing you've found out. Just what you were hired to do," he said.
I did. He listened intently, stopping me several times at junctures where I was rolling over into areas he didn't want to know about.
"You're going to have to name your client, you know."
"I know."
"Is Mr. Flood aware of this?"
"Yes."
"Really?" He rubbed his chin. "Amazing. We can let them take it up with the ubiquitous Mr. Flood, then." He hesitated. "You're sure he's willing, now? Rumor has it that sending him a surprise package of cops would not be the recommended procedure for living a long and fruitful existence."
"What I'm sure of is that they're going to have a hell of a time getting anywhere near Tim. He's had lots of practice."
"That's their problem. Let's go for it."
They filed back in. Van Pelt, using prescribed interrogation technique, dragged a chair from the far end of the table, getting as close to me as he could. The two detectives held up the far wall. Van Pelt started.
"Is it correct that Mr. Knox was in your employ at the time of his untimely death?"
"Yes," I said. The D.A. eyed Jed warily, as if expecting an anvil to fall from the ceiling. Relieved, he continued.
"Do you have any knowledge whatsoever as to the identities of the perpetrators of this act?"
"No," I answered truthfully.
From the other side of the room, Trask made a noise like he was choking on a fishbone. Van Pelt carried on.
"What specifically was Mr. Knox doing for you?"
"Surveillance."
"Of what?"
"A building."
"What building?"
I gave him the address. Trask and Allen already had it. Van Pelt wrote it down anyway.
"Why did you have Mr. Knox watching the building?"
I unobtrusively leaned back in the chair. Jed jumped in.
"Any answer to that question would constitute not only bad faith regarding Mr. Waterman's duty to his client, but, more to the point, would be merely hearsay. Mr. Waterman has only his client's word as to the particulars of the circumstances."
I moved off his fingers. Van Pelt leaped.
"He has no privilege. He's not an attorney. As I'm sure you're aware, Mr. James - " Jed poleaxed him.
"If you want the particulars of Mr. Waterman's employment, take it up with the employer. As I'm sure you know, Mr. Van Pelt, you have a legal obligation to pursue all primary sources of information first and not to rely on hastily harvested hearsay." I winced.
"He's - " Van Pelt stammered, looking back at the two detectives. "Mr. Waterman is prepared to name his client?"
"Of course."
"Well," said Van Pelt.
"I was working for Tim Flood." I recited the address. Nary a soul bothered to write it down.
"Doing what?" Allen asked. Trask looked confused.
"Ask Mr. Flood," Jed shot back. "He's the primary source for this information. Do your job. Stop asking us to do it for you."
Allen started to speak, but clamped down.
They kept at it for over an hour, without getting anything else. Halfway through, obviously disgusted by Van Pelt's pitiful lack of progress, Trask strode the length of the room and slid a paper onto the table in front of me.
Jed snatched it up. "What's this?" he asked without curiosity.
"An arson report," Trask snapped.
"Snohomish County is a tad out of your jurisdiction, isn't it, Detective? You seem to be having enough trouble handling even your own meager responsibilities." Trask ignored the rip.
"Snohomish County arson's got a cabin burned to the ground, and what do you suppose they find in the vicinity?" he didn't wait for an answer. "A car antenna. From a Fiat. Not your most common car."
"So?" Jed inquired.
"So your public-spirited client here drives a Fiat."
Jed waited for me to lean back. When I didn't, he continued, rapid-fire.
"Have you, in some way, connected these pastoral pyrotechnics with the death of Mr. Knox? Have you forensically linked this alleged antenna to Mr. Waterman's car? Have you asked Mr. Waterman if you could examine his car? Have you accomplished anything other than this pathetic fishing expedition?
Trask lost his temper. "We tagged Mr. Waterman's goddamn car, but the fucking thing disappeared." Jed looked down at me quizzically.
"I'm having it serviced," I said.
"We're the ones getting serviced around here," Trask thundered.
"How many Fiats do you suppose there are in the state?" Jed asked.
"Screw you," said Trask.
"No need for that type of unprofessional behavior, Detective." Jed in his most annoyingly calm tone. "I'm sure a review board, especially in light of our cooperation, would find your demeanor - "
Van Pelt wheedled things into a calm. He tried, I'll give him that, but the poor guy was a lion tamer in a pork-chop suit. Jed ate him for lunch.
We were back on the street at one-thirty.
"You owe me one," he said as the revolving door deposited me on the sidewalk. "Get this cleaned up, co I can get you back to doing something socially useful."
"Right now a shave and a shower sound socially useful."
He looked me up and down. "In this case, I agree." He got serious for a moment. "All we accomplished here today, Leo, was to get you a little breathing room. As soon as they find they can't get to Tim Flood, they're going to circle back to you."
"A couple of days is all I need. If I don't have it by then, I'm not going to. By the way - "
"What?"
"Hastily harvested hearsay? Spare me."
"I just couldn't get on a roll this morning." A gleam appeared in his eye. I knew what was coming. "I was up all night worrying about this case you won't handle for me."
He started off. I yelled after him.
"Don't lose sleep over it, Jed. Only the mediocre are at their best all the time."
Chapter 24
Between the carefully combed rows of George's white hair, his scalp was bright red. "You callin' me a liar?"
"No, George, I'm not calling you a liar. I'm just - "
"I'm telling you,
Leo, these little jerks are planning to burn down a fucking boat shed."
"No way," I said.
"Earlene seen ‘em. Sounded weird to me too, so I followed up like you told me. I went down there last night myself. She's right. That's where they been going. No goddamn doubt about it."
"Nobody'd go to this much trouble to burn down a plywood boat shed. It just doesn't make sense.
"I'll show ya, goddammit," insisted George.
"They got it stuffed full of gas cans," Earlene said. "Been bringin ‘em in one at a time every night for a week. One of ‘em just strolls up the street like his car run out. Natural as can be. Ask Mary. She come with me." Mary nodded. "She was with me when the cops chased us off."
"The cops?"
"Said my big ass had better find some other place to hang out. Told me to get back downtown where I belonged. Said if he saw me down here Wednesday night, I was going to do county time. The bastards," she added as an afterthought.
"Why Wednesday night?" I asked. They gave a communal shrug.
I should have been more specific with George. When I told him to show up at four, I'd meant him and maybe Harold and Ralph. He'd brought everybody. My apartment looked like the circus was in town.
Thirteen damp, disreputable-looking characters were scattered around my apartment, perched on every available surface, fingering anything that wasn't nailed down and a few things that were. A half dozen of them were sacking my kitchen at this very moment. I made a mental note to take inventory after they left.
"You know what's going on, Leo?" asked Harold.
"Not the foggiest. Maybe - "
My explanation was interrupted by Nearly Normal Norman, who came shambling out from the kitchen. His massive, knobby hand was holding a blue Tupperware container. The cover was in his other hand. My stomach rolled. To the best of my recollection, whatever was in that container had been there for well over a year. Norman held it in front of my face.
"What's this?" he demanded. I held my breath and peeked inside.
Whatever it had been, it wasn't anymore. A metamorphosis had taken place. A forest of purple and green cilia sprouted from the original pile, lending a soft, furlike texture to the substance. It looked like it was about to moult. I grunted and waved it away, unwilling to expend any of my precious air.
Norman straightened up, stuck his rubicund nose nearly into the contents, and inhaled deeply. "A bit piquant," he pronounced, heading back toward the kitchen.
"For God's sake don't eat any of that," I hollered after him.
"Why? What could happen?" asked Ralph. A mistake.
Norman's head reappeared from around the corner.
"What could happen?" he bellowed, striding into the center of the room, fixing everyone with his maniacal stare. "I'll tell you what could happen. Two days from now, I could be down on the Square when suddenly my tongue could swell up to the size of a snowshoe. Then, with my luck, I'd get it caught in the zipper of my jacket. My eyes would bug out of my head and hang down, you know, like on springs." He gazed about.
Satisfied he had everyone's undivided attention, Norman began to augment his gruesome recitation with a robust pantomime, clutching his throat and staggering bug-eyed about the room. "I'd be flopping around on the sidewalk like a beached tuna, puking my ethereal fluids all over my shoes," he rasped. "Then - then - "
He gave it a pregnant pause. "The whitecoats would come and take me. They'd finally have their way with old Norman. They'd use me for their accursed laboratory experiments. I'd end up on a cold steel table, with my guts pinned all over - "
George gently interrupted. "Never mind, Norman," he said soothingly. "That's a fear we all have to live with."
Norman, seemingly appeased, disappeared back into the kitchen for further research. George turned to me.
"Norman's kinda running' his own movie," he explained.
Even though the Mexican lunch I'd treated myself to on my way home was now moving around alarmingly, my brain had been slapped into consciousness by something that Norman had said. I was talking to myself out loud. "The boat shed sits on Ship Canal, right?"
"Good, Leo," giggled Earlene. "Good thing he's a detective, huh fellas. Not much gets by old Leo. Yeah, Leo, boats work better if they got water."
They yukked it up. I let them have their fun.
Things had been pretty tense ever since George had tried to tell me that Save the Earth was planning a terrorist campaign on a boat shed. The relief was welcome. It gave me time to regroup my thoughts.
"What's on the road side of the shed?" I asked.
They had to think about it. Finally, George said, "A construction site."
"That's right," remembered Earlene, "Some university building."
"they was putting' carpets in all day yesterday," said Mary. "Me and Earlene watched ‘em from the bridge, didn't we?" It was Earlene's turn to agree.
"Interesting," I said, reaching for the phone.
I called Duvall. She answered before the end of the first ring.
"Pathology."
"Rebecca, it's Leo."
"Be still my heart."
"Are you still on the University Medical School faculty?" School you've got in mind, this is going to take significant alterations of your school transcripts. I'd recommend sanitation work as a more realistic choice."
"Are you?" It came out harder than I'd intended.
"A little testy today, aren't we?"
"Sorry," I said.
"No and yes."
"No and yes what?" I tried to keep my voice modulated.
"No, you're not actually sorry, and yes, I'm still a faculty member."
"You remember that animal research lab that somebody torched?"
"How could you forget? I'd like to get my hands on whoever - "
"What are they doing to replace it?"
"Not doing - done. It's opening Wednesday night. Big dedication ceremony. A ribbon cutting, all of that." She misread my silence. "Don't worry. I weaseled out. I figured you'd be under lock and key by then. You won't have to put on a suit and take me."
"Okay, well - " Something in my hesitancy put her on alert.
"Why?" she asked. "Is there something - Leo, if you know anything about who - "
I broke the connection, leaving the phone off the hook. Rebecca wasn't inclined to let questions hang. She'd be calling right back.
I was so immersed in thought that it was a full minute before I realized that there were a dozen pairs of eyes boring holes in me. Even the scavengers in the kitchen had stopped their marauding long enough to tune in.
"You got it, Leo?" asked Ralph.
"Yeah, Ralph, I think I do. It's insane, but I've got it. It's not the boat shed. It's that construction site out by the road. They're just using the shed for storage. They're going to burn down the research lab, either before or during the dedication ceremony."
"What are we gonna do?" asked Ralph.
"Let's call the cops," suggested Earlene, cackling madly.
"We can't," I said.
"Why not?" asked Harold.
"Because that's not what we're getting paid to do. Caroline's going to be with them. The cops will get her too."
"So what?" asked Ralph. "Burning buildings is not nice. Maybe she'd be better off with the cops." In the abstract, he had a point. Unfortunately, this wasn't the abstract. This was Tim Flood. I turned to George.
"You want to go back to where you picked up the cash and explain to those folks that we didn't get the job done?"
He didn't bother to answer.
"Maybe you could make a deal with the cops," suggested a little guy wearing about twelve sweaters. The bulk, when combined with his round, cabbagelike face, made him look a bit like the Michelin Man. As I remembered, his name was Waldo.
"We tell them what's happening and they let the girl go," helped Mary.
"They'll never go for it."
"Why not?" she asked.
"Because, from what I hear, this is maybe not the
first time they've burned the goddamn thing down."
"You mean - " George.
"You got it. They're dedicating a new building because the last one got burned down. This Save the Earth bunch are the prime suspects in the last fire. No ay the cops are going to let anybody skate on this thing. Besides that, there's probably state and federal raps involved here too. No way."
"So, what are we going to do?" asked George.
"We have to stop them ourselves."
"What does this have to do with finding out who killed Buddy?"
For Ralph, this was a most astute, if somewhat ill-timed, question. A moment of silence came over the group.
Daniel's admonition notwithstanding, it was now time to lie.
"The girl we're going to keep away from the cops was the last person to see Buddy alive. We need her. She's the key."
While the first part was the truth, the second part was, at best, highly suppositional. I changed the subject.
"How many of them have been going out there every night?"
"Five," said George. "Caroline and four guys.
"Same five every night?"
"Yup."
"You said you guys saw a dry run."
"Waldo and the Speaker saw it," corrected George.
Waldo spoke again.
"The four guys go in first. Caroline stays outside keeping lookout, then follows then in, maybe five minutes later. They went through the whole thing night before last, before the doors were on. Did it twice."
"Chances are that they plan on burning it tonight," said George.
"Why not tomorrow during the dedication?" asked Waldo.
"Sure would make a lovely picture in the papers," mused Mary. "All of them muckety-mucks standin' around while the damn thing burns to the ground. What a picture. Can you see it?" Her eyes glowed at the thought.
Pyromania became pandemic. The crowd was universally enthralled with the prospect. They all joined in, each adding a few more details and victims to the bonfire of authoritarian doom and destruction until, as nearly as I could tell, everyone in the city who wasn't presently in my apartment had been consumed by the flames. It had even begun to sound good to me until, having run out of victims, they began to cast furtive glances in my direction. This brought me up short.
The phone was now making horrible sirenlike noises in an attempt to tell me that it was off the hook. I replaced the receiver. Silence settled in like fog. The sound of scraping plates filtered in from the kitchen. I tried not to think about what it was they might be eating.