by Earl Emerson
Although there was a Miata in the driveway, neither Bernard’s truck nor Iola’s Land Cruiser was in evidence. The nearest streetlight was burned out. Except for a light in the rear, the house was dark, the blinds drawn, and if anybody had taken note of my approach, I hadn’t seen them. The garage was to the right of the house and separated by twenty yards of grass and old concrete driveway. I walked through the grass, listening carefully for any cars on the road and mentally marking a large rhododendron in the yard as a place of concealment should I need one. Not far away on the Sound, a ferry slid across the black water. Except for the engine of a car below on Alki Avenue and some muffled music from inside a nearby house, the neighborhood was as tranquil as a mausoleum.
Feeling my way across the uneven lawn, I kept the flashlight off until I was up against the garage. For the first time in a long while I got the feeling that this was going to work out, that I would retrieve the bags and clear the property without a problem, that Tronstad would disappear with his share and our troubles would be over. The flavor of success stuck with me until I found the door jammed—not locked, but binding on itself, as if humidity or the earth settling had kicked the door frame out of plumb.
It wasn’t until I switched on my flashlight that I spotted the figure at the corner of the garage, a woman in jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. She was so still that at first I thought she was a mannikin. After a moment, I realized she had a gun, that it was pointed at my chest. “Hey there,” I said, trying to sound friendly.
“Don’t move, motherfucker.”
“Jesus. You’re not going to shoot me?”
“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t.”
“Is that you? You’re, uh . . .” I shined my light on her. It was the young woman who’d told me to stop dating Iola; the woman who nearly broke my thumb in the same way Brown had nearly broken it at the firehouse.
“Who the hell are you? Step into the light.”
“You’re Sonja. Sonja Pederson. I should have recognized the Miata. Gum. Jason Gum.”
“I know who you are. You’re the pipsqueak who’s been banging Iola. What are you doing here?”
“She’s your mother, for God’s sake. How can you talk about her like that?”
“She’s my stepmother. Bernard’s my father.” She lowered the gun. “Bernard is due home any moment. He’ll blow your balls off as soon as look at you.”
“He doesn’t know who I am.”
“You think Iola doesn’t tell him everything?”
“He knows who I am?”
“Maybe not by sight, but he knows more than you think. What are you doing sneaking around in the dark? You a Peeping Tom as well as having a Mommy fetish?”
“Don’t be crude.”
“I’m not the one banging a woman old enough to be my mother.”
“She’s not—”
“She’s forty-five.”
“I stopped seeing her.”
“Good for you. Now tell me what you’re doing here.”
I knew if I told her I was here for something I left in the garage, she’d scare me off with the pistol and search for it herself. The odds of her packing the three bags into her Miata and delivering them to my place were about a zillion to one. I was better off if she thought I was a Peeping Tom.
She put the gun away, then walked over to me and grabbed my hand, twisting my wrist so the flashlight illumined my face instead of hers. She had a cigarette in her free hand, which explained what she’d been doing outside. “You spy on her? You go in the garage and masturbate?”
“Heck no.”
She exerted more pressure on my wrist. “Then, what?”
“Let me go, and I won’t come back.”
Without letting go of my wrist, she inhaled off her cigarette and examined my face. Despite the fact that she’d already been outside some minutes in a T-shirt and jeans, her hand was incredibly warm. She held my wrist, staring into my eyes. Using the hand with the cigarette, she began patting down my pockets for weapons. When I tried to resist, she clamped my hand tighter, and before I knew it we were wrestling. Without releasing the cigarette, she tried to get me in an arm lock. When I fought that, she gouged me in the groin with her knee, doubling me over. Then she put me into the arm lock and turned me into the building until the rough boards were scraping my cheek.
“You’re the second weakling to throw me around today,” I said.
“Weakling? Maybe we should take a picture of this, so you can remember which one of us has a face full of garage.”
She patted me down and released me. It was hard to know why I did what came next.
Like a lineman taking down a quarterback with a cheap shot, I fell on her. She hit the ground on her rump, and it knocked the wind out of her, while I struck my left knee on something hard, probably a rock in the lawn. The flashlight whirled off into the darkness, along with her cigarette. We rolled in a tangle. She was like a wildcat. Flipping her onto her back, I tried to hold her down while she struggled, but she was strong.
What happened next was as strange as anything else in the past weeks.
Without warning, I slipped into a near-catatonic state. I simply went limp. As soon as she felt me go slack, she rolled over onto me and sat on my chest, her skinny haunches stretched across my ribs, pinning my arms, her head inches from mine in the dark. “What’s the matter?” she said. “You sick?”
“Yeah.”
Letting go of my arms, she sat upright. “You going to throw up?”
“It’s not that kind of sick.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Lots of things. My lieutenant died three days ago.”
She felt like a bird of prey sitting on me. It was sexy, too. Her stepmother had ridden me the same way. I put the thought out of my head, but even so, I felt a twinge of sexual tension, a tension that almost supplanted the pain in my balls.
“You’re the firefighter who almost drowned?”
“Yeah. Let me up, okay? You win.”
She stood up, reached for my hand, and hoisted me to my feet. Just as she did so, a pair of headlights washed over us and a vehicle pulled into the drive beside her Miata. “That’s Bernard. Let me take the lead on this. If he knows you’re here to see Iola, he’ll kill you. Just let me—” Before she could finish, he was on us, having slammed his truck door and rambled over to the garage like a grizzly. He stood now in the glow from his headlights, having produced a gun twice the size of the weapon Sonja carried.
“Who the hell is this?”
Sonja wrapped her free arm around my waist. “Daddy, this is Jason Gum.”
“Who the freakin’ hell is Jason Gum?”
“I was just—”
“He’s my friend. We were talking.”
“Out here?” I followed his eyes as he glanced at my flashlight on the ground, Sonja’s smoldering cigarette in the grass, tendrils of smoke rising into the cockeyed beam of my light. “What the hell’s going on?”
“I told you, Daddy. We’re talking.” With that, she laid her head on my shoulder. Her hair smelled of lavender shampoo, and I could feel her bony hip pressing against my leg, her arm tightening around my waist, a small, hard breast snug against my ribs.
“Jesus H. motherfrickin’ Christ,” he said. His truck headlights limned him, so I couldn’t see his features, just the bulk of him, and the beard. And the Howitzer. He was larger than I remembered. His voice boomed, “Why weren’t you in the house?”
“I had a cigarette. You told me not to smoke inside.”
“I thought you quit.”
“Just one.”
He looked at me. “You sneaking a smoke, too?”
“No sir. I don’t smoke, sir.”
“You lying, son? Because I can smell a liar a mile off.”
“No, sir. I’m not.”
He laughed. “You scared?”
“I’m scared that gun’ll go off by accident.”
“Goes off, it won’t be an accident.” He raised the g
un and pushed the barrel forward until it was six inches from my brainpan; I could almost feel the bullet scorching my bones and flesh. “I shoot you, it will be deliberate.”
“For God’s sake, Daddy. No wonder my friends don’t like coming around.”
Lowering the gun, he laughed again, then stumped back to his truck, shut off the motor, locked it, and headed for the house. “Iola around?” he shouted.
“Haven’t seen her,” Sonja replied.
After he was inside, she let go of me, picked up the flashlight, and stubbed out her cigarette with the toe of her sneaker. “Six years ago at our cabin on Lake Roosevelt, he shot and killed a man. Shot him five times and got away with it. They said the man was a burglar.”
“Good grief.”
“A year ago, after she had too much wine, Iola told me the man he shot hadn’t been a burglar at all. He’d been her lover. After she sobered up, she denied it, said it was just the alcohol talking. To this day I’m not sure if she was lying or not.”
“He would have known that? That the man was her lover?”
“I assume so. I don’t pretend to understand even half of what goes on between the two of them, but I wasn’t going to stand around and watch him shoot you down.”
“What happened to your real mother?”
“She moved to Wichita. Married a man from the old neighborhood—our real estate agent, in fact. My father tends to attract faithless wives. Iola’s his third.”
She walked me up the street to my Subaru and seemed reluctant to let me go, engaging in small talk for five minutes after I unlocked my car. “You seeing anybody?” I asked finally.
She stiffened and stepped back. “Not that you would notice.”
Before I could say anything else, she turned on her heel and went back down the hill. Like two small nations threatened by a larger entity, we’d established an uneasy truce after her father showed up, but a truce was all it was.
27. BITCH DRIVE SOUTHWEST
FRIDAY, I ARRIVED at seven-thirty, a full half hour before the appointed time, and was surprised to see Tronstad’s new orange truck already parked in the long drive, and beside it, Johnson’s shiny new Cadillac.
The house was on Beach Drive—or Bitch Drive according to Tronstad—a scenic, winding road stretching along the Puget Sound from the Alki Point Lighthouse south to Lincoln Park. As the name suggested, it followed the beach on the western side of the peninsula that comprised West Seattle. With its barnacle- and seaweed-strewn rocks, it wasn’t much of a beach, not compared to Alki north of the point. From time to time as I drove, I spotted the wreckage of the sunset through the trees and houses.
I loved this part of town, so full of wealth and privilege, as well as teenagers speeding around in Porsches or Infinitis. I would have given almost anything to have grown up here. It was ironic how much I’d craved money my whole life and how revolted I was now with the twelve million dollars in my possession.
This was an area of West Seattle the hoi polloi rarely saw, houses your average peasant like me never visited, not unless you showed up to install a sprinkler system, clip grass, pick up dog shit, or help tote in a piano with rags tied around your shoes. I’d done that in high school. It was such a contrast to the housing where I lived on the other side of the promontory: shacks left over from when the steel mills had been going gangbusters, little more than two or three rooms and a toilet.
Tronstad’s real estate license gave him access to almost any house for sale in the area, a privilege he abused at will. He’d had his license for two years, but lethargy and indolence limited his sales to the infrequent stroke of good luck or an acquaintance in the fire department who hadn’t been warned about him. His commissions were always gone within days.
I parked behind them, noticing that the bed of Tronstad’s Ford was crammed full of belongings, including his motorcycle, which he’d roped down securely. I squinted through the darkness to where a single porch light burned over a utility-door entrance. As far as I could tell, it was the only light on in the house.
“Hey, man!”
“Jesus,” I said. “You scared me out of my boots.” Robert Johnson had been sitting inside his dark car as I walked past.
“Tronstad was already here at seven. Think he’s setting a trap? You give him the bonds and he eliminates the last two witnesses?”
“You don’t really think that, do you, Robert?”
“Why not?”
“I just don’t believe it.”
Johnson climbed out of his Caddy and closed the door quietly. “Tronstad’s a loose cannon. There’s no telling what he’ll do.” He pulled his jacket back until I saw the butt of a semiautomatic pistol in a shiny holster on his belt.
“Oh, no, Robert. What are you planning?”
He brushed past me and walked toward the house. “The question is, what is he planning?”
“I’m not going in if you’re carrying a weapon.”
“You think Tronstad doesn’t have a gun? You think I won’t be protecting you as well as myself?”
“I think . . . Oh, heck.”
As we walked side by side to the house, I took some comfort in the fact that Robert distrusted Tronstad even more than I did, and that he and I had formed an alliance of sorts. There was no overestimating the maniacal thinking of a man like Tronstad, no overstating how fast a man with no conscience could move when you put the squeeze on him.
“You should get yourself a weapon,” Johnson said. “Pick up a rock or something.”
“I’m not very good with rocks.”
Just outside the door, Johnson said, “By the way, where are the bags?”
“Inside.”
“In the house?”
“I’ll tell you inside.”
He wasn’t happy with that, but there wasn’t much he could do.
The house was a two-story Georgian, white with dark green trim. The estate grounds comprised half an acre, all of it carefully groomed and maintained. The door was unlocked when Johnson tried it, pushing it open with the pads of his fingertips. “Hello? Tronstad?”
We went inside, proceeding toward a source of illumination at the rear of the house, Robert switching on lights as we entered each room. The house was furnished, though sparsely, as if raiders had taken favorite pieces, an open space here, an empty room there. On the walls were squares of lighter paint where artwork had been removed.
As we headed toward a light at the back of the house, I looked through the living-room windows and scanned the last of the pink-and-purple sunset over the Olympic Mountains. Puget Sound stretched out below the house, and at the end of the lawn a small dock jutted into the inky water.
“Took you so long?” Tronstad was in a chair at the head of the dining-room table, sitting in the dark, a bottle of Seagram’s on one side, a half-filled cut-glass tumbler on the other. He was slumped, so his head was almost below the level of the table, sipping from the glass, handling it with the familiarity of a man who was already half-tanked.
“I don’t see the bags. You didn’t leave them out in your car, did you?”
“They’re not here.”
“You didn’t get them?” Tronstad didn’t even raise his voice. He was in a semi-stupor. “You didn’t fucking get them?”
“No, and I’m glad I didn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re drunk.”
“I ain’t that drunk.”
“The bonds are safe. I just can’t lay my hands on them tonight.”
“You trying to buy more time? Is that what this is about? So you can think through the ethical implications of your measly little life? Because if that’s what you’re up to, I got news for you. You’re already on the wrong side of the fence.”
“I couldn’t get on the property.”
“What do you mean you couldn’t get on the property?” Johnson asked. Although he kept his voice calm, I’d been around him long enough to know he was pissed.
“They’re on somebody else’s p
roperty.”
“Go back for them now,” said Tronstad, calmly. “We’ll wait. Better yet, we’ll come with you.”
“Not tonight. I almost got shot.”
“You put them on somebody else’s property?” Johnson was growing more and more indignant. “Why would you do a fool thing like that?”
“If you haven’t noticed, I don’t own any property of my own. Besides, somebody already tried to break into my rental. If I’d kept them at home, they might be gone now.”
“Who tried to break in?” Tronstad asked.
“I thought it was you.” I stared at Tronstad. “One of you guys.”
“I didn’t do it. Swear to God.”
Johnson pushed a button on the wall and a dim overhead chandelier came on. Tronstad’s face looked yellow, the circles under his eyes dark, as if he’d been made up like a pirate. His red shirt contributed to the effect.
“Hell, I knew you weren’t dumb enough to keep the stuff at home,” Tronstad said, laughing. “You’re not the sharpest pencil in the box, Gum, but you’re not that stupid, either.”
“Who tried to break in?” Johnson asked. “Who else knows?”
“Brown knows,” I said.
“If he doesn’t,” said Tronstad, “he sure as hell suspects. And then, of course, there’s Heather. And whoever else she told, probably that whole lesbian rugby team.”
“They’re not lesbians,” I said.
“Carpet munchers,” said Tronstad. “All of ’em. Take my word for it.”
“Brown’s the one worries me,” I said. “And whoever comes after him.”
“We’re getting off topic.” Tronstad remained implacable. The times I’d seen him drunk, he’d been like this, sluggish, unconcerned, agreeable. “So we don’t have the stuff tonight. When do we get it?”
“Like I said. I’ll try tomorrow.”
“We’re working tomorrow.”
“I’ll take the day off.”
“Great. I already called in sick.”
“I called in sick, too,” said Johnson.
“Jesus, you guys. Don’t you think that’s going to look funny? The whole crew out sick?”
“Fuck, they shoulda given us merits off,” said Tronstad. “We went through some major trauma. Our lieutenant. Our chief.” He sipped, poured himself more booze, then laughed. “Yeah, man. We been through minor-league hell, us three. And you, Doublemint. You’re a fuckin’ hero again. Surviving the whirlpool that got Sears. Every time I turn around you’re a hero. Go ahead. Take the day off, you’ll probably rescue a baby on the way home. The mother’ll be a producer of the evening news. She’ll give you a blow job and put you on national television. Afterward, they’ll run you for senator. You’re golden, man. The only thing you gotta worry about is when they accidentally prick your tittie pinning all those medals on your chest.”