Sisters of the Road

by Barbara Wilson

  It was strange to think that ten years ago you couldn’t even get a croissant in this town.

  The Redmond was a four-story brick apartment house built on one of the sloping streets between First and Western, in a no-man’s land of vacant lots and withered blackberry bushes. There was a clump of men drinking Thunderbird out in front when I walked up to the door, but they let me pass without comment and with only a couple of leers.

  The glass door had a star-shaped shatter near the knob and the lock was broken. I pushed it open and found myself in a filthy, dim hall illuminated by a single bulb. I saw a row of metal mailboxes, their little doors bent open, their locks forced, and found his name on one of them: W. Hemmings in an elaborate scrawl. 4A.

  There was no elevator, of course, so I walked up, expecting at each turn of the stairs to find a nodding junkie or a rapist. By the time I reached the top I was a little winded. I was also wishing I had bothered to change my clothes again. The tweed jacket was fine if you were pretending to be a researcher, but it didn’t provide much protection against the icy air that pervaded the building. We weren’t far from Elliott Bay and you could smell the salt water in the draft.

  His name was on his door and I heard some cheerful reggae music coming from inside. I knocked without having decided who I’d pretend to be for him, without, in fact, having any story prepared. It was going to depend on what he looked like, how he acted.

  “Hi,” he said when he opened the door, after having checked me out through the peephole.

  “Hi,” I said. “Look—ah, sorry to bother you, but I picked up a girl hitchhiking the other day and she told me this is where she might be reached. She, ah, left a book in my car and I wanted to return it to her. Her name’s Trish.”

  I didn’t know if this was at all believable. In fact, if Trish had talked to him on the phone yesterday he might know all about me—he might even have been expecting me.

  But Wayne was a livelier and, on the surface at least, a less suspicious character than his father, even though he looked something like him, with blond-red hair and a well-developed build. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and jeans, and had an open, sympathetic, tanned face.

  “Sure,” he said easily. “No problem. I’ll give it to her when I see her.”

  I reached into my briefcase and slowly took out Jane Eyre.

  “Listen,” I said. “You mind if I talk to you a minute?”

  There was no apparent hesitation.

  “Sure, come on in. The place is kind of a mess, but I just got back from a trip.”

  The apartment did indeed look a mess, but it was a tasteful, well-heated one. It was a large studio with a loft in one corner and a curtainless view of the Sound and the enormous red neon “E” that hung over the Edgewater Inn. A large pine table by the window was strewn with brushes and paints and pads of paper. In another corner was a camera on a tripod facing a white screen, with a high stool in front of it. In the center of the room was a small red leather sofa and two matching chairs, arranged around a glass coffee table piled with art books and magazines. The stereo was a new and expensive one, with a number of record jackets stacked haphazardly around the speakers. There was a leather suitcase half-opened on the floor, with a few pieces of clothing still inside.

  “Like a drink?”

  “Just coffee.”

  He went off to a little kitchenette, moving to the reggae. I couldn’t quite reconcile his reality with the picture I’d built up in my mind. Playboy maybe, but pimp and hustler? No, he couldn’t be. He was too cute, too friendly, too good-humored. And obviously, he’d just come from a trip somewhere; no wonder Trish hadn’t thought of calling him.

  I stared at the suitcase; something about it bothered me, but I didn’t know what. Some small thing seemed wrong.

  I sat down on the sofa and looked at the art on the white walls. The paintings were pretty awful: large, lurid abstractions hinting at dog muzzles, fire hydrants, skyscrapers. The photographs weren’t too bad: cityscapes with dramatic cloud formations and here and there a nude. I didn’t recognize Trish’s body.

  “I haven’t seen Trish for a while,” he said conversationally, coming back with two cups of coffee and a can of condensed milk. “How’s she doing these days?” he asked with warmth and apparent concern. I felt myself flush slightly. It had been some time since a man, especially one so much younger, had lavished such friendly attention on me, as if there was no question he found me attractive. It was disconcerting.

  “She’s a great kid,” he continued, sipping his coffee. Too bad there are so many family problems. I’m her stepbrother, I don’t know if she told you…”

  My nod could have been yes or no.

  “…and I stayed with my dad and Melanie, his wife, and Trish, a couple of years back. I was sort of up in the air about what I wanted to do—whether I wanted to go to college or be an artist, you know. But Melanie developed some kind of thing against me. She really couldn’t deal with my way of seeing the world. Definitely very threatening to the lady. I finally split just so there’d be some peace in the house between her and my dad.”

  I sipped my coffee. “Maybe she felt you were turning Trish against her?”

  Wayne grinned self-deprecatingly. “Me? No, the lady just couldn’t accept the fact that Trish was going through some changes, that she didn’t think mama was the most wonderful person on earth anymore. My mother was the same way. But kids gotta grow up, right?”

  “Was Trish hanging out with a bad crowd or something?”

  “She was just doing what all kids do at that age—trying new things, meeting new people.” Wayne raised a quizzical eyebrow. “I mean, didn’t you? Come on, admit it,” he teased. “You weren’t always as sophisticated as you are now.”

  Me, sophisticated? He was having me on, but he knew it. There was a controlling quality underneath his boyish charm that was unnerving. If I were younger, if I were an adolescent, it might be attractive. Now I just felt annoyed and unsettled.

  “Listen,” said Wayne. “Trish was a smart kid and there was zero for her at that house. I mean, my father’s a redneck, face it. A beer-guzzling, football-loving hick. My mother just married him to get away from home, to shock her parents. I mean, I like the guy and all, but I was raised pretty differently. My mother and I traveled, she made sure I was exposed to art and interesting people. I just wanted to share a little of the world’s richness and variety with Trish. And old Melanie got jealous.”

  There was a knock at the door and Wayne excused himself to answer it. The man who came in seemed familiar somehow. Dressed in black chinos and a black leather jacket, he was in his early forties, bald, with sinewy arms, narrow shoulders and short, skinny legs. His black eyes were flat and unreadable as twin cameras with the lens caps on; he had a weak mouth and a silky black beard. The artist Trish had mentioned, one of Wayne’s interesting friends.

  “Karl Devize,” Wayne introduced him, with a hesitancy I didn’t expect. I didn’t know if it came from respect or fear.

  The name was familiar too. I’d read an article about Karl Devize in the newspaper a couple of years ago, when he’d first moved to Seattle. Something about bringing the East Village to Seattle and shaking up our provincial notions of art. “Misty skies and rain forests,” Karl had scoffed when the reporter had asked uncertainly if he didn’t admire at least some of the local artists. I’d been a little skeptical. Successful New York painters had better things to do with their time than shake the Northwest out of its dreamy dampness. Nor had the two reproductions of Karl’s work impressed me much: flattened metal trash cans mounted on large canvases and spattered with dayglo paint.

  “Pam Nilsen,” I said. “I was just wondering if Wayne knew where to find a girl named Trish.”

  Karl grunted and sat down on the sofa. His hands shook slightly as he lit a cigarette. “Thought you were going to meet me at the Virginia Inn?” he said to Wayne. It had been better when he grunted; his voice was unpleasantly squeaky, as if there were a rub
ber mouse trapped in his larynx that the throat muscles kept stepping on. After his initial impassive look he hadn’t given me a second glance.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve seen Trish?” I asked him.

  He ignored me. “You just about ready, Wayne? I could use a drink.” I had a feeling he’d already had several.

  “Yeah, sure. I’m ready,” said Wayne. He seemed flustered, as if he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t. He’d been acting the good-time party guy with an artistic streak for me, the concerned stepbrother who nevertheless hadn’t seen Trish for ages. Now all he wanted was to get me out.

  “I’m sorry I can’t help you,” he said. “I don’t know what Trish has been up to lately. I’ve been gone a couple of weeks.”

  I thought he was emphasizing that a little too much, but I wasn’t ready to challenge him on it. “I’m sorry too. If you see Trish tell her hi, though.”

  He showed me to the door, dancing a little to the reggae. Young, good-looking and devil-may-care, that was Wayne. I wondered how many paintings or photographs you had to sell to afford a set-up like this, how many girls you had to have working for you. Or were they working for Karl? Were they all—Wayne, Trish, Rosalie—working for Karl?

  Before we parted he touched me on the arm with misplaced intimacy and gave me another one of his disarming boyish looks: Baby, we could be great together. No wonder Trish had been, was, bowled over by him.

  “Be careful going down the stairs,” he said softly. This neighborhood’s not the greatest.”

  “I think I can handle it.”

  “I’m sure you can, babe,” Wayne said and smiled. “Come by anytime.”

  Just before the door closed I caught a glimpse of Karl staring at me from the sofa, his black eyes flat and hard.

  17

  I GOT INTO JUNE’S CAR and waited for a while, watching the door of the Redmond, but I didn’t feel very cozy. It was true, as Wayne hadn’t needed to remind me, that the neighborhood wasn’t the greatest. Men alone and men in groups passed by me, not very purposeful and unsteady on their feet, but still menacing somehow. Nobody went in or out of the Redmond, and after fifteen minutes of freezing and feeling more and more vulnerable, I drove off to find a phone booth.

  “June, it’s Pam. Can you meet me at the Burger King on First and Pike in ten minutes?”

  “I’ve already had dinner, thanks.”

  “It’s not to eat. It’s to help me shadow someone.”

  There was a pause of exasperation and then June said, “You are really taking this too far, girl.”

  “Come on, June, they’d recognize me. I need some reinforcements.”

  “Some people have children they just can’t up and leave when the notion strikes them.”

  “Can’t you take them to your mother’s?”

  “Somebody has my car last I knew. Besides, Eddy’s here. We’re having a nice quiet evening watching TV.”

  “That’s even better,” I said. “I’ll pick you both up in five minutes.”

  I knew Eddy only slightly but I liked him. He was tall and quiet with a closely clipped Afro and glasses. He worked for City Light and I approved of him choosing June for company. She stirred him up and he calmed her down.

  “I thought we were going to Burger King?” she said as I drove past it.

  “No, I want you two to watch and see if this guy Wayne and his friend are in the Virginia Inn. Just go in there and have a drink and look for them. Wayne is kind of short, and good-looking and muscular, and he has reddish-blond hair and a tan, and he might be wearing a Hawaiian shirt. The other guy is bald with a black beard and a kind of blank mean look.”

  June and Eddy glanced at each other.

  “Like I said, June,” Eddy remarked. “Why stay at home watching Miami Vice when you can be living it here on the streets of Seattle?”

  I dropped them off and parked the car. I spent an hour or so watching the activity on First and shivering, trying to put together what I’d learned today.

  Everything that Beth, Melanie and even Rob had said had led me to believe that Trish was too dependent on Wayne for her own good. Which made her reluctance to see him after Rosalie’s death pretty strange. According to Beth he was a manipulative pimp, with other girls, including Rosalie maybe, in his stable. Rob thought he was a nice kid, just a little spoiled by his mother, and Melanie loathed him. But even if he were a thoroughly corrupt character, what motive would he have for killing Rosalie and whisking Trish away? Assuming he lived off them, it wasn’t likely he’d want to lose the income. He may have lied about not knowing where Trish was, but it didn’t follow that he was a murderer. Whereas Karl looked like he could kill someone without blinking a matte black eye. If he had been the one to murder Rosalie he might have good reasons for wanting Trish away from the scene. Trish had said she was worried someone had seen her. Was it Karl?

  And then there was Rob. I didn’t want to completely rule him out. There’d been so much venom in his red face when he’d talked about Trish. Male murderers were often obsessed with the sexuality of their victims, seeing them as depraved beings it was their duty to eradicate. And he had a bad temper and used to beat Trish, even though he’d denied it. And what had Melanie said? “He’d kill me if I got involved with Patti again.” It was a long shot, but maybe he’d been following Trish, maybe he’d arranged to meet her to tell her something and Rosalie had gotten there first.

  Maybe Rosalie wasn’t the intended victim at all.

  Finally June and Eddy came down the street and got into the car, a little tipsy and in very good spirits.

  “Hey Pam, thanks for the nice evening. Too bad you couldn’t join us,” said June, pushing me into the passenger’s seat. “Can we take you home? Looks like you could use a hot bath. Your teeth are chattering.”

  “Very funny. Well, did you see them?”

  Eddy got in on the other side of me and attempted to bring my fingers back to life. “Hawaiian Shirt and Mr. Bald, yes indeed. Drinking tequila and having a great old time up at the bar.”

  “Were they with anybody?”

  “Hard to tell. Your friends are popular guys, know a lot of people. They were already there when we came in, so we didn’t see them walk in with anybody. They looked like they aimed to stay a while too.”

  “Sorry we couldn’t stay longer,” said June, starting the car. “Eddy and me, we got jobs to go to tomorrow, unlike some private investigators we know,”

  “Were there any women with them, any girls?”

  “You mean Trish? Nope. Just a nice mix of professionals and regular old guys, everybody getting happily soused.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Particularly the bald guy. He had his own bottle, looked like.”

  “There was one thing, though,” said Eddy. “At one point your friend Wayne said he wanted to make a toast: ‘To a successful business deal.’ Somebody who didn’t seem to know him all that well asked if he’d sold a painting, and a lot of others laughed.”

  “You want my opinion, he’s a dope dealer,” said June on the way up to Capitol Hill. “And cocaine’s the name of the game, the way he looks. Hawaiian shirts at the beginning of January. He obviously doesn’t feel the cold—his snow is hot, not freezing.”

  I was less interested in linking Wayne and Karl to dope than to prostitution. In fact, all I really wanted to know was what they’d done with Trish and if one of them had killed Rosalie.

  “I went and talked to Wayne earlier in the evening,” I told June and Eddy. “He seemed so friendly and casual.”

  “That’s the worst kind, honey,” said June. “You never know where you are with them until it’s too late.”

  18

  I WENT BACK TO SEE BETH LINDA the next evening after work. The drop-in center was just as crowded as before; it was like fighting my way through a teenage party to get to her office.

  “Well, you’ve certainly made the rounds,” she said in her comforting deep voice, when she’d heard my stories of m
eeting Rob and Melanie, Wayne and Karl. “What do you think now?”

  We were sitting in her tiny back office, surrounded by the bulging file cabinets and mountains of papers on the desk and chairs. Beth was wearing a turquoise and red tunic over black pants and a huge squash blossom necklace today. There was something both commanding and gentle about her presence, and it wasn’t just her size. It was the sense you had looking at her, at her slightly weathered freckled face and calm green eyes, that (aside from the Carltons) she had learned to tame her devils.

  “I guess I’d like to know more about what Trish has been doing for the past couple of years.”

  “I thought you might be back, so I got out Trish’s files. I looked for something on Rosalie too, but either she never came in, or she used a different name. That happens pretty frequently.” Beth put on glasses and warned me, “This is confidential stuff, so I’m not going to let you read it; I’ll just give you the main outline.

  “She was first arrested over a year ago as a runaway. Loitering. The cops don’t always pick up new kids for prostitution, especially if they’ve never seen them before. They give them what they call a talking to and what the kids call harassment and take them to the detention center where their parents or guardians pick them up. This happened twice with Trish—the detention center is a great place, by the way, to make new friends and learn the ropes. They bond with each other and the old hands teach the new ones.

  “Okay, the third time, someone from the vice squad picked Trish up in a car and says she suggested an act of prostitution. That means money was mentioned. There’s no way of knowing whether she suggested the act or the officer did. It’s happened that a girl who’s never done anything, who’s just been hanging out on the street, will be approached by a man who offers her twenty bucks to go with him. She hasn’t got any money so she says yes, and bam, she’s in juvenile detention with a prostitute label on her that she’ll never get off. Without having done anything. These are the kids we try to get to first with the outreach workers. Because once a girl has got that label, it’s like a tattoo—it can’t be washed off. The parents know, the cops know, sometimes the counselors and teachers at school know. She’s officially a bad girl, a whore now—something that people can throw in her face anytime she steps out of line.