Matters of Doubt

by Warren C Easley

  She smiled and placed a hand on my cheek. “You’re coming back to my place. You need observation tonight.” Our eyes met and held for an interval that had no time associated with it.

  On the way back to Anna’s condo, I said, “What am I going to do about Bambi? I got her into this mess.”

  “There’s a shelter in Beaverton for women trying to get out of the sex trade. I could call them in the morning. I know the people who run it. It’s a great place. Low recidivism rate. Do you think she’d be willing to go there?”

  “She told me she wanted out. I think she meant it. Will she be safe there?”

  “Yes. It’s essentially a safe house. The address is kept under tight wraps, so the pimps can’t find their wayward girls.”

  “Bambi saved my life, you know.”

  “I know.”

  When we got back to her condo, Anna gave me a fresh ice pack and put me on the couch in her living room. I went out like a light, but an hour later she woke me and checked the dilation of my pupils with a pen light. She did this two or three more times that night. The next morning she shook me awake, handed me a mug of coffee, and said Bambi was all set up at the shelter. She gave me the address and said, “You can take her over there this morning if you’re up to it. Ordinarily they don’t allow access to someone they don’t know, but I convinced them you could be trusted.”

  “Good. I’ll take care of it.” I looked down at the coffee. “Uh, my stomach’s saying no to this. Do you have any tea? I can make it.”

  Bambi didn’t get up until after Anna had left for the clinic. Her eyes were red and puffy, but with her thick blond hair pulled back and no makeup, she looked like a college coed, a very beautiful one. After I accepted her apology for getting me beat up, and she accepted my thanks for saving my life, I broached the subject of the shelter. She jumped at it, explaining she’d spent a sleepless night making up her mind to return to Boise and face the music with her family. She wiped a tear away, saying, “I just can’t show up, you know? I need some time to let people know I’m coming.”

  “That’s what the shelter’s there for. I’m sure they’ll work with you.” I listened while she cried and told me about her family and why she’d left. Most of all, she missed her little sister, who was what, twelve now? When she’d cried herself out, I said, “Bambi, last night you told me there was something else.”

  She blew her nose. “Oh, yeah, that. Well, I don’t know how important this is, but I remembered an argument Seth and Mitch had.”

  I nodded encouragement.

  “It was at the restaurant. Maybe two weeks before Mitch died. I’d been in the restroom—the one used by the staff. It’s in the back, down from Mitch’s office. I came out and heard them going at it. They both sounded really pissed. I just froze there in the hall and listened.”

  “What were they arguing about?”

  She wrinkled her brow. “Something about the other restaurants, the ones in L.A. and San Francisco. Seth was saying, like, “We do the same gig there. It’ll work, I know it will.”

  “What was he referring to?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Hiding a growing sense of disappointment, I said, “Uh, that’s it?”

  She shook her head vigorously. “No, right after that all hell breaks loose in the office. I can tell they’re actually fighting. Then Seth comes out rubbing his cheek and cussing a blue streak under his breath.”

  “Did he see you?”

  “I don’t think so. It was dark in the hall, and he went the other way.”

  “What happened after that?”

  “That’s the night Mitch told me he loved me, when he said he wanted me out of the life. I told you about that.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about the fight the first time we talked?”

  “I don’t know. When I saw how broken up Seth was right after, you know, I just forgot about it.”

  “What changed?”

  “Seth did. It’s like, now he’s got this attitude. The big man. The other night he told Tiffany to go change. Said her outfit wasn’t sexy enough. That’s none of his damn business, you know?”

  “What did Jessica have to say about that?”

  “That’s the other thing. She’s going along with it. All of a sudden, she’s like hot for the guy, well as hot as she could be for any man.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  She shook her head. “It’s not like that. She just likes to be on top. Anyway, it just seems like they’re both enjoying Mitch’s absence too much.” She managed a smile. “So that’s what I wanted to tell you. I don’t trust Seth or Jessica anymore.”

  We talked for another twenty minutes, but I didn’t learn anything else. I still had a low grade headache and got dizzy if I moved too fast, but I managed to drive Bambi over to the shelter in Beaverton and help her get moved in. I wasn’t followed, either. I made sure of that. As I was leaving, I said, “Are you going to be okay?”

  She nodded, bit her lip. “Cal, you need to watch your back. Semyon’s going to come after you to get to me. I know it.”

  I patted her cheek. “Don’t worry, I can handle Semyon,” I said with knee-jerk male bravado.

  She smiled sweetly, came up on her toes and kissed me lightly on the mouth. “I’m sure you can.”

  That makes one of us, I said to myself.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  When I got back to Caffeine Central I found Picasso waiting outside. He was sitting next to his bike, slouched against the building wearing a black, hooded sweatshirt, cut-off jeans, and his ever present combat boots. When he saw me approaching, he scrambled to his feet. His eyebrow ring was still missing, and the neck of his sweatshirt obscured all but the single red, yellow, and black repeat pattern of his coral snake tattoo. “Are you okay, Cal?” He asked. “Doc told me you got beat up last night. She said it was some Russian cage fighter dude.”

  “I’ll live. Come on up. We can talk.”

  While Picasso wrestled with Archie, I brewed us both a cup of tea and used mine to wash down three aspirin. Watching me drink my tea, he said, “Thought you were an espresso geek.”

  “It’s tea today. I’m still a little wobbly.” I wasn’t hungry, but I could tell he was. I made him a three egg omelet with Gruyere cheese, toast, and diced potatoes fried up in red onions, sage, and olive oil. While he ate I brought him up to date. Of course, the first thing he wanted to hear about was my fight with Semyon: “Is the dude really a cage fighter?”

  “I don’t know. He was a little slow, come to think of it. Maybe he just bought the t-shirt.”

  “Man, I wish I’d been there.”

  “To see me get my butt kicked?”

  “No, to help you.”

  I chuckled. “The truth is I got more help than I ever expected.”

  Picasso laughed. “Yeah, Doc told me about the hooker with the two-by-four.” He put his hands together and made a chopping motion. “Ka-boom. She must’ve really nailed him!” We both laughed at the image—his imagined, mine seen through a fog of semiconsciousness. Then Picasso added, “Doc said the hooker had some information about Conyers.”

  I described what Bambi had overheard. After meeting Bambi, and in view of what she’d done to help me, the term “hooker” seemed unjust, and I didn’t use it.

  Picasso piled a chunk of omelet on a piece of toast and paused before wolfing it down. “I don’t know, Cal. Brothers fight all the time. Maybe that tip wasn’t worth getting your ass kicked.”

  I nodded. “The thought occurred to me. We’ve been assuming Conyers was killed by the person he was blackmailing. Surely he wasn’t blackmailing his stepbrother.” I wondered about Jessica Armandy’s role in this, but my thoughts were so vague I didn’t even bring it up. Picasso sighed, but not before taking another huge bite of egg and potato.

  “I’ve got much b
etter news about your mom’s case. I think I’ve identified her lover.”

  He lowered his fork to his plate. “Who is it?”

  “He doesn’t know I know. You can’t breathe a word of this to anyone, agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  “His name’s Hugo Weiman. He’s a big time lobbyist in the state.”

  Picasso stopped chewing and narrowed his eyes. “Did he do it? Did he kill her?”

  I raised a hand like a traffic cop. “Whoa, I don’t know yet. I’ve got a private investigator digging into it as we speak.” Then wagging a finger in his direction, I added, “You need to stay cool.” I was glad I’d left out that Weiman was the owner of the property where his mother’s remains were found and had suffered a gunshot wound on the day she disappeared. The last thing I needed was for Picasso to go after Weiman.

  We fell silent for while until Picasso spoke. “So, Doc stitched your ear up?”

  “Yeah, saved me a trip to the ER.”

  A mischievous smile spread across his face. “She’s pretty hot, huh?” When I didn’t respond, he added, “You married?”

  “Uh, no. My wife passed away three years ago.”

  He smacked his forehead with his palm. “Sorry.” More silence, then, “Mind if I ask what happened?”

  I looked down and studied the surface of the table. “She took her own life.” It was my dirty little secret, something that still hung over me with a stench of guilt. But there it was, freely admitted with little urging. I was again surprised at my trust in this young man.

  “Bummer,” was all he replied.

  We sat there without speaking. Cars whooshed by down on the street and a jackhammer some blocks away came on intermittently. Finally, I said, “Yeah, it’s something I don’t talk about much. It wasn’t my finest hour. I, uh, missed the warning signs.”

  He gave his lip ring a couple of tugs and sighed. “It’s easy to blame yourself when shit happens, man. It’s the easiest thing to do, believe me.”

  I met his eyes and nodded. I could only imagine the blame he’d placed on himself, a kid of twelve, when his mother suddenly vanished. I got up and made us more tea. I told him about my meeting with Cynthia Duncan and how she’d agreed to look into the scandal Larry Vincent had suppressed. When I told him Cynthia had talked to Ronnie Lutz about the broken camera, and it looked favorable, he said, “Man, that’s a relief. She did that for me?”

  “Sure. She’s in your corner.” I pulled out my phone, scrolled down to her number and wrote it on the back of a card. “Here. Use the phone I gave you to thank her. She’d be thrilled to hear from you.” Then it was my turn to look mischievous. “How’s Caitlin’s algebra coming along?”

  He shook his head and his face clouded over. “You don’t want to know. She’s got a locker over at Twelfth Street, you know, a place to put her stuff. And she’s in line to get an apartment, an apartment! But every time that fucking family of hers shows up, she forgets all about trying to get off the street. I don’t know man, it’s frustrating.” There was bitterness in his eyes I hadn’t seen since that first day in my office. “All they’re interested in is her income potential.”

  He needed to vent, so I let him go. I had little to offer except to urge him to be patient and to remind him how he felt at sixteen. To that, he shot back, “Yeah, but the street’s no place for a sixteen-year-old girl.” I had to agree. The streets were no place for anyone, boy or girl.

  I was still feeling light-headed, so Picasso did me a favor and took Arch out for a short walk before he left. I sat down on the couch with my laptop, caught up on my email, and made a few phone calls. I left a message for Nando to get back to me. I wanted to know if he had any thoughts on what to do about the Russian, Semyon.

  I laid my head on the back of the couch with the whole mess swirling around in my mind. I drifted off and dreamed Semyon was at the front door. When my cell went off, it became him ringing a doorbell. I awoke full of anxiety, my head pounding. It was Anna checking in. I told her I’d dropped Bambi at the shelter, and when I mentioned I still had a low grade headache and that my bandage was leaking she told me to stop by the clinic.

  My phone rang a second time. It was Nando. “Hola, amigo. ¿Que tal?” he barked out in his deep, accent inflected voice.

  “Bien,” I said without enthusiasm.

  “I’ve got some information on the gun accident.”

  I felt a flutter in my gut. I knew that tone of voice. Nando had something important to tell me, but he wasn’t going to share it on the phone. We agreed to meet at the apartment that evening, and I talked him into bringing takeout from Cuba Cuba.

  Later that afternoon I sat in a treatment room clenching my jaw and grinding my teeth. Anna had just removed the bloody bandage from my ear and was poking around with a cotton swab. Before starting this torture she’d handed me a small mirror. I took one look at my ear and looked away. It was a pulpy, yellow-purple mass, and the stitched, vertical split looked like the zipper in my jeans. But her warm breath was caressing my cheek again, which helped me cope.

  She said, “Hold still. I’m just about done. This looks okay, but I’m worried about a hematoma. If one develops, you’ll have a true cauliflower ear.”

  “Then what, a transplant?”

  She laughed, a kind of girlish sound I hadn’t heard before. “No, but I’ll have to drain it so the skin can reattach to the cartilage. We’ll keep an eye on it.” With that, she rushed off to see another patient.

  Outside, it was misting slightly, but not enough to stop Picasso from working and Archie from keeping him company. His mural of rowdy health care agitators was becoming more fully populated. They poured off the flanks of Mt. Hood like ants and crossed Portland’s eastern plain like an advancing army before crossing the Morrison Bridge. They carried signs and banners. The life-size lead marchers—Gandhi, King, Lennon, and Mother Teresa—were arm in arm and now fully sketched in. Picasso was busy painting John Lennon. The image caught the pop star in the blush of his youth, and he seemed to burst from the wall in three dimensions. I stopped dead. The image took me back to another time, and a thickness developed in my throat that I couldn’t quite explain. I waited a few moments before saying, “It’s looking good.”

  He turned around but didn’t smile. He was all business when he worked. “It’s a long ways from done.”

  “How do you decide who to put in?”

  He shrugged. “Artist’s prerogative, man. It’s just based on what I’ve read about people. John Lennon spoke out on health care way ahead of his time. So did King. I found a great quote from him that I’m thinking about using as the tag line for this mural.”

  “What’d he say?”

  Picasso set his brush down and leafed through his notebook. “Here it is.” He cleared his throat. “‘Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.’ Then I’m going to add something like, ‘Join the march for universal healthcare.’”

  “Nice.” I nodded toward the mural. “You really nailed Doc.”

  He laughed. “Thanks, man. You think she’ll like it?”

  I glanced at her image then back at him. “I know she will.”

  Picasso picked up his brush, but before he turned back to his mural, he said, “Did you get a chance to look into Joey’s situation?”

  I sighed more heavily than I meant to. It had been a long day. “Yeah, I did. I need to talk to him next. I’m tied up tonight, but I’ll be around tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, well things aren’t cool. I was in his tent last night. He’s got a big, honkin’ gun, Cal.”

  “Hand gun?”

  “Yeah, but it looks like a friggin’ cannon. He’s no danger to the public, but I’m worried what he might do to himself.”

  “Set something up for tomorrow night and let me know.”

  Nando arrived at Caffeine Centra
l just after seven with a large white bag filled with food and a six pack of La Tropical. After setting the food and beer down upstairs, he went over to the window and carefully moved the blinds just enough to allow him to look down at the street. My stomach tightened. “What’s up?”

  He let the blinds slide back into place and turned to face me. “Two guys in an SUV down by the corner are watching you. They look like Russians to me.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s one of the things I wanted to talk about.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Nando swirled a jumbo shrimp around in a thick garlic sauce, popped it in his mouth, took a swig of his La Tropical, and belched appreciatively. He sat across the table from me wearing a pearl colored blazer over a lime green silk shirt, dark slacks, and hand tooled leather sandals. I’d just finished telling him about my encounter with Semyon. He frowned, shook his head. “It is bad enough that you hurt this Russian in a fight, Calvin, but it is much worse that you caused Jessica Armandy to lose one of her girls. I believe this is called a double whammy.”

  The beer Nando had opened for me tasted flat and bitter. I set it down and shrugged. “Bambi wanted out. What was I supposed to do?”

  “A noble gesture, to be sure, but there may be consequences. I will tell Armandy that your fight with the Russian was unavoidable and that you have no idea where this Bambi has run off to. I doubt she will accept this.” He shook his head and made a face. “The sex trade is a nasty business. As for the Russian, there is no use talking to him. We Cubans know some things about Russians. They are a mean, stubborn lot. I could have one of my—”

  I waved him off. “I don’t need a damn bodyguard. Can’t afford it.”

  Nando shook his head and flashed that knowing smile that never failed to irritate me. “You are as stubborn as a Russian, my friend. Where is the gun I gave you?”

  I pointed down the hall. “In the bedroom.”

  “Good. If you go out at night, take it with you.”