Matters of Doubt

by Warren C Easley

  Only one Xavier Bidarte lived in the Northwest, according to the online white pages. The listing was in Tacoma, Washington, but no address or phone number was given. I called Nando and left a message for him to see what he could find on this guy ASAP.

  Anna came over that night, and after dinner we drank wine and took turns scraping off the ugly wall paper with a kitchen spatula. The bare plaster walls, with bits of paper, patches of glue and gouges, were a vast improvement over the floral pattern that predated my grandparents. I saw a new side to her that night. She was giggly, funny, and spontaneous. We tried to make it to my tiny bedroom, but wound up making love on the floor in the hallway.

  Before she went home that night, I asked about Caitlin. As if I’d thrown a switch, her face darkened, and the blue seemed to drain from her eyes. She sighed and shook her head. “Caitlin failed her last drug test, and now the apartment offer’s on hold. She claimed it was second-hand smoke, but nobody’s buying that. I think they’re going to put her on probation. Oh, Cal, I wish Picasso could talk to her. He’s the only person she listens to.”

  I held her a long time, and neither of us spoke. Finally, she said in a husky voice, “I don’t know how much more of this I can take. These kids are ripping my heart out.”

  “You’ve got to maintain some distance, Anna. You can’t carry the weight of the world directly on your shoulders. It’ll crush you.” The corner of my brain housing my sense of irony began laughing hysterically, as if to say, Look who’s giving advice. But I had been there, damn it, and knew what she was feeling.

  She gently untangled herself from my embrace and left without saying anything. I let her go. I understood.

  Nando called the next morning with information on the Xavier Bidarte living in Tacoma. The quick turn-around meant he’d used an expensive online search service. I didn’t even want to think about the bill I was running up. Bidarte was the right guy since his job history showed he’d worked at KPOC until June of 2005. Nicole Baxter had disappeared on May 18 of that year. He was now on the support staff at the University of Puget Sound, a small liberal arts college in Tacoma. Nando gave me an address and phone number.

  I called Cynthia Duncan and told her what I’d found. We agreed to drive up together and talk to Bidarte. To make sure he was home Cynthia would call and make an appointment, using a cover story similar to mine. We figured he’d be more receptive to a cold call from a woman.

  That afternoon, I met with Picasso’s attorney, Alicia Cole, to go back over what I’d witnessed at the Conyers’ crime scene, and to discuss my theories—they were nothing more than that—about who really killed Conyers. I didn’t tell her I’d located X-Man. I didn’t want to jinx it. I did tell her to be sure to depose Seth Foster and Jessica Armandy. It would be interesting to know what they stood to gain by Conyers’ death. According to Bambi, Foster was now acting like he owned the Happy Angus. Did he? And what, exactly, was Conyers’ business relationship with Armandy?

  Cynthia swung by after rush hour the next morning to pick me up. I intended to take Archie with us, but Anna convinced me to leave him at the clinic. Picasso’s posse would take good care of him, she assured me. I agreed after telling her not to let them take Arch off the property. We headed north on the I-5. At Cynthia’s insistence we took her car, a late model Toyota. Better gas mileage, she explained. She wore a short skirt, black tights, boots, and a conservative white blouse. A full bottle of raspberry-flavored water stood at the ready in her cup holder. “In case she got the munchies.” We sped through North Portland toward the Columbia River Bridge at eighty-five miles an hour. So much for gas mileage. Her hands gripped the steering wheel like she was strangling a snake.

  She said, “God, my boss is such a wimp. He keeps saying, ‘Now, go slow on this Vincent thing, Cynthia. Keep me in the loop.’” She laughed sharply and the car speed nudged over eighty five. “I didn’t even tell him about what we’re up to today. I’m not sure he really wants me to work on this, but he doesn’t have the balls to tell me no. I think he’s hoping I’ll just give up.”

  Fat chance, I thought to myself. To get my mind off my personal safety, I switched on the radio and tuned into KPOC just in time to hear, “gun-toting, God-fearing, pro-life warrior, Larry Vincent.”

  Cynthia groaned. “Oh, God, give me a break. It’s too early in the morning for him.”

  I laughed. “Let’s hear what he has to say.”

  Vincent started off the program by combing through the news for items to comment on. There was the high cost of the state government pension plan and the proposed new bridge across the Columbia River, both monuments to the stupidity and greed of the local politicians. A bill in the Oregon legislature barring teens from tanning salons was ridiculed as anti-business. There was the serial rapist operating in and around Forest Park. About this, Vincent said, “You wait, folks, when they catch this guy, we’ll find out he’s one of those homeless creeps camping out in the park. Mark my words.”

  Cynthia reached across and turned off the radio. “That racist, hypocritical bastard. He’s triggering my gag reflex.”

  I laughed. “Tell me how you really feel.”

  Gray clouds spit rainy mist most of the way, but just before the turnoff to Olympia, the clouds parted and Mt. Rainier loomed out of the east, a white bearded behemoth peering down on the thousands upon thousands of homes and businesses scattered on its western flanks. I found myself wondering what will happen when it decides to blow like its sister, Mt. St. Helens.

  We met Bidarte in front of the student union on the Puget Sound campus, which looked like a movie set with rich green lawns dotted with old growth cedars and ivy-covered brick buildings. We followed him into a small coffee shop adjacent to the dining hall. I was relieved that the place was nearly empty. We could talk without the risk of being overheard. Bidarte had sharp features, a quick smile, and eyes that were darker than his black hair. He had the build of a runner, and his clothes—an open collar button down tucked into crisply pressed jeans and low cut hiking boots—draped his slender frame with casual elegance. Cynthia said something under her breath that included the words “so hot.” I missed the rest but caught her drift.

  Cynthia nursed her flavored water, and by the time Bidarte’s and my coffees arrived, it was clear I was odd man out. Their eyes were locked together and the space across the table so charged I felt that if I put my hand between them I’d get zapped. After some small talk about the scene in Portland, Bidarte said, “So, tell me about this project you and Cal are working on.”

  Cynthia moved her eyes from Bidarte to me. We had agreed that I would be the one to break the ice, as it were. By this time, I was having my inevitable second thoughts. What’s the chance this guy’s X-Man? What was I thinking, anyway? But I barged ahead. “Xavier, we’re really not researching the history of radio in the Northwest. I’m an attorney and Cynthia here is a newspaper reporter. We think you were the source of a story another reporter was working on eight years ago, in the spring of 2005. The reporter was Nicole Baxter, and the story concerned Larry Vincent, your boss at KPOC.”

  The words hung between us, solid, palpable—a wall or a bridge, I couldn’t tell which. Except for the muscles that flexed along his jaw line, Xavier held a neutral expression. He looked at me, then Cynthia, set his coffee down and got up. Cynthia sprang to her feet before I could move. “Don’t go,” she said. “We need your help, Xavier. Talk to us.”

  Looking directly at Cynthia, he said, “I don’t appreciate being set up.”

  A blue vein appeared in Cynthia’s neck. “We just want to talk to you. Hear us out.”

  “Why should I? There’s nothing in this for me except trouble.”

  I didn’t dare move or speak. This was between the two of them.

  Color filled Cynthia’s cheeks, and she leaned forward with both hands on the table. “You’re wrong, Xavier. You have a chance to do the right thing. I think yo
u’ve been waiting for this chance. Now sit down. Please.”

  An eternity passed while they stood glaring at each other. Finally he exhaled a breath, shook his head, and sat back down.

  “So, what do you want to know?”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  “Oh my God, I thought he was going to walk for sure,” Cynthia said, her hands clamped on the steering wheel as we tore onto the I-5 heading back to Portland.

  I laughed. “Not a chance. He was hopelessly smitten by you, but I’m sure you didn’t notice.”

  She shot me a faux indignant look. “I wasn’t using him, Cal. I’d say it worked out pretty well all the way around. He’s coming down to Portland next weekend.”

  It had worked out well indeed. Xavier Bidarte was hesitant at first, but once he started to talk he told us everything. He was X-Man—his name choice—and Larry Vincent was the target of Nicole Baxter’s exposé. Vincent’s victim was a beautiful young girl named Sherrill Blanchard. She wasn’t a baby sitter, as the rumors had it, but a high school intern at the station. Bidarte had seen Vincent with her too many times. His suspicions were confirmed when he saw her late one night in Vincent’s car, at least until Vincent’s hand came up and pushed her head down. He went to the girl’s mother, then the police, and was first astonished and then angered when nothing happened.

  Cynthia shook her head. “I’ll bet Nicky was surprised when Xavier walked in and handed her a story like that on a platter. I can’t believe she didn’t tell me about it.”

  “Yeah,” I responded, “but she wouldn’t have had much if Xavier hadn’t hacked Vincent’s email. Those puppy-love notes from the girl and Vincent’s explicit responses back to her, compounded by the beginnings of the negotiations with the mother, gave her the makings of a bombshell with a lot of shrapnel.”

  “I can understand why Xavier left Portland,” Cynthia went on. “I mean, suddenly Nicky disappears along with all the evidence he’d supplied her, and nobody else seemed to give a shit about the situation, including the girl’s mother.” Cynthia squeezed the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white. The speedometer nudged over ninety. “I can’t believe Xavier didn’t keep a copy of those files. We can’t prove a damn thing unless the girl’s willing to talk after all this time.”

  We discussed various strategies for approaching Sherrill Blanchard, who was now a young woman of twenty-two or three. Bidarte had no idea what had become of her. The best approach, we decided, was a direct one. Cynthia would make the contact, provided we could locate Blanchard, which we didn’t think would be that hard.

  This was good as far as it went. Cynthia had a shot at resurrecting the blockbuster story that her friend was working on when she was killed. The story would take down a man who richly deserved it. But none of this helped Picasso. Sure, I now knew that Baxter had damaging information about Larry Vincent. When she vanished, it wasn’t a stretch to believe that Mitch Conyers found the files and used them to blackmail Larry Vincent, who in turn killed him for it. Trouble is, I couldn’t prove it. Not yet, anyway.

  Cynthia let me off at the clinic. A couple of kids hanging out on the vacant lot next to the mural told me Caitlin had taken Archie down to the Burnside Bridge. I felt a twinge of anger at this. I was feeling less sanguine about Caitlin and didn’t want Archie out and about in the city without close supervision. I found them with a group of kids lounging in Ankeny Square. Arch yelped when he saw me and pulled her out of the group by his leash to meet me. The oily herb smell of marijuana hung in the still air. The tall, blond kid I’d seen over at the clinic stood up, shot me an annoyed look, and said, “Well, finally. Come on, Snuggles, let’s get out of here.”

  I said to Caitlin, “Snuggles?”

  She dropped her eyes and looked embarrassed. “Yeah, well, it’s what my family calls me.”

  I said, “Didn’t Anna tell you not to bring Archie down here?”

  “Uh, yeah, she did.” She glanced at the group, then back at me. “They wanted to come down here. I didn’t think it would hurt.”

  I nodded. “I can smell the pot, Caitlin. I know you’re on probation. You sure you want to hang with these kids?”

  “Come on, Snuggles, let’s go,” one of the girls in the group called out.

  She shuffled her feet for a few moments, then patted Archie on the head and turned to join them.

  “Thanks for watching my dog,” I said to her as she walked away. She hesitated a moment as if she were going to turn and say something, but apparently thought better of it. Archie whimpered softly as she hurried off to join the group.

  That night I had dinner with Nando at a Vietnamese joint over on Division called Pok Pok. He wore linen slacks and a salmon colored silk golf shirt stretched taut by his ample girth. After our beers had arrived and he had finished ordering for us—prawns grilled over charcoal, boar collar meat rubbed with garlic, and a noodle dish served with minced pineapple, ginger, and green mango—I said, “Putting on some weight, I see.”

  He took a long pull on his beer, then smiled and patted his stomach. “It is probably true, although I do not own a scale.” He wagged a finger at me. “Eating well can never hurt you.”

  I laughed. “I know a woman who would argue that point,” and went on to tell him what Cynthia Duncan and I had learned from Xavier Bidarte.

  After I’d finished and answered his questions, he said, “The blackmail theory is admirable, Calvin, but we have no evidence that Conyers was blackmailing anybody, let alone this ball of sleeze, Vincent.”

  “Tell me about it. I need to talk to Jessica Armandy again. If Conyers was blackmailing somebody, she would know about it. No doubt in my mind.”

  Nando arched his thick eyebrows. “The last time you talked to her it did not go so well.”

  “Look, she thinks I have some leverage with Bambi, right?”

  He popped another shrimp in his mouth and nodded. “She would probably like you to speak to the young girl, get her to leave the other girls alone. Bambi has been bad for her business.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t do that even if I could, but Armandy doesn’t know that. Suppose you told her I wanted to talk about a deal?”

  “A deal you have no intention of honoring?”

  “She wouldn’t know that,” I answered, and when Nando shot me a judgmental look, I snapped back, “Damn it, a young man’s life is on the line here. Give me a break.”

  He shook his head and made a face. “This is very risky, my friend. And the Russian who dislikes you, you will have to worry about him, too.”

  “I know that. Just set it up, Nando. Please.”

  As it turned out, the problem of the Russian who disliked me came to a head sooner than I thought it would. Nando had just pulled away after dropping me off at Caffeine Central. I know, I should have had my guard up, but nothing looked out of place on the deserted street. I was fumbling for my keys in the dim glow of the streetlight when someone, a large someone, stepped around the corner of the building. It was Semyon, and he was too close to me to make ducking into the building or running an option, not that my male ego would have allowed that.

  I turned to face him, tucking my keys into my fist for a little extra clout as the adrenaline floodgates opened. Where was the Glock when I needed it? Up in the apartment, of course. And I took no comfort in the fact that he was alone. That was just a reflection of his confidence that he could take care of me single-handedly.

  The streetlight lit enough of his face for me to make out that same anticipatory glee I’d seen before. His thick arms hung at his sides slightly bowed, gunfighter style. He wore tight jeans, the same shit-kicker shoes, and a dark t-shirt that covered his upper body like a second layer of skin. No weapon. But then, why would he need one? He said, “Hello, asshole. We’ve got a score to settle.”

  I locked my knees so they wouldn’t begin shaking and prayed for a passing car, a bicycle, anything, bu
t the street was deserted. He stepped forward, and I took a step back. “I’m not looking for any trouble, Semyon. This isn’t a goddamn schoolyard. We’re grown men, for Christ’s sake.” I knew the words were futile, but they were all I could come up with.

  He pointed a bratwurst-sized finger at me. “If that little bitch Bambi hadn’t cold-cocked me, I would have finished this the first time.”

  The image of Bambi’s bruised and puffy face rushed back to me. I felt my gorge rise involuntarily and heard myself say, “Well, at least you’re going to beat a man this time instead of a defenseless young girl.” Jesus, I said to myself, there you go again!

  Semyon eyes flared at my words. He was a slow learner, because he lunged at me and threw the same roundhouse right I’d seen before. I ducked under the clumsy punch, slammed the fist holding my keys into his gut, and then spun out of his range. He hardly noticed the punch. I dropped the keys, which had done more damage to my hand than to his stomach. He moved in and loosed an awkward left hook. I brought my right forearm up and deflected the punch, then countered with a straight left that caught him flush on the nose. He staggered back and crashed into the front door, which set Archie into a barking rage inside. I instantly regretted jettisoning my keys. With Archie’s help, I might have a chance. But the keys were well out of reach.

  Semyon wiped the blood trickling from his nose with his thumb, looked down at it, then back at me. Archie was going crazy on the other side of the door.

  I turned my head, pointed to the jagged scar on my ear and said, “You did this. We could call it even, you know.” What the hell, I figured, it’s never too late to negotiate.

  Semyon gave me an incredulous look, said something in Russian, and came at me again. I was watching his hammer-like fists, so, of course, he kicked me. I twisted just enough that the blow skidded off my shin, but I lost my balance in the process. He lunged at me, and I ducked under his grasp, came up behind him and pushed him hard as I could. He was off-balance, and when he thudded against the building wall, Archie went wild.