Slow Burn

by G. M. Ford

  When I was a kid, I used to wonder if the cattle knew their fate. If maybe each herd didn’t have at least one cynic who walked around the pasture going, “They’re gonna kill us, ya know.” While the other cows went, “Oh, Larry, chill out, you’re so paranoid. We’re pettts.”

  “I have it on good authority that the setting of that picture is here in Greater Seattle.”

  “Gasworks Park,” I said. “About a mile or so north of here.”

  No doubt about it. The abandoned apparatus of the old gasworks rose from the hillside like the conning tower of some buried battleship.

  “Mr. Francona spoke with the photographer.”

  I waited.

  “The picture was taken two days ago,” she said.

  I shrugged. “Why? Wouldn’t it be a whole lot easier to just have the animal dressed out? I mean, that’s gotta be less trouble than keeping it alive.”

  “Obviously, you don’t understand Mr. Del Fuego,” she said.

  “That’s probably true,” I admitted. “So why is he going to all this trouble? I hear he’s got enough problems of his own.”

  “Because he hates me. He blames me for his business failures. He claims I’ve been spying on him.”

  “Have you?”

  “Certainly not.” She seemed genuinely insulted. “This is a difficult market. Not at all like when we began.”

  According to Abigail Meyerson, Jack had merely ridden a wave of prosperity, using the initial success of every new restaurant to finance the next, and so forth, on down the line, creating a nationwide pyramid scheme, rather than a self-supporting corporation.

  “It’s easy enough as long as interest rates are high,” she went on. “Nobody wants their investment back. Why should they? They’re making a fortune on the interest. Nowadays…”

  Abigail Meyerson treated me to a five-minute primer on the trials of restaurant ownership in the late nineties. Skyrocketing real estate prices, the perils of the pluralistic workforce, the added strain of just-in-time inventory, the heartbreak of psoriasis. I waited her out.

  “Abby’s Angus can provide its customers with a full-pound, three-inch porterhouse steak which is less than four percent fat. Did you realize that?”

  I confessed that it had escaped my attention.

  “That’s the market, Mr. Waterman. It’s the fats against the skinnys and, unlike the generations preceding us, it’s the skinnys who have all the money. Mr. Del Fuego is a relic from the CB radio period. I can’t imagine what he thinks he’s doing in a health-conscious market such as Seattle. It’s lunacy. I have no need to sabotage Mr. Del Fuego.”

  “Besides which,” I said, “you’re not that kind of girl.”

  Without altering either her voice or her facial expression, Abby replied, “On the contrary, Mr. Waterman, I’m exactly that kind of girl. I readily admit that it is my intention to drive Mr. Del Fuego from the industry. I have been opening restaurants right on top of him for over two years. I consider it to be my civic duty. I make no bones about it.”

  “A little steak joke there,” I tried.

  I regretted the words the minute they escaped my lips.

  “Oh,” she said. “A joke. Yes. Bone.” Silence. “Well, here’s a bone for you, Mr. Waterman. The only reason I’m not buying up Mr. Del Fuego’s back paper and demanding immediate payment is that somebody else is saving me the time, trouble, and expense.”

  It took a moment for me to process this. “You’re saying that somebody out there is trying to put Jack out of business, and it isn’t you.”

  “No. I’m saying that somebody in addition to me is trying to put Mr. Del Fuego out of business. And doing quite well at it too, I would expect.”

  “How so?”

  “I’ve been told that his Toledo store was forced to close when a three-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar note was suddenly and quite unexpectedly called due. When Mr. Del Fuego was unable to meet his obligations, the property reverted to the noteholders, who then proceeded to auction it off down to the last rivet. They’re supposed to have walked off with almost eight hundred thousand.”

  “And Jack thinks it’s you who’s doing this to him.”

  “Which is why he’s started this preposterous charade with that poor animal and why he must be stopped.”

  “Still seems like a whole lot of trouble, without much reward.”

  “Mr. Del Fuego, beneath all that rural charm, is one of those unfortunate creatures who harbors what used to be called a good old-fashioned mean streak. Nowadays, they probably have some other name for it and count it as a disability, for which one can collect a government dole. But that’s how it is. It’s how he’s operated since the very beginning. You only have to look at how he got his first restaurant and at that poor woman and her family.”

  I knew who she meant, but I played along.

  “What woman is that?”

  “His first wife. I believe her name was Sheila Somers. She had a nice little steak house where she used to play the piano and sing.”

  “Where and when was this?”

  “Austin, Texas,” Abby said. “What…eighteen, twenty years ago. She made the great mistake of marrying our friend Willie Wogers.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “That’s his real name, you know. Long o—Wogers. Willie. He was just another small-time hoodlum and gambler.”

  “Interesting,” I said.

  “She killed herself. Hanged herself in the garage, or…” Abby eyed the room. “At least that’s what the authorities ruled,” she finally said.

  “Really.”

  “Less than two years after they were married.”

  Her tone suggested she considered it a minor miracle that the woman had lasted that long.

  “And Jack got the business?”

  “And I’ll give him this,” she said. “He had sense enough to see that the market was ripe for expansion. In those days, venture capitalists were coming out of the woodwork trying to give away money. There was a real gap in the upscale steak business.”

  “You said something about her family.”

  “She had two children by a previous marriage. A boy and a girl. In their early teens. They lived with their father.”

  “Probably for the best,” I offered lamely.

  She sighed. “One would have thought so.”

  I knew what my line was supposed to be. “But?”

  “Oh, I hate to gossip.”

  Oh, yeah. I held my piece. She didn’t disappoint.

  “Sometimes,” she mused, “bad things come in threes.”

  “What was next?” I prodded.

  “The father dropped dead.”

  “And Jack ended up with the kids?”

  “Hardly,” she scoffed. “Mr. Del Fuego is without a nurturing bone in his entire bloated body.”

  “She have family?”

  “Just some trailer-trash sister who wouldn’t take them.”

  “So?”

  “He farmed them out to foster care, where, as I understand it, they came to bad ends.”

  “Bad ends?”

  Abby showed me a small palm. “I can say no more,” she said, then took my elbow and turned me toward the door.

  “I assure you, Mr. Waterman, my security needs are under complete control. Would you please remember to thank Sir Geoffrey for his concern.” I was getting the boot.

  “Mr. Del Fuego denies vandalizing your property.”

  She stopped in her tracks. Drapeman and Doorman stood in the middle of the room. That’s when she told Spaulding to get the tape.

  When Spaulding reappeared, he wasn’t alone. Brie Meyerson was not at all what I expected. First off, she wasn’t a kid. Contrary to rumor, Brie Meyerson was a full-blown woman of about twenty. Not beautiful, but pretty in an old-fashioned sort of way. She smelled of soap, and her hair was still damp.

  Her mother introduced us and then turned toward the entertainment center, where Frick and Frack were trying to get the tape to play. “Is there a p
roblem?” Her tone suggested that problems were only for the lame and the halten.

  When she didn’t get an answer, Abigail Meyerson walked over and began to add her two cents to the problem. Spaulding called them a bunch of spazzes and popped another Coke.

  Brie asked me, “And what part in this circus do you play?”

  I told her, and then turned the question around.

  She was entering her junior year at Bryn Mawr College. Her mother had insisted that both she and Spaulding, who had just flunked out of either his fifth or sixth prep school, accompany her for the summer to get a feel for the business. It had been a nightmare.

  “Two weeks to go,” she whispered. “Bye. Nice to meet you.”

  She slipped out the door and was gone just as Spaulding couldn’t take it anymore. “Jesus. Here, let me in there.”

  He crossed the room, knelt before the VCR, pushed a couple of buttons, and stood off to the side, grinning for all he was worth.

  Me, I readied my poker face. I was the man of steel.

  “I hope, Mr. Waterman, that this will give you some idea of the depths of perversity to which this man has sunk.”

  The picture flickered on. Color. Good production values. Probably made for a promotional or training film. Abigail Meyerson stood behind an oak podium, speaking into a microphone. Over her left shoulder, the head of a neon Angus bull winked down in good-natured invitation, and the familiar red letters spelled out ABBY’S ANGUS.

  “It is with great pleasure,” she intoned. “That here, on the occasion of our thirty-fifth restaurant, we take a moment to acknowledge those…” The camera angle widened. Spaulding stood up on the dais, shifting his weight from foot to foot and picking his nose. Brie wore a white sundress the way I always thought one ought to be worn. I chastised myself for impure thoughts and tuned back in to the speech.

  Before I could pick up the thread, however, it happened.

  With an audible pop, the whole sign flickered and died. And then, just as quickly, recovered its former brilliance. Except for the G. The G stayed out. The sign now read, ABBY’S AN US. And the good-natured wink of the bull was suddenly a perverted leer.

  As for me, if you didn’t count the throbbing of my temples and the almost obscene fluttering of my nostrils, I held it together pretty well.

  What else have you got?” he shouted through the door.

  I checked my drooping wallet. “My library card.”

  “Has it got a picture?”

  “Nope.”

  “What good is that?”

  “Books.”

  I’d already held up, and then passed under the door, my convention security ID card, my PI license, my driver’s license, and my VISA and COSTCO cards. I could only hope that eventually Mason Reese would open the door and return my identity. If he decided to go shopping, I was in serious trouble.

  “It’s not much,” he complained.

  “I’m not much of a joiner.”

  A room-service waiter pushed a cart up the hall in my direction. He was a handsome fellow with dark curly hair and a wispy mustache. Both levels of the rolling cart were covered with silver-lidded chafing dishes, which clattered slightly as he rolled along. A designer ice bucket showed the tops of a champagne bottle and three soft drinks, whose black screw-on tops stared back at me with green jungle eyes. Before moving the cart behind me, the waiter stood upright. His gold badge read, “Rodrigo.” “Something I can help you with, sir?”

  “No, but thanks,” I said.

  Only his five-star service training prevented him from asking me what in hell I was doing there in the hall, standing in front of a door with a DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging from the handle. As it was, he kept throwing glances over his shoulder as he pushed the cart the length of the hall, knocked on the last door on the left, and disappeared inside.

  The door to 814 suddenly banged open on its chain. Mason Reese peered out through the crack at me. He was a puny little guy of about fifty, with a bald pate and narrow eyes. “I can’t be too careful, you know,” he said. “I’m dealing with lunatics here.”

  Normally, I would consider a statement such as this as merely stress-induced hyperbole. Today, however, I was inclined to agree.

  “I understand,” I said. “I can get hotel security up here to verify my identity, if you want.”

  “Don’t bother,” he said. “I have nothing to say to you.”

  He slid his index and middle fingers out through the crack. I pulled my identification from between the fingers and took my time putting them back from whence they came. When I looked up, the door was slowly closing.

  “Is any of that story about Abigail Meyerson and the pork chop bone true?” I blurted.

  The door stopped moving and an eye reappeared. “What story?”

  “That she had it gold plated.”

  “She had two of them made. One for a key chain and another that hung from the mirror of her Mercedes. She used to pass out these little replicas. In the corporation, they called it being ‘slipped the bone.’ If you were ‘slipped the bone,’ it meant you were on your way up the corporate ladder.”

  The door eased toward closed again.

  “Meyerson sort of indicated that she thought Jack had maybe killed his first wife. Any truth to that?”

  The door again banged on the chain. “She was a lush. That’s why the courts gave the kids to the father. Jack had nothing to do with it.” Reese almost grinned. “Unless you count his just being ol’ Jackeroo and driving her to it, of course.”

  “What about her kids?”

  “What about ’em?”

  “Ms. Meyerson said she heard…”

  “That ‘bad ends’ crap of hers.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Crap,” he snapped. “She always makes it sound like Jack set ’em loose on an ice floe or something. He paid the freight. Maybe he wasn’t the paternal type. Maybe he never laid eyes on those kids. But he saw to it that they went to good homes. I know, because it was my job to take care of it. The girl, Sandy was her name, went to these people in Pennsylvania. The foster parents kept in touch with me for years. Sent me her college graduation picture. The boy, Richard, went down south. Georgia someplace. A wealthy farm family.”

  “Big of Jack.”

  “You’ve met Jack. What do you think was best?”

  I had to admit, Mason Reese probably had a point. Spending one’s formative years with a guy who referred to himself exclusively in the third person might not have constituted a particularly sound foundation for successful citizenship.

  I had slipped my toe into the crack, so I took a deep breath while I considered my next option. “What about all this stuff about the Meyerson Corporation spying on him?”

  “I know nothing of that,” Reese said. “I have not been in Mr. Del Fuego’s direct employ for several years now. I know he’s let go the whole staff it took us twenty years to build.”

  “Why’d he do that?”

  “Paranoia. He kept weeding traitors out of the organization until there wasn’t an organization.”

  “Is that what you’re going to say at your news conference?”

  “That remains to be seen, now, doesn’t it?” He leaned lightly against the door.

  “Abby and ol’ Jackeroo have really got your ass in the wringer, haven’t they?”

  He sneered at me. “The way I see it, I hold the initiative.”

  “How can that be?” I scoffed. “It’s your credibility that’s at stake here, isn’t it? And either way, you lose. I mean, if you claim your rating is on the up-and-up, Meyerson will probably add your name to the court case. God only knows what sort of damages that woman will ask for. And if you admit it was all a gag, you become an industry embarrassment, a pariah. Hell, your airline accounts just might sue you too. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.”

  “The situation is under control,” he said.

  “Seems pretty volatile to me,” I countered. “As I see it, just about everybody would b
e better off if you took a hike.”

  He leaned heavily against the door. When it failed to budge, he looked down at my foot. “Kindly remove your foot. I have nothing further to say to you.”

  I kept the foot where it was. “Jack had some questions about the death of Ms. Meyerson’s husband.”

  “That’s just Jack talking through his ass as usual.”

  He leaned harder on the door.

  “I’m staying here in the hotel. If anything interesting develops, feel free to give me a call.”

  He pressed his weight against the door and turned sideways so I could see the thick black automatic that he held down along his right leg.

  “I’m prepared to defend myself,” he said.

  He was nervous and apt to do something stupid. I showed him my hands. I could feel the leather sole bending from the pressure of the steel door, so I pulled my foot out. The door snapped shut with a rush of hot air. End of interview. The door at the end of the hall reopened. The waiter eyed me suspiciously as he rolled the now empty cart back up the hall. I waited until he’d passed me and then followed him on his way. After he rolled the cart into the elevator and turned around, I stepped in. I stood facing the rear as the door slid shut. That always drives ’em crazy.

  For organizational purposes, I’d mentally reduced the afternoon’s festivities to simply the Three H’s: hygiene, hair, and haberdashery. A trilogy of tasks which, I felt quite certain, would be best accomplished in precisely that order.

  I got lucky. Seattle is a white-collar town with lots of folks having latitude as to their hours. During the week, the freeways begin to clog at two-thirty. Fridays, it’s an hour or so earlier. Holiday weekends, it starts on Thursday afternoons. I found a diagonal parking spot on James Street and backed in.

  Downtown Seattle parking meters are calibrated to parcel out their time in nanoseconds. Eight nanoseconds per twenty-five-cent piece. I thumbed quarters into the meter until I risked carpel tunnel syndrome and was rewarded with a maximum thirty minutes of grudging forbearance. My relationship with the Parking Enforcement Patrol was such that last spring I had purchased a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Meter Maids Eat Their Young,” which I proudly wore whenever both circumstances and the weather permitted.