by G. M. Ford
“Me neither,” I said around a yawn, but she knew what I meant. “I’ll get the lights down here.”
“Is he out of his mind?” he demanded. Sir Geoffrey was dressed in an impeccable gray suit and a plum-colored tie, in retrospect a rather prophetic color choice, as it presently matched his face.
He held out his hand and Rowcliffe placed a small pink tablet in his palm. Sir Geoffrey brought the palm to his mouth, as if to stifle a yawn, popped the pill past his lips, and again extended the hand. Rowcliffe, of course, was ready with mineral water in a crystal tumbler.
I waited as Miles drained the liquid, dabbed his lips with the proffered napkin, and got back to scowling at me.
“That question brings us directly to Miss Donner,” I said.
“Must we?” he inquired.
“I’m afraid so.”
“Go on, then.”
“I told you yesterday that she spent the day in the King County Office Building. This morning I called a couple of my contacts.”
The phrase “a couple of my contacts” sounds so much more professional than saying, “I called my aunt Karen, and she called my cousin Nicole’s roommate, Noreen, who works in County Records.”
I’d struck out on the first try. I caught Karen just as she arrived at the office, and she’d gotten right on it. She called back before ten.
“Nothing,” she said. “No Jack Del Fuego. No Dixie Dormer.”
“Really? Nothing?”
“No documents on file, none pending. Sorry, kiddo.”
“Well, thanks, darlin’,” I said. “Looks like I’m going to have to knock on the doors.”
“Later, Leo.”
As I began to lower the phone from my ear, I had my first intelligent thought of the week—not bad, considering it’s only Thursday. I wondered how in hell you spend all day doing business in the county building and manage not to use your real name. Anything you were doing in there was official; you were gonna need…
“Karen, Karen,” I shouted into the mouthpiece.
She came back on.
“What is it, Leo?” Methinks me sensed a bit of exasperation.
“Try Wogers. W-O-G-E-R-S. Willie. Will you do that for me? I promise to leave you alone after that…promise.”
She was back at me in ten.
“You have the family nose for smut, Leo,” she said. “It’s being filed under Donnareen L. Pye versus Wille Wogers. No middle initial.”
“What’s a Donnareen L. Pie?”
“It says the plaintiff is one Donnareen L. Donner-Del Fuego-Horowitz-Pye. Heck of a moniker. Kind of makes you wonder who Liz Taylor would be if you strung them all out.”
“Horowitz?”
“That’s what it says. Hubby number two.”
Sir Geoffrey listened with his eyes closed and his lips pursed as I told him what Dixie was up to.
“I should gladly witness on her behalf,” he announced when I’d finished. “Her petition is manifestly valid. The man is patently out of his mind. The fact that she is attempting to have him declared incompetent to run the business should not be a surprise to anyone even remotely familiar with the situation.”
According to Noreen, that was pretty much Dixie’s position. In documents filed before the court, Dixie claimed that Willie Wogers, aka Jack Del Fuego, had slipped a major cog as a result of long-term alcoholism, and thus she requested that he be immediately remanded for psychiatric evaluation. Her petition asked that the court remove Willie from any and all control of the day-to-day business of the Seattle operation. It held that Willie-Jack had driven the business into the ground and was at present so heavily leveraged that the Seattle operation now constituted his company’s sole unencumbered asset and, as such, must, in the interest of the plaintiff, be protected. The petition asked King County, as the county presently containing the corporation’s sole asset, both to claim jurisdiction and to issue a restraining order. The remaining documents consisted of descriptions and depositions concerning the recent debacles in Atlanta and Cleveland, along with a rundown of the accrued litigation. According to Noreen, there were pictures too.
“Does any of this advance our cause?” Sir Geoffrey asked.
“Not as far as I can see. Short of laying hands on a Sidewinder missile and shooting him down, I don’t see how we can prevent the revenge of the Jackster from taking place.”
“Perhaps Ms. Meyerson’s aggregate forces…”
“The cops will keep them a block away. The city is with Jack on this one, I’m afraid.”
“How,” he blustered, “with that man’s disastrous history, can any governmental body lend its support to his undertakings?”
“Actually, it’s fairly simple. The city is real hot to renew that part of Fourth Avenue. It’s a major priority with them. It’s the last great downtown eyesore in a city that sees itself as being way above eyesores. They figure Jack can be a cornerstone for that whole three-block area.”
“But surely—”
I kept talking. “I’m willing to bet the city gave him a hell of a deal on everything. Nobody seems to be able to figure out why Del Fuego would choose to make his last stand in the heartland of the granola head, but I’ll bet it’s because they cut him a sweetheart deal. I’ll bet they made it pretty enticing to a guy with bad cash flow.”
I had his lordship’s undivided attention.
“And it’s also personal,” I concluded.
He arched an eyebrow as I related the tale of the mayor’s wife and the uninsured mink coat.
“Indeed” was all he said. “You know, Mr. Waterman… and I trust you will take this in the positive manner in which it is intended…”
“Of course,” I assured him.
“But if you don’t mind me saying, it must be quite an asset in your profession to be so much smarter than you, on first impression, appear to be.”
I’ll never be precisely sure how he meant it, but for the sake of civility, I decided to take it as a compliment.
“It do come in handy,” I allowed.
“The media situation is intolerable. The convention will be lucky to get a full column in the second section. Have you seen today’s paper?”
I had. This morning’s Post Intelligence had squeezed world news into two pages and devoted the remainder of the front section to the murder of Mason Reese. They’d come up with a picture of everyone involved, including Sir Geoffrey himself. For me, they’d used a five-year-old shot taken after I’d been living in the Fiat for three days while staking out a South Seattle crack house. I made a note to call the paper and complain.
“Something must be done,” Sir Geoffrey declared.
“Have you a plan of action?”
“Yes, I do. First, I’m going to go upstairs and change my clothes. And then I’m going to find my associate Mr. Paris and persuade him to, as Jack said the other night, do his civic duty.”
“And what would that be?”
“He’s going to surrender to the district attorney.”
Sir Geoffrey was still chewing on that one when I left.
I never did catch the Lola show itself. I’d gone upstairs to see Sir Geoffrey Miles at about one-o-one, right as the Afternoon Northwest music started, and I walked back in the door thirty minutes later to find the credits rolling and the music playing. Only this time the music was the Doobie Brothers, “Takin’ It to the Streets,” and Lola was doing the cheerleader voice-over.
“Join us live tomorrow when we’ll be takin’ it to the streets. Make your voice heard. Make a difference. Until tomorrow, this is—” I hit the power button and went looking for a suitable ruse.
Having now dumped the neck brothers twice, I had to operate from the assumption that they’d wired my car so it could be tracked from outer space. Since whatever advantage I hoped to gain from cooperation would be lost if the tails pinched us before we could surrender, I needed to lose them one more time. I felt sure they’d understand.
The best I could manage in the way of a disguise w
as a pair of gray jeans, a black Harley-Davidson T-shirt, and a matching baseball cap that read, “Smoke ’Em Till the Wheels Fall Off.” I put on a pair of aviator shades and checked myself in the mirror. Sleazy Rider. It wasn’t much, but I’d spent the past few days in a suit and was hoping the change in style would be sufficient cover.
It worked like a charm. I walked right past one of the indoor dicks pretending to read the paper, slithered out the Seneca Street door, and hailed a cab. I handed the Somali cabdriver a twenty and told him to drive north and then east and then back to the south. Ten blocks and four turns later, I was satisfied that we didn’t have any company and started giving him real directions.
In the deep shade of the overpass, he pulled the cab half up onto the sidewalk. I waved another twenty at him.
“You can keep this one and another if you’ll wait here until I get back. It’s going to be a few minutes. Okay?”
He seemed to like that idea. I decided to risk it.
Ten minutes later, when George, Norman, and I emerged from the thicket, he was still there, bopping around in the seat to the percussive beat of a Don Pullen piano solo. We piled into the back.
“King County jail,” I said to the driver.
Ten minutes in, I knew for sure. The cops didn’t have shit. They didn’t know any more than I did. Maybe less. It could have been my imagination, but a sense of urgency seemed to have been added to the mix since the last time I’d been with these two. It wasn’t just that they were running the good cop–bad cop routine on me again, or that Lobdell was ranging around the front of the room like the Tasmanian devil. I was betting he regularly practiced this routine in front of the mirror. No, these two were under serious pressure.
Martha Lawrence stood with her back leaning into the corner. She held her chin as she watched Detective Lobdell prowl the area in front of the door. Apparently, it was her day to be the good cop.
“You asked me to be a responsible citizen,” I said. “And that’s what I did. I got a line on Mr. Paris’s whereabouts, found him, and immediately delivered him right to your door.”
“Responsible citizens have no need to repeatedly evade police surveillance,” Lobdell snapped.
I opted for full-scale obnoxious. À la Spaulding Meyerson. “Decently trained officers couldn’t be dumped.”
Lobdell began to sputter and come my way. Lawrence bounced herself off the wall, blocking his path. She moved toward me and spoke.
“I’m still unclear, Mr. Waterman, as to precisely what it is you think you have to trade and what it is you expect in return. I assure you, your participation is not prerequisite to the successful outcome of this investigation.”
“I’m offering you my twenty years of expertise.” I held up both hands. “I know this is going to come as quite a shock to you, Lawrence, but in spite of my appalling lack of credentials, I just might have a notion or two about this case that would be of use to you.”
Lobdell jumped in. “If you have information pertinent to this investigation—”
“All the information I have, you have, Lobdell. It’s not information I’m peddling. It’s questions. It’s surmises. Inconsistencies I’ve noticed.” I shrugged and folded my arms across my chest.
“And what is it you expect in return for these rare and invaluable insights?”
“SPD’s got eight members of my team. I want them released.”
Lobdell hacked out a dry laugh. “You sure you don’t want a blow job while you’re at it?”
“Why, Rob,” I said in mock surprise, “is it Friday night already?”
He came barreling around the table, his hands clenched into tight red fists.
I stood up. “Come on,” I egged him. “I’ll kick your scrawny ass all over this room, you little piece of shit.”
If Lawrence hadn’t been there, I do believe he would have gone for it. Too bad. She hip-checked him and again got in between us.
“Why don’t you let me handle this, Rob?”
“Yeah, Rob,” I said. “Why don’t you let her handle it?”
Bug-eyed, he yelled over her shoulder, “You smart-ass son of a…”
It took her another full minute to get him out the door. I sat down and tried to listen through the door, but they took it down the hall.
On my way over to the D.A’s office, I’d left Normal at the jail. He hadn’t liked it one bit, but eventually I talked him into it. “Nobody else can do it, Norman. They’ve got everybody except Harold and Ralph, and I don’t know where those two are. It’s all up to you, buddy.”
He shook his big head from side to side. “The white coats are waiting for me in there,” he said. “They’ll pin me to a corkboard.”
“No, no, no,” I said. “You’ve got a get-out-of-jail card.”
“What card?”
I produced his bail ticket. “This one right here.”
George jumped in and tipped the balance. “You’d want us to do it for you, Normal, if it was you in there. Just go in and visit as many of them as they’ll let ya. Tell ’em we ain’t forgot about ’em. Tell ’em to tell the cops anything they want to know. That’s it. Then you walk out.”
George and I stood on the sidewalk and watched Norman force himself to step through the front doors of the Corrections Building.
“I’m givin’ eight to five they keep his big ass,” said George with a smirk.
“He’s the only one of them without an outstanding warrant of some sort. As long as he doesn’t go bananas, he ought to be okay.” I didn’t really believe it, though.
I threw an arm around the old man’s shoulders. “Question,” I said.
He squirmed to escape, but I held him fast.
“The other day down with Piggy and Roscoe…”
“Don’t remind me,” he muttered. “Let me—”
“Remember how you told me about when you got in the elevator to go upstairs to empty the rest of the minibar…”
His eyes rolled in his head like those of a spooked horse.
“That story about Rickey Ray and Miss Atherton…”
He pulled himself free of my grasp and backed away.
“You sayin’ I lied?”
George did a world-class righteous indignation. Unfortunately, he generally did it only when he was stoneguilty. My hopes dropped a notch and a half, but I continued anyway.
“I don’t give a shit about the booze, George. It’s the other part, the part about Rickey Ray and Miss Atherton, and the elevator and all that.”
“Screw you, Leo. You leave me to rot down there with Piggy and Roscoe…and then what…you call me a liar? You must…”
I let him ramble. He’d had a rough couple of days, and besides, Dr. Lorna said it was good for folks to vent. When he finished, I said, “You sure it was two-thirty?”
“There’s a goddamn clock in the elevator, Sherlock.”
He began smoothing his battered suit around his body.
“Why’d they get off on eight and then jump back on?”
“How in hell am I supposed to know? Why don’t you ask them, for Chrissake? Must be they pushed the wrong friggin’ button.”
“After you got off on nine, which way did they go, up or down?”
“Up.”
“You sure?”
“No, Sherlock, I’m making this shit up,” he said disgustedly. “They had one of them fancy keys for the private floors. Like the one you got. I seen ’em stick it in the box.”
I started up the hill toward Fifth Avenue.
“Come on,” I said to George.
“Where we going?”
“I’m going to turn you in to the DA.”
Needless to say, George was thrilled.
The click of the door pulled me back to the present.
Lawrence stepped into the room and closed the door softly behind her.
“Not that it matters, Mr. Waterman, but just for the record, the release of your friends is not within my power”
“It could be arranged.”
>
“Not with that collection of warrants. I’m told there are upward of twenty charges pending on that group of—”
“It’s all crap. Take a look at the stuff they’re charged with. Failure to disperse. Blocking a public thoroughfare. Public urination. Public drunkenness. And then they don’t appear, so the city charges them with Failure to Appear and when they fail to appear for that, they get charged with Failure to Appear on a Failure to Appear. That stuff’s just the price of being poor and homeless. Don’t kid yourself. In America, it’s illegal to be poor and homeless; somebody just made a rule that we’re not allowed to talk about it, is all.”
When she failed to speak, I decided to take the initiative.
“You know, Lawrence,” I began, “a major theme with you seems to be this thing about earning one’s way as opposed to working the system. I think I can give you a way to earn a little redemption for yourself. What do you say?”
She forced a brittle laugh up from her chest. “What makes you think for a minute that I require any redemption?”
“Just a rumor I heard.”
I let it go at that and checked my cuticles.
“Let’s have it,” she said.
“Do we have a deal?”
“It will depend on what you have.”
“I need to know a few things first.”
She looked me over.
“If you’re just fishing, Waterman, I’ll put you in jail and keep you there for the weekend, I swear to God. Jed James or no Jed James, I’ll keep you locked up until ten o’clock Monday morning.”
“Did you guys find a murder weapon?”
“No.”
“Did you find Reese’s gun?”
“Assuming Reese had a gun,” she said. “Your account is all we have regarding Mr. Reese and a firearm.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Are the fourteenth-floor comings and goings confirmed by the security tape?”
“Yes. ”
“Did you get independent confirmation that Tolliver and company were actually at a movie?”
“A mere nineteen people in the Broadway market and the ticket vendor who sold Mr. Tolliver the tickets. Even by Broadway’s rather Gothic standards, Mr. Tolliver is quite memorable.”