Cast in Stone

by G. M. Ford

  I understood completely. This need for closure was what kept me in business. It permitted those who were faced with disaster and guilt a cushion of hope and allowed those who were left behind to eventually turn the page and get on with their lives.

  I thought she was finished, but she suddenly continued.

  "And because there's just too many questions left, Leo, even for a pragmatist like me. Where's the money? Nicky could have had whatever he'd wanted. All he had to do was ask. And . . . there's her . . . that bitch. I don't know how to—" She shrugged. "Then there's the ATM card."

  I waited.

  "On the day of the accident, just before midnight, Heck took five hundred dollars in cash out of the company account with his ATM card."

  "So?"

  "He never used the card. Not once. He liked to go into the bank. He had a card for the better part of ten years, and in all that time, that morning was the first and only time he'd ever used it."

  "Where did he do this?"

  "That's another thing. First Avenue. By the market. What could he be doing in that neighborhood at that time of night?"

  I decided the question was rhetorical and stood mute.

  "Finally," she intoned, "there's the pictures." "The pictures?"

  "I just noticed them a few days ago. I was shuffling rough all of our recent pictures, sort of feeling sorry for myself. That's when I started looking for you. I probably could have lived with the rest of it, if I hadn't gone through those damn pictures. They flushed me over the edge."

  "What about the pictures?"

  "All the pictures we took over the couple of months she was around. Heck had become quite the cameraman. There must be thirty or forty shots she's in, and you know what, Leo? There's not a single good picture of her. Not a single frame where her hand isn't somehow in front of her face, or where she isn't half covered by somebody's shoulder or by her own hair. It defies the law of averages. It had to be on purpose. The pictures were the last straw. I had extra prints and negatives made."

  She opened the drawer in the nightstand, took out a pale green paper bag with interlocking silver rings woven into the pattern, and held it out to me. I walked over and took it from her hand.

  "Those are his notes and all the stuff he took out of the apartment. He's been a man possessed, Leo. He hasn't done anything else but investigate for the past few weeks. You'll have to go through all that stuff. I imagine he's just been running in circles. There's also keys to the Lady Day and to Nicky's apartment." Again, she anticipated my question. "Heck wouldn't part with the apartment either. I'll pay the power company so you can see in there. I let it lapse, hoping if he couldn't see, maybe he'd give it up."

  She rose, folding her arms over her ample chest. "Can you help me, Leo?"

  "I don't know, Marge. I can promise you I'll try, but I think I should tell you up front that things are generally just the way they seem to be. The cops are pretty good at what they do. There are damn few insidious plots. People generally die in bed or get killed by the people closest to them."

  "I understand that, but I need to feel that I've done everything possible. Will you help me?"

  "I'll see what I can do."

  "Do you need some money, a retainer or something?"

  "What I'll need," I said, "is to get with your attorney." "Why?"

  "We need to follow the money. The money is the only tangible thing we've got here. Even when there are other leads to follow, it's still best to follow the money. If your attorneys aren't up to it, I know one who is."

  "For what we pay them, they'd better be up to it," she snorted.

  "Can you get him down to your office on a Saturday?" "In his jammies, if I insist." "Insist." "What time?"

  "One," I said, heading for the door.

  "You'll bill me later?" she persisted.

  "Then I'm working for you?"

  "So it would seem."

  "Then you can count on it."

  She gave me a smile thin enough to pass for a scar.

  4

  It was a clear case of premature jocularity. From the second he'd figured out that I wasn't there to lease a yacht, he'd dropped the jovial sales facade and moved with practiced speed from simply insolent to downright unpleasant.

  I'd spent an hour and a half in Vito's, down the hill from Swedish, nursing a coffee and going through Heck's notepad, as the late lunch crowd came and went. Heck had covered a lot of ground without getting much accomplished. The yacht leasing agency had seemed as good a place as any to start.

  "Do I have to call security?"

  "Easy there, Scooter," I said, showing a palm.

  While his right hand danced above the phone, he used his left to jab at the pale blue business card on the counter. Each word punctuated by a jab.

  "All questions about the accident need to go to our attorneys."

  The embroidery on his pink Ralph Lauren pullover said this was a Chipper, not a Scooter, but what the hell? He was a compact little fellow, about thirty, with a pitted face, a fair hair-helmet so stiff it appeared to be shellacked, and a pair of the smallest feet I'd ever seen on an adult.

  "You must have an earwax problem," he added.

  "I told you, I don't want to talk about the accident.

  I just want to have a few words with the person who leased them the boat."

  "Same answer, bub. The bossman himself leased that one, and he's not talking to anybody, so beat it."

  "Why don't we ask him?" I suggested.

  "Why don't you shag your ass back out that door?"

  "I'll tell you, Scooter, I'm not much impressed with your idea of customer service."

  "That's your problem, dickwad."

  I leaned forward on the counter and beckoned him closer. When he declined, I spread out, letting my forearms push a pile of glossy brochures off onto the floor. They fanned out over his little feet, which began doing something akin to the Ali Shuffle.

  "How clumsy of me."

  He got louder. "All questions about the—"

  I interrupted him by walking around to the open side of the sales counter.

  "—the accident—" he stammered.

  "You say that again, Scooter, I'm gonna mess up your hair."

  He turned toward the phone, dialing finger poised. I stepped closer.

  "I wouldn't," I said quietly. He replaced the receiver with a bang.

  "Come on man," he whined. "I don't want any trouble. We had a whole meeting about this crap. I'm sorry about those kids, but it's my ass if I tell you anything. Mr. Richmond said—"

  "Then call Mr. Richmond," I suggested for the third time.

  "I told you, man, he hates being bothered if it's not an emergency."

  "Trust me, Scooter, as far as you're concerned, this is an emergency."

  As he turned to the phone, he betrayed himself with the slightest of sneers. The buttons clicked.

  "If you're calling security, my friend, I'd suggest

  you reconsider. I'm self-employed. I've got nothing better to do than wait outside for you for the next couple of weeks. Unless you plan on this being your last day on the job, and then like moving to another state, you'd better be calling this Mr. Richmond."

  His shoulders visibly sagged as he depressed the button and redialed. After half a minute of apologetic mumbling and kowtowing, Chipper returned the receiver gingerly to its perch.

  "He'll be right down."

  "Thanks," I said, leaving the business card on the counter. It was identical to the one I'd found with Heck's notes. I turned on my heel and walked back out the door toward the afternoon sunshine of the marina.

  "Fuck you very much," he shot at my back.

  I repaired to the nearest bench to catch a little sun and admire the view. From the Northwest, the gleaming monoliths of downtown Seattle appeared to be under attack from giant insects. These days, the Port of Seattle completely surrounds the spot where the jagged Duwamish River empties into Elliot Bay. A swarm of bright orange loading cranes stood sen
try, seeming to ring the downtown core like modern engines of siege.

  This had been the original Seattle. A hundred years ago, Doc Maynard and his cronies had simply called those bootsucking tidal flats the Sag. Prior to the regrade, that area had been the only place our founding fathers could, at low tide, get down and walk on the beach. The contemporary Doc Maynards called it the Gateway to the Pacific Rim.

  I was pulled from my ruminations by the sound of leather soles on the cement behind me. Richmond was a big, florid man, flushed with the good life. His hair was wet, combed straight back. He wore a sport coat over a pink shirt and gray slacks, penny loafers. No socks, no tie. After unbuttoning the double-breasted blue blazer, he sat heavily next to me on the bench, his bulk springing the central steel support slightly.

  "Chipper says you threatened him, Mr.—"

  "Waterman. Leo Waterman." I offered a hand. Without hesitation, he took it in his oversize mitt and moved it up and down, eyeing me.

  "Waterman's a rather famous name around here. You any relation to Wild Bill Waterman?"

  "My father," I admitted.

  "Hell of a character, if you don't mind me saying," he said.

  "So I understand," I said.

  Predictably, Richmond had a story.

  "I remember one year, it was just after the war, late forties, early fifties, some time in there, he led the Candidate's Parade down Fourth Avenue dressed up like Mahatma Gandhi." He slapped his knee. "He was leading this mangy old goat on a leash. Everybody loved it. It was swell. I'll never forget it."

  Neither would anyone else. Seattle was like a reformed drunk, pious and sober, but secretly nostalgic for its wild youth. I'd heard all the stories so many times that the line between how I remembered him and the stories I'd been told was forever muddled, leaving me with a blurred image of the old man that was, I suspected, more apocryphal than real. I changed the subject.

  "Nice name-—Chipper."

  "Yeah, if you're a beaver," he said, studying the water. "Nasty little fellow."

  He shrugged. "He's my Helen's third attempt at connubial bliss. If I don't keep him working, they'll move back in with us."

  "I wouldn't really have hurt him," I confessed.

  "Too bad."

  We sat in silence gazing out at Elliot Bay, still and

  unbroken in that brief lull between morning and evening breezes. I watched a bufflehead. The small diving duck flicked beneath the surface, stayed an eternity, and then popped back to the surface twenty yards from where it went under.

  "I'm sure you understand why we can't talk to anybody about the accident," he said finally.

  "How's about off the record?"

  He looked at me like I'd just hawked a lunger onto his shirt front.

  "What's your interest in this, anyway, Waterman?"

  I fished in my pocket and produced a business card.

  "Working for?" He pocketed the card.

  "The Sundstroms."

  "Then how in hell can it be off the record?" He spat disgustedly, beginning to rise.

  I laid it out for him. The missing money. Heck's suspicions, the whole unlikely tale as told to me, culminating with the truck hitting Heck. He settled back, resting his arms along the top of the bench, rocking slightly.

  "You're being straight with me?" he said.

  "I've told you the story just like it was told to me."

  "So your interest in this has nothing to do with litigation?"

  "I don't do insurance work. I can't guarantee anything about what the Sundstroms might do later, but right now this is about peace of mind."

  "And the Sundstroms don't think it was an accident?"

  "They don't know what to think." "That makes three of us." "How so?"

  "I've got half a million invested in that vessel. Just had it completely refurbished. Brand new twin Cummings three-seventies. New water, propane, satellite dish. The whole works, inside and out. I checked that boat out myself. You know, if you want something

  done right . . . Five of us took it up through the San Juans to Vancouver. Some of the best men I've got, been with me for years, went over every inch of it. I've been in this business for thirty years. Believe me, Risky Business was leaking nothing."

  "Sometimes, with boats—"

  "And she wouldn't take on any crew, not even a pilot."

  "You offered?"

  "Hell, I insisted, but she didn't want to hear about it."

  "Why'd you back off?"

  "Don't think I haven't asked myself that one." "And?"

  "First of all, that particular boat was damn near foolproof. We try to set them up that way. If you're going to lease boats to the public, they'd better not be rocket science. Everything electric. Directions for everything. Hell, you've got about fifty thousand pounds of boat, with less than four-foot draft. It's not easy to fuck up in a fifty-two-footer. Motor during the day; put up at night; don't hit anything too hard. Not much to it. It had every kind of safety gear in the world. VHF, radar GPS, depth sounder, autocom-pass, autopilot—the thing was loaded. Hell, it had a Whaler with a fifty-horse. Like I said, pretty much idiot-proof. Even Clarence could have gotten the thing down to Baja without a problem."

  "Clarence?"

  He jerked a thumb back to the rental office. "Chipper." I smiled. He continued.

  "Then their credit check came in. Golden, even without the Sundstroms, who as you're probably aware could buy this whole damn marina and then some. The kids had more than the boat was worth sitting in the bank, which makes your tale of the missing money even more interesting."

  "It was sitting in the bank when they leased?" "Seafirst. Downtown branch." "What day was that?"

  "I don't know offhand. But we can find out."

  I rose with him as he pried his bulk from the bench. I'd been so engrossed in our conversation that I hadn't noticed that Chipper was standing thirty feet behind us, midway between the leasing office and the bench, slapping a black, polished fish billy into his palm.

  Richmond sighed again. Chipper hopped from foot to foot.

  "Should I call security, Dad? Or should we handle him ourselves?" Richmond winced.

  "Get the Sundstrom file. Make a copy of the lease agreement and of their credit report and bring them out here," he growled. "And put that thing back in my desk before I have Mr. Waterman here floss your teeth with it."

  Chipper, although visibly crestfallen, scurried to oblige.

  "And you wonder why some species eat their young."

  "You said she didn't want to hear about a crew."

  "Yeah. Didn't seem to me the Sundstrom kid cared much one way or the other, but the girl didn't want any part of it."

  "That didn't set off any bells for you?"

  He chuckled. "Now there, Waterman, just when I was beginning to think you were a man of the world," he chided. "How many married men you know are running their own lives?"

  I thought it over.

  "Exactly zero," I said.

  "Then you see my point. If I refused to lease to every guy with a wife jerking his chain, I'd still be renting rowboats and cutting herring plugs."

  "Point taken," I said. "What was she like?" He thought about it. "Intense," he said after a while. "How so?"

  "Well, you know, Mr. Waterman, we get quite a few folks who think the ocean is just a big wet freeway, that they can just sail or motor up to Alaska, putt around the icebergs drinking margaritas, and then putt home in time for Letterman. The fact that you might have to know something, or could very well get your ass killed, never occurs to them. That's when I come down to the office and have a little talk with them. I can almost always put the fear of God in them. By the time I get through running down my list of possible disasters, they're usually begging for a crew of six and beefed-up insurance coverage. Not this one, though. She never blinked. Never budged an inch. Just kept smiling at me and saying no thanks."

  "And him?"

  "Just the opposite. Wishy-washy. Sort of along for the ride. I didn't know
he was sick then, but it makes sense now."

  We were interrupted by Chipper's reappearance. He handed the boss a sheaf of papers, then stood behind the bench, rocking on the balls of his feet, as Richmond handed them over to me.

  Richmond started to speak and then stopped. He turned to Chipper.

  "Who's minding the store?"

  "There's nobody—"

  "Go back inside."

  Reluctantly, Chipper complied, walking backward, keeping us in view.

  "Thanks," I said, indicating the papers.

  "Same stuff I gave the Coast Guard. You might as well have it too."

  "What did the Coast Guard think?" I asked.

  "Hell, she'd been on the bottom for an hour when they got there and down for nearly forty-eight hours before they brought anything up. Between the fire, the tides, and the crabs there wasn't a hell of a lot left other than the engines. They've got what precious little they recovered down at Pier 50, if you're interested."

  "Still," I repeated. "I'd like to thank you again on behalf of my clients for your cooperation. Most folks would just have blown me off."

  "Don't worry about it. Fucking lawyers just end up with the money anyway," he said. "If the Sundstroms wanted it, all they had to do was ask. God knows I feel bad about their boy."

  "I think Mr. Sundstrom did."

  "How so?"

  I told him of finding his attorney's business card among Heck's things.

  "Chipper," was all he needed to say.

  A strained silence settled over us like a heavy dew.

  "Where were we?" the big man asked, massaging the bridge of his nose with a thumb and forefinger.

  "The happy couple."

  "Oh yeah." He started to rise, springing the bench. A thin smile crossed his lips as he stretched in the sunshine.

  "Just between you and me, I know this isn't nice, but when something like this happens you get a chance to think. I remember thinking at the time, you know, it being a honeymoon cruise and all, I remember looking at the Sundstrom kid and thinking he better enjoy it while he still could, because with this little honey it sure as hell wasn't going to last."

  "What wasn't going to last?"

  "You know—the heavy breathing," he said, stopping and thrusting his big hands into his pants pockets. "With her, it just seemed to be something she