Last Ditch

by G. M. Ford

  "I unplugged the phones. It's a fucking circus over here."

  He was silent for a long moment. We both knew what came next. God knows we'd run through the scene enough times. Somehow it always happened when I talked to Pat. I knew he hated profanity, and although I had no conscious desire to offend him, something inside of me always had the uncontrollable urge to swear like a drill sergeant.

  "Must you?" he intoned.

  "I'm having a bad morning."

  Above the static and road noise, I heard him sigh.

  When I was younger, Pat and I used to compete for my father's attention, acting more like feuding brothers than like uncle and nephew. It took me twenty years of that foolishness to figure out that the old man fostered the rivalry between Pat and me as a means of controlling us, the way he controlled everything else in his universe, but by that time, the bones of contention were buried too deep to be exhumed.

  . "Yeah. They've been all over me, too," he said. "I'm on my way back from the airport. I just put your aunt Rochelle on a plane to Portland. Sent her down to Ed's mother's place until this is over."

  "Probably best," I agreed.

  "She hasn't been the same since Ed died."

  Roughly translated, this meant that I'd know about what was going on with my father's youngest sister if only I kept in better touch with the family, which I don't You cur.

  After my father's death, Pat slid noiselessly into the role of family patriarch. He was, after all, the sole living Waterman brother and, as such, the heir apparent to the mantle. For reasons I can't explain, something deep in my heart sorely begrudged him that role. Maybe it was because, in my family, the patriarch is the keeper of the family story. At least the one we tell in public. And Pat never told it the way I remembered it. That's why I stopped going to most of the big family gatherings. I was afraid that right in the middle of some otherwise joyous holiday moment, he was going to start holding forth about some Christmas or Easter past and I was going to lose it, spring to my feet and shout, "That's not it. That's not how it happened," and the whole slack-jawed multitude would gaze at me as if I'd just dropped my pants and crapped in the corner. Better to stay home, I figured.

  I dreaded the next act, so I tried something noncommittal.

  "Sorry to hear that."

  I should have known better. It didn't matter how I responded. I could have said, "I'm on my way to the Polo Grounds to fuck Hitler's mother," and his response would have been exactly the same. With Pat and I, it was as if our conversations crouched behind our lips like predators, silently marking time until the moment of the kill.

  "She was terribly upset when she saw the story on the news. She's not strong, you know." You cur.

  What came next was the part where we worked out who was suffering more. Prizes were awarded in this category. Winner got a crown of thorns, and the right to assume the position; loser got the hair shirt and self-flagellation rights. I figured martyrdom was a dying business, so I cut to the chase.

  "What do you need from me?"

  Silence. This wasn't how it was supposed to go. You cur.

  After a moment, he said, "How you guys holding up over there?"

  "It's a ffffff . . . it's a state of siege."

  I had him going now. He shifted gears.

  "We need to get a lid on this."

  "I don't think the toothpaste is going back in the tube, Pat."

  "No, but we can certainly control the flow." "How's that?"

  "I've got a meeting set up for two o'clock this afternoon at the Cascade Club."

  "A meeting with who?"

  "Whom," he corrected.

  "Yeah, so whom's gonna be there?"

  I'm not sure, but I thought I heard him grinding his teeth.

  "The PFs going to send •their lawyer. I don't know who's coming to represent the Price family . . . probably another lawyer. Most likely Henry McColl."

  "And you want me to come?"

  He hesitated. "I thought you'd want to be there," he said.

  Roughly translated, this meant that since I'd been sufficiently thoughtless as to find the damn body, I had an obligation to suffer along with the rest of them. You cur.

  "What are we going to meet about?"

  Now I was sure I heard his teeth.

  "What we're going to meet about, Leo, is how to keep this thing contained. How to keep the journalism responsible. How to keep this thing from disrupting our lives any more than is absolutely necessary. Of course, if you have no—"

  I cut him off. "I'll be there," I said. He jumped in quickly, before I could hang up. "And Leo ..."

  "Yeah?"

  "You will wear a suit, won't you?" You cur. "Fuckin' A," I said.

  One second after I replaced the receiver, the phone began to ring. Since the voice mail had done such a fine job last evening, I couldn't think of a single reason why it shouldn't get another chance, so I unplugged the phone and headed for the shower.

  On a good day, I can shower, shave and shinola in twenty minutes flat, start to finish, out the door. Today, it was a good thing I had a few hours. I had a bad case of the slows. I stood under the steaming shower until the hot water gave out and then cut myself twice while shaving.

  When I padded back into the bedroom looking for clothes, Rebecca was gone and the bed was made. The choice of attire should have been simple. After all, I only owned one good suit. Nope. Turned out the only thing simple was me. I stood in the closet for a good twenty minutes pawing everything I owned and then finally selected—yup, you guessed it—my good suit.

  By the time I got downstairs Rebecca had already finished a pot of coffee and read the entire Sunday paper.

  "Oooh," she said. "Don't you look nice."

  "I better," I said. "You look sloppy at the Cascade Club somebody'll hand you a mop."

  "Really . . . the Cascade Club . . . dear me."

  For want of an option, I told her about Pat's call and the meeting. What followed was a twenty-minute ceremony, wherein I swore oaths up and down, back and forth, sacred and profane, that I would not lose my head and disgrace myself and that, furthermore, if I should be so foolish as to lose my temper and act in an unseemly manner, the effect of such actions on my future romantic prospects would be tantamount to being shipwrecked on a desert island.

  I was still mulling over that cheery prospect when I set the e-brake on the Fiat and hopped out into the driveway of the Cascade Club. The valet looked at the little car with undisguised disdain. I dropped the keys into his palm. "My other car is a piece of shit too," I said.

  I'd only been inside once before. Back in college, I'd taken an architecture class and had toured the building. The place may have been made from fire-flashed clinker brick and topped with Dutch gables, but what really constructed the Cascade Club was money. And not new money either. No. In these halls, the only money that counted was hand-me-down money. Money from so far back the family no longer recalled who it was had made the dough in the first place. That kind.

  That's how I knew to ask the ancient attendant for the Price party. While many of the Watermans were certainly not strapped for cash, the money was, to the mind of these sort of folks, not only entirely too recent, but, to an even greater extent, scandalously ill-gotten.

  She led me down the long central hall of the building, past gold-framed portraits of stern men with chin whiskers, across a couple acres of floral carpet thick enough to pass for U.S. Open rough and then ushered me through the proverbial third door on the right.

  A small banquet table had been set up at the back of the room. Gleaming silver urns of coffee and tea, plates of prepared fruit, decadent pastries and hors d'oeuvres, artfully arranged. Just your basic little Sunday morning meeting.

  Pat was standing over by the leaded windows, holding a white china cup in one hand and a saucer in the other, making conversation with a nice-looking young guy in a double-breasted blue blazer. Pat had that pink-all-over, fresh-scrubbed quality of my father's Scandinavian roots. He kept his
remaining hair extremely short. He was straight and trim to a degree attainable only by those who have all day to spend at the gym. He placed the cup in the saucer, set them on the windowsill and crossed to my side.

  He looked me up and down. "Glad you could make it," he said.

  I reckoned how I was likewise thrilled.

  "Fabulous suit," he said. "Been letting Rebecca do your shopping for you, haven't you?"

  I'd have been less annoyed if it hadn't been true. I looked over his shoulder toward the linen-covered table in the center of the room, where Emily Price Morton sat sipping tea with her attorney H. R. McColl.

  "The suit better be good. You neglected to tell me I'd be lunching with the queen."

  He compressed his lips. "Quite surprising," he admitted, then took me by the elbow. "Come along," he whispered. "Let's get this show on the road."

  As we approached the table, H. R. McColl got to his feet. McColl was the lawyer of choice for those who could pay the freight. Just this side of sixty, he was a tall man. His sharp cheekbones were framed by a shock of thick white hair, shaved nearly bald on the sides, worn in a short Marine brush cut on top—all sharp angles in a gray wool suit.

  He extended his hand. "Pat," was all he said.

  With a small nod of the head, Pat took his hand.

  "Henry. You know Leo, I believe."

  His hand now found its way into mine, but he kept talking to Pat.

  "Oh, yes. Our paths have crossed before."

  McColl let me go and turned toward his client, who sat motionless in an off-white silk suit, her hands in her lap, her wide-spaced blue eyes averted and unblinking. Emily Price Morton was the better part of seventy, but you had to get up close to see. Her primary care physician was probably a plastic surgeon. Amazing what enough money could do. Sitting there with her ash-blonde hair twisted atop her head in an old-fashioned knot, she could have passed for a cynical fifty. Except for the mouth. Her wide, dissatisfied mouth gave her away. The series of lines rippling out from the corners served as silent testament to the current limits of plastic surgery. If they pulled the rest of her face back any tighter, she'd have been looking out to the sides like a fly.

  McColl didn't bother with introductions. We were supposed to know who she was. He spoke to her. "You know Pat, of course."

  She rattled her jewelry in assent

  Pat motioned my way. "And my nephew, Leo Waterman."

  No rattle. She looked at me like I was wearing a dog shit suit.

  The guy in the blue blazer was at my elbow now. He spoke directly to Emily. "Mark Forrester," he said, offering a hand. "I'm here representing the Post-Intelligencer."

  No rattle. Not even the shit suit look. I felt better.

  Pat took the lead. "I know everyone has a busy schedule, so perhaps . . ." He swept his hands out over the chairs.

  He waited for everyone to get settled before he continued.

  "I'd like to thank Mrs. Morton for arranging a space for this get-together," he began. "And I want each of you to know I appreciate your taking time from your busy lives to be here with us today."

  Emily Price Morton spoke for the first time.

  "I arranged the room merely as a courtesy. To be quite frank, I am unable to imagine any profitable purpose to this meeting."

  "I had hoped—" Pat began.

  She cut him off. "You hoped to sweep this matter under the rug is what you hoped, Mr. Waterman."

  Pat stayed calm. "I had hoped . . ." he repeated, "... that perhaps we could reach some sort of accord as to how to keep this unfortunate incident from affecting our lives and the lives of our loved ones any more than is absolutely necessary."

  McColl jumped in. "What Mrs. Morton means to say . . ."

  "Be quiet, Henry," she snapped. She fixed Pat with a granite stare. "Mrs. Morton said exactly what she meant, Mr. Waterman. My family and I intend to see blame properly ascribed and justice administered. We have lived with the pain and uncertainty for nearly thirty years. We intend to see this matter through to its conclusion, no matter what the cost or to whom."

  She turned her stony gaze my way. "I hold you no personal animosity, young man," she said. "And I have no wish to foster the sins of the fathers off upon the children, but my family ..."

  My turn to interrupt.

  "What sins would those be?"

  In my peripheral vision, I could see Pat stiffen and raise himself to his full height along the seat back. "What Leo means to say . . ." he began.

  I kept my eyes locked on hers. "Leo said what he meant to say."

  She curled a perfectly lined lip at me. "You can't be serious. My brother's remains were found in your father's yard. What other conclusion could possibly be drawn?"

  "I seem to recall something about people being innocent until proven guilty. And, with all due respect, Mrs. Morton, I don't recall my father even being charged with anything, much less convicted."

  The looks on everyone's faces suggested that they were waiting for lightning to strike me dead. I figured, you know, what the hell so I jerked a thumb at Mark Forrester who was sitting on my right "Although I can certainly understand how you might have come to that conclusion if you've been reading that sensationalist piece of fish wrap these guys have the gall to call a newspaper."

  The kid was smooth. "The Post-Intelligencer has complete confidence in the veracity of its sources and the quality of its reporting."

  "That's because you don't say anything," I said. "You imply; you infer, you stick things that have nothing to do with one another in the same paragraph together and let the readers do the rest."

  "I didn't come here to debate the merits of the press, Mr. Waterman." He began to rise.

  "Please," Pat entreated. He pressed down on the table with his palms as if it were about to take flight and then shot a glance over my way. Forrester settled back into his seat. "Leo and I and the rest of the Waterman family want nothing more than a speedy resolution to this unfortunate matter. Like everyone else—"

  H. R. McColl cut him off. "I'm not sure Leo is on board with you on that one, Pat."

  Pat folded his hands and arched an eyebrow. - "How so?"

  "As I understand it, last night, only hours after the discovery of the remains, your nephew refused to cooperate with the authorities."

  Being talked about as if I weren't in the room was beginning to chap my hide, but I kept my temper.

  "What do I have to cooperate about?" I asked evenly. "I was twelve years old when Peerless Price disappeared. Except for the past few months, I haven't lived in that house for over twenty years. What could I possibly know that would be of use?"

  For the first time McColl addressed me directly. "So you did indeed refuse to cooperate?" "Big as life," I answered.

  Two COPS, ONE big, one little, one rumpled, one neat. Naturally, I knew the big rumpled one. Frank Wessels and I went way back. Oh yeah. We'd detested each other for decades. For a while, in the tenth grade, I'd dated his younger sister Jean. He was a big nasty bastard about ten years my senior. One of those throwbacks to the rubber hose days of law enforcement who liked to hurt people. I was pleased to see that the years had treated him badly. Since I'd seen him last, he'd put on thirty pounds and grown a veiny red nose with the texture of a golf ball.

  I pulled open the door. Before I could open my mouth, the Utile neat one stuck a gold badge in my face and started to step over the threshold. I wedged an arm against the doorjamb about chin high and let him run into it. He staggered back two steps and nearly sat down in the geraniums.

  "Somebody invite you in?" I asked.

  He was about thirty-five, a good-looking little Hispanic guy with a thick head of black hair combed straight back. Just as neat as a pin in a blue silk suit, matching tie and pocket hankie and one of those custom-made shirts with the little rounded collars.

  He readjusted his suit and stepped back up to me.

  "What are you, blind?" he demanded, shaking the badge in my face. "We're SPD."

  "So
what," I said. "That doesn't give you the right to come walking into my house without an invitation."

  He looked back over his shoulder at Wessels.

  "You hear this guy?"

  "I hear," Wessels said. "Leo's a laugh a minute." I looked out over the little guy's head. No way these two guys worked together on a regular basis. I figured they sent Wessels along in case I got hostile with Little Lord Fauntleroy here.

  "Hey, Frank. They eliminate the department height requirement or what?"

  Wessels kept a straight face. "Affirmative action," he said.

  I already knew the answer to the next question, because I ran into her once in a while up at the Coastal Kitchen on Capitol Hill, but I asked him anyway, just to piss him off.

  "How's Jean?" I asked.

  Wessels shrugged and shuffled his feet. "I don't have nothin' to do with her anymore. She's a dyke. She and her gap-lapper girlfriend got them a condo up on the hill."

  "Hope it wasn't something / said?"

  He showed me a mouthful of yellow teeth.

  "Probably that little tiny dick-of yours is what did it."

  Rebecca poked her head out from under my aim. "Why, Officer," she said in her best Blanche DuBois drawl. "Surely that must be some other Leo you're referring to. I assure you, sir, this man's appointments are second to none." And you wonder why I love this woman.

  It was hard to tell, but I think maybe Wessels blushed.

  She grabbed me by the belt and pulled me out of the doorway.

  "Won't you gentlemen come in," she said.

  Rebecca and I sat on one side of the dining room table. Detective Peter Trujillo removed a pencil and a small spiral-bound notepad from his suit jacket, hung the jacket on the back of a chair and then sat down directly across from us. Wessels lounged in the corner.

  Beneath the rim of the table, Rebecca squeezed my knee. Hard. Using her nails. Years of dating the same woman had taught me to interpret a wide range of nonverbal signals. The nails were a dead giveaway. I knew this one. This was, of course, the old "if you start busting this guy's balls and make this take any longer than necessary, I'm going to disembowel you and feed your entrails to feral swine" squeeze. No doubt about it.