by G. M. Ford
She opened her mouth to speak, but I put a finger on her lips.
"Gordon did, didn't he? He heard Peerless rampaging around and threatening you. He remembered the beatings from years before. He went and got the gun. Walked right up behind him."
She was shaking her head, but I pressed on.
"And to make matters worse, I think maybe the poor kid thought he was shooting Jimmy Chen. For nearly his whole life, he's been walking around with the knowledge that he tried to kill his old man."
"That's why I told him Jimmy was dead. He doesn't remember anything about that night," she said. "Never has."
I got to my feet. "I don't know much about psychology, Judy. But I think things might be a lot better for both of you if he did."
She dropped her eyes to the floor.
"Good luck," I said and started up the hall.
"Leo," she called.
I stopped and turned around.
"Your father would be proud of you," she said.
I couldn't help myself. I laughed out loud.
"Yeah," I said. "I get that all the time."
Chapter 28
They'd buzzed his head, reducing the once leonine mane to a field of irregular white stubble, not unlike the last scruffy remains of fall corn. Orange wasn't at all his color, but fashion was a fairly low priority item, as far as King County was concerned. It was like Henry Ford and the Model T. You could have the jail coveralls in any color you wanted, as long as it was orange.
I took a chance that he'd see me. I figured it was possible, because I've been in jail. Nothing serious, you know. Contempt of court, that sort of thing. Two weeks at a time, here and there. But I estimated that Judge Brennan had been in the county lockup for the better part of nine weeks now, and when you've spent nine weeks locked up with people whose basic problem is that they have great difficulty controlling themselves, you get real flexible as to what you will or won't do for a change of pace.
Jail has a way of humbling the most hardened criminals. Not so Douglas Brennan. He came out the jail door into the visitors' room every bit as arrogant as he'd gone in, with that snide smile bending his lips and that patrician air swirling about him. The jailer left his handcuffs on, so Judge Douglas J. Brennan was forced to hold the stinking telephone receiver with both hands, sort of in the "now I lay me down to sleep" position.
"What do you want?" he sneered.
"Just dropped by to say hi," I said, keeping the filthy mouthpiece as far from my lips as possible. "Papers say Dan Hennessey is going to get you a new trial."
He smirked. "It's a done deal. With a competent jurist, I'll be back on the street in ninety days."
"So . . . you're probably looking to keep a pretty low profile between now and then."
"What do you want?" he said again.
"It's not so much what I want as what it is I've got to trade."
He was wary now, sensing the hook.
"Such as?"
"A little peace and quiet."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Just what I said. A little peace and quiet while your new trial is going on. A chance for the judicial system to work its magic."
He got to his feet. "I don't have time for this foolish ..." He began to pull the receiver from his ear.
"The Carlisle Hotel, nineteen fifty-seven," I said quickly.
He was good. Other than flicking his eyes toward the back of the room to make sure we were alone, he kept whatever he was feeling bottled up inside. "Is that supposed to mean something to me?"
"Only if you happened to be one of the people on the fifteenth floor that night."
"What people would that be?"
"In your case, Brennan, the one who walked out alive."
He craned his neck, taking in the bare room.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
I smiled. "Sure you do, Doug. That's why my old man had you in his pocket. And that's why you're going to tell me what I want to know."
"You've got nothing.''
"I've got exactly what he had, Brennan. You know how he was about keeping records."
His nasty smile told me what I needed to know. I decided to take a chance. "I've got copies of everything he gave to you."
He gave me the kind of pitying look one gives an injured animal.
"Gave to me? Gave what to me?"
"You know, Doug, the documentation my old man traded you for the Garden of Eden material back in sixty-nine."
I'd hit a nerve. For the first time since he'd walked in the door, he wasn't amused. He checked the room again. We still had the place to ourselves.
"You wearing a wire?" he asked.
"Nope."
"Let me see."
I stood up, removed my coat, laid it on the stainless steel counter and turned the pockets inside out. I yarded my T-shirt up around my neck and turned in a complete circle.
I read his lips through the glass. "The pants," he mouthed.
I patted the shirt back into place, dropped my drawers to my ankles and repeated the graceful pirouette.
I put myself back together and picked up the receiver.
"What do you want?' he asked me again.
"I want you to listen to me," I said. "And then I want you to tell me what I want to know." I tapped a finger on the smudged plastic between us. "But first, I want you to understand ... if you bullshit me, I'm taking what I've got to the DA. Today."
"And if I don't?"
"Then what I've got will never see the light of day.
They may get it from some other source, but they won't get it from me."
"And I'm supposed to take your word for this?"
"I don't see as you've got much choice."
It took him a minute, but, in the end, he didn't either.
"Deal," was all he said.
My turn to check the room.
"It's simple, Brennan. All I want to know is what it was about the raid on the Garden of Eden that made my old man go to the considerable trouble of making it disappear."
He was sneering again. Rubbing his cheek against the phone.
"That's all?" he asked incredulously. "That's all."
He let out a great whoop of laughter.
"And what if you don't like what I tell you?"
"As long as it's the truth, we've still got a deal."
He rocked the chair back onto four legs, pressed his forehead against the Plexiglas, gave me a great big grin and told me exactly what I didn't want to hear.
Chapter 29
I sat in a red canvas director's chair, sipping a designer root beer, while he threw himself around the room in pursuit of the little ball. The big guy with the iron hair wasn't bad, but he lacked Pat's desperate desire to run down every shot. In the end, Pat just plain outhustled him.
Although the wall between us was clear plastic, Pat didn't notice me until the two of them opened the door and stepped out. His blue pullover was plastered to his body with sweat. Water beaded his scalp.
As usual, he was cool. If I hadn't known better, I'd have sworn he was expecting me. He turned to his partner.
"Monsignor McCarty. Have you ever met my nephew, Leo Waterman?"
He was thick, with a red pockmarked face. His bulk looked better suited to football than handball. He wiped his hand on his shorts and stuck it out. "I don't believe we have," he said.
His hand swallowed mine whole, but his grip was gentle.
"Bill's boy," Pat said.
The Monsignor now began to massage my hand in earnest.
"Knew your father well, Leo," he said. His blue eyes 296 twinkled. "If you don't mind the expression ... a hell of a man."
He and Pat shared a small chuckle; I rescued my hand.
Pat and the monsignor exchanged good-byes. Pat peeled the sodden black gloves from his hands as we watched McCarty walk down the hall toward the showers. Pat waited until he was out of sight.
"You haven't been returning my calls."
"I've been busy
."
"I take it you've read the paper."
In this morning's edition, the SPD had announced its intention to hold a news conference at noon, PRICE TAGS AT NOON. A little more than three hours from now, wherein they would announce their findings as to the untimely disappearance and subsequent discovery of Peerless Price. Oh, joy unbounded.
"I've seen it"
He walked a dozen steps down the hall to a Dutch door. The girl inside handed him a forest-green towel. He wiped his head as he walked back my way.
"Any idea what they're going to say?"
"I'd guess they were going to say that, what with the body being found where it was, and the murder weapon belonging to Ed Schwartz, they'll say it seems likely that his death stemmed from his relationship with my father."
"Seems likely?"
"Unless they've got something real solid, they won't go any further than that for fear we'll sue them."
"But they've got to say something to satisfy the Price family."
"That's how I see it," I said.
He heaved a sigh. "And I suppose you'll feel compelled to prove them wrong."
"No," I said. "I've had enough. Let 'em say what they want."
He stopped mopping his face.
"Really?"
"Really."
He wiped his hands on the towel. "And to what do we owe this sudden spasm of lucidity?"
I did good. I let the jibe go. I like to tell myself that if he'd shut the fuck up and not acted like an asshole, I'd have gotten on my merry way. But, then again, I like to tell myself a lot of things.
"I've decided you were right," I said. "The past ought -to be buried along with the people who lived it"
" 'Tis a pity you didn't come to that realization before you prolonged our family's public embarrassment." You cur.
I got to my feet "You know, Pat you of all people should be glad I pushed the envelope a bit."
He smirked. "And why would that be, Leo?"
I could feel the blood rising to my head.
"Because my poking around put the Garden of Eden raid to rest, once and for all."
He was good. He looked bored. "The what?"
"The Garden of Eden. Remember? Little place down under the Chase Hotel on Western. Bunch of guys sitting around waving their meat at one another." His shoulders stiffened. "They arrested the whole lot of you. Your brother Bill had to squeeze Doug Brennan to keep the whole thing under wraps. That's what you've been shitting bricks about ever since this whole thing started, isn't it?"
He opened his mouth to speak, but I beat him to it.
"Don't bother with a denial. You don't need it for me. I could give a shit. Just take my word for it that Brennan and I have reached a point of . . . what did they call it back during the Cold War . . . mutual deterrence. Nothing about that night is ever going to see the light of day."
He reached over and patted me on the shoulder. "Must have been that blow to the head." On his way past the towel girl, he slung the towel in through the door without stopping. "Pat," I called to his back.
With a show of great reluctance, he stopped and turned back my way. "I thought you were quite through," he said wearily.
"You still run every morning?"
"Why?"
"Well . . . lately . . . with all that crap going on with the judge, I've been running Greenlake in the mornings. I thought maybe some morning you'd like to . . . you know . . . take a lap."
He thought it over at length.
"I'll bury you," he said finally.
"I know."
"What time?"
"Six?"
"Five-thirty." You cur.
"Tomorrow?"
"Where?"
"By the Shell House." 'I'll be there."
Before he turned the comer, he looked back over his shoulder.
"Don't be late," he said. You cur. "No fuckin' way."
Chapter 30
The movement of my sneakers rippled the newly fallen willow leaves, sending dry yellow waves puffing out from my feet in all directions as I walked. About halfway down the path, I moved off the pavement, pushing my way through the web of weeping tendrils, over toward the rear of the sagging boathouse.
As I emerged into the sunlight, I found myself brushing at my arms and shoulders, trying to stem the tide of hitchhiking leaves now attached to my blue windbreaker. At least one soldier had found his way down my collar and rested cold and crisp against my neck. I reached back to get it out but squeezed too hard and sent the shattered pieces skittering down my spine like a colony of ants. I silently cursed and pulled the jacket tighter about me.
I cursed again, this time out loud, when I saw the twisted wooden walkway which wound around the front of the abandoned shack. At least a third of the treads were missing. Another third were cracked or broken. This early in the morning, this time of year, a dip in Lake Union was pretty much gonna ruin my day.
I heaved a sigh so big I noticed it, spread my feet wide, and began stepping lightly, moving from intact section to intact section, stopping after each movement, peering down into the dark water, waiting for the quivering structure to come to a momentary rest before moving on.
I kept at it until I reached the front of the shed. What had once been a gentle ramp down to the water was now nothing more than a half dozen decaying pylons poking up from the shallows like bad teeth. The rolling door which had once spanned the building lay broken and piled upon itself, leaving the little shack agape, yawning out at the lake through a narrow tunnel of trees.
He was sitting in the doorway with his feet dangling over the water . . . checkin' his eyelids for holes ... an Old English forty ouncer clutched tightly in his mitt.
He didn't look up. He left his chin on his chest.
"That you Georgie?" he gargled.
"It's me, Ralph," I said.
Without looking up, he waved the bottle in my direction.
"Gwaaan. . . ." he mumbled. ". . . getouttahere."
I stepped over into the doorway and sat down beside him. A mile away, over on the far side of the lake, across Westlake Avenue, nearly at the top of the hill, the brick gables of my family manse stood dark and sentinel among the trees. Although I'd always been able to pick out my own house from across the lake, today it seemed more exposed to the eye than I could ever recall. Must have been all that trash we'd cleaned up. Ralph pretended to snore.
When I pulled the fifth of schnapps from my sagging jacket pocket, his eyelids fluttered. I took my time removing the him from the bag and then, with even greater deliberation, wadded the sack into a tight ball. When he still didn't move, I picked the botde back up, unscrewed the top and took a long pull.
"Ahhhh," I enthused.
Ralph hcked his lips and shot me a look from the corner of his eye.
"Here's what happened," I said.
And I told him damn near the whole story. The only things I left out were Tim and Frankie, 'cause I didn't want to end up in a crate, and Pat, 'cause I didn't figure it was any of his business.
Forty minutes later, the sun had slipped behind a cloud and the breeze carried the season's first hint of blue northern ice. By then, Ralph was sitting up, clutching the remaining schnapps between his thighs like a fireman's pole. His empty beer him had rolled over the edge and now bobbed about on the surface of the black water.
"Jesus," he said when I stopped talking. He took a long pull on the him and then wiped his mouth with his sleeve. "We're born naked and hungry," he slurred. ". . . and then things go bad."
I reached for the bottle.
The End.
Leo Waterman is the kind of guy you want around in a pinch. He's tough when the time calls for it, but cool—oh so cool. Leo may not, however, be the kind of guy you want to bring home to mother. He's got a heart of gold, but he doesn't wear it on his sleeve. Leo Waterman is a man of few words—though he's always good for a couple of zingers—but his humanity is written all over his actions. A guy like Leo is a guy you want to count among your fri
ends. And if you enjoyed the time you've spent with him in LAST DITCH, you won't want to miss seeing him again in THE DEADER THE BETTER, available now in hardcover from Avon Twilight.
