When the BMW reappeared, Baird again followed it this time to a downtown street only a few blocks from Bond’s department store, where Kathy worked as a salesclerk. Jimbo barely had time to get out of the car before the driver roared away. Jimbo yelled something at him, then went over to another car, which had a parking ticket stuck under the windshield wiper. He removed the ticket wadded it, and shot it basketball-style into the bed of a nearby pickup truck. Then he got into the car, which ironically was a 1972 Chevy Impala hardtop, the very same model Baird had owned more than twenty years before. Only this one was a rattletrap, with cardboard windows, doors that didn’t match, and a muffler that hung almost to the pavement. But it was the car’s license plate that interested Baird most. He had the number written down even before Jimbo pulled away from the curb.
The old car left in its wake a virtual contrail of exhaust gases, so Baird had no trouble following it through the city. Jimbo drove south past the Kingdome and then took the bridge to West Seattle, pulling in finally at a rundown motel that according to the sign out front, now rented its rooms as “Furnished Efficiency Apts.—$95/wk.”
Getting out of his car, Jimbo went over to a row of country-style mailboxes and looked inside one of them, then generously inspected the contents of two others before going on to his room, which was located at the far end of the single-story, L-shaped structure. Baird waited a short time before driving into the parking lot. He went slowly past Jimbo’s room, which had the number “12” above the door, then he stopped and checked the mailboxes. In the name slot for the Number 12 box, a piece of heavy white paper had been inserted. On it, crudely printed, was the name “Slade.”
Baird did not bother to write it down. It was not something he was likely to forget.
For Baird, the one great advantage in working on commission was that he never had to worry about being late for work or even missing a day entirely. Most of his customers required only two calls a month, since paper supplies didn’t turn over very fast. Because of this, he was always able to juggle his various daily routes in such a way that no one slipped through the cracks. In fact, the only reason he showed up at the warehouse at all in the morning was because a few of his customers inevitably would call in for an emergency delivery of one item or another, which he would take to them himself during the course of the day, eventually billing the item on their next invoice. As for his daily orders, he almost always dropped them off in the evening, so the warehousemen would have more time to put them up, especially those that had to be delivered the next day.
The Norsten warehouse and office were located just north of the downtown, in the largely commercial area called the Denny Regrade. Named after one of the city’s pioneers, it was once a hill as large as the others that still ringed the downtown, including Baird’s own Capitol Hill. So steep that horse-drawn wagons could not negotiate its streets, the hill had been simply washed out to sea at the turn of the century, sluiced away with power hoses in the same manner that gold was then mined in Alaska. In the company office there was an antique framed photograph of a house during the regrade, sitting all by itself atop what appeared to be a butte of mud, its owners obviously having refused to go along with the regrade. Reputedly the house of a Norsten forebear, it perfectly symbolized the family tradition of resistance to change. At the Norsten Paper Company there were no computers, no forklift trucks, no power equipment of any kind except for the massive, rickety elevator that carried incoming freight to the upper floors and outgoing orders down to the loading docks.
It was a place Baird went to five mornings a week without a trace of dread. He liked kidding with the girls in the office—and that is what they were still called at Norsten, “girls,” no matter what their age—and he enjoyed the heavier raillery with the other salesmen and the warehousemen and truckdrivers. He also liked the coolness and the smell of the old warehouse, its fragrance of freshly minted paper—boxes and rolls and sheets of it—stacked in the huge old rooms, which were twenty feet high, with thick brick walls and the original oak floors and great ax-hewn rafters a yard in diameter and sixty feet long. But probably the thing he liked most about the place was simply its antiquity, the privilege—rare for a contemporary American—to work in a building erected in another century.
On this day, though, he had gotten in and out of Norsten as fast as he could, kidding with no one, just picking up the call-ins and heading out on his route. He had known that he had to be in the park by five o’clock, waiting for Kathy’s bus. At the same time, he knew that he couldn’t let it show that he was in a hurry, not if he wanted to keep his customers. Baird’s ten years in the business had persuaded him that shopkeepers in general disliked salesmen instinctively, convinced that the bastards didn’t really work for a living, certainly not the way the shopkeepers themselves did, putting in the long hours of the self-employed. Given this mind-set, they quite naturally were always on the lookout for an excuse to dump their current supplier in favor of someone newer and cheaper. Baird of course tried not to give them that excuse. He was not a glad-hander or joke-teller, but he was affable and steady, and he knew the paper business inside out.
Ironically, it was these same small accounts—the bakeries and restaurants and corner groceries—that he could have lost without seriously denting his income. Most of his commissions came from sales to factories and hotels and restaurant chains, large orders of specialty packaging and food-service items, most of it printed. And as luck would have it, most of his customers that day had been these larger, more important ones. Though the purchasing agents for such companies didn’t share the shopkeepers’ hostility to salesmen, they were acutely aware of the largesse at their disposal, how easily they could make or break a salesman’s day.
So by seven o’clock that evening, when he reached Leo’s Bar & Grill, Baird was very much in the mood for a few cool ones. He not only had to unwind from the long, hard day, but now he also had cause to celebrate, having learned Jimbo’s identity. On the drive back from West Seattle, he had phoned home with the good news, adding that this meant they would be going to the police in the morning.
“Oh, God,” Kathy said. “I won’t sleep a wink tonight.”
“Sure you will.”
“Come home soon, okay?”
Baird had promised he would.
Leo’s was located only a few blocks from the Norsten warehouse. Though its clientele was mostly working-class, a number of newsmen from the two local dailies could often be found there. Like all hard-liquor bars in the state, by law the place had to be part restaurant, in fact had to gross half its income from the sale of food. It was said that the owners, Leo and Sally Donato, reached this magical number by classifying as food any drink with an olive, cherry, or twist of lemon. The place wasn’t open for breakfast and had only a small crowd at lunchtime and virtually no one in the evening, so the regulars like Baird naturally assumed that the books were cooked. Still, it was difficult to imagine a state examiner—or anyone else for that matter—arguing the point with Leo, who weighed three hundred pounds, only the last fifty of which were fat.
The food-liquor schism divided the place physically as well. On the left, as one entered, was the bar, a long antique thing as massive as the man who tended it. The mirrors behind it were old and beveled, and the wood floor was worn in ruts where the bibulous had trod through the decades. To the right were naugahyde booths backed by a waist-high wall, on the other side of which was the empty restaurant. On top of the wall were plastic ferns and flowers that looked as old as Baird. In the rear, past the bar, there were a pair of pool tables and a juke box that played nothing later than the Beatles.
As Baird slipped onto a bar stool, Leo gave him his usual greeting, cupping his hand and calling back to Sally, who was working at the reception counter, making change for one of the pool players.
“Hey, Sal, you better go fix yourself up. Your lover-boy is here.”
As was his custom, Baird signaled for her not to bother. “No, just as you are
, Sal. Anytime, anywhere.”
“I’m coming, baby! I’m coming!” she cried, to weary laughter from the regulars, even as she came over behind the bar now. “Where the hell you been?” she complained. “Don’t you love us no more?”
“I love you fine. I’m here, ain’t I?”
“That you are,” Leo said. He had already delivered Baird’s usual vodka-tonic, made with Russian vodka and Schweppes. Since he was not a very heavy drinker, Baird figured he could at least imbibe the best.
“You just don’t look your usual supercool self,” Leo went on. “What is it, Jack—living up there on Fag Hill got you down? You been strolling in that damn park again? You let them naughty boys pull down your panties and do all that nasty stuff they do?”
Baird took a long, cool drink, looking at the two of them, beauty and the beast. Actually, Sally wasn’t a true beauty, just trim and very cute for a forty-year-old. She was also a good deal tougher than any man in the place. Not that Leo was a gentle giant, just a little slower to rile. He was bald and neckless, with sleepy eyes, a squashed nose, thick lips, and arms that looked like logs. Legend had it that in his first and only year of college, he had been slated for the Husky varsity, but on an off day had picked up the line coach and shaken him so hard that the poor man lost a dental plate—and a top prospect.
“As a matter of fact, I was in Volunteer Park this afternoon,” Baird said.
Leo wagged his head in sorrow. “Oh Jesus, they’ve gotten to him. Next thing you know, he’ll be coming in here tacking up Gay Pride posters.”
Sally lit a cigarette from what was probably her third pack of the day. Though she rarely coughed, her voice had begun to sound like Lauren Bacall’s. “Aw, come on, let’s get off his case. When Jackie’s blue, then I am too.”
“And very poetic.”
“Naturally. So you wanta tell Sally all about it?”
Baird had long thought that the worst thing about bars, other than that drunks congregated in them, was that everybody was always playing to the crowd, only rarely managing to be himself. A perfect example of this were the Donatos, who one-on-one were each caring, intelligent, straightforward individuals, which was the reason they were two of his closest friends. Yet at the moment, these two “friends” were patronizing him as if he were a cretin who had just wandered in out of the rain. But then everyone was fair game, including the Donatos.
“I’d tell you, Sally, but you’d only blab it to Leo. Like that afternoon we spent together at the beach.”
She sighed wistfully. “Don’t I wish.”
Leo winked at the other men at the bar, all but one of whom Baird knew. “Me too,” Leo said. “A relief pitcher now and then, that’s all I ask.”
“Pitcher!” Sally barked. “Is that what you call what you do? Catcher is more like it.” She smiled at Baird and the others. “The only way Leo knows he’s had sex is if I tell him so.”
She had to hurry back to the counter then, to collect from an actual restaurant customer. Leo took her place in front of Baird.
“No bullshit, man,” he said. “Everything okay?”
Baird shrugged. “Sure. Nothing serious.”
“Which means everything ain’t okay.”
“I guess you could say that. Some ponytailed creep’s been harassing my daughter. He hounds her all the way home after work, telling her how much she’s gonna enjoy being stabbed and raped and—well, you get the picture.”
“No shit, Jack.”
“No shit.”
“Maybe we oughta pay the fella a visit.” Leo made a fist and tapped it into his palm. His hands looked like a pair of baseball gloves.
“I’ve been thinking along the same lines,” Baird said. “Only it’s my problem, Leo. I appreciate the offer, though.”
Sally had come back by now. “What problem?” she asked. Leo told her and she shook her head in disgust. “God, that really pisses me. There are just too damn many sickos out there these days.”
“California’s getting too crowded for ’em,” Leo observed. “So they come up here.”
“And your Kathy’s such a lovely girl,” Sally said, turning to Leo. “You remember Kathy, don’t you? Jack brought her in here for lunch around Christmas, wasn’t it? God, what a knockout! Brunette hair and violet eyes—I love that combination.”
“Only she’s got brown hair and blue-green eyes,” Baird said.
“Whatever. All I’m saying is, if I looked like that, I’d make a beeline for Hollywood. I’d be bigger than Madonna.”
Leo laughed. “Oh, sure. What do you think, there’s a shortage of beautiful girls down there? You gotta have talent, Sal.”
“I’d take acting lessons. If the Boz can do it, I can do it.”
“I ain’t talkin about actin.”
“What then?”
Leo had moved down the bar to refill a couple of mugs of beer. “Talent, Sal.”
One of the other men, a retiree named Ralston, chimed in. “Yeah, the kinda thing a girl does with her lips and tongue—”
“And teeth,” said another, old Wyatt. “The kinda talent, Sal, that can make ugly old bald guys like me feel like Frank Sinatra.”
“Who’s an ugly old bald guy,” Leo said.
“That’s the joke,” Wyatt explained.
Sally stood there looking at Leo and the others. Making a face, she turned back to Baird. “Not exactly a convention of rocket scientists, you know?”
Baird was not surprised to see old Wyatt at the other end of the bar. A dentist with an almost nonexistent practice in the Regrade, Wyatt was a dead ringer for the Uncle Ben of rice fame and the only black among the regulars. His real name was Dr. Earl Hadley, but he’d made the mistake one day of bragging that a dentist had to have the eyes of a hawk and the steady hand of a Wyatt Earp. Ever since, his name was Wyatt.
Baird smiled. “If it wasn’t for the two of us, Sal, this’d be a pretty tacky place.”
Sally picked up his glass and topped it off with a good deal more vodka than tonic. “You can say that again,” she said.
It was close to ten in the evening and Jimbo Slade was feeling no pain. He had scrubbed himself good in the shower, making sure he got rid of even the ghost of an odor from his job: the stinking dishwasher detergent and the food itself, especially the goddamn leftover fish, which he liked to say smelled like midnight pussy by the time it got to him.
Afterward, he put on the long blue-velvet robe Murray had given him and turned some rock music on the radio. He filled a glass with ice and Red Label Scotch, then lit a reefer and lay back on the bed to enjoy himself. He liked the word “reefer.” Old Murray had taught him that too, along with a lot of other bullshit, like what to wear and which fork to use and how to pronounce “chic” and other asshole words, the old fart trying to turn him into a proper little Hollywood fag. And Slade had gone along for a time, what with the old creep gone all day designing sets or something like that, and the streets absolutely running with primo pussy. Murray had even let him use his car occasionally, a prissy little BMW that Slade nevertheless had managed to score with more than a few times, usually in his special way, the cunts down there being just as gutless as the ones up here, scared to death of a real man.
Finally, though, he hadn’t been able to get up even a limp one for Murray, and when the pitiful old fag started bitching about it, Slade had simply unloaded on him—too much, as it turned out, since the bastard almost died. Slade had squeezed everything he could into the fucking BMW and was almost out of state when some gung-ho trooper checked the car’s license and pulled him over. Originally charged with attempted murder and grand theft, he plea-bargained it down to assault and grand theft, and did eighteen months at Soledad.
But he was smarter now, more cautious, taking his time. The dishwasher job kept the parole officer happy, and when the police came sniffing around—especially that bitch, Jeffers—he was able to tell them that he was straight now and that he had a job and paid taxes just like everyone else. As for the mea
sly minimum hourly wage, at least it kept him in smokes. And meanwhile, he was moving ahead slowly but surely, selling mostly to his johns and their friends, nickle-and-dime stuff maybe, but it was adding up. Then too, there was more product now, with acid becoming big again, like Murray said it was back in the sixties, when the old fag was a fucking hippie.
The only problem was the brothers, who wanted to hog it all. You had to move so goddamn carefully with them that he sometimes thought he was going to get an ulcer. But it was the only way. You crossed them and before you knew it you had a bunch of twelve-year-old jungle bunnies running up your ass with Mac-tens. They were wasting each other even faster, though, so Slade figured things eventually would go his way. All he had to do was kiss a little black ass on occasion, be patient and careful, and he was confident he would wind up where he belonged, up there on top of the mountain.
Of course that meant he had better not lose his cool anymore, like he had the other night. Sometimes it just got to him, though, the way some rich, stuck-up little cunt would give him the shoulder. It really pissed him, because it made no sense at all. It certainly wasn’t because of the way he looked; the fags proved that every day, practically standing in line to have a shot at him. And it wasn’t the way he talked or acted either, because some of the cunts would turn away the minute they saw him looking at them, smiling at them. All he could figure was that he must have scared the hell out of them, with his hard face and hard body, right out there for the whole world to see. He dressed the way he did, like a rebel, because that’s what he was. What they saw, that’s what they would get, and he figured they just didn’t have the guts for it. That was the only logical explanation.
Nevertheless he knew he couldn’t let it happen again. The lady dick, Jeffers, was still on his case about the Ravenna thing, he was sure of that. But he’d been smarter this time, wiping the girl off with her own fucking sweatshirt and deep-sixing all of it—the sweatshirt, gloves, and tire iron—in the Duwamish River, on his way home. Still, he promised himself that there would be no more of that, no more blowing his cool. He had too much to lose. And anyway, the girl who worked at Bond’s was really beginning to get to him. He couldn’t even think about her anymore without getting a mega hard-on. She was so goddamn beautiful, and she seemed so sweet and pure, he would have bet a gram that she was still a virgin. Maybe he would send her flowers and ask her for a regular date, start taking her out to dinner and shit like that. Maybe she wouldn’t be so shy and skittish then.
A Man's Game Page 3
