by Richard Hoyt
Which no doubt accounted for Augustus Poorman’s appearance in Ilwaco. The old Foxx! “What happened?” I asked.
Egan watched while his wife poured us more coffee. “Isn’t she wonderful?” he said, as she handed me my cup. What could I say? Egan said, “What happened was that Willie and Rodney Prettybird got a loan from the Small Business Administration — minorities and all that crap — and made a bid for the cannery. Why do you think they want treaty rights for the Columbia? They could either move the cannery down here or truck the fish up there; no big deal either way. Can’t start a cannery from scratch, though — too much money these days.”
Willie and Rodney wanted to buy SalPaclnc? Why hadn’t Willie told me? “Who owns SalPacinc?”
“It’s mostly owned by a halfbreed named Davis. He’d probably have sold out to Jensen if the Prettybirds hadn’t made an offer. Now he’s just sitting back and taking it easy.”
“Just watching the price go up.”
“That’s about it. I don’t think the Prettybirds can keep up, though.” Egan looked amused. “Maybe the fuckers’ll go bankrupt.” He could hear his wife talking on the telephone in the kitchen. “Isn’t she just fabulous?” he said, in his deep radio announcer’s voice. Doug Egan had a wife with a famous front and the money to stake him to a fishing business. He was so secure that he seemed not to be showing off when he wasted Wild Turkey bourbon by pouring it into coffee. He had world-famous Douglas fir salmon leaping up the sidewalk to his handsome home. But he wasn’t satisfied; he wanted more. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Just between you and me, Mr. Denson, I’m not the kind of guy to get fucked over by a young buck like Rodney Prettybird without fucking back. You understand what I mean?”
Doug Egan’s hormones prevented him from keeping his intentions to himself, which would have been the smart thing to do. He just had to tell me what was on his mind. Had to.
17 - DOWN AT THE STATION
I knew who they were when I saw them coming up the sidewalk. They had that look about them. Something about their walk. Casual. In charge. They wore raincoats and their shoes were polished. Cops. One was tall and dark-haired, the other broad and blond. They looked about them as they walked, appraising the condominium building. They were thinking: this guy Denson’s a private, true, but he has a roof over his head. At one time or another each one of them had probably wondered if he shouldn’t try it — go private, starve on freedom.
I suspected I was going to learn the truth about Augustus Poorman. Poorman either worked for Foxx Jensen or Willie Prettybird. These gentlemen, I knew, were my payment for not being careful.
I poured myself another cup of coffee, picturing their progress in my mind’s eye. They would open the glass door in front, would turn left in the foyer, would smile to themselves as they looked down the hall and saw Winston waiting for them. They would have been talking about Winston on the way over, because he was known by most detectives in the department.
For their entertainment, I selected a bark that sounded like an effeminate Chihuahua — a languid, lisping little bark — a response that hardly fit the terrible Winston. Both cops were laughing when I opened the door with my little punch-button selector in hand.
“You think that one’s good, try this,” I said. I punched up the blood-curdler with which Winston had greeted Janine Hallen. “He’s got five different barks.”
The tall one dug his boxtops out of the inside of his jacket pocket and showed them to me, still grinning and staring at Winston in disbelief. The I.D. said he was a Seattle police detective.
He said, “We got a guy at the station who wants to talk to you, and ordinarily he would have come out himself but he broke his foot trying to roller-skate with his kid.”
The broad one said, “So he wants to know if you won’t let us take you in for a few questions.”
“About what?”
“This and that,” the tall one said.
I hadn’t done anything illegal. “Do I bring my toothbmsh?”
The tall one laughed. “No, no. Nothing like that. Just questions, is all. Like I say, he would have come out himself but couldn’t on account of his foot. You’re not gonna have to have a lawyer with a writ or anything like that.”
“Sure, if you bring me back,” I said. I got my hat and coat.
We talked about the Sonics’ streak on the way down to the police station. The cops were cordial but didn’t want to talk about whatever it was I was about to be questioned for. I was taken to the office of Lieutenant Daniel Harner, a freckle-faced man with red hair and his foot in a cast. Harrier was middle-aged and paunchy, friendly as an old pair of jeans. He reminded me of Gutley, a shaggy old Chesapeake Bay retriever I’d owned as a kid. Harner looked up from an elaborate model of an old farm that he was building on a table. Everything that was on it was an impeccable miniature.
Harner shook my hand warmly. “Thank you for agreeing to come down, Mr. Denson. I would have driven out myself but I banged my foot up a little. My wife was nagging me about doing more with my kid, so I bought these roller skates for sidewalks at a garage sale — you know those deals with polyurethane wheels and all. I used to skate when I was young, but all I managed to do was break my ankle ten minutes out.”
“Ouch!” I said. “I never learned to skate because I grew up in desert country. No sidewalks on a farm.”
“My kid felt bad, you know, and my wife felt she was to blame because she’d been nagging me. I was embarrassed, big-deal father and police detective falls down and breaks his ankle. Then the doctor, he says if I want my ankle to be the way it was I gotta keep my weight off it for six weeks.”
“The two detectives said you want to talk to me.”
“Listen, there’s a Thermos of coffee in that cabinet over there and some cups. Why don’t you pour us some?” Harner kept talking while I went for the coffee.
“To be honest with you, Mr. Denson, this ain’t the way these kind of interrogations are normally conducted. I’ve got a partner named Willis who really knows how to behave like an asshole. He’s got an expressive face, actually. He can come off any way he wants. What we do is take somebody like you to see Willis and Willis makes a lot of threats and scowls a lot — he’s got a hell of a scowl — and in general scares the pee-wadding out of people. We let this go on for a while, then I show up and act all compassionate and sensitive and give the impression I think he’s an uncivilized moron. Then I bring the poor guy down here to my office and give him a cup of coffee out of my Thermos. It’s a lot more impressive than if the coffee comes out of the department pot down the hall; people are more willing to talk.”
“Can you get away with an act like that with women?”
“We used to, years ago. I’d wait until their chins started bouncing before I interrupted — just before they were ready to cry.” Harner considered the memory. “It was actually sadistic, I suppose, and we can’t get away with it anymore, not with women’s lib and all. A female suspect feels safe with a matron sitting there to insure that she’s not being pawed or something.”
“Probably a good thing in the long run, don’t you think?”
“Oh, sure. I never had the heart to work a woman sitting there scared to death with her face all bunched up. So my part of the act involves working on my model here. I’m supposed to find what we want to know — all amiable like. No fuss. Working on the model is the trick, Mr. Denson. People are fascinated by miniature figures. It’s like I’ve got a little world here on my table and they get to watch it grow a little. The deal is, Willis isn’t working today and I’m not supposed to be moving around so I’m going to have to start right out with the coffee and the model.” Harner leaned over the table and began painting a miniature outhouse with a tiny brush. “When I finish one tableau I auction it off to buy Christmas presents for kids who wouldn’t ordinarily get them, and start another. This one’s a Colorado ranch of the 1870s. As I understand it, you’ve already met Willis.”
“He was here a few days ago
when I brought a listening device in here.”
“Willis is a smart cop, but he’s pissed off a few people over the years. He’s impatient with boneheads.”
I was curious about what kind of trouble Willis had gotten himself into. “I understand Lieutenant Willis is in some kind of trouble.”
Harner scratched his stomach and looked momentarily tired. “I guess you could say that. He’s awaiting a disciplinary hearing. Thanks to the union it’s a matter of public record.”
“I probably won’t go look it up, but I’m curious.”
“He’s charged with insubordination and disrespect for a superior officer, something like that. What happened was that a captain who plays golf with the chief and who is the godfather of the chief’s son screwed up on a common rule of law. The result was that a man we all know raped at least five women is walking the streets free on a legal technicality. Well now, Mr. Denson, we had a detectives’ meeting where we were all civilized, peers and all that, and pretended that the captain really hadn’t done much wrong, that the judge was an asshole, and so on. You know what I mean. Nobody was going to put his dick on the block.” Harner looked chagrined.
“What happened?”
“Willis couldn’t take it anymore. With the chief of police standing there being everybody’s pal, Richard Willis said the truth was the captain didn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground.”
“Oh, no!”
“Oh, yes. That was just the phrase he used.” Daniel Harner felt truly sorry for Richard Willis. He’d probably wanted to say the same thing himself.
I changed the subject. “You know, when I was a kid I always wanted a miniature steam engine. I remembered looking in the catalog and wanting one always but they cost too much money.”
“That’s why I turn my tableau money over to the Christmas fund. How long have you known Willie Prettybird, Mr. Denson?”
“A couple of years. I met him at the Pig’s Alley Tavern before it got bought out. We both throw darts.”
“And you moved to Juantar’s Doie Bar?”
“That’s where we go to throw now.”
“You’re Willie’s good friend, then?”
“Sure, you could say that.”
Harner squeezed a trace of rust-colored acrylic onto his palette. “Are you working for him now?”
I didn’t say anything. “Willie’s got unreal nerves come out-dart time.”
“How was it exactly that you came to accompany Augustus Poorman to see the SalPaclnc cannery? Would you tell me that?”
I told him what happened and my reservations and anxiety about Poorman.
“What’s the name of that woman at Hillendale’s you talked to?”
“Doris Baldwin.” I gave him the number I had called at Hillendale’s.
“And now you feel something was wrong?”
“Something. Looking back and all. Little Texan in black gloves. Hillendale’s.”
Harner leaned close to the table and examined the outhouse carefully. “This is a neat little crapper, isn’t it? You’ve seen outhouses like that, haven’t you? Are you a very successful private investigator?”
“I pay the rent, I guess.”
He applied another dab of paint, an ochre this time. He looked up at me. “You’re a trusting man, Mr. Denson. I suppose in most people that’s a fine trait.”
“Poorman seemed nutty enough to be true. You know how it is. Am I being suspected of something?”
Harner looked surprised. He turned his attention to the roof of his barn. “Barns like this are too expensive to make anymore, you know. But they’re beautiful things. Don’t you think so? If a man had a barn like this he had something to be proud of. He could care for his animals and feed his family and have a good enough life. They lifted hay up with this little pulley — it’s a lot like the apparatus the Dutch use to get furniture into the upper floors of their houses. No, I don’t think you did anything wrong, Mr. Denson, but at first blush it might not seem that way.”
“A guy wonders, you know.”
“Then you went to talk to Foxx Jensen. Do you know Mr. Jensen well, Mr. Denson?”
“I saw him once on television. This was the first time I’d met him.”
“Did you ever correspond with him or talk to him on the phone? Have any contact with him at all?”
“No.”
“What did you talk about down there in Ilwaco?”
“My investigation.”
“I see. Have you ever been employed by Foxx Jensen, say, through a third party?”
“No.”
“Did you agree to contact him after you left?”
“No again.”
Lieutenant Harner began putting his paints away. “Mr. Denson, if I were you I’d be a little more selective in the clients I chose. You should give that some thought.”
“Are you talking about Poorman?”
Harner smiled.
“Are we finished?” I asked.
“Oh, I think so, Mr. Denson. I do appreciate your help.”
“It was pleasant,” I said.
“I really do mean what I said about being careful about your clients, Mr. Denson.”
“Do you want to tell me who Augustus Poorman is?”
Harner said, “These acrylics really are wonderful, do you know that? You can thin them out just like watercolor. Water down a red real good, and you can make a model barn look like it’s spent forty or fifty summers in the sun.”
18 - BACK RUB
The tall cop and the broad cop took me home after my session with Daniel Harner. They had gotten tired of talking about the Sonics and got onto the subject of a narc friend of theirs who had gotten shot in the foot on a cocaine bust. The broad cop drove and ignored yellow traffic lights on the way to my place. If the traffic was clear on a red light, he ran it cold.
“I don’t like those things, either,” I said, as we sailed through the second red. “They just wear out your brakes.”
“They get in your way,” the broad cop said. “If nobody’s coming, what the hell?”
“If you see a man in a necktie casually run a red light it means he’s a police detective,” I said.
“One of the perks,” the tall cop said. “The city doesn’t pay us worth a damn. People’re all the time saying we’re vicious cruds. This is a makeup, Denson. The department says, ‘Hey, run all the red lights you want. No sweat!’ That keeps us happy and doesn’t cost them anything. It’s called labor relations. Keeps us from signing up with the Teamsters, which everybody knows is run by the Mafia. Up at the U-Dub they teach courses on that kind of thing.”
The broad one slowed for a red light at a crowded intersection. “Would you want the Seattle police department in the clutches of the Teamsters and the Mafia, Denson? Would you? Give us a break.”
The tall one said, “I bet you privates have some perks of your own, or else why would you go around wearing blue jeans and corduroy jackets. At least we wear decent shoes.”
“Income taxes,” the broad one said. “We’re salaried employees so the government gets its rip before we get our paychecks. Only Denson here knows for sure how much money he makes in a year.”
“That’s why I wear jeans and a corduroy jacket,” I said.
The tall one said, “Fake ‘em out, eh, Denson? All right! That’s gotta be it. So what’s the deal? You get a job here, a job there. Is that it? Cash is just fine by you. This fiver’s for you. That buck’s for your Uncle Sam; you put your money in a Swiss bank and wear that getup as a front. Not bad.”
“I use a bank in the Cayman Islands. Gives me an excuse to go scuba diving. Look, you guys aren’t going to turn me in or anything like that?”
“Hey, it’s okay, either one of us’d take that kind of action any day,” the broad one said.
Once I got back to my apartment I turned on my radio and tuned into a virtually adless and newsless FM station that played mellow music. The media people were getting all oh-no! and oh-my! over the butcher murder story,
which was a bit hypocritical as far as I was concerned. The truth was they loved it. Big-time Pervert! I treated myself to a glass of screw-top red. It was a playful vintage — at least six months old — with an aroma, I thought, that hinted of mildewed vinegar. The first taste of it puckered my mouth and made saliva run in the back of my throat. I got myself some carrot sticks and thought things over. I still didn’t know who Augustus Poorman was or how I had been used. Judging from Harner’s questions, Augustus Poorman’s Ilwaco connection was Willie Prettybird’s old nemesis, Foxx Jensen. Apparently I wasn’t suspected of any crime, but it, was embarrassing to have Daniel Harner think I was dangerously stupid. It was embarrassing and not good for business to have a police detective think that way about me.
What I needed was counsel, I told myself. A friend. Succor. Something like that. I thought of Janine Hallen’s intelligence. She was orderly, systematic. Perfect for counsel. There lay warmth and passion beneath Janine’s measured exterior, I was sure of it. Perfect for a friend. Grand for succor. Emma at the answering service, who knows me, said I should avoid women like that; I should find a woman who doesn’t mind a sink full of dirty dishes. To hell with Emma. I phoned Janine.
“I’m glad you called, Mr. Denson. I was wondering about your adventures. What happened? What did you find out?”
There was hope for succor, I thought, but I had to be careful. “I spent a few hours on the road, Janine. I talked to Mike Stark. I talked to a cop about the bug in Melinda’s apartment. I took a salmon buyer from Hillendale’s to the coast. I drove down to Ilwaco and talked to Foxx Jensen. I talked to Egan. I was interrogated by the police.”
“Interrogated by the police?”
“Just some good old-fashioned sadism. The bastards kept me up half the night, most of it standing with a hot light in my face,” I said.
“They what?” She was concerned.
“I’m exhausted. I thought that kind of stuff went out with the movies.”
Janine Hallen may have been a lawyer with a Mensa I.Q., but I was convinced that in the heart of most good women there lurks a desire to provide succor to something — a goldfish, a cat, a private detective, maybe. She said, “Is there anything I can do?”
