Contract Killer

by Richard Hoyt

  “Put that thing away and sit down, Juantar,” Janine said.

  Juantar sat. “Praise the Lord,” he said.

  Richard Willis said the meal was on him. He said he’d figure out some way to bill it to the department, which at least owed us all a good meal for saving its collective rump. He thereupon ordered scallops. Juantar went for Dungeness crab.

  Janine studied the menu. “I think I’ll have number seven,” she said. “Poached salmon. Expensive, but why not? The cops are paying.”

  She was right about one thing: salmon was damned expensive.

  “And you, sir?” the waitress asked me.

  “I think I’ll take number four there.” I waited for the waitress to mark my order on her pad. “Just for the halibut,” I said.

  Juantar said, “Must we keep your company, Denson? Must we?”

  Willis looked disgusted. “We’ll all have double whiskies. Any objections?” He looked at the rest of us.

  Nobody objected.

  I slumped back on the red plastic cushion of my chair. The waitress brought our whiskies. I took a sip. I was tired. I thought about Willie Prettybird, who had been forced to kill his brother. I thought about Rodney Prettybird, who had been driven mad by the legal system. I thought about Prib, who had murdered out of naive loyalty. I thought about Melinda, who had destroyed her life. I thought about Jensen’s greed and Egan’s greed. It was early in the morning of a lonesome October of my most immemorial year.

  Before the sun came up Melinda Prettybird died in the hospital. The doctors had pumped her stomach, but it was too late. Prib Ostrow, however, lived. His large bulk was credited with being able to absorb more poison than Melinda’s small frame.

  Because Ostrow lived, the rest of the story soon became clear. It turned out that Prib had been an employee of the contractor hired by the city to reinforce the rusting iron beams that held up the street-level sidewalks above the underground. That was how he found the closed-off tunnel that was the aborted first leg of a plan to connect the underground city — cut into isolated islands by solid streets — and save it from extinction. The tunnel builders had dug a shaft to the center of Pioneer Place that was eventually to have been the main entrance to the underground. The shaft had long since been capped, covered, and planted in turf like the rest of Pioneer Place. This was how Rodney and Prib smuggled parts of Moby Rappaport and Kim Hartwig past the police video cameras.

  Three days after that awful Halloween, Prib Ostrow, following the counsel of a court-appointed lawyer, confessed to helping Rodney butcher the judge and his law clerk. At the end of the fishing-rights testimony, he said, Janine Hallen told the Prettybirds that Judge Rappaport would have the Boldt controversy on his mind when he wrote his decision, so he would be extra careful. She said justice was slow. Sure enough, Rappaport gave himself two months to deliver his final decision. She said Rappaport needed the time to develop an airtight case to back the decision he probably made halfway through the evidence. There were studies that showed that judges made up their minds fairly early on. On top of that, she said, Judge Rappaport wouldn’t even write the decision himself. He would outline his arguments to his law clerk, Kim Hartwig, a young man fresh out of Georgetown University Law School.

  Ostrow said Janine told the Prettybirds to be patient. None of this was out of the ordinary. The Prettybirds should read nothing into it. They would win. Just wait, she said.

  But Rodney and Melinda Prettybird didn’t want to wait, Ostrow said. They were impatient to know the decision. So without telling Willie — who wouldn’t have put up with that kind of thing — they connived to have Melinda take Kim Hartwig for a sail on her waterbed. Guided by stars that were Melinda Prettybird’s dark brown eyes and with an erection for a tiller, Hartwig, eager at the helm, told Melinda that yes, Rappaport was going to support the Prettybirds.

  Alas, Ostrow said, after they had gone to all that trouble, Rodney Prettybird didn’t believe Hartwig. Rodney said Hartwig was just trying to please Melinda. Hartwig was lying. In order to get the truth, Rodney beat Hartwig nearly unconscious. In order to stop the beating, Hartwig confessed that he had lied to Melinda: Rappaport was going to support Egan and Jensen.

  Ostrow said Willie found out about the beating through his little nephew, who’d heard Rodney and Prib laughing about it while they drank beer and watched a ballgame on TV. Rodney and Melinda didn’t want Willie to know what they had been doing, so Rodney hit upon the idea of beating up on a couple more of Melinda’s lovers. That way, they reasoned, neither the police nor Willie would care who the lovers were. Melinda could blame the beatings on Mike Stark, whose jealousy was a matter of court record.

  The next problem was what to do about Judge Rappaport. If Rappaport had already made up his mind on the lawsuit, Rodney reasoned, they might as well take a chance on Rappaport’s replacement, Judge Louise Awdrey. So, Prib said, they kidnapped and murdered the judge. They got high on dried Fly Agaric and used Prib’s brick saw to butcher the corpse. Once they did that it was easy enough to tidy things up by murdering Kim Hartwig.

  After Prib Ostrow had said all this, of course, he and his lawyer claimed the confession was made under the influence of Amanita pantheria and was therefore not admissible in court. Prib really didn’t understand what he was saying, the lawyer said. The lawyer said it was a well-known fact that the effects of Amanita pantheria last for hours. Besides, the lawyer said, Prib was insane at the time of the murders — this also from eating Amanita. Prib couldn’t remember where he was or what he was doing.

  Prib Ostrow’s legal dodge infuriated the public and gave the television people reason to videotape all manner of people saying how outrageous it was.

  In the first week of November, an indictment was handed down on Doug Egan for bribing Hartwig to tell him the details of the pending court decision. Hartwig had inadvertently aided the people’s attorneys by recording the details of the transaction in a personal journal that police discovered while they were investigating his disappearance. William “Foxx” Jensen was arrested for extortion and willful destruction of property for his assaults on Jim Davis’s SalPaclnc cannery. Officials in Olympia petitioned their colleagues in Austin for the extradition of Jensen’s Texan accomplice.

  It was only after all this that the nearly completed brief of Judge Moby Rappaport’s decision in the matter of Prettybird et al. vs. the State of Washington was found in his study. Judge Rappaport supported the Prettybird arguments right down the line. He said there was no reason the Cowlitz should be excluded because the Chehalis refused to sign the treaty. He said Governor Stevens was obliged to treat the tribes separately, not as a single entity.

  Rodney Prettybird had concluded that Kim Hartwig was lying to Melinda about Rappaport’s decision. In fact, Hartwig had been telling the truth. As far as I was concerned, that was a curious mistake on Rodney’s part. Melinda Prettybird had the kind of eyes and charm that would make a man swear allegiance to Lucifer if she asked.

  The Prettybird case was moved to the court of Judge Louise Awdrey.

  Richard Willis, accompanied by Janine Hallen as his attorney, faced the police department tribunal for his alleged insubordination earlier in the year. Before the appointed hour Janine got tough with Richard. She told him he had to be calm. He had the advantage because he had gotten to the butcher killers before the department did and had let the cops take credit. News of Toba’s participation had somehow remained secret, and that was Richard Willis’s ace.

  The chairman of the disciplinary panel, worried about protecting the department’s collective behind, let Willis off with an admonition to in the future please be more patient with dumb cops.

  Willie Prettybird dropped out of sight after he was cleared. He told me he’d be back one day and to expect him to return when I saw him walking through the door. I got in touch with Captain Mikey, Scabby, the Rodent Clone, and the Beaner. We formed the First Avenue Irregulars, a dart team out of the Doie. Rodent Clone took over the job of my unofficial coac
h: Keep your foot down, Assholete. Slow down. Stop rolling. Extend your arm. Start it with the triple-eighteen, believe me. Zen darts now. Zen darts. When Rodent Clone was absent, Captain Mikey took over the onerous duty.

  Every Sunday we played Killer at the Doie. As far as I’m concerned, above all other games, darts in general and Fuck Your Buddy in particular most approximate the vicissitudes of life: a constant struggle against loss of concentration, bad luck, and better players. The last time I was in the Doie, Willie’s brethren were still sitting under the shelter of the delicate, airy pergola across the street. They had their wine with them. They smoked cigarettes. They powwowed. They told one another old fish stories.

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