by G. M. Ford
Shopping in my neighborhood meant going down to what had, for the past hundred years or so, been known as “the Village.” A retro little collection of shops so super-white and squeaky clean you half expected Beaver Cleaver to come out of the sweet shoppe licking a cherry vanilla ice cream cone. Welcome to 1957.
I wheeled into the Metro Market parking lot and got out. I was running on autopilot, ruminating on the death of the middle class and income inequality in the twenty-first century, which probably explains why I didn’t see her until we both reached for the same Sumo orange. Her hand landed on top of mine.
Funny how inadvertently touching another human being has become cause for terror. The whole zombie-pandemic thing, methinks. Our hands recoiled as if we’d touched a molten ingot. When I looked up, she was frowning into my face. Mrs. Lexus, my neighbor from across the street, wishing she was any other place on earth. The little white dog was riding on the fold-down area.
Dogs in supermarkets is one of those places where I’ve failed to evolve. Far as I’m concerned, any animal who considers toilet water to be an aperitif, or whose idea of hors d’oeuvres involves its own ass, ought to stay the hell outside.
I couldn’t help myself. I laughed out loud.
“Talk about an awkward moment,” I said.
To her credit, she had a sense of humor. She smiled in agreement.
“I’m not sure awkward quite covers it,” she opined.
“Great oranges,” I tried.
This time, she laughed.
I stuck out my hand. “Leo Waterman,” I said.
She took it. “Janet Seigal,” she said. “And everybody in the neighborhood knows who you are, Leo Waterman. You used to be a private eye. Your father was some kind of big muckety-muck in city government. Supposedly stole millions from the taxpayers.”
“I prefer to think he was just more adept than most at doing business the way it was done back then.”
“No revisionist history for you, eh?” she said with a twinkle.
“Things were different in my father’s day. Everybody was in everybody else’s pocket. It was the way they did business. They didn’t look at it as corruption. They looked at it as greasing the skids.”
“La mordida,” she said.
“Exactly,” I said with a grin. “Everybody gets a little bite.”
Yesterday’s events were hanging over us like a locomotive, but I wasn’t going to bring it up unless she did. She did.
“About yesterday . . .” she began.
“I didn’t mean to intrude,” I mumbled.
“Yes you did,” she said affably.
I opened my mouth, but she waved me off.
“And it was the right thing to do,” she added. “But I just want you to know . . . You know, that kind of thing . . . I wouldn’t want you to think . . .”
Suddenly, the amused expression slid from her face, and she was looking over my shoulder instead of into my eyes. Didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure this one out.
I flicked a glance back over my shoulder, and there he was. The hubby—Richard, as I recalled—clutching a twelve-pack of bathroom tissue tight to his chest. As he moved our way, his back got stiffer and his stride more assertive, but it isn’t easy to play the hard case while you’re squeezing the Charmin.
Mr. Whipple walked around me and dumped his load into the shopping cart. He kept his eyes locked on mine, like we were about to have a fifth-grade staring contest.
“Can I help you with something?” he demanded.
“Probably not,” I said.
“Well then?”
“Well then what?”
The air was thick as gravy. Wisely, Janet wanted no part of it. She swung the shopping cart in an arc and began walking toward the end of the aisle. I couldn’t help but notice how hard she seemed to be leaning on the cart. Richard was backing away. He unfurled a bony finger and jabbed it in my direction. “You stay away from us,” he said.
Janet and the cart disappeared around the end of the aisle. I lowered my voice.
“You hit her again and you’ll need help wiping your ass,” I promised.
He showed me a different finger and disappeared from view.
I took my time shopping, secretly hoping to cross his path again so’s I could shove that finger up his ass, but, alas, it was not to be. By the time I collected some True North coffee and the makings for a mac and cheese, darkness had slithered over the bluff and the wind had bared its teeth.
First thing I used to tell prospective clients was not to hire me. That they’d be better off going to the cops. That modern police departments have resources available to them that no private agency, regardless of size, can hope to match.
But people don’t hire private eyes because it makes sense. They hire them because they’re desperate. Because they find themselves in a situation where they’ve tried everything reasonable and it hasn’t worked, so they figure it’s time to get crazy.
There’s no excuse for me though. Not only did I know better, but I’d been warned to keep my nose out of it. Unfortunately, something inside me doesn’t like being told what to do, so I figured I’d work off my rebellious streak by finding out whatever I could about the plaque. Maybe who manufactured it. Something like that.
Before I left the house, I’d surfed my way through Seattle’s trophy and awards listings on the web, looking for those shops that had been around the longest, figuring the dead guy had to be under fifty, so the award must have been given in either 1987, 1997, or 2007. Wound up with five stores that had been around for at least twenty-plus years.
Problem was, although the companies may have been around for decades, the people presently working the stores had been around for about forty-five minutes.
The tattooed kid at Northwest Awards knew nothing from nothing. Athletic Awards in the U District was even worse. When I asked her for the store’s address so I could GPS directions to Ballard Trophy and Awards, she had to find a piece of letterhead and read it to me. Sheeeesh.
The Ballard address was up north, damn near in Crown Hill. As I cut across North Fortieth Street, I experienced a moment of extreme clarity, wherein I decided that it would be sacrilege to be that close to Señor Moose at lunchtime and not suck down a couple Enchiladas de Puya, so, instead of turning right onto Eighth and getting about my business, I headed straight for the feedbag, grinning like an idiot and salivating like Pavlov’s dog.
Four minutes later, as I rolled around the big bend on West Woodland, the Ballard Bridge came into sight. That’s when a sign up ahead on the left suddenly jogged my memory. MOUNT ZION MINISTRIES, the black-and-white sign read. And it was a good thing it had a sign, too, because the rest of it was the least likely-looking church building I’d ever seen. Single story. The size of a grocery store. Three white doors out front, and not another aperture of any kind—no windows, no skylights, no nothing, just a solid black building with the sign on top. About as inviting as your average mausoleum, which probably explained why I’d been driving by it for years without ever really taking notice.
The guy behind me chirped his tires and then leaned on the horn as I jammed on my brakes, cut hard right into the driveway of a muffler shop, and slid to a halt.
I rummaged around on the passenger-side floor and came up with the Swedish Jesus picture and the personal hygiene pamphlet I’d found among the dead guy’s things. YOUR BODY AND YOU. Mount Zion stamp down at the bottom of the back page.
Mount Zion had churches scattered all over the Seattle area. I’d figured they probably gave out thousands of YOUR BODY AND YOU pamphlets every year. Expecting anyone involved with the church to know anything that could help me identify the dead guy had seemed like a pipe dream, but now . . . you never know. Sometimes reality runs things right in front of your nose just to see if you’re paying attention. So what the hell? I was here.
I eased myself back into the West Woodland Way traffic flow, staged a tire-squealing U-turn about a block on the other side of the bridg
e, and was standing in front of the church about two minutes later.
The only car in the lot was a white Range Rover. I sauntered down the length of the building and peered around the side, looking to see if there were any cars parked over there. Nothing there but one hell of a big parking lot. Coupla acres, anyway.
Seattle’s a pricey town these days. Even in a semi-industrial area such as this, that much land, inside the city limits, was worth big-time folding money. Whatever Mount Zion’s doctrine was, apparently poverty wasn’t part of the program.
With those enchiladas dancing in my head, I made an executive decision that my time would be better spent with a full stomach than with an empty church. I was reaching for the car door when, from inside the building, a crashing sound stopped my hand in midair.
I walked over to the triple doors, thumbed down the latch, and gave it a yank. It swung open; I stepped inside. Took my eyes a minute to adjust.
The place was nearly empty. Wooden pews were stacked three high along the south wall. Up in front, along the edge of the stage, several nearly chest-high lines of folded metal chairs stretched completely across the building.
The sound I’d heard from the parking lot had been the front rank of folded-up chairs fanning out over the sanctuary floor like a deck of cards.
I watched in silence as two men appeared from behind the curtain and glared down at the mess.
The little guy caught sight of me first, cocked his head, then made his way to the stairs and started walking my way. Late twenties, early thirties, sporting rimless glasses and a case of early-onset hairlessness. One of those postmodern nebbishes who walks around with his cell phone faceup in his hand, staring at the screen, as if where he’s going couldn’t possibly be as interesting as where he’s already been. He bellied right up to me and frowned up into my face. “Who are you with?” he demanded.
I made like I was checking the surrounding area. “At the moment . . . you.”
He blinked once. “Is that supposed to be funny?”
“I hope not.” I stuck out my hand. “Leo Waterman.”
He ignored my hand. “You with Mount Zion?” he wanted to know.
I slid the handful of paper from my coat pocket and unfolded it.
“I found this among someone’s belongings,” I said, handing him YOUR BODY AND YOU. “I was wondering if there was any way to find out . . . you know . . . how he got this. Or maybe who gave it to him.”
He never so much as glanced at the photo.
“This place look like it’s open to you?” he sneered.
“I thought churches were open all the time,” I said, holding my ground.
His partner was sauntering in our direction now. Looked like he was as wide as he was tall. Maybe six two or so, but real thick. Two seventy, at least. One of those bulked-up guys who puts on a layer of fat as he ages, but never loses the sheet of muscle beneath.
“What we got here, C-Man?” he asked.
“Some kinda nosey bastard,” the little guy said.
“I was trying to get a line on this guy,” I said, holding up the Preacher’s likeness.
He plucked the photo from my fingers and brought it up in front of his face. I watched as his eyes slid around the image. His icy blue eyes were still running back and forth over the surface of the photograph as he reached out and handed it back to me.
He had a Malibu tan and enough gold teeth to cover the national debt.
His slicked-back hair was the color of dirty brass, and long over the ears.
He gave me a big shit-eater grin and extended a hand. “Brother Biggs,” he announced.
I reflexively took it and then immediately wished I hadn’t. He jammed his big paw all the way back into my grip and applied rock-crusher pressure. Took all I had not to sag at the knees. Instead, I matched him tooth for tooth and tried not to let on about the shooting pains racing up and down my arm.
“Leo Waterman,” I said through clenched teeth.
“These holy rollers ain’t in business no more,” he said. “Me and the C-Man just lookin’ after a few things for ’em. What’s your angle here?”
“Just trying to get a line on that guy in the picture.”
“What’s it to you?” he asked.
“Curiosity.”
“Killed a lot of kitties,” he said, and then clapped his other hand in the middle of my back and began to steer me toward the door. I didn’t resist, but I didn’t help either. Didn’t matter. Next thing I knew I was moving across the floor like I was on casters, and the little hairs all over my body were beginning to tingle.
Wasn’t till he got me all the way outside that I finally got hip to what was going on with me. When you’re as big as I am, it doesn’t happen very often, so maybe that explains why I was so slow on the uptake: something inside of me was a little scared of this guy. I could feel it way down at the bottom of my innards. Some fundamental survival instinct was telling me that Brother Biggs could not only pound me to jelly, but that he almost certainly would relish the experience.
He pulled me in close and kept on crushing my hand until we reached my car. It was all I could do not to shake the cramp out. I could smell his breath mints as he pinned me with those ice-blue eyes. “Don’t want to be seein’ you around here anymore.” He tapped me twice in the chest with his index finger. “I was you, I’d make it a point not to be runnin’ into us again,” he said. He looked over at the other guy. “Right, C-Man?”
The little guy looked up from his phone. “I was him, I’d make it my life’s work.”
At which point, they turned and began to walk away. Slowly, as a sign of disdain. I hopped into the driver’s seat, started the car, and went rolling after them, pulling my phone from my pocket as I crunched across the gravel.
“Hey,” I yelled out the window. They turned in unison. “Say cheese,” I said as I snapped their picture through the car window.
Above the roar of the engine, I couldn’t make out what either of them was yelling, but somehow I figured it wasn’t Bible verses.
The day went downhill from there. Must have been fifteen people standing outside Señor Moose waiting for a lunch table. Forty, forty-five minutes, at least, I figured. I considered rustling up a parking space and getting in line anyway—you know, just to kind of spite myself—but just couldn’t, on this day at least, bring myself to be quite that stupid, so the Enchiladas de Puya became the stuff of dreams, and I kept on driving, rolling up toward Crown Hill, up where you could still park in the street for free, and the city hadn’t gotten around to putting in sidewalks they’d promised half a century before.
Lost in thought, I rolled up Twenty-Fourth in a daze, past the Buddhist temple and a big blue JESUS SAVES sign. I’d wasted a lot of time on this and wasn’t one bit closer to finding out who anybody was than when I’d started. Worse yet, I was beginning to wonder why I was bothering with this thing. Which, of course, got me to thinking about my tenuous connection to my father, which, equally of course, started to take me places I’d visited often enough to know I didn’t want to go back, so I snapped myself upright in the driver’s seat, rolled my neck around in a circle, and turned the radio up loud. Santana. “Black Magic Woman.” Could be worse.
I’m old enough to recognize those moments when the universe tells you to take a hike, that enough is enough and not to press your luck. Problem is, I’m apparently not smart enough to take advantage of the insight. Trust me. I’ve got the scars to prove it.
I pulled open the door of Ballard Trophy and Awards and walked in. Behind the counter an old man with a walrus mustache was polishing a bowling trophy.
He turned my way. “Help you?” he asked.
I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out the plaque. He turned it in his hands, looking at it from all directions, then brought it up to his face and sniffed it.
“Schmatta,” he declared. Sensing that my Yiddish wasn’t up to snuff, he helped me out. “Cheap crap. The kind of thing they don’t even let you sell a
nymore. It supposedly emits some kind of gas into the atmosphere.”
“Anything else?” I prompted.
He gave it a second look. “Looks a lot like the crap that used to come out of that factory down in Shelton.” Shelton was a little town about eighty miles south of Seattle. “Used to turn ’em out by the tens of thousands. Tree huggers put ’em out of business years ago.” He made a disgusted face. “Gotta be green, ya know.”
“Any way to figure out who sold it?”
He shook his head. “Every shop in town sold ’em.” He shrugged. “I was looking for whoever used to own this though . . .” He hesitated. “I’d start with the archdiocese.”
“What archdiocese?”
“Of Seattle,” he said. “You know—the Catholics! They used to buy these things by the truckload. Used ’em for just about everything. School awards, church awards. Athletic prizes. Knights of Columbus. Catholic women’s charities. All of it.”
The onshore flow was thick as cotton, and carrying enough water to make the wipers seem spastic. The lights in the fog-shrouded houses were soft and fuzzy as I crept up Magnolia Boulevard at about four miles an hour.
As I crawled past the Seigal house, I threw a quick glance in that direction. Between the floor-to-ceiling window and the front door, wedged back against the wall in the foggy darkness, I saw the orange glow of a cigarette. I braked to a stop. Squinted out the window, trying to make out the smoker. A sudden riffle in the fog told me that whoever it was had ducked around to the back of the house. I lifted my foot from the brake.
My front porch lights and the light over the garage come on automatically. Tonight they looked dim and distant as I eased into my driveway. I reached up and pushed the button on the garage door opener. I could hear it squeaking open, but couldn’t make it out in the foggy gloom.
I eased through the yawning doorway and shut her down. I was feeling real uneasy, so I locked the car up tight and then locked it in the garage. Couldn’t tell you the last time I did that.
