by G. M. Ford
All total, nearly five months of investigation by the SPD, the Washington State Patrol, and the FBI had turned up nothing but some green polyester fibers and half a dozen stray pubic hairs, which any competent defense attorney would argue came from the Dumpsters.
Corso got to his feet. Stretched. Massaged the back of his neck for a moment and then ambled into the galley, where he dropped to one knee and rummaged around under the sink. He came out with a small card-board box and carried it back to the salon, where, one at a time, almost reverentially, he put the photos and the files facedown in the box and then slid the box back under the sink. He checked his watch: 4:25.
“The stuff we got from the cops is a hundred-percent useless,” Corso said. “I spent the day going over everything.” He shook his head. “They’ve done what they could, but they’ve got bupkis. This guy’s going to have to make a mistake before they get a line on him.”
Mrs. V.’s face was grim. “How many more lives is that going to cost?”
Corso shrugged. “The good news is, his level of violence is going up. He’s working himself up to a frenzy. It’s what these guys do. With each new killing, it takes more and more to get them off. They start to feel invincible. Next thing you know, even the organized ones start to get a little sloppy. Hopefully somebody in charge will be paying attention when it happens.”
“Meanwhile…Mr. Himes,” she began.
“Yeah,” Corso said. “Meanwhile, Mr. Himes. We don’t come up with a smoking gun, old Walter Lee’s gonna buy the farm.”
“And you’re still convinced of his innocence?”
“Innocent”—he waggled a hand—“I don’t know. I go back and forth about that. What I am sure of is that he got a bad deal in court. If nothing else, he ought to get a new trial.”
A silence settled over the room.
With a sigh, she put her palms on the desk. Got to her feet.
“Guess who’s on the payroll?”
“I’ll bite, who?”
“Miss Samples.”
“Doing what?”
“Subscription complaints. We needed some new help in a hurry. She said she’d like to try. Mr. Harris says she’s absolutely marvelous. Totally unflappable. Seems she has a homily for every occasion.”
Corso smiled at the thought of Leanne telling some irate subscriber who didn’t get his paper how “Mama said…all things come to those who wait.”
The grin faded when Mrs. V. said, “You wouldn’t believe the volume of hate mail we’ve received in the past eight hours.”
“Over what?”
“Over our suggestion that Mr. Himes may not be guilty. It seems that a great many of our fellow citizens are in favor of executing Mr. Himes whether he’s guilty or not.”
“That’s what idiots do, isn’t it? Whenever reality fails to match their little preconceptions, they demand that reality forthwith be changed.”
“You’d think they’d have some interest in justice.”
“They can’t,” Corso said. “They’d have to admit that every day of their lives they’re probably rubbing shoulders with the likes of Walter Leroy Himes. They like their villains remarkable. Evil geniuses who want to conquer the world or eat your liver with beans…something like that.”
“I’m sure you have an opinion on why that is?”
“’Cause the more remarkable the villain, the farther removed it is from them. They don’t actually know anybody like Hannibal Lecter.” He waved a hand. “Child-molesting rednecks. Hell, they’ve got relatives like that. That’s what really scares the hell out of them.”
She nodded. “What did somebody once say about how the law is practiced in courts, but justice is dispensed in alleys?”
“That’s it, exactly,” Corso said. “We ought to reinstate public executions.” He met her amused gaze. “I mean it. Right out in the town square. Westlake Center. High noon. After church on Sunday. Everybody gets to see the system in action. Gets to let off a little steam. You know…bring a lunch. Bring the family. Make a day of it.”
“You’re terrible,” she said with a chuckle.
“No…I mean it. It’d be like a weekly cautionary tale. They could wire ’em up for special effects like that Porter guy over in Montana.”
She winced at the memory. A couple of years back, triple murderer Stanley Porter had been electrocuted at the Montana State Penitentiary. As horrified witnesses watched, eight-inch flames had burst from Porter’s ears. Several sensitive souls had fainted dead away. Turned out they’d had a dead short in the system. Not that it had mattered much to Stanley Porter. He’d had his fifteen minutes. For a while there, seemed like half the cars in Montana had one of those “Stanley Porter is alive and medium-well” bumper stickers.
“Way I figure it,” Corso said, “you let a kid see a couple of dozen felons doing their impression of Bunsen burners, and we’ll have a lot fewer of the little turds showing up at school with guns.”
“I’d like to think we’re too civilized for such spectacles.”
“That’s the problem. We’re too damn civilized. We raise these kids out in little isolated patches of suburbia. Buy them any damn thing their diseased little minds can imagine, protect them from all harm, and what do we get? We get these lonely little nerd boys who blow our brains out over breakfast one morning and then go down to the high school and kill everybody who’s feeling better than they are.”
“You’re feeling very passionate about things this afternoon,” Mrs. V. noted. Corso rubbed the side of his face. “It’s that—what did you call it the other day? That quixotic spark of mine.”
“We’re imperfect; ergo our systems are imperfect,” she said.
Corso ran his hands through his hair. “I had a professor once who said the greatest trait a reporter could possess was a tolerance for ambiguity.”
“You think he was correct?”
“Only up to a point. Too much tolerance and you become amorphous. You wake up one morning, everything’s so friggin’ hunky-dory that you’re nobody in particular.”
“How so?”
“Because things like intellectual certainty and moral outrage and righteous indignation are the engines of society. Self-satisfied tolerance never accomplished a damn thing except to muddy up the waters of what’s right and what’s wrong.”
He opened his mouth to say something else, but instead merely laughed at himself. “Listen to me. Jesus. I must be tired.” Corso turned and crossed to the door. “I’ve got to pick up Dougherty. We’re following an artistic lead.”
He tried to muster a final smile, but couldn’t get his face to go along with the program. Opened the door and stepped out without a backward glance. Violet Rogers was tapping away at her keyboard. He walked past her desk and pushed the elevator button. Violet looked up. Gave him a wink.
“You know, Violet…I’ve been thinking about what you said the other day. About how maybe I was mad at God and all.”
“And?”
“And I think maybe you’re right. I think maybe I am.”
A muted tinkle announced the elevator’s arrival. The door slid open and Corso backed in. Violet shook her head sadly. “You better hope she don’t get mad at you back.”
Corso pushed the button. Rode to street level, where the little Hispanic guy was behind the security desk. They exchanged silent nods before Corso jerked open the door and stepped outside.
The night air clung to the skin like wet linen. He hunched his shoulders, crossed the sidewalk to where the Datsun was parked in a tow-away zone. Looked up toward First Avenue, where the fog had swallowed even the darkness, leaving the city puffy and whiter than white. He started the engine. Clicked on the head-lights. Watched the beams disappear down a black hole about twenty feet out.
She pulled the leather jacket tighter around herself as she stepped onto the concrete. Corso killed the engine and got out of the car.
“This will probably go better if I go in alone,” she said.
He gave her a two-fingere
d salute. “I’ll be right here. You have a problem, you just call my name.”
In three steps, she was enveloped by the fog. Corso listened to the fading sound of her boots on the concrete. Overhead, half a dozen orange lights cast a velvet glow. The school was gone, but the playground remained. What used to be the Martha Shelby Middle School was now nothing more than three concrete walls with a basketball hoop bolted to each wall. The city had dedicated the space for graffiti artists and skaters. “Graffiti City” the taggers called it. The de facto agreement was that the cops would leave Graffiti City alone. Smoke your underage cigarettes. Toke on those pipes. Stay out late. Spite your parents. But…keep it off the streets and don’t wake the neighbors. It starts leaking out into the streets or we get any complaints and the party’s over.
As much as Dougherty hated the fog, the cool mist soothed her cheeks and forehead. Her face felt like it was sunburned and about to crack to pieces. The sound of a basketball slapping against the concrete echoed around the walls. To the left, a trio of preteens sat on the ground smoking contraband cigarettes. She heard voices ahead in the gloom. Three more steps and the outlines of two guys emerged. Shrill laughter erupted from somewhere deep in the enclosure.
They were maybe sixteen. One white. One Hispanic. Uniform baggy pants and oversize stocking caps. Plaid jackets buttoned all the way up. Passing a pipe.
“Hey, Cholo…look what we got here,” the white kid said.
Her mouth suddenly felt as cracked and dry as her face. She knew better than to let them get started on their routine. Let ’em get worked up and they could be dangerous.
“I’m looking for Torpedo,” she said.
Torpedo was the street name for one of the kids Dougherty had photographed for a piece about graffiti artists. They’d gotten along well. He’d been her guide through the underground world of taggers and skaters. His tag was the word “Boom” in the center of the rainbow-hued explosion. Made his taggin’ rep puttin’ his mark on cop cars, then made himself a legend tagging the space needle Christmas Eve, ’98.
“I got a torpedo for you, baby,” the other kid said.
The first kid stepped in close. He smelled of weed and stale sweat. He put a hand on her ass and gave it a little tweak. She slapped his arm away.
“Keep your fucking hands to yourself,” she said.
“You hear that?” the Hispanic kid asked. “She gonna kick yo ass for you, boy.” White boy laughed and grabbed his crotch. Moved his package up and down.
“Come on, baby. Got just what you need right here.”
Dougherty felt her throat constrict as she checked out the area he was fondling and then stared him down.
“At best you got about half what I need right there.”
The Hispanic kid bent at the waist and pointed at his friend. “Hoo hoo hoo.”
White boy lost his sense of humor. Started bopping around like a spastic rapper.
“You got some mouth on you, bitch…you know that?”
She felt a finger of fear on the back of her neck. Much as it pained her, she was about to scream Corso’s name when a figure stepped out of the fog.
“I hear somebody usin’ my name in vain?”
Torpedo. Finely wrought features and some of the longest eyelashes she’d ever seen. Multiracial. A little of everything. Claimed to have been in seventeen separate foster homes. He’d grown since she’d seen him last. Tall as she was now. Still wore the biggest pants she’d ever seen. Obligatory plaid jacket buttoned to the throat and one of those knitted Scandinavian wool hats with the earflaps. Reindeer cavorting across the front. Festive like.
He stopped. Pointed at her. “The pitcher lady,” he said. He walked over and slapped her five. “You gonna makes us famous again?”
“Maybe, if we can get rid of the stoner boys here.”
He turned toward the pair. “You heard the lady,” he said. “Take your weed-smellin’ asses up the road.” White boy opened his mouth to speak. Torpedo reached languidly into his pants pocket. Left his hand in there. Everybody got stiff all of a sudden. Had a little E.F. Hutton moment, until Whitey’s friend reached over and put a hand on his pal’s arm. They passed a look. “No problem,” the Hispanic kid said, showing Torpedo his palms. Together, they backed silently off into the gloom.
Torpedo inclined his head to the left and then started walking that way. Dougherty followed. She heard shouts and the clank of the ball on the rim. More dribbling.
Torpedo walked all the way to the east wall. Leaned his back against it. He straddled a puddle. Dozens of bloated cigarette butts bobbed like an armada.
“I been thinkin’ ’bout you lately,” he said.
“About what?”
“’Bout how we need some more help to get our story out. To tell people what’s really happenin’ out here. Not that crap they put in the paper.”
“Like what?”
“Like how they givin’ kids a year inside for taggin’.”
“A year?”
“No shit. I know three kids serving serious jail time for nothin’ but taggin’. No dope. No resisting. No nothing but tagging.”
Dougherty wasn’t surprised. Seattle was as fat and full of itself as it’d been for a hundred years. Anything shabby had to go. You could walk around downtown and point at buildings and say, “That won’t be there in a year.” From Dougherty’s Capital Hill apartment, the skyline bristled with construction cranes, almost as if the city were under siege. Turned out, affluence was the fifth column.
“What can I do?”
“Get us some space. So we can tell ’em.”
“Tell them what?”
“That…that no matter how much they tear down, nothin’ gonna change. People still gonna be shootin’ dope and beatin’ their old ladies. Guys gonna lose it behind whiskey and shoot some motherfucker for somethin’ that don’t make no sense to nobody but him. Ain’t gonna be perfect…no matter how hard they try, how many poor people they lock up. City just ain’t gonna be perfect.”
“I can ask around the alternatives and see if anybody’s interested.”
“Somebody got to tell the story,” he said. He pulled out a pack of Merit cigarettes, offered her one, took it himself when she refused. Fired it up.
“What you needin’ from me?” he asked.
“The kid who tags ‘fury.’”
“What about him?”
“What’s his real name?”
“Bobby Boyd.”
“I need to find him.”
Torpedo bumped himself off the wall. “He doan come down here much. Doan like painting where it’s allowed. Kid’s a taggin’ animal,” he said with obvious admiration.
“You know anybody who’d know where I could find him?”
“Sure,” he said. “His two main homeboys are Tommy and Jared.” He pointed in the direction of the invisible basketball game. “Them two little shits shootin’ hoops right over there.”
Chapter 22
Friday, September 21
7:25 P.M. Day 5 of 6
Hear the car door. Figure it be that fat Korean she work for. King, Kin, Kim, whatever the hell it is. Stop by sometime to bring her little presents and shit. But there’s three voices. Hope like hell it ain’t the cops. Can’t hear shit through the door. A woman’s deep voice say “fury.” His mama sayin’ how he ain’t been out the house at all. They go back and forth, real quick like, but he can’t make out the words.
“Robert.” The voice. Maybe if he don’t say nothin’…
“Robert, you come down here, right now.”
Shit. Shit. Shit. Must be the damn cops. His stomach contracts and the tears start from his eyes. That bitch judge told him. Gonna get a year inside like Manny, if they catch him at it again. Gonna admit nothin’. Not one goddamn thing. That’s where everybody blow it. Listen to that cop crap about how they’ll feel better if they tell the truth. End up down in county lockup givin’ it up to stay alive. Don’t tell ’em nothin’.
He checks himself in t
he mirror on back the door. Lookin’ nappy as hell. He pats at his hair. Just look worse. Shit.
“Robert.” Real loud this time.
“Comin’,” he calls.
He steps over the hole in the stairs. Take his time. Gettin’ his shit together on the way down. No way they gonna see him sweat. All you got to do is just be cool, fool. Just be cool.
Two of ’em. Standin’ there in the front room. Ain’t no cops neither. Big mean-lookin dude with a ponytail and one of them Capital Hill sun-hater chicks with the black all-over shit. Maybe seen her before somewhere. Hard to tell. All them Addams family hos look the same. “Yeah?”
She’s standin’ there with her arms folded across her chest, big-time pissy look on her face. “These people here from the newspaper. Want to talk to you.”
“You remember me?” the chick ask.
He don’t say nothin’.
“I took pictures of your artwork, last year sometime. Remember?”
“Oh yeah,” he say. “You come wid Torpedo.”
Before she can say somethin’, Pissy Face start flappin’ her lip. Right up in Goth Girl’s face too. “Don’t be talking about no ‘art’ here, lady.” She turn her head and lay the brow on him. Almost as bad as the voice. “What we talkin’ about here is vandalism. ’Bout defacin’ people’s property. ’Bout the kind of choices this young man is making wid his life. Choices if he ain’t careful gonna follow him around for the rest of his days. So doan be talking bout no spray can ‘art.’ Not here in my house, you ain’t.”
“We’re not here to make any trouble,” the big guy say.
“Good, ’cause Robert doan need no help wid trouble.”
“Why don’t you tell us about the yard behind the Aviator Hotel, Robert?” Ponytail say. Felt like all the blood drained down to his feet. Musta looked that way too. Next thing he knows everybody lookin’ at him like he hurled or somethin’. She unfold her arms and put a hand on his shoulder. “You all right, Robert? What’s this man here talking about? Aviator yard or something.”
