Emerald City

by Chris Nickson

  “People change, Carla,” I said softly.

  She leaned against the cart, under the shade cast by the large umbrella that stood over it. “Bullshit,” she said again, and stared at me. “Look, this guy was my friend just about my whole life.”

  “Had you seen him much in the last few years?”

  “No,” she admitted. “But we still ran into each other, and no way was that guy shooting up. For Christ’s sake, Laura, I’ve known junkies. Craig wasn’t one.” She ran a hand across her eyes to brush away the tears that were starting to form. “Sorry,” she muttered, “but it’s all wrong.”

  I gave her a gentle hug then walked slowly back up the hill sipping on the coffee and thinking. I’d known a few people who were clean one day and junkies three months later. Craig could easily have started using again; so many did. I sighed. This was going to be very different from anything I’d done before. I was going to have to work my ass off.

  At home I dug out the records that would be Craig’s legacy, two singles and an LP. Snakeblood was emblazoned in blood red on the front of the album, with fangs on either end of the S. I put the record on the turntable and lowered the needle. The sound was a touch of glam, a touch of metal, lots of melody and that voice. It was arrogant, it was knowing and seductive, it grabbed the attention and wouldn’t let it go. They could have been huge. Everyone in town had been saying so for a year or more. And now the voice had been silenced.

  Three

  People forgot just how young Seattle was. It was only back in 1851 that the first white settlers had staggered off their boats on to Alki beach. A few years later it had been a wide-open town, where the loggers and the prospectors heading for the gold rush in Alaska spent their money in the brothels and bars around Pioneer Square and invented the term Skid Row. It was strangely gratifying to know that hadn’t all disappeared yet as yuppies ate up the neighborhoods. Even now you could drive up Aurora and see plenty of hookers looking for business. The Seattle Police Department seemed to leave them alone, like a reminder of the city’s wild past that kept the place human.

  The cops were generally good. They treated people fairly and looked after all the burglaries, thefts and assaults, and dug into the few murders we had every year. That didn’t mean they were helpful, though. When I called the sergeant at West Precinct he explained he wasn’t authorized to give me any information about Craig’s death, sounding overly patient just in case I couldn’t understand him because I was female. Instead he directed me to the information officer downtown.

  She was nothing more than a PR person in a uniform, friendly enough, but a practiced stonewaller who was pure ice behind the surface charm. Even trying a little sisterly solidarity couldn’t move her. The only thing she offered was to fax over the department’s statement on the case. It was essentially what had been in the paper; the only bonus was Craig’s address. A quick check in the Thomas guide showed that SW Kenyon Place was a tiny dead-end street just across from Lincoln Park, about as deep into West Seattle as it was possible to go. For most things it was the middle of nowhere, but the beach and Puget Sound were just two minutes’ walk away. Craig must have thought the trade-off was worthwhile. Or the house price had been too good to turn down.

  Over at the King County Medical Examiner’s office at Harborview Hospital a secretary confirmed that an autopsy had been carried out. For a fee I could have a copy of the investigator’s report. All the private information on Craig would be blacked out, but it would still be useful. Right now anything, everything, would be useful.

  Inside, I felt sure that the truth behind the death would probably turn out to be simple and sordid, the way most things in life were. A junkie gone back to smack. Still, even that left a story to be told. A bleak, sad one, another hopeful lost to drugs and haziness. One more name to add to the list of musicians who’d died too early, a list going all the way back to jazz and blues.

  It was barely one o’clock and I already felt as ragged as if I’d put in a full day. But the typewriter with a fresh ribbon was waiting accusingly for me on the table, a pile of clean white paper next to it, reminding me that I had a review to write and money to earn. I sat down, pulled out the album I’d been listening to the day before, and started to type.

  If musicians were paid by the melody, Crowded House’s Neil Finn would be a rich man...

  An hour later it was complete. Several drafts lay crumpled and discarded in the garbage can, leaving me with a clean copy and a head full of mist as my mind kept twisting back to Craig. I picked up the car keys and headed out.

  For once, the old Pinto caught at the first try. It had been a gift a year before; a friend had planned on junking it. My car had died so I took it, spent forty dollars on a tune-up and now it ran pretty well most of the time, with a little coaxing in the cold and damp. I followed the Mercer corridor, climbing up the winding road to Capitol Hill and cutting across to Harborview, its daunting 1930s bulk perched on the hill above downtown like a dark reminder of mortality.

  In the coroner’s office the air was chilly and sterile as if to keep the stench of decay away, and the fluorescent lights were frighteningly bright and intense.

  “I’m Laura Benton,” I explained to the receptionist, a woman with a smile like a pageant doll and a name tag that read Barbara. “I called earlier. They said I could buy a copy of the investigator’s report on Craig Adler.”

  “When did he die?” she asked absently, and riffled through a pile of files on top of a cabinet. “I’ve got it. The report’s ten dollars,” she explained apologetically.

  That was it. So simple, so straightforward that it seemed impossible.

  I slipped the Pinto through the downtown streets, the sidewalks clogged with purposeful afternoon pedestrians, none of them smiling, and joined on to the Alaskan Way viaduct at Columbia. The road fanned out past the container port with its strange, futuristic cranes that looked like something out of Star Wars, and funneled me on to the West Seattle Bridge, running high over Harbor Island and the Duwamish river. From there it was a straight, easy run to Fauntleroy Avenue and all the way out to Lincoln Park.

  It was nearly four when I parked. Kids and their moms were loud on the swings and teeter-totters, and the cars were beginning to line up on the street outside the ferry terminal, anxious to scuttle back to their rural homes over the Sound. The drivers looked shocked and bruised, as if a day on this side of the water had exhausted them.

  I walked down the hill to where water lapped against a pebble beach, sat at a picnic table and unfolded the investigator’s report. The brevity was beautiful, professionally terse and abrupt, with everything compressed on to a single sheet of paper. A call to 911 had been logged at 10.15 on Saturday night, a female asking for an ambulance, saying she’d found Craig passed out with a syringe by his side. The paramedics had arrived inside ten minutes. They’d attempted to resuscitate him but without any luck; he was dead by the time they reached the house. He was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.

  The investigator had interviewed the woman – her name carefully blacked out – and discovered she was Craig’s girlfriend. She’d come home after her shift waiting tables at Denny’s, let herself in and found him. Her time card seemed to confirm the story. There was no indication of a struggle, no break-in. The heroin had been cooked up in a spoon that was lying out on the table.

  The only thing wrong was that the girlfriend insisted Craig hadn’t been a junkie. She admitted they’d both shot up regularly in the past, but not this year. The admission of a drug history seemed to be enough to satisfy the investigator. He concluded that Craig had either shot up too much or the drug had been stronger than he’d anticipated. He’d been drinking, too, with a very high alcohol level in his bloodstream.

  It all pointed to a terrible, unfortunate accident. Another dead druggie, good riddance, end of story, next. I put the paper back in my jacket and crossed over the road, stopping at the car to pull a comb from my bag and run it through my hair, trying to lo
ok vaguely professional. Kenyon was just one block long, scrambling sharply up the hillside from the main drag. The houses were Thirties single story frame buildings that looked as if they’d all been bought from the Sears catalog. Back when they were put up all this would have been country, surrounded by crops and livestock. They’d have been the urban pioneers. Now it was just one more tiny part of the city’s suburbs, the gardens all tidy, grass neatly clipped. They were homes to people who might not have owned a lot but valued what they possessed, the cars all older, lovingly polished sedans in the driveways. It looked so typical of everything in West Seattle, neat and ordered, stuck in the fifties, as if somebody had transported Mayberry to the Northwest.

  Some strands of yellow crime scene tape still clung to the porch of Craig’s house, the only thing to distinguish it from any of the others. The paint was recent, white with green trim, and Craig’s old truck, the beat-up F150 with the camper shell I’d seen at plenty of gigs, was still sitting in front of the garage. There was nothing to indicate who’d lived there, no quirkiness, no eccentricity, no garbage. The lawn in the front yard needed cutting. Around the borders plants I couldn’t name were starting to poke through, green shoots rising tentatively. Spring really was here, but he’d never see it.

  I stood back and took a deep breath. No one was outside, nothing was moving on the street. If I was going to find out more I’d need to start knocking on doors and talking to Craig’s neighbors. He’d lived there for several months; they must have had a sense of him.

  I took a deep breath. It was time to become a reporter.

  At the next house up the street a woman answered, warily keeping the door on a chain. Her hair was grey and stylishly short, her eyes sharp and inquisitive.

  “Hi,” I introduced myself. “My name’s Laura Benton. I’m writing about what happened to Mr Adler.”

  She shook her head and at first I thought she didn’t want to talk to me. I’d already started to turn and leave when she said, “Craig’s death was terrible. He was always so kind. You couldn’t have asked for anyone sweeter to move in next door.”

  I was silent for a moment.

  “I interviewed him,” I told her, “but I didn’t really know him.”

  “We’ve had the people from the papers and television around already,” she said cautiously. “You weren’t one of them.”

  “No, I’m a music journalist,” I explained and her eyebrows rose in surprise. “Really. I write about music. I’m trying to find out what happened to Craig, and why. Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?”

  She nodded, as much to herself as in acknowledgment, and pushed the door to. I heard the chain slip off and then she said, “You’d better come in. Just leave your shoes in the hall.”

  There was a Japanese theme to the living room, the floor bare except for a few tatami mats and low seats. Everything was spare, the walls stark white, bamboo blinds on the windows, simple, elegant strokes of calligraphy framed on the walls. There was a sense of deep tranquility about the place.

  “Sit down,” she said, and I settled on one of the mats.

  “I’m sorry to intrude, Mrs...”

  “Heston. Elizabeth Heston. And it’s Ms.” She smiled to show there was no sting or sadness in her words. “Forgive me,” she said apologetically, “but I have to ask. How did you end up writing about music?”

  I smiled. She didn’t need to say the rest, I’d heard it often enough before.

  “I’ve always loved music and I found out I could write.” After all this time I’d managed to condense the explanation into a single sentence. Her eyes were scrutinizing me, but there was a kind look in them. “Craig,” I said, to jog her.

  “Yes,” she answered slowly. “He enjoyed coming over. He liked to sit in here and talk. He was interested in Japanese culture.” She chuckled for a short moment. “Well, he thought he was. He didn’t know too much about it, really.”

  I cocked my head.

  “I used to teach Japanese studies at UW until I retired,” she told me. “So it was mostly me talking and him listening. But he did genuinely want to know. He’d come over a few times a week for an hour or so.”

  “Would you be okay if I recorded this?” I asked. “It’ll be easier for me later.”

  “Sure,” she answered with a gracious smile, and I pulled the cassette machine from my bag. She seemed younger than her years, lithe and graceful, her pale skin clear, as if she lived a smooth, ordered life. She settled down cross-legged in an easy way.

  “What did you make of Craig?” I asked once the tape was rolling.

  “I don’t know, I guess he was a mix of things,” she said after some reflection. “He was looking forward to all these opportunities with his music, but he seemed scared of them too.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I think he was scared of failing, which was quite understandable, I suppose. You know that a record company was going to give his band money?” I nodded. “He worried that what he did might not be good enough. But he was full of contradictions, just like the rest of us. There was the young man who was very comfortable in the city. He loved Seattle, even all the way out here.” Her eyes twinkled for a moment. “But underneath was the boy who’d grown up in the country with those values.”

  “Was he a good neighbor?”

  “He was the best,” she insisted. “He took me up to Thriftway every week back in the winter when it snowed, and to all my doctor appointments. I never like to drive when the roads are bad. He cleared Harry’s walk – Harry’s three doors down – and made sure he had enough food in.”

  It wasn’t a side of Craig I’d ever imagined. The one I’d known had always been hanging out in clubs or bars, a small court gathered around him, all crammed around a table at the Comet or standing and catching the music at the Central. The hip Craig. This was him once that mask had been removed and he was able to be just an ordinary person. Somehow it made me like him more.

  “Did he ever play you any of his music?”

  “A couple of times.” She made a small, sour face. “It wasn’t my kind of thing.”

  “What about noise? Was he loud? Parties?”

  She shook her head. “No, he wasn’t. We were all worried when he moved in, you know, a musician. But he was very considerate. We’d see him or Sandy, his girlfriend. They’d have some friends over sometimes, but really, they were like everyone else, just... normal.” She said the word as if it came as a surprise. “They took out the trash and looked after the yard. He even painted the house back in the fall.”

  “There was never anything that might have suggested drugs?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “That depends what you mean by drugs. Did I know he smoked pot? Of course I did. You only had to walk into his house and there was the smell of it.” Her fingertips made small circles on the polished wood floor. “I’ve spent a working lifetime around students. Getting stoned isn’t going to kill anyone, and I’m sure you know that as well as I do, Ms Benton.”

  “Please, call me Laura. Everyone else does.”

  “Laura, then.” She paused. “A long, long time ago I had a boyfriend who died of a heroin overdose.” She looked away for a moment, straining for a glimpse of the past. “If he hadn’t, well, who knows, maybe I’d have ended up living somewhere else, doing something different.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be, it’s a long time ago.” Her voice was small and tight. “But you don’t forget. Did I know Craig was using heroin? Yes. Sandy, too. They quit at the end of last year. We even talked about it.”

  “You did?” I asked in surprise. I’d never imagined it as a topic for conversation over coffee. “What did they have to say?”

  She stared at me and countered with a question of her own. “How well did you know Craig?”

  “Like I told you, hardly at all.”

  “Well,” she began slowly, “he was a smart man, and he could be ambitious. He had his publishing deal – he had to explain what i
t was to me – and he was seriously negotiating about a record contract. He wasn’t going to mess that up.”

  “And what about Sandy?”

  “You know she waitresses?”

  “Yes.” It was on the coroner’s report.

  “Don’t let that fool you,” she warned, looking straight at me. “Sandy’s very intelligent. She’s got a degree in psychology and she uses her brain. She shot up with him. I think she wanted to see what it was like.” She thought for a moment. “She always seemed to... keep a kind of distance from it. Craig was a junkie. I’m not sure Sandy ever really was, not in the same way.”

  “Why did he start, did he ever say?”

  “He was blocked in his songwriting. He thought it would help him.”

  It was so clichéd that I looked at her for a moment, not sure how to respond.

  “And did it?” I asked finally.

  “It’s hard to do anything productive when you’re out of it,” she said, bitter experience in her voice.

  “But they did stop?”

  “Yes,” she said firmly. “He needed to clean up for his record deal and Sandy made sure he did that. She kept him off it, too.”

  Except he’d died of an overdose. That question remained.

  “What do you think happened on Saturday?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. They were home in the morning, I saw them when I went for my walk. Then I heard him take her to work in the afternoon.” She hesitated. “After that the next thing I knew was flashing lights and sirens outside and I went to see what was happening,” she said with sad finality.

  “Where’s Sandy now, do you know?”

  “I think she went to stay with her mom. Or maybe a sister, I don’t remember. Anywhere that wasn’t here.” She stood up gracefully. “I’m sorry I can’t be more help.”