Who in Hell Is Wanda Fuca?

by G. M. Ford

  "What makes you think he's coming back?"

  "He's been in every day this week. He'll be back."

  The matron at the other end of the bar banged her glass three times in what I supposed to be prearranged signal for another double.

  "Tell him you told me," I said to his back.

  "You going to get in touch?" He was still walking.

  "Just tell him you told me. That gets you out of it."

  "I'll tell him," he said, refilling the old lady. I chugged the rest of my tea. Patsy wandered back. I reached in my pocket. He stopped me.

  "Tea's free."

  "But vodka's - "

  "Nothing rhymes with vodka," he said with a wink.

  Chapter 3

  I made it home sober. I stopped at four more bars but managed to stick to soft drinks. I told myself that it was the atmosphere, the camaraderie, the easy laughter and built-in excuses that I craved, not the buzz. I tell myself a lot of things. My last stop before turning up the hill to my place was the Zoo.

  It was an old-time saloon in the truest sense of the word. An ornately carved stand-up bar, complete with brass footrail, ran the full length of the room. I'd always favored stand-up bars. They kept a guy honest. It was too easy for a guy to drink himself senseless while perched on a padded stool.

  Standing up was another matter. A guy had to maintain some semblance of sanity or risk falling among the phlegm, the cigarette butts, and the peanut shells littering the filthy planked floor. Around here, it was known as huggin' the rail. Too much huggin' the rail would get a guy eighty-sixed.

  Much like the Alaskan caribou, drunks follow a strict migrational pattern. The process usually begins in some neighborhood fern bar hard by the office, where the stressed-out go for just a few after work.

  The Zoo is at the other end of the spectrum. The Zoo is the last stop a Seattle drunk makes before tottering down to Pioneer Square and taking up permanent residence in the streets. When it got so bad a guy got eighty-sixed from the Zoo, from then on he did his drinking alfresco.

  The left-hand wall comprised a series of brown leatherette booths. The management kept the regulars standing. The booths were for walk-ins. The booths were empty. The bar was full. Two steps inside the place, I was greeted like a returning war hero.

  "Leo, Leo, where've you been?" It was Buddy Knox. A short, dumpy little guy, Buddy looked a bit like Fred Mertz. Buddy had, years before, been an editor at the Times. A taste for single-malt Scotch had careened Buddy through three short=lived marriages and a series of increasingly less responsible editing positions into his present status as resident arts and literature critic of the Zoo. Hereabouts, Buddy was the final authority.

  "How you been, Buddy?"

  "Hanging in there, Leo. We haven't seen much of you lately."

  "By design, Buddy."

  "Staying sober, huh?"

  "I'm working at it. You're looking good. Looks like you've gained a little weight, right?" I said poking him gently in the waist.

  "Maybe a few pounds," he admitted, checking himself out. "But remember, Leo" - patting his formidable girth - "a waist is a terrible thing to mind."

  He pivoted back toward the bar. "Hey Terry, how about a Coke down here/" He turned back to me. "Coke okay?"

  "Coke's fine," I said. Buddy set about creating a reunion.

  "Harold, Ralph, George, look who's here," he shouted down the bar. "It's Leo." One after the other, like the June Taylor Dancers, they each leaned back and squinted up front to see what the commotion was. One by one, they detached themselves from the bar and wandered up. Handshakes all around. The bartender shuffled over like he was walking on broken glass and set my Coke on the bar. I ordered a round for the boys. The gesture was greeted with unanimous acclaim.

  Harold Green, Ralph Batista, and George Paris had, like Buddy, once been local people of some note. The four of them shared the enormous front room of a rooming house up the hill on Franklin. Last time I'd had business cards printed, I'd briefly considered changing the logo to read Waterman and Associates. I did, after all, use these guys quite a bit. Maybe they deserved billing. Sanity prevailed. I stuck with Waterman Investigations. God forbid anybody wanted to meet the associates.

  Harold had sold men's shoes at the Bon. He used to be taller. The years had carved even more meat from his already gaunt frame, further emphasizing his baseball-size Adam's apple and prominent ears.

  Ralph, who'd picked up and kept whatever weight Harold had lost, used to be some sort of port official. The extra folds of skin on his face, combined with a startling lack of functioning brain cells, gave him the benign countenance of the Mona Lisa. Inner peace by default.

  George had been one of the first high-level bankers to get the axe in the great merger mania but was hanging in there pretty good. His finely chiseled features and slicked-back mane of white hair made him look like a boxing announcer. If you didn't look into his eyes or down at his shoes, you could mistake George for a functioning member of society.

  Other than a sadness for the past and a taste for the grape, there seemed to be two factors keeping these guys together. One was their financial status. Each had managed to hang in there long enough to have garnered a meager monthly stipend from his respective employer. Not a full pension, not enough to make it alone, but enough, when you added it the money I paid them, to collectively keep them in liquor and out of the rain.

  The other factor was their wardrobes. None of them had yet reached the Dumpster stage. Each was attired in the last remnants of his executive wardrobe. Finely tailored costs and slacks, stained and worn to a shine, hung mismatched on their bloated, sagging bodies, a credit to their tailors and a link to their pasts.

  We drank to the good old days. I sported them to another round. We drank to my father. One by one, as it became obvious that a third round was not forthcoming, Harold, Ralph, and George said their good-byes and drifted back to their deeded spots along the bar, leaving Buddy and me alone. Buddy stepped in close. He smelled like an attic.

  "You got anything going that we can help you with, Leo?"

  I often used Buddy and his friends as field operatives. The destitute and the homeless had become so prevalent and so bother some in Seattle that they were able to operate under a cloak of cultural invisibility. They were there, but nobody saw them. They could hang around places for days at a time without being noticed. It was as if they had their own little socioeconomic force field. Even better, they took great pride in their work and didn't require much in the way of fringe benefits. When they worked for me, they stayed relatively sober. When I paid them, they got drunk. It worked.

  "Things are a little slow right now, Buddy. Mostly paper trails, but if I get anything, I'll let you know."

  Buddy eyed me closely. His eyes were filigreed with red. I watched as he went through one of those instantaneous mood swings that only drunks and menstruating women can manage.

  "You wouldn't be getting self-righteously sober on us now, would you, Leo? Maybe too good to be working with a bunch of old drunks like us anymore?"

  "No way, Buddy. I'm just a mostly sober drunk, that's all."

  Buddy relaxed. "Good," he said, downing a Scotch followed by a beer chaser. " ‘Cause I got a little information I'd like to pass your way." He patted his chest as the liquor made its way down. His eyes watered.

  "Smoooooth," he wheezed. I waited. "That's why I thought you might have something interesting going on."

  "Why's that?"

  "Guess who's been around looking for you?" he asked smugly.

  "Frankie Ortega," I said.

  "Goddammit, Leo."

  "Just a wild guess."

  Buddy was pissed. I'd ruined his surprise. He ordered another boilermaker. I paid for it. He went through the same routine as he gulped it down. This time, his nose started to run. He wiped it on his sleeve.

  "He found you, huh?"

  "Nope," I said. Buddy leaned close again.

  "You're not into Tim for money, are you?
I mean, Jesus Christ, Leo - "

  "Don't worry, Buddy. I'm not into Tim for money."

  "Good." He breathed out heavily, and the air reeked of mothballs. "We're gonna have to move on. Did I tell you that?"

  "No. How come?"

  "Mrs. Paultz is retiring. Wants to move down to Arizona to be closer to her kids. She's selling the house. They'll tear the old place down for sure."

  "Sorry to hear that."

  "I don't know what the hell we're gonna do, Leo. There's not many old places - " He was about to lapse into maudlin. I didn't have it in me.

  "Gotta go, Buddy. You take care now, okay?"

  "Come on, Leo, stick around. Things are just starting. Nearly Normal Norman will be in in a bit. The whole gang'll be here. Come on," he whine.

  I swilled my Coke, fished out the cherry, ate it, and threw the stem back in the glass. "Gotta go, Buddy."

  "You'll be back." He'd changed again. His pouched face was suddenly hard. He was beginning to slur.

  "I don't think so, Buddy." He smiled and moved his head up and down. His eyes failed to keep pace with the movement.

  "I don't mean today. I just mean you'll be back." He pointed down at his feet. "One of these nights when I've slid down - when I'm huggin' the rail with my pants full of shit - I'll look over to the side and you'll be there. Don't doubt it. You'll be there, Leo." He turned back to the bar. I headed out.

  Probably because I was so busy ruminating on the likelihood of Buddy's prophecy coming true, I got sloppy. I have my own little security system for my combination office-apartment. Years before, in a drunken rage, I'd tried to kick the door in one night when I'd lost my keys. The door held fast, but somewhere in the locking mechanism something had snapped. Since that night, whenever the door is locked from the outside, the handle tilts violently to the right. Locked from the inside, it stays straight up.

  I was three steps inside my apartment before I snapped to the fact that I wasn't alone. Great cumulus clouds of cigarette smoke swam in the sunlight that angled in through the front windows. Frankie Ortega was leaning all the way back in my white leather recliner, working on his second beer.

  Frankie was a little guy. No more than five-six or so. I'd always thought he looked like Cab Calloway. Thick, black processed hair combed straight back. A bold, wide mouth accented by a pencil-thin mustache clinging precisely to the outline of his upper lip. He was sporting a fawn-colored suit, a bright yellow tie, and two-tone loafers, brown and white.

  "Relax, Leo," he said. I relaxed. I was unarmed. In spite of the fact that he must be pushing sixty by now, Frankie Ortega was not somebody I had any desire to take on. Whatever he may have lacked in size, he more than made up for in speed and ruthlessness. For the past thirty-five years he had handled Tim Flood's problems without so much as wrinkling his suits.

  "Make yourself at home, Frankie." When in doubt, try irony.

  "Thanks, Leo. I knew you wouldn't mind." He smiled and pushed the handle forward, bringin himself to an upright, seated position. He stood and smoothed out his slacks. "Nice quiet place you've got here."

  "You looking to sublease, Frankie?"

  "Still the comedian, eh, Leo. You really ought to get over that, you know. I told you before, there's no long-term future in it."

  "Other than career counseling, did you have some other purpose for stopping by to see me today, Frankie?"

  "You know I been looking for you." It was a statement.

  "I might have heard a rumor to that effect," I said.

  "You know if I'm looking for a guy, I'm gonna find him, right?"

  I didn't feel any great need to answer. His ego didn't need the boost.

  He walked over and stood too close tome. He kept his hands in his pockets, letting his cologne grab me instead.

  "Tim needs to see you," he said evenly.

  "So where is he?" I said, looking around the apartment. "I'm in the book. W for Waterman or I for Investigations." He shook his head sadly and started for the door.

  "Tim don't get around so good anymore, Leo," he said as he passed.

  "I'm kind of busy right now, Frankie. Tell Tim - "

  "Dinner at seven at the house. We'll be expecting you."

  He opened the door and stepped silently into the hallway. Before closing the door, he looked me up and down. "You probably ought to clean up a bit, Leo. That suit's a mess," he said shaking his head again. He was gone. Only the smoke remained. I opened the windows.

  Chapter 4

  In some perverse way, it was probably fitting that Tim Flood had ended up on Capitol Hill. For nearly a century the Victorian mansion of the Hill had gazed disapprovingly out over Lake Union like crotchety maiden aunts. The wealth of the Klondike, the spoils of the sea, and the offspring of the founders had competed cheek by jowl in a thirty-year frenzy of bourgeois building, each hoping to appear more firmly settled and less nouveau riche than his neighbors.

  This same neighborhood had, for many years, been a major bone of contention between my parents. My mother had wanted to get in on the building program. She'd envisioned an Edwardian mansion at the very zenith of the hill as the type of home that befitted both my father's political status and her own social-climbing fixation. The old man had disagreed.

  He saw himself as a man of the people and had steadfastly refused to budge from the ancestral digs on lower Queen Anne. As, one by one, my mother's friends had abandoned the old neighborhood in favor of the Hill, she had become increasingly strident in her demands. The old man was a rock. He wasn't going anywhere. They'd carried the argument to their graves. Probably beyond.

  I slid the Fiat to the cub atop the thick layer of sodden maple leaves that blanketed Tenth Avenue, two blocks south of Tim Flood's house. As I locked the car, I tried to remember the last time I'd been up here. A couple of years at least. I turned my collar against the wet breeze and looked around.

  At first glance the street appeared timeless. The maples and elms formed towering Gothic arches above the street. The immense old houses seemed to have been hewn directly from the landscape. A Northwest Norman Rockwell. A frozen fantasy of the American dream.

  The illusion was transitory. Even from here, nearly the epicenter of the neighborhood, the steady gnawing away of the Hill's exclusivity was plain.

  Broadway, the heartland of the leather geek, was pissing on the back steps. Pill Hill, with its ever-expanding megamedical facilities, crept steadily in from the south. To the west, trendy new condos rapidly devoured the modest homes that used to litter the side of the hill. It wouldn't be long.

  I slipped my hands into the pockets of my overcoat and meandered slowly up the street, wondering how much a month it cost to heat one of these monsters. A sure sign that I didn't belong here.

  I still hadn't settled on a figure when I reached the gate. The house, like most of its neighbors, was better than twenty rooms. Three stories of tapered columns, gabled windows, and gingerbread flourishes covered in brown shingles. A three-foot brick wall, into which an ornately wrought gate had been set, separated the sidewalk from the small front yard. I opened the gate and walked up the broad front steps to the double doors. I never got a chance to knock.

  A young guy of about thirty opened the right-hand door as I reached for the brass knocker. Samoan maybe, five-eleven but a solid two-twenty or so, with a neck wider than his head. He looked funny in a suit. Suits weren't made for that kind of bulk. Even the custom tailoring couldn't fully disguise the bulge under his left arm. He stared dispassionately at me as I were something blown onto the porch by the breeze. He made no move to invite me in. He stood with one hand on the door and the other on the frame like Samson chained to the temple.

  "Leo Waterman to see Tim Flood," I said.

  He moved his thick, spiked hair an inch or so, opened the door wider, and stepped aside. He had a twin. Same spiked hair, same impassive face, same bulging suit, leaning back against the inside wall, hidden by the frosted glass of the doors. I stepped in and gazed from one to the oth
er. Number one closed the door. Number two closed ranks.

  They waddled before me down the marble-covered hall that bisected the residence. Their gait was remarkably splay-footed. It appeared that at any moment each twin was likely to split down the middle and march away from his other half straight into one of the mahogany-wainscoted walls.

  We marched all the way to the end of the hallway and on through the double French doors at the end of the passage. We were in a small foyer between the main house and the giant solarium at the back. They stepped back and ushered me into the stifling sunroom. It was at least eighty-five degrees inside, as humid as New Orleans in August. The doors closed behind me.

  A dazzling array of tropical plants and shrubs, some pushing the thirty-foot glass roof, dipped in the moist air. A greenhouse with furniture.

  "Leo." A hoarse voice beckoned from the far end of the room.

  I wandered over. Tim Flood, or what was left of him, was nearly lost amid the cushions of the ancient wicker settee that fanned out behind his head like a halo.

  "Sit," he said, motioning toward a green wicker chair that had been drawn up by his side. Sweat was beginning to form on my scalp, deodorant failure was imminent, but Tim Flood, beneath the bright afghan, was wearing a sweater. I sat.

  He looked pretty good. Smaller than I remembered, beginning the same descent back inside himself that I'd watched my father take, but holding up pretty well. His hawk-like nose had become more prominent with advancing age and his bony liver-spotted hands rested limply on the padded arms of the lounger like bird's feet, but the eyes were as hard as they'd always been.

  "Thanks for coming, Leo." His voice was husky enough to pull a dogsled. "What can we get you to drink?"

  "Bourbon rocks."

  The words were hardly out of my mouth before Frankie Ortega appeared, drink in hand. Back over his shoulder, through the massive ferns, I could see a portable bar along the north wall.

  Frankie had taken his own advice. He'd changed into a blue three-piece suit highlighted by a blue-and-green-striped tie riding above a tight collar pin. He hadn't broken a sweat. Tim spoke.