by Earl Emerson
“What do you mean?”
“Burton chickened out. He’s afraid of his father-in- law. He thinks Angus will run off to Brazil and take Angel if he makes any legal moves.” Kathy shook her head and scanned the rest of her mail.
“That’s foolish.”
“I know. But he’s such a loving man, it’s hard to get ticked off at him.”
“There’s a difference,” I said, “between being loving and being a doormat.”
“What’d you find out about Melissa?”
“That she phoned her aunt last Tuesday and was expecting to be in Bellingham Wednesday morning with her daughter.”
“With Angel?”
“That’s what she told her aunt. She phoned from Tacoma. She know anybody in Tacoma?”
Kathy hummed and thought about it. “Not that I can recall.”
“She still might turn up on her own.”
“I noticed tonight’s paper on the table. Read it yet?” “The reward was there again. Same wording and phone number as before.”
“Maybe we should dial it and see who answers.”
“It’s a recording. Leave your name and number and they’ll get back to you. The phone is in the Taltro building downtown.”
“It must be Melissa’s father.”
“Yeah. I didn’t see any point in leaving a number. It would be awfully hard to worm information out of someone on the phone. Besides, the guy is obviously looking for her himself.”
“Oh, Thomas. I want you to talk to her father and see if you can get him to give Angel back. Would you do that for me? Burton’s so pathetic without her. He’s cleaned up the whole house and he’s dragged out a collection of her toys and spread them across the living room as if she’s been playing with them. It’s pathetic.”
Reviewing the one snatch I’d seen of Angus Crowell, commandeering the steering wheel of his Cadillac as-if it were a chariot from hell, I deliberated. I said, “You think he’ll listen to me?”
Kathy pursed her lips. “Can’t you try?”
“Sure. If you bop over to the Hopewell Clinic with me.” “The what?”
“The Hopewell. On Capitol Hill. Melissa wrote a check to the joint a couple of weeks back. They do cut-rate counseling and psychiatric work for the downtrodden, I thought you and I could go in and be downtrodden.”
“Us?”
“All I want is a quick peek into their files.”
Kathy clucked her tongue and looked at me reprovingly. “Thomas! How can you be like that?”
“You want to find Melissa? Tell you what. I know she might be in Tacoma. What do you say we drive down and start knocking on doors with a Polaroid of her? That might take about five years, providing we start within the hour and brown-bag all our meals.”
“We could tell them who we are.”
“No social worker or psychologist is going to spill anything to a detective. Or to anybody.”
She sighed, squinted at my carefully arranged washcloth, and chewed her lips as she decided. “Do we dress up for this?”
“I do,” I said. ?
Chapter Eight
SHE DRESSED LIKE A WHORE. IT WAS FUNNY AND RIDICULOUS and interesting all at the same time. She wore tall, shiny, black leather boots and Levi’s so tight I doubted she could sit in them. Over her blouse, she wore an open, waist-length fur coat. It had taken a passel of dead rabbits to make it. The perfect chippy.
Oh, we were going to stop traffic tonight. Kathy’s teased hair ballooned around her head like an enormous black helmet. She was out of makeup downstairs, she had to be; it was all daubed onto her face. Her cheeks were tinted ruby, scarlet and a tinge of cinnamon, her eyelids heavily white, spattered in indigo. Her eyelashes were bat wings. She was simply not recognizable as Kathy Birchfield.
I wore a tee shirt and a pair of dirty jeans reserved exclusively for working on my truck. She made me take a rakish-looking golf cap she had surprised me with last Christmas. To cut the wind, I threw on a worn-out leather Air Force flight jacket.
While Kathy buffed her nose and played with her hair in the rearview mirror, I tilted the seat forward and stashed my loaded .45 into the space between the gas tank and the seat springs. In all probability, I would not use the pistol, but I wanted it handy.
First we drove by the Nadisky household in Ballard. Kathy wanted me to speak to Burton, talk him into standing up for his rights. The house was dark and no one answered the door. Burton was undoubtedly down at the public library brushing up on his Emily Dickinson. I said as much.
“Give the kid a break,” urged Kathy, popping a wad of bubble gum. “We can’t all be brave, hey Cisco?” “Hey, Pancho.”
The Hopewell was closing for the day when we strode up the front steps together. An old woman wearing a bitter face crossed our path in the doorway, muttering to herself. She looked at my flight jacket disgustedly and said, “You merchant marines are all alike. Sailors!”
The hallway was bare wood and gritty, grime tracked in from a day of the downtrodden. The plaster on the walls was cracked. One window was chipped and scarred.
“Im afraid we’re closing for the day,” said a woman at the end of the hallway, as she stabbed a key into a door. She wore enormous tortoiseshell glasses. Her arms were burdened with files, folders, papers and books. She maneuvered unsnapped galoshes like snowshoes.
“We sure need your help,” said Kathy, enunciating around her wad of bubble gum. “My husband here don’t know who he is. And when he does know who he is he thinks he’s someone else, if ya know what I mean.”
“We’re closing for the night. I’ll give you one of our cards.”
“I mean, he’s got like three, four, six different people inside him. Really. Right now he’s a bum named Joe Blooey. I hadda haul him away from the dumpster at Safeway. I mean…” She snapped the gum deftly inside her mouth. “Can ya help him? He thought he was a jet pilot two days ago. They didn’t stop him till he taxied a 747 right out onto the runway at Sea-Tac. I wouldn’t be so worried, but sometimes he thinks he’s like that Ted Bundy, you know, the mass murderer? Buries gals up in the mountains? Oh, don’t worry. He ain’t dangerous now. Now he’s Joe Blooey. Now he’s so stupid he hardly knows what we’re saying.”
I grinned moronically.
The woman in the tortoiseshells squinted at me, shoved her glasses back up onto her nose and unlocked the door she had just locked. Switching on the yellowish lights, she ushered us in and bade us sit together on a ramshackle sofa.
“My name is Ms. Gunther,” she said, primly. Im a psychologist. I work here at the clinic two days a week.” She eyeballed me. I grinned my best Jack Nicholson grin, not caring if a trail of saliva snaked down my chin.
Her gray eyes radiated visions of treatises, newspaper articles, magazine spreads, a book and perhaps movie rights. Perhaps, one day, her own syndicated column. “How do you know he has different personalities?”
“Cause I seen him change,” said Kathy. “He changes three, four times a day. His daddy used to beat on him. That’s what started it, I guess. He used to get these headaches. Then one day he thinks he’s this Dr. Richards, a gynecologist. I come home and he’s got some woman in these stirrup things.”
Ms. Gunther frantically grabbed a stenographer’s pad and a pen out of a desk drawer. “What are your names?”
“Ixnay,” said Kathy, masticating her wad of chicle loudly.
“Pardon me?”
“Ixnay on the amesnay.” She jabbed her thumb in my direction. She peeled off the wrapper on another block of bubble gum and popped it into my mouth, a mother feeding her child. “Maybe we better do some of this amenay usinessbay omewhereelsesay? Huh? Some people get real upsetnay about it.”
“Oh,” said Ms. Gunther, eyeing me warily, as if I might metamorphose into a full-blown madman in front of her. “Sure. Where would you like to…”
“Maybe if we left him here and went into another room? I hate to move him once he’s settled this way. Sometimes it starts him acting up.�
��
“Acting up?”
“That Undybay person is hard to control.”
Oh.
At the door, Ms. Gunther peered back at me and paused. “It’s okay,” said Kathy. “Long as nothing disturbs him, he’ll sit that way for hours.”
“Fascinating,” Ms. Gunther remarked. “Absolutely fascinating.”
As far as I could ascertain, only the three of us were left in the building. Kathy’s loud footsteps were clearly audible as they walked down the hallway. I was counting on those loud boots of hers to signal the alarm when they came back.
Two gray, paint-chipped file cabinets stood behind the desk in the corner. The first cabinet was unlocked and didn’t contain much of interest, primarily pamphlets and magazine reprints categorized according to topics. The indexed titles read like rock albums. Grief. Weight Loss. Depression. Holiday Blues.
I wasn’t much good at locks and the second cabinet was a bitch to pick. The top two drawers belonged to a Dr. Weaver. The bottom two to a number of others, including Ms. Gunther. I flipped through the folders as quickly as I could, scanning hundreds of names. “Nadisky” did not appear.
I blew almost three minutes in an adjoining room, picking the lock on a file cabinet. Nothing but financial information and bookkeeping records.
It wasn’t until I had roosted on the couch again to wait for Kathy and the psychologist, that it occurred to me to riffle through the stacks of papers and files Ms. Gunther had abandoned on the desk top.
This was it. El Dorado! The third file was a manila folder labeled “Nadisky.” I tried to speed-read it, but the process was aggravating. She had only sketched her thoughts. To make matters worse, Ms. Gunther’s penmanship could have been improved by a bird fresh from an ink well.
I read snatches:
“Neither partner facing up to the responsibilities of their commitment. She maintains a tremendous emotional conflict with her father and father figures in general. Must resolve the paternal struggle, or her life will grind to a halt. Thought of father paralyzes her thinking and action. She must uncover the childhood trauma. Expose it to the light. Hypnosis? However, I find it difficult to believe someone could be married for forty-two months and only have had sexual relations three times. Are they fabricating?”
It took me a moment to realize I was being watched. Ms. Gunther and Kathy stood frozen in the doorway, staring at me. I slammed the folder shut and quickly arranged it back in the stack. What was going on? Things like that rarely happened to me. I never got caught.
“That’s Neil,” said Kathy, wincing. “I told ya about him. Anything for a good time.”
“Howdy, ma’am,” I said, in a slow drawl. “I don’t believe we’ve met”
Ms. Gunther glanced from Kathy to me, to the file folders, and then back to Kathy. I said, “We’re goin’ out dancing a little later. Care to boogy? Im sure we can find a man for a cute little gal like you.”
Ms. Gunther blushed, then gathered up her reserves and said, “What were you doing? You were reading my reports.”
“No ma’am. Fact is, I can’t read a lick. Left school in second grade to work on my daddy’s horse ranch. Tell you the truth, I was looking for some snow. Know what I mean? I got the spoon but ain’t got no sugar.”
When she gave Kathy a quizzical look, Kathy nodded and smiled tightly. We were millimeters from being exposed. “I didn’t think he’d change on us. Usually it takes some outside thing, you know?”
“Fascinating,” said Ms. Gunther. “Why don’t you both sit down? I’ll get my tape recorder. We’ll put some of this on tape.”
“Sorry, ma’am,” I said, moving to the doorway where I took Kathy’s arm. “Me and this filly has got some mighty serious drinking and hoofing to do tonight. You care to come?” My eyebrows twittered and I gave her my best corn-pone leer.
After seriously considering the scientific aspects of such a liaison, the research grant, the article in Psychology Today, an appearance with Merv, maybe even one with Johnny, Ms. Gunther shook her head, churning her pageboy. “I want you both to come back. Do you understand? I want you both to come back!”
“If I can get him back,” said Kathy over her shoulder as I guided her down the dim corridor toward the front door. “The only time he does what I say is when he’s Joe Blooey.”
“Who the hell is this Joe Blooey you keep blabbing about?” I said loudly. “You been steppin out on me?” Ms. Gunther muttered, “Fascinating.”
Outside in the truck, Kathy got snippy, a reaction from the pressure and from being forced to lie. “You find out anything, Buster?”
“Not much. Maybe we should talk to Burton. I wonder where he could be.”
“Was I all right?” Kathy asked, her tone changing abruptly.
“Are you kidding me? You were fabulous. I’ve never seen anything like it. You’re a better liar than I am.” “Thanks,” she said. “I think.”
“You were great.”
“Now what? The Crowell place?”
“I don’t know what good it will do, but here we go.”
No matter how long I live in Seattle, I am constantly amazed at the variety of the city. The Crowells resided on the waterfront in West Seattle. It took five minutes and a good map to pinpoint the precise location. It took another twenty minutes of prowling around on pitch black, rain-spattered streets before we found it.
Melissa’s parents lived on a numbered street smack dab on the water. The road came down off a hill, dropping a good hundred and fifty feet in elevation as it approached the select community. We descended through three-quarters of a mile of virgin woods inside the city limits before we found it. The dead-end road was narrow and pitted, mired in spots, partially blocked by small mud slides, doubling back upon itself twice.
We discovered five houses on the beach. Guard dogs yapped at our headlights. One streetlight wobbled on a pole in the wind. None of the houses looked as if they could even be discussed for less than a million.
Angus Crowell’s place was a sprawling stucco ranch-style house, baroque iron grillwork barring all the street-side windows and doorways. What was he expecting? The Nez Perce had been peaceful for more than a century. The grillwork alone undoubtedly cost more than my entire house.
My best guess was that the nearest house, except for the four others on the beach, was about half a mile away, through the moss-covered trees and up the slimy hill.
The last storm off the sound had toppled a maple at the end of the block. Some industrious soul had chainsawed it into pieces and carted most of it away.
“Maybe I’ll just sit in the truck,” volunteered Kathy, peering out at the dark house as she listened to the throaty guard dogs up the street. “Besides, I look like a strumpet.”
“Yes,” I said. “But your heart is pure gold.”
I wheeled the truck around so that it was pointed toward civilization and parked it in front of a single-story garage sixty feet long. I could see the roofs of at least three autos inside. A Mercedes two-seater. The Cadillac we’d almost collided with on Sunday. A new Bronco.
“What do you want me to say to this bozo?”
“First of all, don’t call him a bozo,” warned Kathy. “Don’t antagonize the man. Remember, this is on behalf of Burton and Angel. We want them back together. Okay? Just ask him if he’ll return his granddaughter. And if he won’t, ask him under what circumstances he would.”
“Got it.”
Before I traipsed up to the front door, I went over to the windows in the long garage and peeked inside. Crowell had collected five cars, a lawn tractor, several bicycles, a row of motorcycles and a dune buggy. The man liked his toys. Through windows on the opposite side of the garage, I could see the marbled reflections from a lighted swimming pool.
At first, I took the stooped hag who swung open the door for a servant. It was only later that I realized it must have been Mrs. Crowell. In the army, they used to say shit rolls downhill. Mrs. Crowell was at the bottom of the hill and she kn
ew it.
She said she would fetch her husband and then she shuffled through the living room and ragged at the little girl, warning her of the dire consequences should she happen to spill her milk. She bossed with the sad vengeance of one who is rarely allowed the privilege.
“Not again, Angie! You’ve made too many messes today. That’s my favorite flavor,” she added, as an afterthought, when she saw the scowl on my face.
I sidled around the corner and spotted Angel Nadisky sitting dejectedly at an ornate table in front of a coloring book and a tall glass of milk, too tall and bulky for her little hands. A bowl of butter brickle ice cream was melting in front of her. Any fool could see she was about as happy as a spider in a jar.
The house was dead silent. No music. No TV. Not even a parakeet I could teach a few quick curses to. Only one lonely little blonde Angel sitting at a table too tall for her and straining dutifully to crayon in a book she could barely reach.
I had to stifle an urge to run across the room and give her a hug. I could see it wasn’t the thing to do. She was terrified of me. She was terrified of everything. Her face was molded into a mask of fright. I began to scout around the living room. That was me. Snoopy.
“Ooooooh,” she said. “Ooooooooooooh.”
When I looked, she was staring somberly at the tipped milk glass, at the growing puddle of whiteness. “Ooooooh. I’m gonna get it. I’m gonna get it. Ooooooooooooh.”
I went over and said, “Tell you what, sweetheart. Ill clean this up and nobody ever has to know it happened. How’s that?”
Angel shied away from me, evaluated the plan, both pudgy little hands on her cheeks, and then evaluated me. I found a towel inside the door of an ornate buffet and used it to mop up the spilled milk. I polished off the table top, righted the glass, and crammed the sopping towel into my flight jacket. Then I patted Angel on the head and winked. A tiny, cautious grin spread across her face.
I was entertaining the kid when Angus Crowell came in. He wore gym shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, a patina of sweat glistening on his brow. He had enough excess beef on him that a walk from the other end of the house would make him break into a sweat, though I sensed that he had been exercising.
