by Earl Emerson
“How do you know all this?”
“I overheard a phone conversation.”
“That’s how you knew I was talking to Stone?”
“More or less.”
I don’t know why, but I began weeping, the tears pouring out like rain. I didn’t want to smear my makeup by rubbing my face, and I might have climbed back in the car, but then he would have gotten in beside me and I would have been trapped, so I simply stood in front of him with my hands at my sides and wept, which of course was the most ridiculous thing I might have done.
And then, in a move as uncharacteristic as it was unnerving, Trey stepped forward and enveloped me in his arms. He didn’t say anything, just held me until I laid my head on his chest, which felt like a slab of oak. “I’m so embarrassed,” I said into his shirt.
“Everybody cries.”
“Not in the middle of the day in front of…”
“It’s been stressful. Besides, I’m an asshole.”
“I was spying. I’m ashamed. And I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. We’re doing fine. You and I.”
“We are?” I asked, tipping my head to look up at him. He was smiling. He leaned down and kissed my forehead, my left cheek, and lightly brushed my lips with his.
I was ready for more, had closed my eyes, when he released me and said, “Feel better?”
“A little,” I said, trying to get my bearings. “Okay. So…tell me exactly what you know and how you know it.”
“Here?”
“I don’t feel like going anyplace where people can see my puffy face.”
“Here’s fine. I was about to suggest it myself.”
“Sure you were.”
“Let’s make a pact. We’re both going to be completely truthful from now on.”
“Okay. Fine. Were you really going to suggest we stay here?”
“No.”
55. BAD THINGS, BARRY, BAD THINGS
STONE CARMICHAEL>
Renfrow and I met at Ruth’s Chris Steak House, just the two of us, Renfrow bringing his bourbon over to the table, while I studied the menu, breathing heavily as he sat down, a man unused to physical exercise—which was an odd trait for a self-confessed former soldier of fortune, college athlete, and onetime club-level boxer. After college and a stint in the Navy, Renfrow had worked for the CIA for eight years. Then, following a series of incidents involving the deaths of multiple low-level officials in a small South American country, he resigned and spent ten years freelancing for various U.S. spy agencies. When he decided to go into private industry, India’s father hired him. Overby and my father had been using his services ever since. He’s good. He’s a pig, but he’s good at what he does.
Renfrow was adept at maneuvering through the bureaucratic process wherever we encountered it, but he was also useful for all the ugly little stuff nobody else knew how to deal with—or didn’t have the nerve to tackle. He’d maintained contacts in the spook world and seemed to know at least one man in almost every police department and prison in the country.
The restaurant was not crowded yet, and I was still a little annoyed that this meeting had forced me to cancel a meeting with my divorce attorney. Even though he denied it, Renfrow had been putting me off for a couple of days, so I knew there was something he didn’t want to tell me.
It was like pulling teeth to get him to meet you where a free meal was not involved. His suits were always shiny because he’d been wearing them too long, and his shirts were dingy, and unless he was in a company vehicle, he rarely drove a car that wasn’t fifteen years old. At home he had two cats, a pet lizard, a condo full of photos of a girlfriend he hadn’t seen in ten years, and a seedy sex life he only hinted at. He was a blowhard, too. Had once claimed you could remove all the silverware from the table and he could still find six items to kill you with, two that could be used from across the room. My guess was he’d read about it in a book somewhere.
When his breathing settled down, he said, “So what’s going on? You going to have the rib eye well done and a Caesar? You always have the rib eye and a Caesar. A glass of Indian Wells chardonnay? No dessert. A decaf.”
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
“Didn’t I call yesterday?”
“No.”
“Wasn’t yesterday Wednesday?”
“Thursday. This is Friday. You didn’t call either day. And neither did our little weather lady. I’m beginning to get annoyed.”
“I thought she was a special features person? They have some blond chick doing the weather, don’t they?”
“They’ve got that chubby black dude who makes jokes doing the weather. Right now I haven’t heard from her in two days. Or you either. Can you tell me what that’s about?”
“Same old, same old. You know. They’re interviewing firefighters and witnesses. Had a picnic the other day. Spread their crap all out on a blanket down at the lake.”
“They sweet on each other?”
“I don’t think so. So what’s this? Friday? Tell you the truth, they might be done with the interviews by now. I’ll ask my people.” He flipped open a cell phone, but I motioned for him to put it away.
“What’s going on, Barry? And what do you know about my wife leaving me?”
“Your wife?”
“The day she left was the last day I heard from you. What do you know about my wife, Barry?”
“India? Why…nothing.”
“There’s something going on, and I have a feeling you know what it is. I’m not leaving until you tell me.”
Renfrow sighed heavily. “She was with him the night she left.”
“Who?”
“Your brother.”
I hadn’t thought of Trey as my brother even when he was my brother, but now that he’d been disinherited and footloose for years, it seemed an absurdity to think he was part of the family. Even though I’d reintroduced him to everyone, I was planning to ostracize him again as soon as they produced a satisfactory report. “Are you saying India and Trey have been seeing each other?”
“A couple of times that we know of.”
“That’s not possible.”
“I’m afraid it is.”
“Are they having sex?”
“I don’t know. We’re not watching him every minute.”
“They’re having sex. Goddamn it. I knew something—”
“I don’t know that they are.”
“I do. Who else knows?”
“Me. One other operative.”
“How did you find out?”
“We’ve been following Trey and the woman. Monday around lunchtime we followed him to the Olympic Four Seasons, where he had lunch with your missus. They drove somewhere, but we lost them in traffic. He also was at your house the night when she moved out. They kissed at the door.”
“Fuck! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was afraid of how you would react.”
“You had good reason to be afraid. Do you have any idea how much this pisses me off?”
“Mr. Mayor,” came a voice, “I’d like to introduce you to my wife and her daughter. My stepson and his two children.”
I looked up and found the table surrounded. An older gentleman I had no recollection of ever meeting was standing over us with a squadron of relatives. I nodded to my SPD bodyguard across the room that it was okay. The trouble with being recognizable was people recognized you. Fortunately, most of these people were from out of town and weren’t impressed with a mayor they’d never heard of, so we were able to quickly dust them off.
Our meals came, and Renfrow began eating with a gusto I found sickening. I should have known something was up at the ball Saturday night when I noticed the way India was watching Trey. It just didn’t seem possible that she would be attracted to him…again. “You sure about this, Barry?”
“I was going to tell you. I just didn’t know how.”
“This is a hell of a thing for me to have to drag out of you. After my wife has a
lready left me.”
“Marriage is tricky. You want the truth, I don’t think it was meant to be.”
“My marriage or marriage in general?”
“Marriage in general.”
“Are they serious?”
“All I know is they’ve met a couple of times. The last time at your house.”
“Oh, they’re having an affair all right. Jesus, Barry, you should have told me right away. You know that call you made Wednesday, before I went to the game? The machine picked it up, so I think our conversation was recorded. I was going to check it when I got home, but the tape was missing. Along with my wife. And now you tell me he was there? You think she gave it to him?”
Speaking around a mouthful of a half-chewed lamb chop, Barry said, “I don’t know. How pissed off is she?”
“Pissed off enough to move out and ask for a divorce.”
“Then one of them has it. My money would be on him.”
“Bad things are happening, Barry. Bad things. Okay. This is what we do. You get that tape back, and then you hurt him. Hurt him bad. Do you hear what I’m saying? I thought you were already going to hurt him. Why hasn’t it been done?”
“Give me some time to set it up. Listen, Stone. It was probably just something they had to get out of their systems. Why don’t you go home and pretend it never happened? I’ll get the tape. I’ve got people who can do that.”
“I want somebody to beat the hell out of him.”
“I can arrange it, but it’s not right.”
“It’s exactly right. You don’t know him.”
“I think I do. I drove him for two hours in a car once and thought he was going to die choking on his own blood the whole way. He’s a tough cookie. You ever see him play for the Huskies? The other teams were scared of him. I mean, scared…I went to every home game he played. He was something.”
“Just do it.”
“Listen. Once you get up in the governor’s mansion, things will look different. Leave it until then. There’s public focus on him now.”
“You tell me some black guy…” I looked around at the other tables and lowered my voice to a whisper. “You tell me this black bastard is boning my wife, and I’m supposed to sit on my nuts and take it? Is that what you’re saying?”
“He’s not just some guy.”
“Which makes it worse. He’s the bastard my father brought into the house because he couldn’t keep his hands off the upstairs maid. What I want is for somebody to mess him up.”
“This is not a good thing, Stone.”
“Tell you what,” I said. “With all this rioting…why can’t we have a Reginald Denny of our own right here in Seattle? Only a black one. What if some of his own people took him down? Huh? Beat him and maybe hit him in the head with a brick for good measure. He wakes up two weeks later and can’t remember his name.”
“We might use some coke, too. Drugs always remove any credibility a victim has.”
“You’re a genius. Tell you what. I’m going to Minneapolis for a conference. I want him in the hospital when I get back. Preferably the brain ward.”
“I’ll have to clear it with Harlan.”
“You know how he feels. He’ll probably give you a bonus for coming up with the idea.”
56. IF CATS WERE AS BIG AS DOGS
TREY>
Our materials spread out on a blanket on the grass, we worked for a little over three hours and then went to Café Flora, where Estevez paid for a leisurely lunch for both of us. Café Flora was in the Madison Valley neighborhood midway between my house and Stone Carmichael’s mansion on the lake.
When I took her in my arms down at the lake, I knew in the blink of an eye that Estevez had feelings for me I hadn’t noticed before. Like India, Estevez was one of those women most men assumed they didn’t have a prayer with, and she’d been so damn snippy with me that it was a real ego boost to realize she’d been thinking about me in that way. For some reason, it changed the whole way I thought about her, made her more lovable.
At Café Flora we ordered Wu-Wei tea, and then I feasted on the Oaxaca tacos, roasted corn tortillas filled with spicy mashed potatoes served with black beans and wilted greens. Estevez nibbled at her organic wild greens salad. After the meal, she took out a notebook and said, “Let’s talk about how it came about that people didn’t get rescued.”
My phone rang before we could go any further. It was Kendra inviting me to visit our father with her that afternoon. “Sorry, I can’t make that. I’m busy and can’t leave my partner hanging.”
“What about Saturday? I could bring the girls and you could meet them. Father wants to see you badly. I think he wants to make amends.”
“I don’t know if it’s such a good idea.”
“I would love it if you and he could find some sort of resolution. I know this has been hard on you, Trey, but I would love it if we could work this out somehow. Please?”
“Okay, I’ll do it for you. And I’d love to meet your kids. He at the same house?”
“No. Grandpa’s old place across the lake. Saturday? Threeish?”
“Okay.”
As Estevez and I saw it, the Z Club fire was confusing for a lot of reasons. There were civilians giving contradictory stories to the IC. There was what amounted to a secret club operating on the second floor, and it was a long time before anybody in that club got to a window. The only two exits were blocked. But so far I hadn’t seen anything to indicate fire department personnel had knowingly bypassed victims.
On the north side of the building, Engine 28 put a ladder up and found multiple victims on the second floor. At the time firefighters had been assured everybody was out of the building, while many of the onlookers had concerns that this was not the case. It appeared to many of these increasingly angry onlookers that the fire department was deliberately ignoring their concerns.
Approximately twenty-five minutes after the first units arrived, it was determined that firefighting efforts inside the building had become too hazardous to continue, and all rescue operations were suspended.
We’d already spoken to every firefighter who’d been on the second floor, where all the victims except Sweeting were found and where the people in the stairwell had come from. The cell phone call was what is known in the movies as the MacGuffin. It kept our search going, but that was all it was good for. The fact was, I was the only firefighter who ran into civilians inside the building, and we were fairly certain the caller had seen me pass by in the smoke more than once, and thus thought he was being passed by more than one firefighter. If the man hadn’t been so heavy, I would have gotten him out. In the report, we would have to explain that rescuing him would have required two or three men. The community could make what it wanted of our not having enough manpower on side C to accomplish this. What we were finding out about the building ownership, and my suspicions about Stone being involved in some sort of cover-up, went a lot higher than the original charge of firefighters bypassing victims in the smoke. This was going to bring down an administration and maybe put some people in jail.
When we left Café Flora, we headed downtown on Madison, the only street in Seattle that stretched uninterrupted from Elliott Bay to Lake Washington. I explained as much to Estevez, who said, “You’re just a fountain of information, aren’t you?”
“Have you ever considered the fact that if house cats were as big as dogs, they’d kill us and eat us?” She laughed.
At Madison and Broadway we stopped at the light while a group of marchers carrying signs, placards, and a toy fire engine crossed the street against the light and blocked traffic. They were chanting, “We want the truth. We want the truth.” Instinctively I scanned the faces for Johnny, but he wasn’t among them. One sign had photographs of Z Club victims under the words “We’re not going to forget” written in red paint. I would have liked it if they’d included Sweeting’s photo, but in all this conspiracy talk, his sacrifice went largely unmentioned.
We worked through Thursd
ay and Friday, interviewing the rest of the people on Estevez’s list. Nothing major came to light, and to my surprise, Estevez and I managed to keep our bickering to a minimum.
57. DADDY’S BOY
TREY>
Palatial is the word the Sunday magazine used ten years ago when they profiled the Meydenbauer Bay estate where my father now lives—a brick-walled ivy-covered mansion with an English garden Kendra and I used to romp in as kids, and in which her children play now.
It was Saturday afternoon just before two o’clock when I pulled through the security gates behind a Lexus SUV, roared down the long driveway, and parked the bike in front of the main doorway near the portico and the wisteria I remembered from when we were kids. I twisted the throttle a couple of times just to make sure the neighbors knew the devil was in town, dropped the kick stand, and shut off the motor. I wore black leather chaps with jeans underneath, a beat-up black leather jacket, and a black helmet with sunglasses.
“Trey, it’s good to see you again,” Kendra said, hopping out of the Lexus. She wore a sundress and sandals.
“You, too. I thought you were bringing your kids.”
“I, uh…they had a party I forgot about.” It was a weak lie, delivered without conviction, and we both knew she hadn’t brought the girls because of lingering doubts about my character—and because she was afraid of the possible fireworks when I met our father.
Father was tucked into his chair in the living room with a blanket around his legs. It was all a little formal and awkward, even for him. Watching Father watch me, I recalled that India had told me how he went to pot the summer Shelby Junior died and I was banished from the clan: how he began drinking heavily, how his business affairs began to slide and continued to slide for years, and in the end, how he and my adopted mother went through some sort of rift they never really seemed to recover from until those last few weeks of her cancer. It was almost as if the guilt for what he’d done to me had undermined his life.
We handled the awkwardness of the situation the way Carmichaels always handled such things, by pretending it wasn’t awkward, by plunging ahead as if nothing untoward were happening. “So why don’t you tell us all about the Z Club?” Father asked after the conversation fell into a lull.
