by John Dunning
I remembered that Baudelaire had been one of Poe’s biggest fans in his lifetime. In fact, Baudelaire had translated Poe’s works into French.
4
I flew to Seattle the same afternoon. The job was a piece of cake, Slater said at the airport. The kid had no priors and had offered no resistance to the deputy who arrested her in the woods. No weapon had been found, either in Rigby’s possession or in a search of the vicinity. The shooting was believed to be an act of panic, and Rigby had ditched the gun immediately afterward. At the bond hearing her lip had described her as a sweet kid committed to nonviolence. She was either Mother Teresa or Belle Starr, take your pick. I took my gun along for the ride. I wasn’t about to shoot the kid, but when you’ve been a cop as long as I was, you don’t leave home without it. I cleared it through the airline and tucked it in my bag, which I checked through luggage. I was also carrying a certified copy of the bench warrant and an affidavit describing in detail the Rigby woman’s crime. I read it all through again on a bumpy two-hour flight.
Slater had arranged everything. I had a car waiting and a room at the Hilton downtown. My plan was short and sweet: I would bust the Rigby woman, park her for safekeeping in the Seattle jail, cut a swath through the Seattle bookstores tomorrow, and deliver her to New Mexico tomorrow night. The ghosts of Poe and Baudelaire were my companions, but I shook them off. I was not going to get into that, I promised myself. Poe sat beside me as the plane circled Seattle: the gaunt little son of a bitch just wouldn’t go away. The hell with you, I thought: I’m taking this woman back to New Mexico. Poe gave a crooked little smile and fastened his seat belt, and the plane dropped into the dense cloud cover and rumbled its way downward.
My contact was a guy named Ruel Pruitt. Slater had used him on several cases with Seattle angles and found him to be “a good guy at what he does. He hates the world,” Slater said, “but he’s like the damn invisible man, and there’s nobody better at this cloak-and-dagger shit.” I was to check into my hotel and wait in my room until Pruitt called, then go pick up the girl. After that I was on my own. I had never done any bounty-hunter work, but I knew the routine because I had cooperated with enough of them when I was a Denver cop. Some were okay, highly professional: then there were the goofballs right out of a Chuck Norris movie. All I needed for this job, Slater assured me, was a sturdy pair of handcuffs, and he had given me a set of good ones from the trunk of his car.
I got into Seattle at three-thirty Pacific time. Of course it was raining. Perry Como might think the bluest skies you ever saw were in Seattle, but all I’ve ever seen there is rain. I almost missed the hotel—the Seattle Hilton has its check-in lobby on the ninth floor, and only a garage entrance and elevator at street level. By four-thirty I was settled in my room, on the seventeenth floor with a window into rain-swept Sixth Avenue. At 5:05 the telephone rang. A velvety voice said, “Janeway?” and I said, “Yeah,” and he said, “I’m in a bar near the Kingdome.” He gave me an address and said he’d be outside in a blue Pontiac. He read off his plate number and I got it down the first time. “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out,” he said. “I got no idea how long this little dyke’s gonna sit still.”
Wonderful, I thought, listening to the dead connection—just the kind of charmer I’d expect to find working for Slater. I slipped the cuffs into my jacket pocket and ten minutes later I pulled up behind the Pontiac on First Avenue. The plate matched the number he’d given me, and I could see two people sitting inside. One of them, I thought, was a woman. The bar nestled at the foot of an elevated double-decker viaduct, looking like a cliff dwelling at Mesa Verde. It was triangular, squeezed in where the street slashed through on a kitty-corner layout. The rain was heavy now. I sat waiting for a break, but the rain in Seattle isn’t like the rain in Denver: a guy could grow a long white beard waiting for it to slack off here. At 5:45 by the digital in my car, I decided to run for it. I flicked up my parking lights, got his attention, hopped out, and ran to his car. The doors were locked. Pruitt and his ladyfriend sat smoking, chatting as if I weren’t there. I rapped on the backseat doorglass and Pruitt looked around, annoyed, and pointed to his custom seatcovers. I stood with water running down my nose and looked at them through the glass, said, “Son of a bitch,” and hoped they could read my lips. Eventually he got the message: he leaned over the seat, found an old blanket, and spread it over his seatcovers. By the time he was ready to open the door, I was drenched.
I pushed the blanket roughly out of the way and flopped down on the backseat.
“Hey, cowboy,” Pruitt said, “are you trying to piss me off?”
The woman giggled and we all looked at each other. Pruitt was an ugly pockmarked man. His face had been badly pitted long ago, the way you used to see on smallpox victims, and it gave him a look of rank decay. He smelled of cedarwood aftershave and peppermint, which on him had a faintly sickening effect.
He was in his late forties: his girlfriend was younger, a brassy-looking blonde. But it was Pruitt who commanded the attention. His coat was open so I could see the gun he wore. He was an intimidator, I knew the type well, it had crossed my path often enough when I was a cop in Denver. Give him an inch and he’ll walk all over you. He’ll bully and embarrass you and make life miserable. I never give guys like him an inch, not even when I could see, like now, the eyes of a killer.
“Where the hell did Slater dig you up?” he said.
“He used to date my mother. I hear he found you the same way.”
The blonde gave a small gasp: one didn’t, I was supposed to believe, talk to the man in that tone of voice. Pruitt’s eyes burned holes in my head. “We’ve got a real smart-ass here, Olga. Ten thousand guys in Denver and Slater sends me a smart-ass.”
“Tell you what,” I said evenly. “Let’s start over. I’ll go back to my hotel and dry out, -have a drink, get a good dinner, maybe find myself a friend of the opposite sex to help me pass the time. You sit here in the rain, follow Slater’s girl, and call me when you want to pass the torch. How does two weeks from tomorrow sound?”
“A real smart-ass. You’re getting water all over my car, for Christ’s sake, didn’t your fucking mother teach you anything? Where were you raised, in a back alley behind some Denver whorehouse?”
“As a matter of fact, yeah. I seem to’ve missed all the advantages Mrs. Hitler gave you.”
He burned me with his killer eyes. The blonde seemed to be holding her breath, waiting for him to crawl over the seat and kill me.
“Just for the record,” I said pleasantly, “I’m about this close to pushing what’s left of your face right through that windshield. Do we understand each other yet, Gertrude?…or do I have to take that gun away from you and empty it up your ass?”
We sat and stared. I was ready for him if he came, and I thought he might. The rage simmered in the car and fogged up the windshield. In the end, he had a higher priority than teaching a cowboy from Denver who was boss.
“You want to tell me about this woman?” I said.
“You’ve got her picture. She’s in there, it’s your job now.”
“I’ll tell you when it’s my job. If I have any more trouble with you, I’m out of here, and you and Slater can figure it out by yourselves.”
“Shit.”
I couldn’t improve on that, so I let it ride. We sat in the car for a few minutes without talking. “Go inside,” he said to Olga as if I weren’t there. “See if our pigeon’s getting lonely.” She got out and ran through the rain, disappearing into the bar. Pruitt sat in silence, his collar turned up to his ears, his eyes riveted on the neon lights in the window. He lit a cigarette but put it out without comment when I cracked the window and the rain came in on his seats.
“Let’s get this over with,” he said. He got out in the rain and walked to the bar. I trailed along behind him. He tapped the hood of an old roadster parked at the front door—Rigby’s, I was left to conclude. It was a true jalopy, with current Washington plates and bad t
ires. We went inside. Pruitt didn’t want to go past the dark aisle that led into the barroom. We stood there a moment in the pitch, trying to adjust our eyes. It was still early, but already the bar was crowded with happy-hour zombies and refugees from various wars. Music was playing loudly on the jukebox: “Sea of Love.” Maybe thirty people were at the bar and at tables scattered around it. The bartender was a fat man who looked like Jackie Gleason. Olga sat on a stool at the far end. Two stools away was Eleanor Rigby.
“There she is,” Pruitt said.
We stood for another moment.
“Is it your job yet, or am I supposed to stand here all night?”
“Go on, blow.”
He motioned to Olga, who left an untouched beer and came toward us. “I’ll probably meet you again sometime,” he said to me. “The circumstances will be different.”
“I’m in the Denver phone book, if you ever get out that way.”
“Maybe I’ll make a point of it.”
Asshole , I said, not entirely under my breath.
I ambled to the bar and sat on the only empty stool, directly across from Rigby. The bartender came; I ordered a beer and sucked the foam off. Ten yards away, Eleanor Rigby had another of whatever she was drinking. I watched her without looking. I looked at two guys having a Seahawks argument and I watched her with peripheral vision. I watched the bartender polishing glasses and I looked at her. She looked bone weary, as if she might fall asleep at the bar. I stole a frontal look. There wasn’t much danger in it, she was just another good-looking girl in a bar and I was a lonely, horny guy. She’d be used to gawkers, she must get them all the time. She was twenty-one, I guessed, with thick hair pinned back and up. “Eleanor Rigby.” I shook my head and tried to clear away the Victorian spinster the song conjured up. I wondered what it does to people, being named after something like that and having to carry that baggage all your life.
I was in it now, committed to the deed. I told myself she was nothing more than a cool five grand, waiting to be picked up. I wasn’t sure yet how to take her—probably later, on the street. I didn’t like the smell of the crowd in the bar. It was a blue-collar crowd, a sports crowd, and there’s always some ditz ready to rise up out of a crowd like that and defend a pretty woman’s honor no matter what. Never mind my court papers, never mind the cheap-looking ID Slater had given me as I left. The ID identified me as an operative of CS Investigations of Denver, but there was no picture of me on it and it gave me no authority beyond what Slater had, what anybody has. What I could use right now was a state-issued license with my kisser plastered all over it. But the state of Colorado doesn’t require its private detectives or its psychotherapists to have special licenses: all a bozo needs is an eight-by-twelve office, the gift of gab, and the power of positive thinking. I was making what amounted to a citizen’s arrest, and I had the law on my side because she had jumped bail and was now a fugitive. But if you have to explain that to a crowd in a bar, you’re already in trouble.
I nursed my beer and waited. She sat across the waterhole, a gazelle unaware of the lion’s approach. The stool had opened to her immediate left. I was tempted, but a shark moved in and filled it. Story of my damn life: the studs make the moves while I sit still and consider the universe, and I go home to a cold and lonely bed. I thought about Rita McKinley and wondered where she was and what she was doing with herself. In a way that was difficult to explain, Eleanor Rigby looked a little like Rita, like a younger model. Actually, she looked nothing like Rita at all. The stud to her left was already hitting on her. In happier times she might’ve been thrilled, but now she just looked tired and bored. The bartender drifted down and asked if I wanted another brew. I said I was okay, I’d send up a flare when the need became great. At the front table the Seahawks flap was still raging, a real-life commercial for Miller Lite. Across the way, Mr. America said something and gestured to her drink. She shook her head and tried to go on with her life, but he remained doggedly in her face. She swished her ice and sipped the watery remains while her hero worked his way through the first twelve chapters of his life story. He was one of those loud farts, the kind you can’t insult: he probably couldn’t be killed, except with a silver bullet. He was halfway to his first million and nobody to share it with. I couldn’t imagine any interesting woman falling for that line, but interesting probably wasn’t what he was after. The guy was a moron, either that or I was. I didn’t have time to dwell on it because just then Eleanor Rigby got up and left him flat, halfway between the big deal he had just pulled off and all the bigger ones coming down the pike.
I liked her for that. In a way it was a shame I was going to have to bust her. I left two bills on the bar and followed her down the hall to the Johns. She disappeared into the ladies‘. I checked to make sure there was no other way out, then I drifted back into the bar and took up a position where I couldn’t miss her. I was standing near the only window, which looked out into the street. Heavy black drapes were closed over it, but I parted them slightly so I could see out. I was staring at her car, my hand suspended between the curtains. Someone was sitting behind the wheel. I saw a light, very faint: he was looking for something, rummaging through the glove compartment. He put on his hat and got out in the rain. Pruitt. He stood for a moment, oblivious to the rain that had bothered him so much before. He gave her door a vicious kick, leaving a dent six inches across. I saw the snap of a blade, a wicked stiletto, and he bent over and poked a hole in her tire. Then he walked away and I watched the car go flat.
Just then she came out of the hallway. She walked past, so close I could’ve touched her. I let her go, following her out through the narrow foyer. By the time I got to the door she had run to her car. I stood watching her through the tiny pane of glass. Yes, she had seen the flat tire: she was sitting in her car doing nothing. I could imagine her disgust. Time for Loch-invar to appear, as if by magic: a knight with a bouquet in one hand and a set of shackles in the other. Bust her now, I thought, walking out into the rain: bust her, Janeway, don’t be an idiot. But there was Poe, grim and pasty-faced, lurking in the dark places under the viaduct.
I stopped at the curb and pointed to her tire. She cracked the window ever so slightly.
“You got a flat.”
“No kidding.”
“Hey,” I said in my kindest, gentlest voice. “I can’t get any wetter than this. Gimme your keys, I’ll get out your jack and change it for you.”
5
She sat in the car while I changed her tire. I jiggled her up, took off her lugs, and hummed a few bars of “Singin‘ in the Rain.” Her spare tire was like the others: it had been badly used in at least three wars, the alleged tread frequently disappearing into snarls of frayed steel. I hauled it out of the trunk and put it gently on the curb. The street was as deserted as a scene from some midfifties end-of-the-world flick, but it fooled me not. Pruitt, I thought, was still out there somewhere, I just couldn’t see him. If this were Singiri in the Rain , he’d come on down and we’d do a little soft-shoe routine. I’d be Gene Kelly and we’d get Eleanor Rigby out of the car to play Debbie Reynolds. Pruitt would be Donald O’Connor, tap-dancing his way up the side of the viaduct and out onto the highway, where he’d get flattened by a semi. Suddenly I knew, and I didn’t know how, that there was a joker in the deck: Slater hadn’t hired me for my good looks after all. A far greater purpose was hidden under the surface: what had been presented as an interesting side dish was in fact the main course, and the big question was why the camouflage ? I was told to play lead in Singin’ in the Rain , and now, well into the opening number, I learned it was really West Side Story we were doing. In a minute Pruitt would come down and we’d do one of those crazy numbers where the good guys sing and dance with the hoods, just before they all yank out their zip guns and start zipping each other into hoodlum heaven. I scanned the street again, searching for some sign of life, but even Poe had disappeared into the murky shadows from whence he’d come.
I tossed Rigby’s flat ti
re into her trunk and contemplated the spare. I resisted the inclination to laugh, but it was a close call: she must’ve searched the world to’ve found five tires that bad. I’ll take your four worst tires and save the best of my old ones for a spare . You gotta be kidding, lady, there ain’t no best one. Oh. Then throw away the three worst and give me whatever’s left . You know the routine, Jack Nicholson did it in a restaurant in Five Easy Pieces : four over well, cooked to a frazzle, and hold the tread. Pruitt didn’t need a knife, a hairpin would’ve done it for him. I hummed “I Feel Pretty” in a grotesque falsetto as I fitted the tire onto the wheel, but it didn’t seem to brighten the moment. Crunch time was coming, and I still didn’t know what I was going to do. It was that goddamned Poe, the wily little bastard: he had cast his lot with Slater and was waxing me good. That one line about Baudelaire in the Huggins bibliography had been the hook, and I was too much the bookman to shake it free.
Was it possible that Darryl Grayson had been working on a two-book set, Poe and Baudelaire, English and French, at the time of his death, and that one copy of the Poe had been completed and had survived? If you read “Dear Abby” faithfully, as I do, you know that anything is possible. What would such a book be worth, quote-unquote, in today’s marketplace?…A unique piece with a direct link to the deaths of two famous bookmen, snatched from the blaze just as the burning roof caved in. Was it truly the best and the brightest that Darryl Grayson could make? If so, it was worth a fair piece of change. Ten thousand, I thought, Slater even had that right: it was worth just about ten grand on the high end. But with one-of-a-kind pieces, you never know. I could envision an auction with all the half-mad Grayson freaks in attendance. If two or three of them had deep pockets, there was no telling how high such a book might go.
