by G. M. Ford
Orders from the boss, no doubt. Here in the land of the dead, they frowned upon the living wandering about the building.
“Thanks, Monica,” I said.
She scurried for the door with the rustling swoosh of a flock of flamingos.
I walked around the desk and plopped down in Rebecca’s chair. Seeing Martha up close, my first thought was, “Wow . . . she’s gotten older”—a realization that somehow never includes me, as if I am for some reason immune to aging. It isn’t until I pass by a mirror and catch sight of my own composting carcass that I’m forced to fess up to reality. Hate when that happens.
Her face was the color of old putty. Looked like if you pressed it with your finger it would stay dented forever. We like to tell people, “I know how you feel” when disaster strikes. But we don’t. I mean how do you imagine what it’s like to have your son murder someone on camera and then lose your father to a self-inflicted gunshot wound a week later? Anybody who can conjure up how it feels to have that happen to them needs a shrink worse than I do.
I was trying to come up with a suitable lead-in but found the repartee cupboard bare. Something like “sorry to hear about you losing your son, your father, and your peace of mind” didn’t seem to have quite the proper cachet, so I buttoned my lip and left it that way.
We just sat there, the sounds of traffic punctuating the silence.
“You were looking for me?” I said after an uncomfortable decade or so.
She nodded but didn’t say anything, so I tried again.
“Goes without saying . . .” I cleared my throat and kept talking. “Sorry about all of it.”
She folded her hands in her lap and closed her eyes. The air in the room was thick enough to swim in.
I watched as she dry swallowed several times and then choked out, “My mother says my father came to see you right before he . . . before . . .”
I didn’t want her to have to say it out loud, so I jumped in.
“Yes he did.”
Her face suggested she’d expected me to deny it. “What did he want?”
Not sure I ever wanted to weasel out of a conversation that bad in my life, but I sucked it up and then spit it out. “He wanted to know why Matthew did what he did,” I said. “He figured . . . you know . . . I used to be a private eye, so he thought maybe I could find out what . . . what pushed your son over the edge. He seemed to feel that . . . that there must have been other . . . outside . . . forces involved.”
She cut me off. “He loved Matthew,” she said.
“I’m sure he did.”
Out in the street somebody’s car alarm was bleating to the sky. Usually not something you want to hear, but not surprisingly, right at that juncture, both of us were silently grateful for the interruption.
“I think he came to me because of my father,” came rolling out of my mouth, unbidden. She turned in the seat and looked at me. Felt like I was being skewered.
“Why would he do that?” she asked.
“In his time,” I began, “my father could fix just about anything you needed fixed. He knew who to talk to and what it was going to take to get it done. You needed a traffic ticket fixed, you called Big Bill. Your kid got a DUI you needed to go away, he could make that happen.” I shrugged. “Provided either he owed you or he wanted you to owe him.”
I took a deep breath and went on. “I think your father . . . I think maybe . . . somewhere in his desperation . . . he thought maybe Big Bill could somehow make it all go away for him . . . you know . . . even from the grave.”
My words seem to revive her. I watched as an underlying redness crept up her neck and then to her cheeks. She unfolded her hands. Rubbed them back and forth on her skirt and squared her shoulders.
“That’s what I thought,” she said bitterly. “Phil couldn’t face it,” she said. “Neither of them could. No matter how many times I told him or other people told him . . . doctors, teachers, counselors . . . Everybody told them . . . He just couldn’t admit it. It was like it so offended his maleness that Matthew might be sick . . . He kept making excuses for it. It was just a stage he was going through. He’d grow out of it. It was the school’s fault. With the proper medication, he’d be fine.” She waved an angry hand in the air and looked away. I watched her stifle a sob.
I put an awkward hand on her shoulder.
“Mr. Macho man gun nut,” she went on. “It was like there was no possible way the fruit of his loins could possibly be defective. Oh no! There had to be some other explanation. Somebody or something other than his son had to be to blame.” Her anger settled over the room like cannon smoke.
“I wish I could have helped.”
Her voice rose. “What’s to help? It’s done. The media’s turned my son into some kind of urban terrorist. My father shot himself. Phil and I are both under siege. I had to sneak out of my house in the middle of the night to drive up here and attend my own father’s funeral last week and again today. I’ve got cars following me around.” She got to her feet. “What’s to help,” she said again. “We’ve become the pariah.” She gathered her purse under her arm. “Sorry to have bothered you, Leo.” She shrugged. “I was just . . . I don’t know what I was thinking.”
I did. Knew all too well. People go to private eyes when they’ve already tried everything remotely sensible and have made a substantial dent in their crazy list too. Something inside them knows, without being told, that unless they do everything and anything they can think of, they’re never gonna get a decent night’s sleep for as long as they live.
“It’s cool,” I assured her. “Where’d you park?”
“Over by the Sorrento, on Madison.”
“I’ll walk you to your car,” I said.
She didn’t bother to argue. I guided her down the hall to the elevators, stopped at Monica’s desk to make sure she knew we were leaving, and then we stepped out onto Jefferson Street, or almost, anyway. The driving rain appeared to be in danger of turning to sleet. Just looking at it gave me the shivers.
I took her arm and walked her back through the building, the short way, out to my car in the swell-folks parking lot. We hunched across the asphalt, the rain hissing around us like silver wasps. I started her up, buckled myself in, and dropped it into reverse. “The receptionist . . . ?” Martha said out of nowhere.
“Monica?”
“Does she always dress like that . . . I mean . . .”
“Yeah. Pink on pink.” I leaned a little closer and tried to lighten things up a bit. “Underwear too.”
Her eyes narrowed. “And how would you know that, Leo?”
“I’ve inadvertently seen her bra straps on several occasions. Pink. So I’m assuming . . . you know . . . you gotta figure . . . a coordinated ensemble . . .”
“Good bet.”
We drove the rest of the way in silence, the rain hitting the car like gravel. I let her out across the street from her ride. She got out and stood in the open door. She was so wet, I couldn’t tell if she was crying or not. “Thanks for the good humor, Leo. I didn’t mean to be a burden. I’m just sort of at my wit’s end, I guess. I don’t even remember driving over here, to tell you the truth.” She lifted an arm and then let it drop to her side with a slap. “I didn’t even know where I was until you came into the room.”
“No problem,” I assured her. “I don’t know if things in your life are going to get better . . . because . . . you know I really hate it when people say that shit to me, but I feel pretty confident saying they couldn’t get a hell of a lot worse.”
The rain had made her mascara come unglued. She looked like a drowning raccoon as she gave me a wan smile. “Take care of yourself,” was the last thing I got out of my mouth before she closed the door and hurried across the street to a red Toyota and let herself in.
I nosed into the Sorrento Hotel’s circular driveway only to find it was no longer circular. Been a while, I guessed. They’d converted it into kind of an outdoor patio where guests could enjoy the fresh ai
r and sunshine on any of the eleven days a year when it wasn’t raining its nuts off. If I ran this place, somebody’d be looking for work.
I used the little turnaround they’d left for the valets and nosed back out onto Boren Avenue just in time to watch Martha pull away from the curb, heading north. I was about to turn the other way and put all of this behind me, literally and figuratively, when a dark-blue Range Rover nearly ripped off the front of my car as it came off the curb like a pool ball, squealed a tight half circle, and began rolling up the street in Martha’s wake.
It was the old wait-and-then-hurry-up maneuver that got my attention. The moment Martha disappeared around the corner, the driver of the Range Rover stomped the accelerator and roared after her.
I knew that one all too well. Trying to follow somebody in city traffic. That’s how ya did it. Didn’t work worth a shit, but that’s what it looked like when you gave it the old college try.
If any competent law enforcement agency wanted to tail you around a city like Seattle, it wouldn’t be two guys in a Range Rover. They’d have anywhere from eight to twelve nondescript vehicles and maybe a helicopter involved, depending on how congested a particular part of town was at a particular time of day. They’d trade off following you. Trying to keep both behind and ahead of your computer-projected route. And even then, even with an eye in the sky helping out, there was a decent chance the subject would slip the net. Cities were like that. Too much of everything.
I bounced out onto Boren and fed the Tahoe nine dollars’ worth of unleaded.
Our little motorcade wound its way down to Broadway and turned north. That’s when the whole Jim-Rockford-tails-people-all-over-L.A. scenario shit its pants.
This was Capitol Hill. Between the cars, delivery trucks, streetcars, buses, and the hordes of pedestrians—and I don’t mean regular pedestrians, no no no—I mean entitled pedestrians. These were people with the goddamn right of way, people who’d step right in front of your car wearing skinny jeans and earbuds, reading a book on their Kindle, and then throw you a withering PC sneer when you were forced to skid to a stop in order to keep from turning them into meatballs.
By the time we got up to Seattle Central College, Martha’s Toyota had disappeared like a cool breeze. Three cars up, waiting for the light to change, the guys in the Rover didn’t seem to mind a bit, so I chided myself for misreading the situation and started thinking about where I was going to have lunch.
The light went green, and as Seattle geography would have it, we were already pointing in the direction I was going, so I just kept tootling along behind the Range Rover until we got all the way up to Roy, at which point they turned left and started down the ski-jump hill, past Annie Cornish, down through the nasty little curve where Roy drops straight down the face of the hill and all of a sudden you’re driving on Belmont, heading right at Lake Union.
The wind had turned the surface of the lake into a green-and-white washboard. Out in the distance, through an iron curtain of rain, the Aurora Bridge arched like a questioning brow as a yellow-and-white floatplane waggled down over Gas Works Park.
Belmont was narrow as hell. A steady stream of traffic labored up the hill in the oncoming lane. I was planning to turn right at the bottom of the hill, run over into Eastlake, maybe grab a sandwich at Mammoth on my way home, but as I pulled up to the stop sign, a quick glance to my left changed all that.
Martha’s car was rolling down the big airborne ramp they’d built from the base of Capitol Hill to the newly crowned center of the known world—South Lake Union. Amazonville Central.
Either the guys in the Rover had just gotten real lucky and stumbled onto Martha again—a coincidence my brain rejected before I was through thinking it—or perhaps they already knew where she was going because they’d been following her. Or—you know—if I wanted to get all James Bondy about it, maybe they’d put a transponder on her car. I was trying to keep an open mind, but hard as I worked at it, I couldn’t come up with another reasonable alternative.
I pumped the brakes harder, letting the Rover put some distance between us. When the Rover put on its left-turn signal and followed Martha down the ramp, any doubts I had about whether or not they were shadowing her hit the bricks.
The car behind me tooted its horn, getting impatient with my I brake for gravel approach to driving. I turned left and checked the mirror as soon as I rolled onto the ramp. Nobody behind me. I fed the Tahoe some gas.
After ten minutes of seeping along at the speed of lava, I was so intent on watching Martha pull into the Sheraton Seattle Hotel valet area, I nearly failed to notice the Rover slipping into a deliveries-only zone across the street from the hotel. I feathered the brakes. Slowed to a snail crawl. A herd of horns brayed their displeasure. I cursed, kept the Tahoe moving as I tried to find a spot to stash the car. Nada. Screwed and blued. No place to stop, so I goosed it up to the next light, turned left, and repeated the process a few times, until five minutes later I was parked half a block up from the Sheraton on Sixth Avenue. There’d been major changes in my absence.
Martha was gone. The valet was nosing her Toyota down the ramp into the underground garage. The Rover was gone too, and all of a sudden I was being tossed on the horns of a dilemma. Should I go inside and tell Martha there actually were two guys following her? It seemed a bit excessive, since she’s the one who’d told me she had a tail. At the time, I’d assumed it hadda be more of the antigun crowd. I mean anybody nutsy enough to picket a guy’s funeral because he was a killer’s grandfather was certainly bonkers enough to follow the killer’s mother all over the Pacific Northwest.
So I decided to break all precedent and mind my own damn business. Not necessarily the most ethical decision I’d ever made, but as long as it got the Fowler family out of my life once and for all, I figured I could live with it long term.
I dropped the Tahoe into gear, waited a year and a half for a hole to open up in the traffic, and started downhill, hoping to get all the way to Western before I became eligible for social security.
It was the pulsing red-and-blue lights up ahead that got my attention, and not in any former-detective sort of way. More like in a road rage kind of way. Two blocks up, a cop had pulled somebody over, but since there was no over in the downtown core, they’d stopped him in the right-hand lane, forcing everyone to move to the left through a stream of cars whose drivers would rather get rabies than let anybody in front of them. The way I saw it, that $150 traffic ticket was going to add an extra fifteen or twenty minutes to several thousand people’s commutes. To protect and serve. Yeah. I was all atwitter at the thought.
Wasn’t till I got to Second Avenue that I changed my tune. Right there on the corner of Second and Union, an enormous SPD motorcycle cop had stopped the Range Rover and was standing in the right-hand lane scribbling in his citation book. I read the Rover’s license plate number into my phone and smiled for the first time in a week or so.
Must be true what they say about a smile too, because for the first time all day, I got lucky with the traffic and ended up first in line at the light. I threw a quick glance toward the Rover. The cop was in the way, but I could see the driver was a curly-haired white guy. Fortysomething. Thick neck. Greasy face and mean little eyes.
I leaned forward, trying to see around Officer Humongous. The passenger was a white woman. Big gal. Nest of blonde hair of a shade that doesn’t appear in nature, wearing big, red hoop earrings and a red satin jacket with something embroidered on the back. A dragon maybe. A black number nine adorned her left shoulder. Some kind of team jacket, for sure.
The light changed. The steady rain was taking its toll. Every cross street was a nightmare of scurrying, rain-soaked pedestrians looking for shelter and wherever the hell it was where they threw the fish around.
Down by the Labor Temple I parallel parked in front of a Costco delivery truck and called Tim Eagen. Straight to voicemail. I read the Rover’s plate number into his machine and then asked nice if maybe he wouldn’t run
the plate number for me. Carl could do it too, but first off he’d charge me up the yak, and second off he’d bust my balls for a half an hour before he came up with the info. Yeah . . . Tim Eagen was a way better choice, even if he was in love with my girlfriend.
CJ’s Eatery was two blocks behind me on the other side of First Avenue. One of my favorite downtown no-frills joints. Breakfast and lunch. No dinner. Just good food and no pretense. I began perusing CJ’s menu in my mind, wondering if a guy could still get Swedish pancakes at this time of day. I’d made up my mind to beg if necessary, grabbed the door handle, glanced at the mirror so’s not to get my big ass run over, when, what to my wondering eyes should appear but the Range Rover, zipping past me up toward Denny. Except that the blonde woman was now driving, and the greasy guy had a black leather elbow sticking out the passenger window.
Like a moth to the flame, I slid the key back in the ignition, pulled my door shut, and bounced out into traffic. They took First Avenue all the way to the end, where it runs into Denny, hooked a left in front of Tini Bigs martini bar, and then a quick right, and then another, up the alley behind Tini’s into the construction zone for the new building next door.
I pulled to the curb, got out of the car, and walked up to the corner. Peeked around. The rain hissed like a locomotive. The alley opened onto city streets at both ends. No Rover. I hustled back to my car, fired her up, and wheeled into the alley.
The portable construction office was forty yards ahead on the left, wedged between a fenced enclosure piled high with debris and the yellow construction crane looming in the sky like a steel mantis.
I was guessing the high wind had sent the crew home for the day. Halfway down I could see the church parking lot at the far end. That’s when she stepped out in front of me.
Unlike Martha’s coif, Blondie’s mane seemed to be completely impervious to the wind and water. I braked to a stop. She stood there looking at me like I was a creature from another planet.
I slid out of my seat, closed the car door, and took a couple of tentative steps in her direction. I thought about yelling something but couldn’t figure out what to yell. I shoulda known better. The question wasn’t, What in hell was Blondie doing standing in the middle of a rain-washed alley? The question that should have been bouncing through my circuits was, Where the hell was her partner?
