Slow Burn

by G. M. Ford

  “Is that it?” she said when he’d finished.

  Jed said it was.

  “Well, then, please allow me also to begin with a statement.” Again, she leveled her gaze on me. “Mr. Waterman, I am given to understand that you have become accustomed to preferential treatment by nearly all the city agencies.” I opened my mouth to protest, but she added, “Including law enforcement agencies. I give you fair warning, Mr. Waterman. None of that is going to happen here. Both Detective Lobdell and I are fairly new to the Seattle area. Unlike you, we have no history here, and as far as we are concerned, neither do you.”

  “Are you threatening my client?”

  She ignored Jed. “Mr. Waterman, you are about to be charged with first-degree assault, unlawful entry, and accessory to murder. I don’t have to tell you that these are serious charges.” She rambled on for another three minutes about how I was both literally and metaphorically fucked, since all the evidence against me was airtight and I was surely going to spend my declining years as a sperm-drenched sex toy in a maximum-security prison. I couldn’t make up my mind whether she was trying to scare me or to show Lobdell what a hard-ass she was. Probably both.

  “You skipped a bunch of stuff,” I said.

  “And what would that be?”

  “You left out the whole part where you ask me the questions and I give you the snappy answers.”

  Jed was giving me the shut-up squeeze.

  “They always ask me dumb-ass questions before they threaten me. It’s in the cop book somewhere. First questions, then threats. Look it up. It definitely needs to be done in that order.”

  “I wish to confer privately with my client,” Jed said suddenly.

  Lawrence rose. “As you wish,” she said. Lobdell walked up to the stenographer’s side and helped her with her chair.

  Jed waited until the door closed behind them before he spoke.

  “It’s damage control.”

  “I thought we were going to deal.”

  “We’re in rough company.”

  “The Lawrence woman?”

  “We have a history,” he said. “It would be fair to say that her past dealings with me have—how shall I say—somewhat steepened her career path. You might be better off with different representation.”

  “Not a chance.”

  “You may be tarred with the same brush.”

  “Sounds like I’ve already been tarred with my own brush. Hell, it sounds like my brush may be worse than your brush.”

  He nodded. “You’ve never met her before?”

  “Never.”

  Jed took a deep breath. “If they had any intention of dealing, they wouldn’t have sent her. They’re gonna do this by the numbers.”

  “Then, as you said, it’s damage control.”

  Damage control meant that we told them as little as humanly possible. That we had to protect against information erosion. We wouldn’t specifically lie about anything, except what it was we remembered. Nobody can prove what it is a person does or does not remember. We would answer their questions in as succinct and specific a manner as possible, carefully avoiding telling them anything more than what they asked. Jed would jump in and take any questions that he thought required his attention. When in doubt, we’d do the old Ollie North Tango: To the best of my recollection…

  When the authorities decide they want to get serious, it’s best to have an ace in the hole. It’s no skin off their noses one way or the other whether you go home or you go to jail. Either way, they go home and eat their young. Like everything else, it’s just a system of trade-offs. If you expect them to look the other way on your transgressions, you damn well better have something good to trade.

  Jed walked to the door and invited our tormentors back into the room. Lobdell got the stenographer settled and then picked up where Lawrence had left off. “Were you operating as a private investigator during your stay here at the hotel?”

  “Yes.”

  “By whom were you employed?”

  “Sir Geoffrey Miles.”

  The pair exchanged a short glance.

  “With a J or a G?” Lawrence asked.

  I spelled it out for them.

  “Where will we find this gentleman?” Lobdell asked.

  “Room sixteen hundred.”

  Lobdell excused himself and stepped out in the hall for a moment. Lawrence waited for him to return and get settled before she asked, “What were you hired to do?”

  “Security.”

  “For whom?”

  “What,” I said.

  “What what?” Lawrence tried.

  “I was handling security for a what, not a who.”

  They waited. So did I.

  “Well?” Lobdell said.

  “Well what?”

  “Which what were you handling security for?”

  “The convention that’s going on over in the convention center.”

  “The foodfest,” Lobdell said.

  “Le Cuisine Internationale,” I gave it my best Pepé Le Pew French accent.

  “What, specifically, were you hired to do?” Lawrence asked.

  Jed threw me a little nod, saying that I should give them this part of the story, so I did. I ran down the whole Meyerson, Del Fuego, Reese soap opera. I told them how I’d interviewed the parties.

  Lawrence interrupted once. As I finished describing my interview with Reese, she said. “So, Mr. Waterman, you’re saying that you didn’t enter Mr. Reese’s room?”

  I looked to Jed. “Yes,” I said. “That’s right.” And then I told them about Rodrigo, the room-service waiter who’d seen me in the hall.

  “I have a few questions,” Lobdell announced. Turned out, so did Ms. Lawrence. They picked at the story like fussy vultures, tearing off one bite-sized nibble at a time before moving on to the next. It took an hour to go back over the story to their satisfaction. I was losing my patience.

  “Go on,” she said.

  I explained about how, the next morning, I’d kept track of their comings and goings. About stomping around boarding stables and cattle yards all afternoon and returning to the hotel.

  “And what time did you get back here?” Lobdell asked.

  “I just told you that. Right before six.”

  “And there was a message.”

  “Yes.”

  “From?”

  “Mason Reese.”

  Lawrence was getting a little antsy too. “Survey says…”

  “He said I should give him a call.”

  “And you did,” the cop prompted.

  “Yeah, but I got no answer.”

  They were good. They were able to take complex events and reduce them to a series of single actions, which could then be either verified and dismissed or disputed and investigated. One halten step at a time, they documented me from my room to the door of 814.

  “I elbowed the door open,” I said.

  “But you didn’t go in,” Lawrence said immediately.

  If I answered, the jig was up, so I treated it as a statement and buttoned my lip.

  “Is that correct?” Lobdell asked.

  “Is what correct?”

  “That you did not enter Mr. Reese’s room, after you pushed open the door.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  She paged backward in her notebook. “You certainly did.”

  Jed took over. “In the citation for which you are searching, Ms. Lawrence, you asked Mr. Waterman, in the context of his interview with Mr. Reese, if he had entered Mr. Reese’s room. You did not ask him if he had entered Mr. Reese’s room at any time.”

  “That’s pathetic,” the sergeant snapped.

  “Actually, it’s poor grammar,” I suggested.

  Lobdell kept picking. “After receiving the message, after going downstairs, after pushing open the door, did you enter Mr. Reese’s room?”

  “Yes.”

  It took another half hour to cover the three minutes I’d spent in the room. When I’d finished, Jed s
aid, “My client was concerned for the well-being of Mr. Reese. He was aware of the animosity inherent in the dispute between Mr. Del Fuego and Mrs. Meyerson and was concerned for Mason Reese’s safety.”

  Lobdell sneered at us. “So it was as a public-spirited citizen that Mr. Waterman unlawfully entered and disturbed a crime scene.”

  “Would that we had more of his ilk,” Jed said.

  “What he said,” I added.

  “What sort of gun did Mr. Reese have?” Lawrence asked.

  “A black automatic.”

  “Just a black automatic. That’s the best you can do?” Lobdell prompted.

  “Most of it was in his hand.”

  “And he brandished this weapon?” Lawrence persisted.

  “No. ‘Brandished’ is too strong a word. It makes it sound like he waved it at me. He just let me know he had it.”

  Lobdell jumped back in. “When you entered the room in your capacity as concerned citizen, was the gun there?”

  “Not that I saw.”

  Lawrence again. “Do you own a handgun, Mr. Waterman?”

  “Two.”

  “Where are those weapons at this time?”

  I’d left them locked in the trunk of my car, but there was no chance they were still there. By now, the cops had long since been through my room and my car. These two were fishing for lies.

  “I’m betting you’ve got them,” I said. “Make sure you don’t miss the licenses. Those are in the glove box.”

  “And immediately after exiting the room is when you assaulted Mr. Kenny?” Lobdell said.

  “Immediately after exiting the room is when I defended myself from an unprovoked attack by Mr. Kenny.”

  “What reason would Mr. Kenny have for assaulting you?”

  “Yesterday I broke his thumb.”

  They looked bewildered, so I told them the story. When I’d finished, Lawrence said, “Even granting that your version of the incident is accurate”—her tone indicated that hogs would sing opera first—“there would appear to be very little difference between the impropriety of Mr. Kenny’s actions and that of your own.”

  “The difference, Ms. Lawrence, is that I’m a professional thug and Lance is not. A professional would never use any more force than is necessary. Nothing could be dumber. That kid just wanted to show off for his buddy. Unfortunately for him, amateurs operate at their own risk. That’s all there is to it.”

  “And when he saw you in the hall, he summarily assaulted you? Is that what you’re selling us, Mr. Waterman?” Lobdell again.

  “Sure is.” Before he could speak, I said, “Try his partner. A guy named Lincoln Aimes. See what he has to say. I rate him as a pretty good kid. He’ll stick up for his buddy at first, but if you press him, I’ll bet he’ll tell you the truth.”

  Lobdell was losing his patience. “If it’s all right with you, Waterman, we’ll stage our own investigation. If I had my way, you and the rest of these clowns would already be downtown.”

  As they scribbled in their pads, the door opened and one of my elbow uniforms came in with a folded piece of notebook paper, which he set down next to Detective Lobdell. Lobdell finished his scribbling and then picked up the note. I watched as his eyes moved over and down the lines, and thought I detected a slight smile hiding in his thin lips.

  He leaned over and whispered in the woman’s ear, and then they agreed on something. “Mr. Waterman, in the matter of recording the comings and goings of the principals, did you act alone, or did you employ the help of others?”

  He had me in a vise. Was the note from the blue-suited Lieutenant Driscoll, telling him of my ploy to get rid of George? That I could deal with. Or did they actually have George? If I outright lied and they had George in custody, I’d be guilty of obstruction. Time to Ollie.

  “I hired a guy.”

  “What guy?”

  “A guy named George.”

  “Does this George have a last name?”

  “Probably, but I don’t know it.”

  “You don’t know his last name?”

  “He’s an old friend of my father’s. I’ve known him all my life. He’s always just been my uncle George. That’s how I think of him.”

  Lobdell jerked a thumb in the direction of the hall, and the cop hustled out. “Perhaps we can help,” Lobdell said.

  His white hair hung down in front of his face, but with his arms handcuffed behind him, George couldn’t do anything about it.

  Lobdell addressed him. “Mr. Waterman says your name is George but that he can’t remember your last name. Is your name George?”

  “Maybe it is. Maybe it ain’t,” George said.

  “I’d like to speak to my client privately,” Jed said.

  “You already did,” Lawrence objected.

  “This gentleman is also my client.”

  “My ass,” said Lobdell.

  “The gentleman’s name is George Paris, and if you will check the county court records, you will find that I have represented Mr. Paris in a number of matters both criminal and civil. You will, as a matter of fact, find that I am Mr. Paris’s attorney of record, and as much as I hate to repeat myself, I want to talk to my client alone.”

  Before Lawrence could speak, Lobdell jumped to his feet. “And you shall, Mr. James. Just as soon as we get these gentlemen booked into the King County Correction Facility, you will be afforded ample opportunity to confer with either or both of your clients.”

  I could see that Lawrence had more questions but didn’t want to make a scene. She took the professional approach.

  “Good evening, gentlemen.” Gathering her gear into a pile, she prepared to make her exit. “I expect we’ll be seeing one another again in the morning.”

  “Count on it,” said Jed.

  Lawrence cleared her throat. “And, ah, Mr. Waterman…” She lifted my PI license from the pile of documents before her and waved it in the air. “Until this matter is satisfactorily resolved, the county is pulling your PI ticket, retaining custody of your handguns, and revoking your ‘right to carry’ permits. Consider yourself to be at least temporarily out of the private eye business. Good evening, gentlemen.”

  If you go to the King County lockup, you spend at least six hours. No matter if your mom is standing there with the bail money clutched in her little hand when they bring you in. Whether it’s littering or larceny, mopery or murder, you still spend at least six hours. King County doesn’t get reimbursed by the state for stays of less than six hours. Need I say more?

  They drove us singly and then locked us up together. Go figure. After separating us from our belts and shoes, and taking a couple of those glam photos with the handy number on the bottom, they left us in a small cell with a black telephone on the wall.

  The turnkey was a pear-shaped guy on the verge of retirement. His bald head gleamed like an egg in the overhead lights, and his two-tone brown uniform seemed in danger of being rendered asunder by the onslaught of his burgeoning body as he waddled us along the corridor.

  “Make your calls,” he said, leaving us alone.

  “Where are Frank and Judy?” I asked as soon as he was gone.

  “They beat it. I give them the high sign first time I come down from the eighth, after I seen all them damn cops.”

  I clapped George on his bony shoulder. “Good man. How much info did you have in your notebook? Did you write down where everybody went today?”

  “Hell, no,” he said. “Never even got a chance to talk to anybody else. I just got done payin’ people when the place was crawlin’ with cops.”

  “Good. So all they’ve got is the cames and wents.”

  “They probably ain’t even got that.”

  “They didn’t get your notebook?”

  He gave me a sly grin. “Fat chance.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said.

  He did. When he finished, I threw an arm around his shoulder and gave him a shake. “You’re the best, George. The best.”

  “As good as Buddy
used to be?”

  Nobody had mentioned Buddy in a long time. I was suddenly filled with that cold feeling I got whenever his name came up. I took a deep breath. I used to think it was sorrow that froze my innards, but have come to see it as a kind of permanent rage for which there is no suitable outlet. Buddy Knox had been the de facto leader of the crew before George. He was stubborn, and I was careless. On a job down in Tacoma, the combination cost Buddy his life. What his death cost me remains to be seen.

  “Better,” I said. “You keep your shit together better than he did. I couldn’t trust him the way I can trust you.”

  I gave him a small hug.

  He struggled to escape. “Leggo of me, ya gorilla,” he growled. “Christ, in here, they’ll be thinkin’ we’re engaged.”

  “You could do worse,” I lisped.

  George looked grim. “We gonna call anybody?”

  “Not unless you’ve got a girlfriend.”

  Ten minutes later, the jailer reappeared. “You boys call your mamas?” he asked as he pulled open the cell door.

  “Called yours instead,” George snapped.

  “One of them psychics, are ya?” he said affably. “Follow me.”

  We walked along the gray corridor, past a half-dozen individual holding cells and down around the corner to the left.

  Even from the outside, it was obvious that the big general holding cell was where the action was. Beneath the bright lights, twenty or so men were divided into three distinct groups. At the far end of the cell, six or seven Hispanics sat close together in sullen silence. Something about their clothes and haircuts told me they were probably waiting for the immigration van. Their quiet eyes followed George and me as we shadowed the jailer down the hall to the orange door.

  The middle of the cell was held down by the African-American contingent, which lounged on the benches and the floor like they’d signed a lease. Sitting with his back to us was a huge specimen with a three-ring neck. As George stepped into the cell, he was just finishing up a story. “… and so I axed the bitch. I said, ‘Bitch, you want me to come upside your head again?’ and she say…” He looked over at George. “Hey, Granpaaaw,” he hollered in a put-on drawl, to the delight of his audience. “Come ova hea…ah got somefin’ fo’ ya. Ah bettcha you kin pull them teeth right out, can’t ya, Pops? Got nothin’ but smooth gum for cool Poppa here.”