Slow Burn

by G. M. Ford

  “Correct.”

  “What about the Meyerson boy?”

  “We don’t know where he went,” I said. “He separated from the pack while they were at the television station. Since the party still consisted of four people, my men decided to let him go.”

  “He arrived back at the hotel at twelve fifty-five. Is that correct?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “And then he left again at one-twenty, not to return until four-fifteen.”

  “Yes. That must have been confirmed by the surveillance tape, or else they would have busted his story too.”

  “As they did with the Meyerson girl.”

  “Yes.”

  He studied the list again.

  “She told the authorities that she’d taken a cab back to the hotel at about two-thirty and gone straight to her room.”

  “Right,” I said. “But it turned out that she’d been fraternizing with the enemy.”

  Sir Geoffrey shrugged. “It’s not their fight. They are, after all, relative contemporaries who spend most of their lives sequestered together in the same hotels. I don’t find it at all surprising that they’ve developed a few ties.”

  “I don’t know whether you noticed, but her mother didn’t share your sense of inevitability.”

  “She was rather put out, wasn’t she?”

  “I’m guessing the girl finds herself on a real short leash for a real long while.”

  “Has this trip to the motion pictures been corroborated?”

  “I’m guessing it has. They never questioned whether Atherton and Tolliver went, just whether the Meyerson girl went with them. I don’t see how anyone could claim to have gone out in public with Rickey Ray if it wasn’t true. I mean, he’s…”

  “Of course,” Miles said.

  “That little group is probably the least likely of suspects. Tolliver has an unforgettable face, and they’ve got corroboration from both sides of the Meyerson–Del Fuego fence.”

  He agreed. “And what of the remaining Del Fuego mob?”

  “Let’s begin with Dixie and Bart,” I suggested.

  He made a face. “If we must.”

  “Dixie and Bart claim to have spent the entire morning and early afternoon sightseeing.”

  “But your men say otherwise.”

  “I have it on good authority,” I lied, “that she spent the entire day in the King County Office Building, on either the fifth or the ninth floor. My man couldn’t be sure which. At four-twenty, she met a cab in front of the building and arrived back at the hotel at four-thirty.”

  “Indeed? And am I to presume that we once again have no idea as to what business she was on?”

  “Something official. Something civil rather than criminal. That’s all that goes on in that building. I should have no trouble finding out what she was doing.”

  “Very well. Carry on.”

  “Her companion, Mr. Yonquist, left the King County building at two-ten and walked back to the hotel. I have his arrival both from the man following him and from my people in the lobby, so that one is extra solid. He claims to have gone to his room to change and then to have gone down to the hotel weight room and worked out.”

  Sir Geoffrey cocked an eyebrow at me.

  I shrugged. “We’ll have to assume that if the cops didn’t brace him about it last night, he must have shown up on the tape at the appropriate times.”

  “What of Mr. Del Fuego himself?”

  “Mr. Del Fuego told the cops that he ran some errands and then went to his new place. He wasn’t altogether truthful.”

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  “He ran a couple of errands, all right, but not to the produce wholesaler and the linen supplier like he said.”

  “Where was he really?”

  “It’s all down there. He made three stops.”

  Miles perused the papers. “A scenic-tour company?”

  “That’s what it says. Look at the next one.”

  “Cold storage?”

  “A commercial meat locker. I know the place.”

  He cast me a knowing glance and shook his head.

  “Those two, he made before going to the restaurant.”

  “And afterward?”

  “Next on the list.”

  “Wagner’s Farm and Garden. What’s this?”

  “A feed store?”

  “A feed store and a commercial meat locker would seem to be mutually exclusive.”

  He was right. There’s something strange about feeding a dead cow.

  I shrugged. “My people say he went to the feed store last thing. Took a taxi all the way to North City and back to the hotel.”

  Sir Geoffrey sighed. “So then this Mr. Tolliver drove Mr. Del Fuego to his new establishment and, after leaving Mr. Del Fuego, drove the paramour Miss Atherton back to the hotel. Is that correct?”

  “Yes. They got here at about two twenty-five, bought a newspaper in the gift shop, found a movie listing, and went to the theater. Del Fuego arrived by taxi at six-forty.”

  He listened attentively as I told him about George’s elevator ride with Rickey Ray and Candace. After he went back to staring at the list, I anticipated his next question. “Reese left me a message at two-ten. I found him dead at about six-ten. They didn’t say, but I’m guessing he’d been dead for at least a couple of hours when I found him. So…we have to figure the window for killing Reese was somewhere between, say, two forty-five and five in the afternoon.”

  Miles allowed his glasses to slip to the end of his nose as he looked from the paper to me and back. “This is rubbish,” he finally complained. “If these times are correct, we can eliminate only Mr. Del Fuego from consideration as the murderer.”

  “That’s the way I see it. Give or take a half hour, every one of them except Jack was here sometime within the period when Reese was probably killed. Some of them, like the moviegoers, were around at the beginning of the period; others were around at the end. Like Dixie and Ms. Meyerson.”

  “Indeed,” he said again. He took off his glasses and folded his hands over his middle. “Then we are at an impasse,” he declared.

  “Not quite.”

  “You have a plan of action?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “And a few questions.”

  “Such as?”

  “First off, I’m still a bit unclear as to who was threatened enough by Mason Reese to want to kill him. In my experience, people either kill from passion—you know, heat-of-the-moment kinds of things—or they kill for profit or maybe even sometimes for revenge.”

  “Mr. Reese was in a position to be troublesome to both camps.”

  “Troublesome,” I repeated. “That’s right. That’s the perfect word for it. He could have made himself troublesome, but you know…troublesome is what we have lawyers for. We don’t usually shoot people over being troublesome.”

  “What else?”

  “Then there’s the question of exactly who it was that Mason Reese would have opened the door for.”

  “I’m not sure I follow.”

  “He made me stand in the hall,” I said. “I had every kind of ID known to man and he talked to me through a crack in the door. I want to know who it was he felt comfortable enough with to let in.”

  “Good point.”

  “Put yourself in his place, Sir Geoffrey. You’re in town to cut yourself a deal with either Meyerson or Del Fuego. You’re paranoid as hell. Somebody knocks on your door. Who do you let in?”

  He closed his eyes, pursed his lips, and thought it over.

  “A woman, perhaps?” Sir Geoffrey suggested. “Or a child.”

  “The only thing we have that remotely resembles a child is the Meyerson boy, and he’s the last person on the planet you’d let in your hotel room, believe me.”

  “Manifestly,” he agreed. “A lout.”

  I stood by the side of the bed in silence. I could hear Rowcliffe moving around in the outer room. Finally, I said,

  “I’m going out this af
ternoon and retrace some of their steps. Maybe if I can find out what they were really doing, all of this will begin to make a bit more sense.”

  He made that dismissive noise again. “I have my doubts.”

  With that, he slipped his glasses back over his nose, which he then stuck into his book. Still the Steven Jay Gould. I can take a hint.

  He stopped me halfway to the door, catching my gaze over the top of his glasses. “Mr. Waterman, I regret having run you so seriously afoul of the authorities. Your efforts to distance this sordid matter from the conference have been stellar. For the moment, the unwanted notoriety has been confined to the principals, for which I am grateful.” He took a deep breath. “I am, however, concerned that Mr. Del Fuego’s Friday night debacle will seriously detract from the quantity and quality of media attention given the conference.” He showed me a palm. “Who could have guessed that this matter would come to such a speedy and…final conclusion? Señor Alomar and I wish to assure you that we will continue to support you with the full weight of our respective organizations. You shall not be abandoned.”

  I thanked him, waved good-bye to Rowcliffe, who was busy brushing imaginary lint from a brown suit, and let myself out.

  Once again, my room had been completely renovated since I’d left this morning. I headed right for the shower, where I spent a full fifteen minutes separating myself from spider-webs and the smell of mutton.

  I couldn’t help myself. It was fate. As I laced up my Reeboks in the sitting room, the digital clock read 1:10. L-O-L-A time. I flipped on the tube and moved up to Channel 8. The cardboard cutout of Jack and Bunky had been moved to the rear of the set. Lola King sat on one stool, and a swarthy little fellow with a cue-ball head sat on the other. He wore black slacks and a red nylon jacket with some sort of insignia on the front. Lola, as usual, looked concerned. The camera had been moved to the side of the stage to include the audience in the wide-angle shot.

  “So what you’re saying, Mr. Tate, is that this particular bull has value above and beyond…” Lola struggled for a phrase.

  “This bull is a completely new standard for the breed. A quantum leap forward for the husbandry of the Angus. We at the American Angus registry were fully prepared to—”

  Click.

  I dialed nine and then Bruce Gill’s number at KOMO-TV. I’m not sure what his job title is, but he’s got the corner office on the top floor, and he shaves only once a week or so. We’d played together on the same thirty-five-and-older basketball team until his knees gave out. He was a gunner. You passed that sucker the ball, you never saw it again.

  “Gill.”

  “That’s not very customer-friendly.”

  “Customers don’t have this number. You still taking all the shots, or do you pass the ball once in a while?”

  “Oh, don’t start that shit with me, man. It was you…”

  It was like finding something I didn’t know was missing. As we bantered back and forth, I realized how long it had been since I’d indulged in this particular brand of male bonding and how much I missed having it in my life. I wondered how its disappearance had managed to escape my notice.

  “Hey, what’s going on with Lola King over at KING? How come she’s on every day this week? She making a comeback or something?”

  “Think. You just asked me why a corporation did something.”

  He had a point. “Okay, where’s the money coming from?”

  “The Meyerson Corp. They’ve got two mil a year in TV ads to use as candy. They get whatever they want. I hear they went to management and offered them the spots in return for the full-week special.”

  “Isn’t this animal rights stuff going to hurt her business too?”

  “The way I see it, she can afford it and Del Fuego can’t.”

  “Yeah” was all I could think to say.

  “You still play?” he asked.

  “Nah. The wheels came off a couple of years ago. The kids kept getting bigger and younger.”

  “Getting old’s a bitch,” he said.

  Couldn’t say I disagreed.

  In a way, it was comforting. When I’d ditched them this morning, they’d stayed a demure four or five cars back.

  If they’d done that again, I’d have been worried about whether or not they had my car wired. As it was, they were standing on the circular sidewalk, leaning back against the Taurus, when I came out the front door and handed the valet the ticket for the Fiat. No more Mr. Nice Guy. They didn’t give a hoot whether or not I knew they were following me. The bigger of the two wanted to make macho eye contact, so I made small talk with the valet captain and pretended not to notice them. This one was really gonna piss them off.

  I took the freeway to the Forty-fifth Street exit and stayed all the way to the left. The cops were two cars back, behind a Federal Express truck, when I stopped and waited for the light.

  I turned left on the green, crossed the freeway, and started up the hill toward Wallingford. The buildings used to be a service station and a mom-and-pop grocery, which eventually came to be owned by the same Greek family. If I remembered correctly, they’d started out with the store and then later bought the gas station, or maybe it was the other way around. They’d sold out about five years ago, and the buildings had been converted into a Mike’s hamburger stand and a Colortime carpet store.

  Back in the sixties, right after they bought the station, hoping to encourage their customers to avail themselves of both the gas station and the store, the Greeks had connected their two businesses with a short driveway. Considering the recent minimart–gas station frenzy, a savvy move indeed.

  What the Greeks had joined together, the new owners had not bothered to render asunder. Thus, when you got to be the third car from the front in Mike’s drive-up line, only a small concrete curb stood between you and turning right into the carpet store’s parking lot and then out onto Donald Avenue. Yep, they were gonna hate this one.

  Using my signal so as not to confuse the fellas, I turned into the suicide lane, waited for the traffic to thin, then darted across Forty-fifth into Mike’s. The Taurus stayed in the center lane to see what I was going to do.

  Like I figured, there was no way they were going to get in the drive-up line with me. Everybody knew the old “drive-in dodge.” All you had to do was get a citizen between you and them in the line, and they were as good as lost. No, these were pros. They weren’t going for that crap. As I wound around the back, they pulled into the parking lot and backed the car up against the west side of the building, perfectly positioned to go either way on Forty-fifth, once I made my exit.

  I was six cars from the drive-up window when I drew up to the speaker. I took the electronic gargling to be a request for my order and asked for a small Coke.

  “Is that all?”

  “That’s it.”

  “That will be one-o-six at the second window, please.”

  In front of me, a blue Toyota PTA van bounced on its springs as a herd of toddlers threw themselves around the interior. The red Citation, first in line, left the window. Five from the front. Then four, and then finally the black pickup, just before the Toyota, eased out into traffic, the van pulled forward, and I was on my way, cutting hard right, bumping up and over the curb, rolling down past the fantastic free-installation offer and out onto Donald Avenue.

  I drove all the way to Westlake in a cloud of adrenaline fumes. There’s something about getting away with something that still tickles my central nervous system. I checked numbers as I rolled up Westlake. Not even close. I drove another quarter mile and checked again. Here somewhere. I pulled to the right, onto the wide, connected parking area that runs nearly the length of the busy road.

  The sign said, PACIFIC SKYWAYS. Scenic tours of Seattle, Mount Rainier, and the San Juans. Charter service to B.C. Sounded pretty ambitious for a battered gray shack wedged between a yacht brokerage and dry-dock yard. I parked the Fiat and stepped out onto the gangway.

  Shards of driftwood bobbed along democrat
ically with a couple of pop cans and a torn Styrofoam cooler. To my right, a gaggle of houseboats sat cheek to jowl with one another, bobbing slightly in the breeze, emitting a low chorus of squeaks and groans. The north arch of the Aurora Bridge was visible at the far left, and beyond that, Fremont, Ballard, and the Sound.

  At the far end of the dock, two yellow-and-white De Havilland Beavers rocked front to back on their pontoons, like a brace of rambunctious puppies eager to slip the leash. The Beaver is to aircraft what no automobile manufacturer has ever managed on the ground, an unstoppable, unbreakable machine of such endurance and reliability as to have become the stuff of legend. As I approached, the big Pratt & Whitney power plants seemed to smile at me with rows of ribbed teeth.

  I was standing at the end of the dock looking in through the nearest pilot’s window when he spoke. “Help you with something?”

  He was about fifty, sandy hair gone to gray, and sporting a waxed handlebar mustache. On one breast it said, “Pacific Flying Service”; on the other, “Rick.” I walked over and stuck out my hand.

  “I’m Leo Waterman.”

  He took it. “Rick Bodette, Pacific Flying Service.”

  “I really love these old Beavers.”

  “Finest utility aircraft ever made,” he agreed. “I take it you’ve flown in them before.”

  I told him about how the old man always knew somebody who knew somebody who’d fly us up to Canada to go fishing a couple of times a year. Some place you could only fly into.

  “Looking to do a little flying?”

  “Wish I was. What I’m looking for is somebody around here who’s seen this guy lately.”

  I pulled the newspaper ad with Jack and Bunky from my back pocket and unfolded it. The newsprint flapped wildly in the stiff breeze until I captured both edges and stretched it out between my hands.

  “Know this guy?” I asked.

  “Which one?” he asked with a grin.

  “The one without the halter.”

  “Never seen him in my life.”

  “Sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “Maybe somebody else here…” I began.

  “Nobody here but me and Andy.”