Last Ditch (13 page)

That's
why the
words that escaped my lips so startled me.

"Not
a
bit," I said.

Claire
Wells
smiled. "So . . . it's not just me," she began. "I was afraid
that maybe I wasn't ready for something like this. That maybe it was
just too
soon for me." She took another sip. "But it's not that, is it? We
don't agree on anything, do we?"

I
figured in
for a penny, in for a pound, so I spoke up.

"Near
as I
can tell, you and I couldn't agree on so much as the weather or the
time of
day."

She
drew a hand
to her throat, closed her eyes and took several deep breaths.

"I
feel so
much better."

"Me
too," I offered. "Can we go home now?"

"You
mean
like separately?"

I
gave the
Scout's honor sign.

"Absolutely."

"In
a
minute." She forked in half the salad and then washed it down with a
healthy slurp of wine. When she finished swallowing, she said, "You
know
... if you're going to make a go at this dating thing, Leo, you're
going to
have to get rid of those bleeding-heart, man-of-the-people politics of
yours.
There's no future in that. Women hear that stuff, they start picturing
life in
a mobile home."

A
strong man,
an assertive man, a man in complete charge of his faculties would have
smiled
knowingly and said nothing. At least that's what I figure. If I ever
meet one,
I'll ask him.

"Oh,
yeah?
Well, what about your elitist, spoiled-little-rich-girl,
fresh-out-of-journalism-school politics? Nobody with a brain bigger
than a lima
bean or a heart bigger than a gnat will listen to that 'them and us'
crap for a
minute."

She
chewed and
swallowed the last of the salad and then began to wave her fork in my
general
direction.

"And
that
corny, cynical private-eye stuff."

"Ohhhhh
so
insensitive ..." I scoffed. "... and thus doubly offensive to an
assertive, fork-waving woman such as yourself."

She
grinned
madly and nodded.

"Exactly."

We
both burst
out laughing. She had a piece of lettuce on her front tooth. I raised
my glass.
"To us," I toasted. We downed our wine. We hadn't yet ordered
entrees, so I threw forty bucks on the table, rescued her coat from the
coatroom and drove her directly home. No kisses. No hugs. Just enough
of a
smile to assure the lettuce was still locked in place and an awkward
handshake.
An odd night to be sure, but, if nothing else, it .cured me of blind
dates,
once and for all.

Interestingly
enough, over the next ten years, fate and those same mutual friends
kept
throwing Claire Wells and me back together. We kept running into one
another at
Christmas parties, political fund-raisers and summer birthday bashes.
She was
working her way up the corporate ladder with the Post-Intelligencer.
For a
while, she'd tried her hand at news writing, but had eventually decided
she was
more interested in telling people what to do, so she went into
financial administration.
I was scratching out a living serving legal papers. Dashin' for cash,
we used
to call it. Maybe it was because neither of us was having much luck
with our
dating lives, but, after that, whenever we found ourselves in the same
room,
we'd invariably gravitate toward some empty corner where we'd gossip
about our
partners of old and our companions du jour, and eventually we'd get
around to
reliving that strange night long ago, and then we'd again attempt to
unravel
the knot of how that aborted evening had, in some peculiar way,
cemented a
lasting bond between us.

That's
how I
knew that if I showed up on Monday morning, down at the security desk
at the
Post-Intelligencer, she'd come down and rescue me. Friends don't leave
friends
at the security desk. I told the guard my name was Randy Metzger and
asked him
to inform Claire Wells that I was in the lobby.

I
was hiding in
a copy of Outdoor Life, learning to hunt mule deer from a tree stand,
when I
heard her heels on the floor. There was no mistaking the sound. Claire
Wells
was the fastest walker in the world. Even handicapped by a pair of
four-inch
heels and a tight red skirt, she'd leave all those wiggly-ass
Olympic-style
walkers in the dust

She
clicked to
a halt about a foot from my shins. She was a slender woman of about
forty,
five-eight or so, wearing a black silk blouse and shoes to match the
skirt. Her
thick brown hair was shorter and not quite the shade I remembered, but
she had
those same gray eyes. She tapped the toe of one red shoe and then
spoke, barely
moving her lips.

"The
name
thing. Was that supposed to be funny?" "I couldn't very well give him
my own name, could I?" She paced around in a small circle, her hands on
her hips.

"Make
my
day, Leo. Tell me you're here to give the paper an exclusive on this
Peerless
Price thing."

I
shrugged.
"You wouldn't want me to start lying to you now, would you, Claire? Not
after all these years."

She
raised her
voice. "The hat and the glasses are supposed to make you invisible, is
that it?"

"Shhh.
I'm
undercover."

She
smirked.
"What makes you think I'm going to let you stay that way? Huh? You can
run
out of here with your coat over your head and we'll still be miles
ahead of the
competition."

"You
wouldn't do that"

"Why
not?
You're the hottest story in town. Right now, you're the only story in
town."

"
'Cause,
first off, you're not that kind of girl."

She
opened her
mouth, but I cut her off.

"Besides
which, you're a bean counter, not a newshound."

"So
what?
Regardless of my function, I work for a newspaper. What do you suppose
my
bosses would think if they knew you were here, and I didn't tell
anyone?"

I
ignored the
question, instead taking the offensive.

"Besides
that, you owe me."

"For
what?" she demanded.

I
tried to look
hurt. "How quickly they forget." She wasn't giving an inch.
"Howsabout the aforementioned Randy Metzger?"

She
winced.
"I can't believe you'd stoop so low."

"If
I
recall correctly, my dear Claire, it was you who was about to do the
stooping."

About
five
years ago, Claire had gotten engaged to a guy named Randy Metzger.
Good-looking
blond guy about her age from Mukiteo. Some sort of high-priced software
engineer for Boeing. At least that's what he claimed. I ran into the
happy
couple coming out of the Metropolitan Grill one Friday night, and, even
though
we spent no more than five minutes trading banalities on the sidewalk,
something about the guy bothered me. In my business, I get lied to a
lot. Lies
have a certain rhythm of their own, as if in some odd way they slip out
from
between the lips more easily than the truth. Two minutes into the
conversation,
Randy Metzger had my bullshit meter reading maximum, but, at a time
like that,
what was I going to say? "Nice to see you again, Claire. Boy, is this
guy
you're going to marry next month full of shit." Naaah. I don't think so.

A
couple of
weeks later, I was up at Boeing's manufacturing facility in Everett
trying to run down a former avionics
engineer who'd skipped on a thirty-thousand-dollar bond. After I came
up empty
on the bail jumper, something clicked somewhere in my mind, and I asked
my
source to run the name Randy Metzger through her computer. Came up—not
currently employed by the Boeing Company. Do not rehire. Not only that,
but, a
couple of years prior, when he had briefly been employed, it was in the
capacity of an apprentice airframe mechanic, not a code writer. Not
only that,
but gosh and b'golly, my inquiry on Randy Metzger was not the first.
No, Mr.
Metzger was also currently being sought by authorities in Sand-point, Idaho,
where he still had a wife whom he had severely battered and three
children whom
he was accused of having sexually molested.

I'd
mulled the
news over for a couple of days and then called Claire. Like I figured,
her
first instinct was to shoot the messenger. She went postal on me,
calling me a
no-good busybody motherfucker, saying I was jealous of her happiness
and all
that. As I recall, she also questioned the fiber of my morality, the
validity
of my parentage and the quality of my tumescence before finally hanging
up in my
ear.

A
couple of
weeks later, she'd called me and come as close to saying thanks as she
was
able. She'd made a few calls, found out I was right and then turned
Randy in to
the Washington State Police, who'd promptly extradited his butt back to
Idaho. Funny though,
when she got through telling me of the lame excuses she'd been forced
to make
to her family and how embarrassed she was about the whole thing, she'd
hung up
in my ear all over again. Dude.

She
swiveled
her neck, taking in the lobby, and then flipped the magazine over. "Oh
. .
. nice . . . Outdoor Life. Goes with the disguise."

"I
need
your help."

She
put her
hands on her hips. "Oh, stop it. I hate it when you give me that
puppy-dog
look. It may have worked on your mother, but it doesn't work on me."

"It
didn't
work on her either," I confessed.

Again,
she
peered furtively around the crowded lobby. "I can't take you to my
office
without a badge, and I can't get you a badge without ID," she muttered.

I
shrugged.

"Come
over
here," she said, motioning to the hall which led to the public
restrooms.
"Before somebody sees you."

I
jogged along
behind as she clicked across the lobby and down the uncarpeted hall.
She led me
down to the end, past the restroom doors, to a small bench with a black
plastic
cushion. I sat.

"What
do
you want?"

"Peerless
Price ..." I began.

"The
cops
took it all this morning. They had a court order for all of it." "All
what?"

"Said
the
case had been officially reopened. Backed a truck right up to the
shipping dock
and loaded the stuff in. Boom. They're gone."

"What
stuff?"

"The
whole
Peerless Price archive. The whole kit." "What archive?"

"We
kept
all his stuff together down in the basement, instead of putting it on
microfilm. That way, every time somebody wanted a copy, we didn't have
to go
looking for it."

I
must have
looked baffled.

"We
get
asked for Peerless Price material all the time, Leo. Almost daily.
Counting for
labor and materials, we spent nine thousand dollars last year sending
out
Peerless Price information to other news agencies. Nine thousand
dollars. He's
the Jimmy Hoffa of the Northwest Heck, we've even got a standard press
kit we
send out as bulk mail."

A
short East
Indian woman came down the hall toward us, the rubber soles of her
shoes
squeaking with every step. She wore a shiny silver blouse outside a
pair of
black stretch pants.

Claire
looked
back over her shoulder. "Hello, Bharti," she said.

The
woman's
black eyes moved back and forth between us.

"Hi,
Claire. How are you doing?" "Fine."

She
straight-armed the door to the women's room and disappeared inside. The
door
eased shut.

"Does
it
have his last columns?" I asked.

"The
last
month or so. It's got a bio and family background. You know, all the
standard
crap."

"Can
I
have one?"

She
was
skeptical. "That's it?"

"No.
I
need something else." I hesitated. "And I need it to be just between
us."

"You
mean
like ..."

I
didn't let
her finish.

"Kind
of
like Randy Metzger. That kind of just between us."

Suddenly
the
air between us grew thicker.

"Are
you
threatening me, Leo? Are you suggesting ..."

I
wasn't sure
whether she meant it or whether she was pulling an end run on me, so I
interrupted.

"No,"
I said quickly. "You misunderstood me, Claire. What's between us is
between us and always will be. Anything else would be a breach of
trust. I'm
just calling in my marker is all."

Her
eyes
searched my face and came up empty.

"It's
a
guy thing,'' I added. "Accountability."

The
door to the
women's room hissed open. The roaring of a hand dryer arrived in the
corridor
before Bharti, who stepped out, gave each of us a quizzical smile and
then
squeaked her way back up the hall. Claire waited until the woman was
out of
sight.