Last Ditch (14 page)

"I'm
sorry. I don't know what made me say that. That was a rotten thing to
say."

"Yeah.
It
was."

"I
haven't
heard that name in a long time. When the guard called ..." She stopped
herself. "What do you need?"

I
pulled a
yellow piece of paper from the pocket of my jacket and handed it to
her.
"I need you to check with circulation. I need an address for this
guy."

"Edward
Albert Schwartz," she read. "Who's he?"

I
shook my
head.

"What
makes you think this guy reads the paper?" "If he's still alive and
living around here, he gets the paper."

Claire
folded
the yellow paper twice and slipped it between her fingers. She heaved a
sigh.
"Where are you parked?" "In front. Out on Elliott."

"You
still
drive that, little green . . ." She searched for a word. "Yeah."

"I'll
meet
you out there," she said.

When
she'd
clicked off, I ambled back through the lobby and out into the parking
lot. I
didn't need a weatherman. It was as dark as dusk. To the east, steel
clouds cut
off the tops of the hills on the far side of Western Avenue. To the west, out
over the
water, a blanket of gray had swallowed the mountains whole. The front
of the
storm was over Bainbridge Island and running hard
this way, its diaphanous curtains of rain sweeping and weaving before
it like
ghostly dancers.

Ten
minutes
later, the storm had rolled halfway across the sound and was bearing
down on
the city like a locomotive. Claire Wells came clicking out the side
door and
across the street at about fifteen miles an hour. In her left hand, she
held a
spiral-bound booklet with a clear plastic cover. When she got close, I
reached
for the booklet, but she quickly pulled it back.

"Did
you
really pull Stone Sanders's wig off?"

"What
kind
of name is that anyway? Stone."

"What's
wrong with Stone? We had a Rock."

"Hell,
we
had a Pebbles and a Bamm Bamm. But Stone? Jesus."

"And
Cliff," she added. "Don't forget Cliff."

I
reckoned how
I should have known better than to start with her.

She
kept the
papers out of reach. "Did you?"

I
nodded.
"I left it with the security guard over at KTZZ before I came over here
this morning."

She
smirked and
handed me the booklet. "I wrote Mr. Schwartz's address on the first
page," she said. "Weekdays, he gets three papers. Two on Sunday. You
were right."

"Thanks,"
I said.

The
damp breeze
shimmied through her black blouse. She hugged herself and looked out
over the
sound, where the surface of the black water roiled like braided
serpents. She
brushed her hair from her face. "What do you want out of this, Leo?"

I
thought it
over. "I think I'm pretty much trying not to think about that," I
said finally.

"Not
knowing what you want is very dangerous."

I
allowed how I
was aware of that fact."

"I
hope
you're not looking to prove your father's innocence or something really
stupid
like that."

"Funny,
I
kinda figured he was innocent. I had this weird idea that was how the
system
worked."

She
gave me the
fish-eye. "You don't really believe that, do you?"

When
I didn't
answer, she turned her face to the wind. A volley of huge raindrops
spattered
about us, slapping down onto hoods and windshields. She held out her
hand as if
to catch one.

"Back
then, when we used to run into each other a lot, you know . . . those
were the
unhappiest days of my life."

"Gee,
thanks."

She
laughed.
"That disaster with Randy. I mean . . . that was the last straw.
Something
about that whole mess . . . something finally told me I was trying way
too hard.
Gave me my first real look at what a desperate creature I was." She
massaged the back of her neck. "There didn't seem to be anything to do
but
back up and get straight with myself."

As
I waited,
the rain stopped splattering and the wind suddenly died. Like I
figured, she
wasn't through.

"I
was
unhappy because I didn't know what I wanted. I thought I wanted ..."
She
used her fingers to etch quotation marks in the air. "... a
relationship,
you know . . . like everybody else wanted, and it used to drive me
crazy
thinking that there was something wrong with me. Like I was the most
relationship-challenged person on the planet. It was like, no matter
how good
things started out, after I slept with a guy about five times, I was
always
looking at my watch, wishing he'd go home."

"So
what
did you do?"

"I
finally
figured out that a . . ." Quotation marks again. "... relationship
was what my mother wanted and what my aunts wanted and my sisters. I'd
just
sort of inherited the idea. What / actually wanted was a whole lot
easier to
find than a relationship." She bapped herself in the side of the head
with
her fingertips. "Turns out I just like to get laid on a regular
basis*"

She
read the
expression on my face.

"So
shoot
me. I mean, it's not like I'm an uncaring person or anything. I like
me. You
like me. Lots of people like me. I'm just not emotionally equipped to
actually
live with anybody."

"So?"

"So,
now
I'm happy as a clam, Leo. I keep a steady stream of hard-bodied
twenty-somethings running in and out of my life." She dug me in the
ribs
and winked. "If you'll permit me the unmixed metaphor. No bullshit, no
promises, no overnighters, just a healthy little poke in the whiskers
and hit
the road, Jack."

Something
deep
within me, something middle-aged, was offended. I could tell, because I
said
something incredibly stupid.

"I'll
bet
they're dazzling conversationalists."

She
chuckled
and bopped me on the shoulder. "We don't talk much, Leo. We just get
naked
and do all night long what it takes guys your age all night long to do.
Now get
the hell out of here before I change my mind and sic the newsdogs on
you."

I
headed up
Elliot, got lucky at the light on the comer of Western Avenue and
turned left,
rolling north past a ramshackle collection of old lumberyards, plumbing
wholesalers and machine shops that littered the length of the narrow
valley
between Queen Anne Hill and the Magnolia Bluffs.

My
luck held as
I drove toward Ballard. I made the lights all the way past the Magnolia Bridge,
getting nearly to Fisherman's
Terminal before the sky unloaded. Within a minute, the little split in
the
convertible top that I'd been promising myself I'd fix was channeling a
steady
trickle of water into the hollow of the passenger seat. A sudden gust
of wind
moved the car a half a lane to the right. Quickly, I checked the
mirror.
Couldn't see a thing. Gritting my teeth, I eased the Fiat all the way
into the
right lane and slowed to thirty.

I
was leaning
forward out over the steering wheel, peering through the intermittent
little
fans scraped clear by the wipers. Outside, trees thrashed about in the
gale,
and the air was filled with debris and the last leaves of fall, torn
loose now
and riding on the back of the fifty-mile-an-hour breeze. I kept both
hands on
the wheel.

The
little car
buzzed and wobbled on the metal grating as I crossed the Ballard Bridge.
On either side of the roadway, a tangled maze of boat rigging and
antennas
trembled gray and gaunt like a drowned forest. I used my sleeve to
clear the
windshield, put on my signal, said a silent prayer and moved one lane
to the
left.

The
traffic
fight at the comer of Western and Northwest Market swung in the wind
like a
lantern as the rain fell in volleys, line after silver line blowing in
from the
west. All around me, the rush of traffic created a moving shroud of
mist which
slid along above the sodden street, reducing visibility to dim
taillights in a
half-erased pencil drawing.

Northwest Fifty-eighth
Street
was a middle-class
neighborhood. Small
postwar homes, one and two bedrooms, no two quite alike, their
well-tended
lawns and hand-painted mailboxes separated only by narrow concrete
driveways. I
rolled down the window. The driving rain splattered my face as I eased
up the
narrow street, looking for numbers. Even numbers on the left. Odd on
the right.
It was the kind of neighborhood where nuclear families used to five,
before Seattle became Uncle
Bill's land of latte.

Thirty
sixty-four was halfway up the block, a neat little one-story house,
freshly
painted white with forest-green trim and shutters. To the right of the
front
door, a seasonal arrangement of colorful gourds and Indian com was
being
guarded by a brown ceramic squirrel, while all along the front of the
house, a
hardy bed of red and white impatiens defiantly shook the last of its
colorful
blossoms in the face of the storm.

I
slid the Fiat
to the curb and turned the engine off. I sat for a moment counting my
breath as
it fogged the windshield, listening to the pounding of the rain and
hoping for
a break in the weather. Yeah. Sure. Sometime late next May. I took a
deep
breath, shouldered the door open and went sloshing across the street
and up
onto the porch.

I
pulled open
the green screen door and knocked on the solid white one underneath. It
wasn't
latched and opened a crack as I struck it

"That
you,
Amy?" a voice called.

"No,"
I said.

A
gust of wind
blew the white door all the way inward and I could see him sitting in a
leather
rocker over on the far side of the living room, over by the picture
window on
the west wall. His aluminium canes hung from the windowsill, next to
his
glasses. The white walls of the comer were covered with an array of
framed
photographs. Even from where I stood, I could pick out my father in
most of
them. I closed both doors behind me and stepped into the room.

The
years had
sunken Bermuda's thick chest pushing whatever
remained down beneath his wide black belt leaving his upper torso
nearly
childlike. It looked as if, with no effort at all, he could rest his
chin on
his silver belt buckle. His hair was white and disheveled, kind of that
Einstein at Princeton look. He wore a blue
cardigan sweater over a loud flannel shirt His left hand groped about
the
windowsill, searching for his glasses. He found them and brought them
to his
face. Larry King glasses, huge and black, with lenses so thick that
from my
side, they reduced his pupils to pinpricks.

"I
thought
you were Amy," he said.

"Whoever
Amy is, Bermuda, I hope for your sake she's a
lot better-looking woman than I am."

"Does
things around here for me ..." he started.

He
pushed his
glasses up on his nose, blinked several times and then broke into a
huge grin.

"I'll
be
goddamned. Look at you, kid," he exclaimed. "Damn shame you got so
old. How'd that happen?"

I
stood on the
rose-colored carpet and looked myself up and down.

"I
don't
know what happened, Bermuda. Last thing I
recall, 1' was twenty and gonna set the world on fire. Remember?"

"Oh,
I
remember." He tapped his temple. "Nothing wrong up here, kid. I
remember real good. Legs don't work anymore, but the rest of me is
working just
fine."

"Glad
to
hear it," I said.

I
checked out
the room. In the main section, a brown leather sofa and matching chair
surrounded a glass-topped coffee table. Several color-coordinated
floral prints
adorned the walls. A fireplace dominated the east end, its green tile
front
reflecting the blue gas flames out onto the floor. From where I stood,
the area
seemed foreign and unused, as if a decorator had stolen in at night,
leaving Bermuda only the comer by the window to call his own.

By
the time I
looked back, he was staring out the window.

"Where
did
it go, kid? Where did it all get to?" "I'll tell you, Bermuda, I had
any idea where it went, I'd go there and
bring it back for the both of us." A rueful smile bent his lips. "Would
that we could, kid."

"Somebody
once said that life is what happens while you're busy making other
plans."

"John
Lennon," he said quickly. "John Lennon said that"

His
head
swiveled my way and his eyes narrowed. "I knew somebody'd find me,"
he said. "Soon as I saw the papers. Figured some bright young media
type
would do his homework and find his way to my door. Didn't imagine it
would be
you though."

I
crossed the
room and sat down in the ladder-backed chair which had been pushed over
next to
his rocker.