Last Ditch (18 page)

By
the time I
pulled to the curb in front of twenty-nine seventy-four Fifteenth Avenue East,
I was feeling
pretty smug. My roof repair had allowed nary a drop into the car, which
was a
good thing, because the minute I'd flipped on the heater, an acrid fog
had
begun to rise from the sodden carpet, reducing visibility inside the
car to
something akin to midnight on the moors. I had to drive with the
windows down.

The
house sat
high above the street. Dark brick on the bottom, light blue stucco on
the top,
in kind of a neo-Tudor motif. Two sets of stairs up to the house. Six,
then
four. The wide porch was covered in blue Astroturf. The window to the
right of
the door displayed a yellow Neighborhood Watch insignia. I gave the
bell a pair
of assertive rings.

She
was about
three, with brown hair cut straight across the front and held on the
sides by a
pair of red plastic barrettes. She held her tiny hand up for me to see.
Her
small index finger was nearly covered by a Flintstones Band-Aid. Her
blue eyes
were still wet around the edges.

"Did
you
hurt your finger?" I asked.

She
nodded and
stuck the damaged digit in her mouth.

I
heard the
tapping of feet and a clone appeared at her elbow. A boy, this time.
Same age;
same face. Either twins or acid flashbacks.

"Is
this
your brother?" I asked her.

Another
nod.
Another finger in the mouth.

"Jason,"
he chirped. "Megan got a owee."

"She
showed me," I said.

The
door swung
all the way open. Gaylord LaFontaine was a wiry five-ten, about a
hundred sixty
pounds. He had a round, open face with big features set apart from one
another.
He'd grown his twelve remaining hairs long and wrapped them around his
dome a
couple of times in a last-ditch attempt to forestall the inevitable. He
was
drying his hands with a black-and-white dish towel.

"You'd
be
Waterman," he said.

"The
very
same," I assured him.

He
turned his
attention to the twins.

"What
have
I told you two about answering the door?"

The
pair began
to recite in two-part harmony. "Never open the door to strangers. Never
..."

When
they
finished, he said, "All right, you two. You go in the den and watch
cartoons for a bit while I'm talking to Mr. Waterman. Then we'll get
dressed
and go to the movie."

The
deadly duo
didn't require further prompting. In an instant, they went tearing
around the
corner together and were lost from sight.

“Cartooooooooooodooooooooooooooons.''

He
ran the dish
towel over his face and neck.

"It's
murder when the weather's like this and they can't go out," he said.
"Come on back to the kitchen. I've got a few things to do."

I
followed him
back to the kitchen. He talked as we walked.

"You
know,
I've been thinking about that day ever since you called. Haven't
thought about
it in years, but since you called, you know ... I can't get it off of
my
mind.''

He
steered me
into an oak chair at his kitchen table, poured us both a cup of coffee
and sat
down across from me.

He
looked out
over my head toward a blank spot on the wall, and took a sip of the
coffee.
"There's certain pictures . . . you know, images that are gonna be with
me
forever. Things I'm gonna see when I close my eyes, right up till they
put me
in the ground. That family there in the container ..." He took a deep
breath.

"Family?"

"Oh,
yeah.
They were all related. Four generations of the same family. Fourteen of
'em'.
Four kids." "What killed them?"

"The
heat," he said. "It was ninety-eight, a hundred all that week. The
docs figured it was probably a hundred and sixty inside the container.
They
never had a chance."

"And
the
yard was closed for the holiday," I added.

"A
full
four days. The Fourth was on a Thursday. Everybody had the whole
weekend
off." He shook his head. "Wasn't even anybody around to hear 'em
scream. Hell, they'd be lucky to last four hours in that kind of heat,
let
alone four days."

We
shared a
belated moment of silence before I asked, "And nobody ever went down
for
it?"

"Nah.
Down
on the docks, nobody ever goes down for nothing." His eyes narrowed.
"It's dumb kids doing the hard time. The kind of people bring people
over
here in containers, everybody knows who they are, but they don't do
time."

"What
do
you mean, 'everybody knows who they are'?"

"Just
what
I said. Wasn't any problem knowing what was going on. It had been going
on for
years and it's probably still going on now. Problem was proving it."

"How's
that?"

"Listen.
In those days, you got four companies using the Pier Eighteen yard. Two
American, one Japanese, one Chinese. I mean ... I don't know about you,
and I
don't want to sound like a bigot here, but I don't see Safeway, Costco
or
Panasonic branching out into the illegal Chinese immigration business."

"If
it was
that obvious—" I started.

"The
fix
was in. They had big-time juice. They had somebody downtown and
somebody in the
Port of Seattle both. Somebody high up who could
assign them to a commercial yard. Somebody who could fix it that a
couple of
containers here and there wouldn't be missed from time to time."

He
read my
expression. "Hey ... I'm telling ya. When I first come on, you know, I
was
green and eager, so I asked the port supervisor, went marching right
into his
office—and this guy was high up—I said . . . 'Hey, what's this little
piss-ant
company doing down here on the commercial end? How come it's not down
at Harbor Island
with the rest of the ham-and-eggers where we can keep better track of
it?'
'Cause you know, Customs doesn't pay a hell of a lot of attention to
the big
commercial yards. Between you, me and the wall, the bureau figures a
Panasonic
container contains whatever Panasonic says it contains. It's the
mom-and-pop
importers like Seven Rivers you got to watch like a hawk. Know what the
port
guy told me?"

"What?"

"He
said
if I was planning on making pension, I oughta just do my job and keep
my mouth
shut. Said if he was me, he'd just sort of forget about Seven Rivers
Trading
altogether. Said Seven Rivers was political."

"Political
how?"

He
shrugged.
"I always figured he could have meant it one of two ways. Either he was
saying the fix was in . . . You know . . . that somebody in government
was
throwing his weight around for a piece of the action."

"Or?"

"Or
. . .
you know . . . that the whole refugee thing was political. Had a lot of
people
in those days didn't see anything wrong with people trying to get out
of places
like Red China. Made those poor souls in that box out to be like
martyrs, and
whoever tried to bring 'em into the country into some sort of
humanitarians or
something."

"The
underground railway."

"You
got
it. Either way, somebody higher up decided it wasn't something for
little old
me to be messing around in. Soon as it was clear they were illegal, INS
took
over the investigation and boom, the bureau transferred me down to the
airport.
Two days' notice. No explanation. No nothing. Just down to the airport."

"You
said
before you figured it was still going on."

"Why
not?
Last time I looked, they were still down on Eighteen. Change the name
every
year or so, but it's still the same people. They've got an open door
into the
country. Why should they stop? I wouldn't."

"You
think
they're still bringing people into the country?"

He
thought it
over. "I think ... if you took two dozen INS agents and made a sweep
through the International District you'd need a fleet of school buses
to haul
off the illegals. It's the same in every major city in America." He
dropped his hands
to his sides. "They gotta come from somewhere."

You
couldn't
argue with that, so I didn't.

He
checked his
watch. "Gotta go," he said. "Movie's clear up in Lynnwood at the dollar
theater."

"Baby-sitting?"

He
looked
bemused. "You could say that."

I
thought he
was going to let it go, but I was wrong.

"They're
my grandkids," he announced suddenly and with a certain amount of
pride.
"I guess ya could say we're kinda stuck with each other."

Unless
I was
mistaken, we were approaching another of those conversational moments
when it
didn't matter what you said next, so I kept it simple. "Cute kids," I
said.

He
spoke as if
he were reciting a catechism.

"My
boy .
. . their father . . .he's out on McNeil
Island. Went down for
armed robbery . . . got four more years before he comes eligible."

"Sorry
to
hear that."

"He'd
be
takin' care of his kids, if he could." I tried to look like I knew that
to
be true. "What about the mother?"
 
-

He
gave a
short, dry laugh. "If it ain't got anything to do with a crack pipe, it
ain't got anything to do with Jolene." His eyes took on a new life.
"That's how it happened, you know. Davey was just tryin' to get money
to
feed her habit. Davey never had that monkey on his back. It was her. No
. . .
right now, at least until Davey comes eligible, I guess I'm about all
those
kids got."

"They're
lucky to have you."

"First
the
state wanted to send them to Jolene's trailer-trash family. Can't even
take
care of their own. Then they wanted to put 'em in foster homes, but I
mean,
what am I gonna do, send 'em off to strangers? I read about what goes
on in
those places. I couldn't let that happen. They're family."

"Lotta
kids don't have anybody like you," I said.

He
stuck his
hands in his pants pockets and leaned back against the kitchen counter.

"Not
exactly what I had in mind for my retirement. I'd sorta been thinkin'
about
cabin cruisers and grateful widows." We shared a small chuckle.

"Who
knows," I said. "Maybe you're lucky to have them, too."

His
eyes twinkled.
"Well, if nothin' else, they keep me runnin' all day. I'll probably
live
longer that way." He smiled. "Could be you're right."

He
crossed the
room and leaned into the front room. "Okay, you two, you get your
jackets
... the ones with the hoods, you get 'em from the hall closet and meet
me by
the front door."

They
shrieked
in unison and ran from the room.

''Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah.''

"The
Little Mermaid," he said. "We've seen it before."

He
and I ambled
across the room and out to the front door.

"Thanks
for your time, Mr. LaFontaine."

"My
pleasure. Don't get to talk to other adults much these days," he said.
"Hope whatever you're working on works out for you."

''Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah."

The
kids were
back, carrying matching red raincoats. I let myself out while Gaylord
LaFontaine helped them on with the coats.

Pier
Eighteen
Sits in the perpetual shadow of the West
Seattle Bridge,
nearly at the original mouth of the Duwamish
River. That was before
they rerouted its flow, tore Harbor
Island from its bottom,
and lined its banks with heavy industry. Way back then, it was actually
a
river. Nowadays, they call it a waterway. That's bureau-speak for
"river
they screwed up on purpose."

I
lined up
behind three container carriers waiting at the Pier Eighteen guard
gate. I had
my LEO WATERMAN, SENIOR INSURANCE ESTIMATOR, PRUDENTIAL INSURANCE
COMPANY
business card out and my rap ready. Something about the picture of that
blue
rock on the card. Never fails.

Didn't
fail
this time, either, because the guard just waved me through when the big
eighteen-wheeler in front of me went roaring off across the yard. I
guess they
figured that if whatever you were driving wasn't big enough to load a
container
into or onto, you couldn't be much of a threat. A white sign stood in a
small
traffic island just inside the gate. Costco and Eagle Hardware to the
right,
Safeway straight ahead. Triad Trading and Western Cold Storage to the
left.
Ahead and to the right, huge concrete buildings lined the edge of the
waterway,
each bearing a famous logo. To the left, nothing was in sight. It was
like
LaFontaine said. Didn't take a rocket scientist.

 
The yard was crammed with orange containers
with the word HANJIN painted on their sides in bold white letters.
Stacked four
high, they ran row upon row, seemingly to the horizon, forming a
corrugated
canyon whose ribbed walls nearly erased the sky above the car. I kept
it in
first gear and drove slowly down the long central aisle for the better
part of
a half mile before I came to a perpendicular artery, where I turned
left,
toward the water. I figured I'd keep going until I got to the water and
then
reconnoiter. No need.