Last Ditch (27 page)

"Actually,"
I amended. "It was two specific dates. May eighteenth and June first,
nineteen sixty-nine." He pursed his Lips and leaned back in the chair.
"Why did you say you were researching this?" "I didn't."

He
mulled it
over. "This have anything to do with your father?"

"I
didn't
say that." "You didn't have to."

"Why
would
it have anything to do with him?"

He
gave me a
shy smile. "Well . . . you're too young and Wild Bill Waterman and old
Peerless Price have been looking back at me from the front page every
morning
for a week." He leaned across the table at me. "Besides that, your
father being involved would explain a lot of things."

The
weight
which had a scant moment ago been lifted, now settled heavily back upon
my
shoulders. "Why's that?"

"You
happen to know what night of the week May eighteenth, nineteen
sixty-nine
was?" "A Friday."

He
nodded.
"You notice I didn't ask you about June one.

When
I didn't
say anything he asked, "You know why that is?"

"I'm
betting you already know."

"June
one
was the last night the club was ever open."

I
tried to
sound calm. "Really."

"That
was
the night of the raid, man. The famous disappearing raid." He eyed me
closely. "You do know what I'm talking about here, don't you??'

"Remind
me," I wheedled.

He
pointed a
huge finger at my chest. "No way," he said. "I was born on a
weekend, Waterman, but it wasn't last weekend." I tried to look shocked
and offended, but he wasn't going for it. "You know damn well what I'm
talking about here. If we can't manage an open exchange of information,
maybe
you ought to get up the road."

Much
as it
pained me, I allowed how I did know what he was talking about.

"Tell
me
what you know for sure."

I
told him the
story about my old man taking the car on those specific nights. "That's
all I know," I said when I finished.

"If
it was
anybody but your father, I'd say it was damn little." "Why's
that?"

"Because,
man, what this whole mystery has always been lacking was anybody with
enough
clout to quash the arrest and subsequent booking of nearly a hundred
and fifty
people. Especially when it was orchestrated by a public figure like
Peerless
Price. That took real balls. There couldn't have been more than four or
five
men in the state who had the clout to pull that off."

He
was kind
enough not to add that my old man was definitely one of them, but I'm a
quick
lad and figured it out.

"That's
all I know," I said.

"That's
about all anybody knows. I spent a month trying to dig up something on
it and
came up dry."

"What
did
the cops say?" I asked. "You mean to tell me departmental heads
didn't roll over that one? I thought you told me police corruption was
a thing
of the past by then."

"For
the
most part, it was. The cops were clean. Before they ever even got the
whole lot
of them booked, an Order of Provision was issued and delivered to the
precinct."

"What's
that?"

"An
order
from a district court judge for all documents to be sealed and sent to
his
office. It's used sometimes in cases where the veracity of an accuser
is in
question, so that a person won't be tainted by the mere fact of an
accusation.
A judge reviews the material before it has a chance to become public.
The cops
just did what they were ordered to do. They packed up every bit of
paperwork
and sent it off to the judge."

"And?"

"The
judge
never got it. Or at least, that's what he says."

He
was smiling.
I didn't like it one bit. The hair on the back of my neck was standing
on end,
but I asked the question anyway.

"What
judge was that?"

The
grin got
bigger. "Your old buddy Douglas Brennan."

Bermuda
was
exactly where I left him on Monday, sitting in that white leather chair
by the
window with the pictures of his past framed on the wall behind him and
his
glasses and canes close at hand. When I poked my head in the door, he
reached
over and slipped on his glasses.

He
got me into
focus and said, "I taught you to swim, kid. What, you forgot how?"

"You
left
out the part about being strapped in the car."

"That
was
in a later lesson."

When
I was
eight or nine, Bermuda would take me to the Y
on cold winter afternoons. When we first started going, I couldn't swim
yet. As
a matter of fact, I was scared to death of the water. My parents had
paid for
two years of private lessons. The experience had only multiplied my
fear,
leaving me clinging to the wall at the shallow end while the other kids
my age
were rough-housing in the deep water. It drove my old man crazy. He
used to
leave the pool area at the country club so he wouldn't have to be party
to my
terror.

Bermuda
had a better idea. After the country club debacle, he started taking me
to the
Y. I remember how surprised I was that he could swim. He explained that
although his back and legs weren't up to the demands of gravity, the
buoyancy
of water allowed him an ease of movement which he never experienced on
dry
land. His motion was odd; he kicked with both legs at the same time and
sort of
doggie paddled with his hands, but he could swim forever, slowly,
doggedly,
moving back and forth along the wall of the pool, seemingly oblivious
to
everything going on around him.

He
never
pressed me about swimming either. Never said a word. He just left me
alone to
play with the other children. He knew that's all it would take, because
he knew
me.

I
can still
remember the day I began to swim. I remember because, for me, in order
to swim,
I had to be willing to die. I remember standing on the diving board,
holding my
nose, telling myself that a watery grave was better than spending the
rest of
my life on the concrete, listening to that fat Rocco De Grazia
busting-my
chops. I remember jumping off the end and thinking that my death would,
once
and for all, teach my parents a lesson, and being vaguely disappointed
when I
found myself alive and clinging to the pool ladder.

Bermuda
gestured toward the ladder-backed chair across from him. I crossed the
room and
took a seat

"To
what
do I owe the honor of a repeat visit?" he asked.

"Confusion."

"Confusion
is a high state, kid," he said. "Being confused means you're open and
ready for an answer. Beats the heck out of being sure. People who are
sure
don't learn a damn thing. They already got the answers."

"I
spent
some time with Judy Chen this morning."

The
rest of his
face never moved; he just wrinkled his brow.

"Who?"

"Judy
Chen. A short little Chinese lady. Owns most of the International
District
these days. The one who was sleeping with my father for about thirty
years.
That one."

"Oh,
that
Judy Chen," he said. "Yeah."

He
looked older
than when I'd seen him the other day. In the deep shadows of the
receding
light, he appeared to be loose and disconnected, almost at large within
his own
skin.

"Don't
be
pokin' in there, Leo. It's none of your business. Even dead, a man's
got a
right to a private life."

"I
thought
my mother and I were his private life."

He
lifted his
gnarled hands from the chair.

"You
live
and learn."

"Maybe
we
were just his public life."

He
let the
hands fall with a slap.

"Or
maybe
you were both," he offered.

"Is
that
supposed to make me feel better?" I asked.

"I'm
just
trying to tell you who you are. That is what you came for, isn't it?"

I
shifted
gears.

"You
ever
hear of a club called the Garden of Eden?" "Fag joint down on
Western. Under the hotel. Why?" "You ever hear about the raid on that
place?" "Old
  
Peerless'
  
raid?
  
The
  
one
  
that
 
they
  
say disappeared?" I
nodded.

His
eyes lacked
their usual bemused animation. "Everybody heard about that," he said.

"You
think
my father could have engineered that?"

"Could
have?"

"Yeah."

"Sure
he
could have. Nobody had more juice than your dad. He could arrange for Mt. McKinley
to disappear."

"Did
he
make that raid disappear?"

He
hesitated,
stuck out his lower lip and grimaced as he spoke, "Why would he do
that? I
mean . . . what was in it for him?"

He
pushed his
glasses back up his nose and looked me over.

"You're
not thinkin' ..." he began. "No, of course not."

"Good,
'cause not only was Bill straight as the day is long, but he didn't
waste his
time on things unless there was an angle. You got any idea how much
juice it
would take to pull that off?"

When
I reckoned
how I wasn't sure, he went on.

"Just
for
starters, you'd have to own a district judge and a precinct captain.
That's no
small shit, kid. And they'd have to owe you big favors. Big enough to
call in
markers of their own. All the way down the line. You gotta ask yourself
why
would your dad call in that many markers over a raid on a fag bar.
Don't make
any sense." He waffled a hand in the air. "To save his own ass . . .
sure." He gave me a look I didn't like at all. "Or maybe your ass . .
. somethin' that would reflect on him like that, somethin' some yahoo
like
Peerless Price could use, but . . . short of that ... it don't make
sense."

He
stopped
talking and looked at me like I'd made a mess on the carpet. I made
like I
didn't notice, and pressed on.

"You
remember back in sixty-nine, that whole family of Chinese they found
dead in
that container down on Pier Eighteen?"

"Yeah,
I
remember. Why?"

"Because
I
met a guy used to work down on the docks tells me it was pretty much
common
knowledge that Judy Chen's import company was the one smuggling aliens.
And
guess what? I gave Judy Chen a chance to deny it and she didn't."

Now
even his
brow was smooth. His face was as featureless and bland as a cabbage.

"Wadda
you
want to go there for, kid?"

"I'm
just
along for the ride."

He
craned his
neck toward the wall behind him.

"You
see
the picture of me up there with the big fish?"

I
scanned the
wall and found it. The back of a boat. Bermuda
sitting in a deck chair with three other guys standing around him. The
one on
the right was former city councilman Richard Barre, rhymes with Larry.
The
other two I didn't recognize. Bermuda held in
his hands what appeared to be about a thirty-five-pound king salmon.
Both he and
the salmon were showing their teeth. The other three guys looked like
they'd
rather be having a prostate exam.

"Yeah,
I
see it," I said.

"I
let
myself get talked into that. Barre owed your dad a favor. Insisted on
going
fishing. Your old man talked me into going in his place. Worst day of
my life.
You know what you've got to do to catch a fish like that?"

I
had a good
idea where this was leading, but I decided to be polite.

"What?"

"Well.
. .
let's say you want to go fishing on Saturday. Then Friday afternoon
you've got
to pack up and drive down to Westport.
What's that—two, three hours?"

"Two
and a
half."

"So
you
get there and you get a crappo motel and you take all your shit outta
the car
and then go out to dinner and get shitfaced. You know how it goes,
right?"

"I
know."

"Then
. .
. five friggin' o'clock the next A.M., you've got to drag your ass out
of bed,
hungover as a son of a bitch, get dressed and go out on this boat with
about
thirty other assholes whose breath is even worse than yours. Then, as
if
everybody wasn't already about to puke, you all get a ride over to the
Westport
Bar, one of the ugliest mother-humpin' pieces of water on the west
coast. You
spend six hours bobbing around out there. They feed you the sandwiches
the last
group didn't eat and all the flat beer you can swallow and then take
you back
in over that same humpin' bar and dump you on the dock, where, for a
mere
thirty bucks, some other asshole takes your picture."