Last Ditch (28 page)

"I've
been
there," I said.

"Then
you
know what I'm talking about."

"What?"

"That's
the question, kid. For what? All that friggin' trouble just to catch
some fish
who's minding his own business down there on the bottom of the ocean."
He
spread his hands. "It's not worth that much trouble and aggravation
just
to catch one little bitty fish. That's a ride I don't go on no more.
You hear
what I'm saying?"

"I
told
you. I'm not driving. I'm just going where the bus takes me," I said.

"Well,
maybe you ought to get off. 'Cause when you start sticking your nose
into
things you don't understand, I personally have to wonder about your
motives,
kid. It's beginning to sound like you're one of those sad cases who has
to
denigrate his father. One of those Oedipal types who secretly yearns
for his
mama's bed."

He
read the
color of my face and the tightness of my hands.

"What?
You
gonna hit me?" He stuck out his chin. "I been hit before. Go on. Hit
me with your best shot, kid."

"Stop
it," I said. "I just want to . . ."

He
cut me off.
"You just want to tear your old man down so's you can feel better about
being Wild Bill Junior."

"I
just
want to find out who did what to who ..."

He
spread his
hands. "Why? So you can draw a line in the sand and tell yourself the
good
guys are on one side and the bad guys are on the other? I thought I
taught you
better than that. It's not that simple, kid. People aren't one way or
the
other. They got a little bit of both in there. People look for simple
answers .
. . Usually turns out the only thing simple about the situation was
them."

"If
you
say so," I said.

He
leaned
forward and looked at me sadly.

"I
guess I
didn't do as good a job with you as I thought. Go on .. . get out of
here. I
got nothin' to say to you. You get some respect, you come back and see
me.
Otherwise, I figure I can probably go another twenty years without
seeing
you."

He
set his jaw
like a bass and turned toward the
window.

"I
didn't
mean for this to come between us, Bermuda."

He
kept his
face turned to the darkness. His lips were set in a thin line. I got to
my
feet, zipped up my jacket and crossed to the door.

I
had one hand
on the doorknob when I spoke. "I'm going to find out what's going on
here,
Bermuda," I said.

His
head
snapped around. "Don't call me that," he spat. "You hear me? I
never liked that dumb-ass name, anyway. My name is Ed. You ever talk to
me
again, you call me Ed. You hear me?"

I
said I did
and stepped out into the night.

Overhead,
a sky
the color of dirty wool hovered inches above the treetops like an oily
shroud.
Along the narrow street, the yellow lights of the houses dropped
tentative
pools among the gathering darkness. I pulled open the car door, got in
and
turned the key. Nothing. Stone dead. Tried it again. Same thing. Shit

By
now, I knew
the drill. If I waited for a while, it would start right up and take me
wherever
I wanted to go. I folded my arms across my chest and settled back in
the seat.
I counted my breath and contemplated my options. As much as I hated the
idea,
maybe, just this once, everybody was right and I was wrong. Maybe I had
the
worst seat in the house for watching my own movie. For the first time
all day,
my head was beginning to throb. I closed my eyes.

When
I opened
them again, the car windows were completely fogged. I guess it was the
familiar
sound that jiggled me awake. The flat clacking of his canes. I rolled
the side
window halfway down. Bermuda was wearing a
light brown wool jacket and matching beret. He leaned heavily on one
cane while
he pushed open the double wooden gates that separated his house from
the house
next door. When he'd swung the gates out of the way, he reached over
and
retrieved his other cane from where it leaned against the side of the
house and
went clacking around the back in his unmistakable crab-like gait

I
rolled the
window up. I was still marinating the question of what had driven
Bermuda out into his yard at this time of the evening
when the lights smeared themselves over the car window. The single
headlights
came bouncing around from the backyard, turned the corner, coming right
at me
now, rolled across the narrow side yard, bounced across the curb and
out into
the street. It was an old Buick from the mid-fifties with wide
whitewall tires
and Little round hubcaps. A classic. Immaculate, gleaming two-tone
brown with a
grille like a chrome shark and three portholes in the side.

I
scraped the
windshield clean with my sleeve just in time to see Bermuda's
beret peeping up over the steering wheel as he tooled up the street
with both
hands locked to the wheel. I turned the key. Nothing. I cursed and
turned it
again. Dead as a herring. I pounded the steering wheel in frustration
and
hopped from the car. My instincts wanted to run toward the Buick's
receding
taillights, but my middle-aged body knew better. I jumped back into the
car and
tried it again. Silence. Shit.

I
got out and
slammed the door for all I was worth, rocking the little car on its
springs. I
walked up to the front of the car and kicked the tire hard, leaving a
black
smudge on the front of my sneaker and a dull ache in my big toe. Shit.
I kicked
it again. Shit.

I
jammed my
hands deep into my pants pockets and took three laps of the car,
pausing
occasionally to curse and kick some particularly delinquent spot. Sure,
it was
stupid, but it made me feel better.

When
I deemed
the car had been sufficiently punished, I crossed the street to the
side yard.
A single set of wide, treadless tire marks had matted muddy tracks into
the
otherwise perfect grass. I followed the oozing tracks around to the
back of the
house to a postage-stamp backyard, bordered by a weathered board fence.
Maybe
fifty by a hundred, half of which was a concrete slab. Big abstract oil
stain
adorning the middle of the slab. No garage. At the far end of the paved
surface, a gray canvas car cover lay hunched in the shadows like a seal
carcass.

In
the meager
back-porch fight, I squatted and ran my hands over the ground where the
Buick
had first rolled down onto the lawn. The lawn was smooth and unmarked,
except
for the wet, new tracks. I was betting he hadn't had the car out in
months,
maybe years. Why now? Shit. My legs cracked and complained as I
straightened
up.

I
retraced my
steps around to the front and checked out the neighborhood. Darkness
had sent a
white cotton fog sliding like smoke along the street, reducing
visibility to
about two houses in either direction. I crossed the front lawn and
stepped up
onto the porch next to the gourds and the ceramic squirrel. I turned
back
toward the street. Still empty. To my left, the muffled sound of
voices, the
closing of a car door and then silence.

I
pulled open
the screen door, wincing at the strangled whine of the spring and
checked the
street again. As usual, the front door was ajar. With my elbow, I
pushed it
open, stepped into the room and then silently eased both doors closed
behind
me.

I
crossed the
room to his chair and looked around. A black portable phone rested
comfortably
in Bermuda's preferred spot. I picked it up,
pushed redial and put it to my ear. The phone rang a half dozen times,
clicked
twice in transfer and then began to ring anew.

An
electronic
voice said, "You have reached six-two-four, seven-seven-six-five.
Please
leave a message at the beep." Beep.

I
dropped the
receiver back into the chair, pulled out my new notebook and made the
number
the first entry. Had it been anybody else's house, I would have gone
through
everything, hoping to get a hint as to what had been sufficiently
urgent to
send Bermuda driving out into the night. But
it wasn't anybody else. It was Bermuda, and I
couldn't bring myself to go through his stuff. Maybe it was all those
pictures
of my old man staring down at me from the wall. I was probably just
imagining
the disapproving cast in his eyes. Or maybe it was the feeling that
tossing the
place would somehow make every disparaging comment ever made about me
true.
Either way, I slipped the little notebook back in my pocket and let
myself out.

They
Were Chasing
me on thick thighs that never seemed to tire. No matter how fast or far
I ran,
no matter how many new corridors I plunged down, they pounded along
behind,
gasping, with their wet mouths so near my neck I couldn't risk making a
run for
the single secret passage. Unable to escape, I raced among the narrow
winding
stairs to the next level and the doors to nowhere, where, like the last
time, I
saw the small tracks on the black-and-white checkerboard floor.

"Leo.
Leo."

I
opened my
eyes. Rebecca stood by my side, her hand on my arm, gently shaking me
awake.
"Wake up. Leo. Wake up."

My
breathing
was fast and shallow. When I reached up and touched my forehead, I
found myself
hot and clammy to the touch.

"I'm
awake," I said automatically.

"Sit
up," she said. "You were shouting in your sleep."

I
swung my feet
from the bed and rested them on the cold oak floor. "I was dreaming,"
I said. She was dressed for work.

"You
might
want to hold that thought," she said. "I was having a
nightmare."

"Not
like
this one." She tossed the morning paper in my lap.

I
kept my eyes
locked on hers. "What?" I said.

Her
eyes said
if I was looking for sympathy, I better find myself a dictionary. "Read
it," she said.

Reluctantly,
I
stuck my thumb into the fold and brought the paper up in front of my
face.
Princess Di typeface. Pictures again. Peerless and the old man. At the
bottom
of the page, a picture of a small silver automatic laid out next to a
wooden
ruler.

SON
OF A GUN

The
strange
saga of Peerless Price took another unexpected turn this morning when
the
Seattle Police Department announced that SPD officers now had in their
possession a nickel-plated Uiirty-two-caliber automatic handgun which
they
believe to he the murder weapon in the Peerless Price case.
Spokesperson Rhonda
Peters declined further comment until ballistics tests can be completed
later
this afternoon.

The
sudden
appearance of a weapon is but another bizarre twist in this nearly
thirty-year-old case of—

"Jesus,"
I said. "At least," she agreed. "How did they . . . where did
the . . . ?" "I called Tommy. He called Harvey Wendenhall down in
Olympia ... at the crime
lab." "Yeah?"

"Wendenhall
says some stoner kid brought it into the East Precinct last night about
eleven-thirty. In a shoe box. Says some guy gave him twenty bucks to
Band the
box

to
the desk
sergeant. A note inside the box said the gun was the murder weapon in
the
Peerless Price case." She shrugged. "That's all Harvey knew."

I
jumped to my
feet a bit too quickly, sending my head swimming.

"Good,"
I said, as my vision cleared.

"Good?
How
can this be good?"

"It's
good
because I was about to give it up. Believe it or not, I finally came to
the
conclusion that everybody else was right and I was wrong. That I was
poking my
nose in where it didn't belong. I'd made up my mind to forget about
Peerless
Price and get my ass back to work."

"Yeah
. .
. sure."

"Really,
I
was."

"And
now?"

"And
now .
. . it's pretty obvious. I've managed to do what I do best. I've made
somebody
uncomfortable. Uncomfortable enough to do something stupid. That's
good. That's
very good."

"What
if
it turns out to be the murder weapon?"

"Then
sending it to the cops was even dumber. All I've got to do now is
figure exactly
whose day I ruined and why."

"Any
ideas?"

"Absolutely
none," I confessed. "I pride myself on being an equal opportunity
annoyer. I'd like to think I piss everyone off equally, without
consideration
of race, creed or sexual orientation. With me, it's kind of like a
point of
honor."

"How
I
admire a man with standards," she drawled. "I'm gonna jump in the
shower," I announced. She leaned over and gave me a peck on the cheek.
"How come you're all dressed up?" I asked. "I'm off to work. See
you later." "On a Saturday?"

She
sighed and
headed for the bedroom door. "I'm still behind on my work. I'd rather
work
today than have to stay late all next week."