Last Ditch (30 page)

"What's
the word 'Rastafarian' mean?"

"It's
two
words, mahn. Ras mean 'prince.' Tafari, now dat was da name given to
Haile
Selassie before he crowned emperor of Ethiopia. Prince Tafari."

"Why
Ethiopia?"
I asked. "It's a long way from Jamaica."

"It's
in
de Bible, mahn. It say, 'Ethiopia
shall soon stretch out her hands unto God.' Psalms sixty-eight
thirty-one."

"And
Haile
Selassie is the living God?"

"Yes."

I
was confused
again. "But he's dead."

"Don't
matta, mahn. De spirit lives. Some things are universal." He took out a
battered pack of Luckies. "You got a light mahn?" I shook my head and
pointed to the four-foot-by-four-foot sign painted on the green block
wall, NO
SMOKING was first among the don'ts.

He
shrugged.
"What dey gonna do, mahn, put us in jail?"

He
had a point.

"Maybe
he's got one," I said. He looked over at the drunk.

"Doan
wanna smoke that bad." He put the cigarettes back in the pocket of his
green Army jacket.

Thousands
of
anxious fingers had worn the green paint off the bottoms of all the
chain links
in the screen. I kept my hands in my pockets. A metal door banged
somewhere in
the building. A distant conversation slowly receded. The drunk stirred,
mumbled
something unintelligible, broke wind and went back to snoring. The door
at the
end of the hall hissed open. Footsteps.

The
jailer
stopped in front of the mesh. "Waterman?"

"That's
me."

"You're
outta here. You ..." He pointed his baton at the Rasta man. "... to
the back of the cell."

"No
fucking way, mahn. I'm gettin' nowhere near that smelly fucker."

"You
want
me to get some help in here? That what you looking for, Bob Marley?
Huh? You're
gonna be with us for a while. I get Waterman here straightened away,
I'll be
back down to fix you up with a haircut. That shit on your head looks
unsanitary
to me. Rules say we got to maintain sanitary conditions."

He
grinned and
patted his palm with the baton.

"You
best
be bringin' some help, mahn."

"What's
your last name?" I asked.

"Why
you
want to know, mahn? You writin' a book?"

"Somebody
coming for you?"

He
shook his
head.

"Gonna
have to sit this one out," he said. "What you in for?"

"Drunk
and
disorderly," he said sadly. "It's dat demon rum, mahn. Dat demon
rum."

"Give
me
your name, and I'll see what I can do about getting you out of here."

He
twisted his
hair while he thought about it.

"Reeves.
Quincy Reeves."

He
spelled it
for me.

"Give
Bluto here a break, and I'll see what I can do."

Quincy
shrugged, picked his
multicolored hat
off the cot and moved to the center of the room. The jailer opened the
door
wide enough for me to slip out and then slammed it behind me.

Rebecca
and
Stubby Watts were waiting for me in the visitor area. Stubby owned
Evergreen
Bail Bonds. Back in the good old days, I used to do a lot of skip trace
work
for him. That was back when us primitive types used to look for folks
by hand.
Nowadays, he's got a staff of electronic bounty hunters who sit in
front of
computer terminals. If you want to hide from Stubby, you better pull a
Ted
Kaczynski. You better find a cabin out in the middle of Bumfuck
somewhere, and
you better adopt a lifestyle where you don't generate a single piece of
official paperwork. Not a pay stub, not a parking ticket, not an
overdue charge
at the library, not a nothing. Because the first time your name or any
of your
known aliases gets entered into somebody's computer, anywhere in the
world,
Stubby's boys are going to be all over you like a cheap suit

I
hugged
Rebecca and then shook his hand.

"Stubby,"
I said. "There's a guy in there named Quincy Reeves. See what you can
do
about getting him out"

"What's
he
in for?"

"Drunk
and
disorderly."

"Buck
and
a half," Stubby said.

"Spring
him. Send me the bill."

Duvall
watched
as Stubby pulled open the door and disappeared inside. "You made a
friend?" she inquired.

"Yeah.
Quincy's a Rastafarian.
Nice guy."

She
cocked an
eyebrow. "Jailhouse romance?"

"Not
funny," I snarled. "Get me out of here."

We
pushed open
the double doors and stepped out into the street

"Where
are
you parked?" I asked.

"Second
and Madison."

I
took her
elbow and turned north. We stayed close to the buildings, out of the
wind and
out of the way of the hoards of scurrying commuters who filled the
sidewalks.
The swirling air carried the faint odor of diesel fuel and the promise
of rain.

"By
the
way. Thanks. I'm sure getting me out of the slammer put a hell of a
hole in
your day."

"Don't
mention it," she said. "At this point I'm so far behind, it doesn't
matter anymore."

We
crossed Fourth Avenue
and
headed down the steep slope of Madison,
the wind scourging our faces, our hair a half a block back.

I
paid the
fourteen-dollar parking charge. Under the circumstances, it seemed like
the
least I could do.

Rebecca
pushed
her seat-belt harness beneath the collar of her coat, turned the key
and looked
over my way.

"Where
to?"

"Ballard.
I need to get my car."

She
shook her
head. "They impounded it."

"Shit"

"You
can
get it back from Southside Towing between eight and five tomorrow."

"For
a
mere ninety-five bucks."

"Plus
tax," she added, dropping it in reverse.

"Son
of a
bitch."

I
fastened my
seat belt The CD player sent Frank Sinatra's resonant baritone rolling
through
the car. I settled back in the seat as she backed out of the parking
stall.
"A brand new love affair ..."

"How
about
dinner?" she said. "The Asia Grill
maybe?"

I
checked my
watch. Six-fifteen.

"A
bit
early for dinner," I groused.

"I
just
thought it might cheer you up."

She
slipped the
Explorer into drive and eased out onto Madison.
The Metro bus in front of us had a sign on the back offering a
fifty-dollar
reward for the arrest and conviction of vandals. The sign had been
tagged with
bright blue paint, TOLO it read.

"I
can't
for the life of me figure out how Trujillo and
Wessels got to Bermuda's place," I said,
as much to myself as to Duvall.

"The
gun
belonged to Mr. Schwartz," she said.

"The
gun
in the box?"

"Yeah."

"How
do
you know?"

"While
I
was waiting for you, I called Harvey Wendenhall to see if the
ballistics
results were in yet" "And?"

"They
got
a fourteen-point match. It's the murder weapon."

"And
it
was registered to Bermuda?"

"He
bought
it in May of sixty-nine. Warshal's Sporting Goods on First Avenue."

A
shiver ran
down my spine. She read my face.

"You're
worried about Mr. Schwartz, aren't you?"

"Yeah,"
I said. "Big-time. Turn left as soon as you can."

"Why?"

"Just
do
it."

Instead,
she
pulled the wheel hard to the right, slid to a stop along the curb and
jammed it
into park.

Several
angry
horns bleated above the dm of the traffic.

"As
you'll
probably recall, Leo, I'm not particularly good with phrases such as
'just do
it' "

She
had that
look she used to get in grammar school. At this point you either put up
your
hands or you apologize.

"Sorry,"
I said. "I didn't mean it the way it sounded."

"If
I
thought you meant it the way it sounded, you'd be on the sidewalk by
now,"
she said.

Whatever
fool
said love never means having to say you're sorry must never have been
in a
serious, committed, nineties relationship. Once per infraction,
however, was
definitely my limit.

We
sat in
silence for a moment.

"What's
going on?" she said.

"I've
got
a bad feeling Bermuda went down to Pier
Eighteen."

"Why
in
God's name would he do that?"

 
"Because ... I think he knows what
happened to Peerless Price." "So?"

"So
... I
think my last visit scared him. I think he wanted to talk to Judy Chen."

I
told her
about the last number Bermuda had called.

"When
he
didn't get an answer, I think he went to the only place he knew to go.
Back in
his time, that's where she lived. She and her son had a couple of rooms
up over
the warehouse."

"Where
you
were attacked."

"Yeah,"
I said.

"Why
Judy
Chen?"

"Because
she knows too. She practically told me so. Somehow or other, they both
know
what happened to Peerless Price."

"What
did
you say that scared Mr. Schwartz so?"

"It
wasn't
anything I said. He just knows me is all. He knows what a hardheaded
bastard I
am."

While
she
thought it over, I had another idea.

"Why
don't
you let me drive you home, and then I can run down to Eighteen and
satisfy
myself."

She
pulled the
lever back into drive. Another chorus of angry horns greeted our sudden
reappearance in the street

"Not
a
chance," she said.

The
guard
Stepped out of the shack, directly into the path of the Explorer.
Rebecca slid
the car to a stop about a foot from his shins. He stood in the glare of
the
headlights and wrote the Explorer's license number on a clipboard. He
was a
short guy, with skin about the color of coffee with too much cream,
sporting
the world's last full-blown, Julius Erving Afro. As he walked, the
brown guard
cap wobbled about on the wiry mound of hair. He strolled over to the
driver's
side, slipped the clipboard under his scrawny arm and rocked back on
his heels.
"Hep you folks?"

I
leaned over
and thrust my trusty "piece of the rock" insurance adjuster card out
the window. "We need to have a look at the place where the guy and the
car
went in the water."

He
took the
card. "Prudential," he said. "Good company."

"Solid
as
a rock."

"Heh,
heh,
heh," he chuckled. "Like a rock," he sang.

I
thought it
best not to correct his commercial confusion.

"Like
a
rock," I agreed.

He
handed the
card back to Rebecca.

"They
some
problem?"

"Just
a
formality," she assured him.

He
nodded
knowingly. "Hep yourself, then. You axe me, he din have no binuss down
there inna first place," he said. "Way down on Eighteen. Far left as
you can go."

I
directed her
down the long central aisle.

"Go
slow," I said. "Check the aisles on your side. I'll check them on
mine."

"What
am I
supposed to be looking for?"

I
swept my hand
across the windshield.

"Anything
but orange containers."

We
were
creeping along at about three miles an hour. The mercury vapor lights
lining
the yard cast their odd light only on the tops of the corrugated
canyon,
leaving us to squint through ghastly green gloom.

"Take
a
left here."

She
wheeled the
car around the comer. We drove for a quarter mile and then turned right
toward
the river. Two hundred yards ahead, our headlights were reflected back
into our
faces by the front window of Triad Trading's little office. We crept
along
until we pulled to a stop in front of the building.

"Nothing,"
she said.

I
pushed open
the door and stepped out.

"Be
right
back."

I
checked the
door on the office. Locked. I tried to slide all the windows. Same
thing. Then
I walked across the lot and worked my way around the warehouse, one
door at a
time, stepping carefully so as not to break an ankle on the rubble.
Everything
was locked up tight. I'd worked my way over to the door I'd entered the
other
night and was admiring the shiny new padlock and chain, when I heard
her voice.