Last Ditch (33 page)

One
of the
things twenty years of working as a PI will teach you is that pain and
sorrow
are equal opportunity employers. It's not a question of whether they'll
come
knocking on your door, it's only a question of when, and of how you're
going to
handle it when the wheel stops and suddenly it's your turn to answer
the Double
Jeopardy question about who in hell you are and what it is you're doing
here.
Answer in the form of a question, please.

You
gonna let
it stop you cold? Gonna be a victim like Ralph? Gonna let the sight of
a dozen
or so moldering corpses make such an impression on your psyche that
your life
comes to a screeching halt? I mean . . . you could hardly blame a guy .
. .
could you? I mean hell . . . after all . . . fourteen dead bodies.

Or
are you
going to be a tough guy? One of those crew-cut souls who strangles
hankies,
sheds his dry tears and then marches resolutely onward with his life.
You know
. . . stiff upper lip and all of that.

Or
maybe you
join the masses somewhere in the middle. You shed your tears and
stumble onward
. . . cringing . . . from that moment on destined to spend a lifetime
peeping
back over your shoulder, flinching at loud noises and waiting for the
other
shoe to drop.

Sometimes
I
think it doesn't much matter which path you choose. Nobody dodges all
the
slings and arrows, and -nobody gets out alive. Hell . . . maybe guys
like Ralph
have it easy. In the long run, maybe the express route from the
penthouse to
the outhouse turns out to be less painful than the route with all the
stops.
Kind of like getting hit by a falling safe would surely be preferable
to being
picked to pieces by birds.

The
tough guys
... the ones who seem to roll their cuffs and step over adversity . . .
they're
fucked too. They get to spend the rest of their days wondering whether
the
reason they were so effectively able to go on with their lives was not
because
they were strong, but was because they never gave a damn to begin with.
Wondering if maybe their mothers and ex-wives hadn't been right about
what
shallow, one-gutted pieces of shit they really were.

For
the masses,
it's the happiness industry. They go to therapy. They sit around little
rooms,
singularly and in groups, trying to find their inner child so they can
convince
the poor little bastard that this disaster of a life isn't their fault.
Using
whatever happened to them in the past as a blanket excuse for their
hollow,
half-assed existences, they try like hell to drag everybody else down
into the
hole they're in. They tell guys like Ralph that they're sick and need
professional counseling. They tell the tough guys that they have
unresolved
issues and will never be whole unless they too spread their inner lives
upon
the floor for public inspection. Catharsis, you know. Makes them feel
sensitive
instead of weak. If that doesn't work, they take Prozac.

THE
ZOO WAS
hopping. First of the month. Checks were in. George, Harold and Normal
were holding down
their deeded stools at the far end of the bar. Behind them, at the
snooker
table, Red Lopez leaned back against the wall holding a cue, his eyes
narrowed
to slits. Flounder stalked about the table, up one side and down the
other,
chalking the tip of his cue as he walked. Earlene and Heavy Duty Judy
shared a
table and a couple of pitchers with Big Frank's jacket I scanned the
bar, but
Frank was nowhere in sight. Ralph was over in the comer with his arm
thrown
around Billy Bob Fung's neck, slobbering in the poor guy's ear as he
talked.
Billy Bob kept pulling back and picking at his nose.

I
checked my
watch, One-twenty. Hopefully, they weren't too far into their drinking
day to
work. Up in the front of the room, with the last of the lunch crowd,
the
jukebox blared out country western Jimmie Dale Gilmore, singing through
his
nose, wanting to know if I'd ever seen Dallas
from a DC-9 at night.

I
could tell
right away that nobody had read the paper. The only thing this crowd
liked
better than a reason to party was a reason to cry. If they'd known
Bermuda was dead, they'd have been holding their own
version of an Irish wake.

I
made it all
the way to Harold's elbow before anybody noticed.

"Hi
ho," said George. "It's the swimming detective."

"Howdy,
fellas," I said.

Harold
threw an
arm around my shoulder.

"You
gotta
be more careful with your driving."

They
yukked it
up. I signaled Terry to bring the fellas a round.

"Any
of you
guys want to make a little cash?"

"No
yard
work," George said quickly.

"Detective
work," I said, pulling the Identi-Kit picture from my pocket and laying
it
on the bar. "I need for you to find this guy."

They
huddled
together over the picture.

"Ugly
bastard,"
George said.

"Bad
hair
day," Normal
added.

George
pulled a
frayed notebook from his pocket.

"Wadda
ya
got in mind?"

I
told of my
encounter with the Man With No Ears and of my little ride in the river.
"Guy looks like this," I said. "Only places he can get lost are
the square of the International District. Get together as many people
as you
can muster. Make copies of the picture. Canvass the whole district if
you have
to, but ..." I paused for dramatic effect. "... be careful. This guy
is dangerous. He damn near punched my ticket for me, and unless I'm
mistaken he
killed Ed Schwartz on Friday night."

"Ed
Schwartz," George gasped. "Bermuda?"

"Yeah,"
I said. "It's in all the papers."

Harold
jabbed
the picture with his finger.

"What
this
guy have against Bermuda?"

"I
don't
know. That's what makes it scary."

I
gave them the
Reader's Digest version of the story and then threw a hundred bucks'
worth of
fives onto the bar. "Here's some cash to keep your whistles wet and
I've
got another fifty for the guy who turns him."

They
began to
scuffle over the money. "And George ..." I said.

He
clutched an
unruly assemblage of cash against his chest with both hands. "Yeah?"

"Leave
Ralphie out of it,"

"Sure,"
he said. "He still got that bug up his chimney about you, anyway."

I
crossed
behind the snooker table to the men's room. The minute I jerked open
the men's
room door, I solved the puzzle of the missing Frank. Big Frank stood at
the
urinal, leaning against the toilet partition, dead drunk asleep with
his dick
in his hand.

"Frank,"
I said once. Nothing. "Frank," I bellowed.

He
blinked
several times and stood up straight. He looked over my way and then ran
both
hands through his greasy brown hair.

"Leo,"
he said. "Yeah ..." He grunted several times. "I think I better
have me a bracer," he said and started my way.

I
held up a
hand. He stopped. I pointed down at his fly. "You probably better put
that
away," I said. He looked down at himself and-grinned. "Oh,
yeah."

He
stuffed
himself back into his pants and lurched back out into the bar. I
checked the
toilet stall. Empty. And then followed Frank.

With
the
exception of Ralph and Billy Bob Fung, the entire crew was gathered
around
George over at the bar. I walked over and put a hand on Normal's
shoulder. He followed me to the far
side of the room.

"I'm
gonna
have a little talk with Ralph," I said. "I want you to keep anybody
from coming into the men's room while we chat"

He
eyed me
closely.

"You
ain't
gonna hurt him, are you?" he asked. "No," I said. "I'm just
going to talk to him." "I don't think he's gonna want to talk to ya,
Leo. Lately, he don't like you at all."

"That's
why I need you to keep people out." He nodded. "Okay. But don't hurt
him."

I
walked over
to Ralph and Billy Bob and threw an arm around Ralph. "Hey, Ralphie,
how
you doin'?"

He
was
bleary-eyed and smelled of cheap scotch. Beneath a worn gray suit
jacket, his
yellowed long underwear top was wet.

"Get
the
hell away from me," he said.

I
spoke directly
to Billy Bob. "You don't mind if I borrow Ralphie for a minute, do
you?"

Through
a
series of head moves and facial tics, Billy Bob indicated that he
would, as a
matter of fact, be downright joyful were I able to get Ralph to stop
drooling
in his ear.

"I
ain't
goin' nowhere ..." Ralph started.

I
grabbed him
by the back of the collar, spun him around and marched him straight
through the
men's room door. When we got inside, I kept him moving, all the way to
the back
and the toilet stall, where I plopped him down on the seat with a thud
and
closed the door behind us.

"We're
going to have a little talk," I said.

He
half-rose
and started a roundhouse right toward my head. His elbow bit the side
of the
stall, reducing the movement to more of a push than a punch. I caught
the fist
in my left hand and pushed him down onto the toilet with my left.

"Stop
it," I said. "I'm not in the mood to be bit. You smack me, and I'll
knock you on your ass."

"Oh,
yeah,
big man?" he sneered.

"Fourth
of
July weekend, nineteen sixty-nine. That date mean anything to you,
Ralph?"

He
turned his
face to the wall.

"I
thought
you might recall that Chinese family. You remember them? The ones they
found in
the container. The parents, the grandparents. Or maybe you just
remember the
kids. I hear the smell was really something."

His
eyes bulged
in his head. He hiccuped once and then, using the graffiti-covered
walls for
leverage, scrambled to his feet I thought he was coming at me, so I
spread my
feet for balance and put my hands up. Instead he turned his back to me,
dropped
to one knee and began vomiting into the filthy toilet.

I
pushed open
the stall door and stepped out into the room. He was full of beer, so
it took a
while. When the beer and everything else in his innards was gone, he
kept on
heaving until it sounded as if his muscles simply would no longer
contract

Normal
popped
open the door. "Leo," he yelled. "Got some people out here need
to go real bad."

"Tell
'em
to go piss off the back porch," I said.

When
I stepped
back into the stall, his eyes were full of water and a thin line of
spittle
connected his lower hp to his shirtfront

"Who
was
supposed to let them out?"

"I
don't
know what—"

"Hey,"
I shouted. "Save it. You want to go up on Queen Anne with me and talk
to a
guy named Gaylord LaFontaine?"

His
eyes
flicked up at me. He remembered the name. I could tell.

"He
used
to work for U.S. Customs. Remember? You told him to keep his nose out
of what
was going down on Eighteen. Told him it was political and that he
should keep
clear. Remember now?"

He
gave a
nearly imperceptible bob of the head.

"Who
was
supposed to let the people out of the container?"

He
said it so
softly, I didn't hear it the first time.

"Who?"

"Jimmy
Chen."

He
had me
going. "What Jimmy Chen?" "Judy's ex-husband," he said,
without looking up.

"I
thought
he'd been gone for years."

"He
was.
Showed up again that summer. She give him a job workin' down in the
yard."
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "If I'da known, Leo. I'da
.
. ."

Suddenly
his
eyes overflowed and tears began running down his face. "He was supposta
let 'em out that Thursday." He looked at me. "Never showed up. Those
people ... If I'da known . . ."

"What
happened? How come he didn't do his job?"

Ralph
shrugged.
"Disappeared," he said. "Ain't never seen him since," he
said. He stared up at the ceiling. "I ever see that son of a bitch
again
..."

He
moved his
gaze to me. "I always figured it was your old man," he said.

"Why's
that?"

"He
wanted
that son of a bitch gone, but Judy didn't want to hear about it. Made
him
promise to leave Jimmy alone."

"But
you
figure he did it anyway."

He
hunched his
shoulders.

"Two
roosters and one hen."

I'd
have felt
better if he'd said nearly anything else.

"But
you
don't know for sure."

He
shook his
head.