Slow Burn (2 page)

Without
thinking, I grabbed for the nearest door and pulled. The blonde came out first,
wearing a pair of crotchless panties, a red feather boa and a pained
expression. Both the boa and her hair were on fire. I used her own momentum to
hustle her past me into the fountain pool, where she landed facedown with an alldible
hiss.

The little
Chinese woman was another matter. Screaming in agony, she burst out through the
limo door like a cannon-ball, butting me hard in the solar plexus, leaving me
hiccup-ing for breath as she flailed wildly at herself and began tottering down
the drive.

She was wearing
a pale lavender corset-type thing that left her small breasts bare, a tiny
matching garter belt and white shoes and stockings. All of which were on fire
as she hotfooted it down the drive, her blind terror pushing her in exactly the
wrong direction.

I sucked in one
long breath and ran her down, lifting her from the ground with one hand and
tearing at her burning clothes with the other. In the time it took to turn back
and take the two steps into the pool, her flames claimed my eyebrows, and the
heat of the small metal corset hooks blistered my fingers. Ten measly seconds.

A nameless UPI
photographer, sent down to cover the fund-raiser, had caught the action at just
the moment when I lifted the two women from the pool, one arm around each, all
of us grinning for all we were worth. One big happy family.

Turned out
they'd been freebasing cocaine and balling a pimp who called himself Eightball
when the red velour interior of the limo, having finally reached its chemical
saturation point, spontaneously burst into flame. Despite his best efforts, the
driver, one Norris Payne of Tacoma, had been unable to extricate himself from
his seat belt. In his thrashing about, Norris had inhaled a couple of lungfuls
of the brightly colored flame and died under heavy sedation a couple of days
later up at Harborview.

Eightball had
eventually managed to roll himself out the far side and, with the help of
several bystanders and a handy fire extinguisher, had successfully saved
ninety-nine percent of his considerable epidermis. As irony would have it,
however, the remaining one percent consisted of none other than his wanger,
which, in a travesty of bad timing, had been experiencing liftoff at the very
moment of ignition and thus took heavy lateral damage. He still calls himself
Eightball. Behind his back though, they call him Brother Beef Jerky.

Marty Conlan
peered over my shoulder at the photo. "Maybe if you hadn't all just seemed
to be having such a hell of a good time," he mused.

"People
who find themselves suddenly on fire tend to be somewhat elated when the fire
goes out," I countered.

"Or if you
hadn't been the one holding the dildo."

"I don't
know where it came from, either, man. It was just floating there in the water.
I thought it was an arm or something. I just instinctively picked it up. It
must have been part of the ensemble."

Resigned, he
flopped back into his chair. After a moment he asked, "You know who's in
sixteen hundred? That's the Edwardian Suite, you know."

I decided to
give him a break. "As a matter of fact, I don't, Marty." I told him
how the message on my machine had merely requested my presence at ten A.M. on
Sunday morning. It had assured me of a day's pay, no matter what. Said I'd have
to check in at the desk, because there was no elevator button for the private
floors. A special security key was required.

"Sir
Geoffrey Miles," he said.

"A sir,
you say? You mean like nobility?"

"I
do."

"Where do
I know that name from?" I asked. "Food. He's famous in food."

Yeah, that was
right, food. Sir Geoffrey Miles. The world's foremost authority on food. The
Guru of Gourmands. The Bagwan of Bouillabaisse. The Ayatollah of Gorgonzola.
Dude.

"In town
for the big food convention?" I asked. "Nice to see you still read
the papers." "An informed citizenry is the backbone of a free
society," I said.

His nostrils
suddenly flared in a manner usually reserved for sniffing long-forgotten
Tupperware containers.

"They're
all here," he said. "At least all the muckety-mucks. We palmed a few
lesser luminaries off on the Sorrento, and the hired help is camped out down at
the Sheraton, but everybody who's anybody is here."

According
to
the Times, for the next five days the best and brightest of the world
food
community would be holding their annual confab in beautiful downtown
Seattle. The article had gone on to note that it was only following
prolonged political
wrangling at the highest levels that Le Cuisine Internationale had ever
so
reluctantly consented to the Seattle venue. Never before had the event
been
held outside Europe. A number of aquiline noses were seriously bent.

Marty wasn't
through. "I figured, you know, these were classy people. Robin Leach.
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and all that, and, you know, it's a holiday
weekend, so I figured we could get by with a skeleton crew . . ." He shook
his head sadly.

"No, huh?"
I prodded.

"Biggest
bunch of assholes I've ever encountered," he said. "Bar none. No lo
contendo," he enunciated carefully. "How come?"

"Everybody
hates everybody else. These people got grudges going back thirty years. I don't
watch my ass, I'm gonna have an ethnic cleansing right here on the premises.
The service staff is pulling its hair out. These people complain about
everything. Nothing is good enough for any of them. They fax room service
ten-page instructions on how they want their lunch prepared and then send the
sucker back, anyway. I've got royalty on sixteen. I've got armed camps hunkered
down on fourteen. I've got—"

I interrupted
his litany. "Wadda you want from me, Marty?"

He was ready.
"You know, your old man and I—"

"Stop the
bus," I said quickly. "Don't take me there. Just tell me what you
want. I've gotta go."

My father had
parlayed an early career as a labor organizer into eleven terms on the Seattle
City Council. Four times he narrowly missed being elected mayor. The good
people of Seattle had instinctively known that Wild Bill Waterman was not the
kind of guy to be left nmning the store. It was bad enough that nearly every
city department was headed by somebody named Waterman. As several opponents had
suggested, both Wild Bill's sense of humor and his inclination for nepotism
were simply too advanced for any office with wide discretionary powers. From
what I hear, he knew everyone, and everyone knew him.

Everyone but
me. I was left with an uncomfortable composite of myth and remembrance upon
which, at times like this, nearly anyone who had so much as passed him on the
street could be expected to attempt to trade.

Marty Conlan
nodded his head at me and laced his fingers together. "Yeah ... I suppose
you must get sick of that shit, huh?"

"I've
gotta go," I said, turning. Ten-oh-seven.

"So, Leo .
. . you'll keep me informed, huh? I've got enough troubles already without
trust-fund private eyes roamin' about the hallowed halls, stirring up
trouble."

"What’s
that supposed to mean?"

"Don't get
me wrong, Leo. You've always been straight with me. Far as I know, you've
always been straight with everybody. I'm not saying you're not a stand-up guy.
I'm just saying that if I had my drothers, I'd rather be dealing with somebody
who needed the money. That's something I can relate to. You understand what I'm
saying?"

What he was
saying was that he, like nearly everybody else in town, was aware that my old
man had left the family fortune in trust. Whatever his other failings, the old
boy was a hell of a judge of character. He'd always sensed in me something less
than a firm commitment to the Puritan work ethic and had wisely arranged to
protect me from my own worst urges. The result was a trust fund of truly
draconian complexity. For over twenty years, the trust had repelled all
attempts to break it. A succession of greedy relatives, annoyed creditors and
one remarkably resolute ex-wife had squandered bales of cash, only to be left
on the outside looking in.

- "What
the fuck does that have to do with anything?"

"Hey,
hey," Marty said. "Don't get upset. I didn't mean anything. It's just
that you tend to act unilaterally."

"Unilaterally?
I act unilaterally?''

"You're
just not a good team player, Leo."

"Exactly
what team would that be, Marty?"

Cordon ignored
the question. "Just keep me informed. Okay, Leo? No surprises. I've got
all I can handle. Okay?"

"I'll do
the best I can," I lied.

He stood,
placing his hands flat on the desk in front of him.

"I best
get downstairs and see about Lance."

He was a mound.
A kimono-clad Kilimanjaro rising ro-tundly from the surrounding plains of
burgundy silk. Across his middle, a silver serving tray lent a flat working
surface to what otherwise was all slippery slope.

He worked his
massive jaws slowly, his eyes closed, his brow knit as he chewed and finally
swallowed the last morsel of sallsage from the silver plate before him. With a
sigh, he opened his eyes, looking around the room as if returning from a dream
state. Satisfied as to his surroundings, he made a flicking motion with his
fingers, seemingly shooing imaginary flies from the piled plates.

From the far
side of the bed, his manservant stepped forward and removed this morning's
repast, lifting it carefully over the mountainous middle and setting it on the
rolling cart along the far wall. Finished, he turned back to his employer.
"Well, sir?" Sir Geoffrey Miles pursed his small lips and wagged his
head.

"A
reasonable effort at sallcisse minuit, I suppose. Ambitious and agreeable, but
lacking . . ." He wiggled his fingers again as he searched for a word.
Unable to locate the proper reproach, he suddenly turned his attention to me
instead.

"Of
course, I apologize for the delay, Mr. Waterman," he began. "I had
planned on your joining me for breakfast."

Propped up in the
bed by a platoon of pillows, he now folded his weU-manicured hands over his
stomach and ran his clear blue eyes over the length of me.

"My fault,"
I offered. "I was late."

He wiggled his
three lower chins in agreement.

"I take
great pride in the regularity of my indulgences. Breakfast at ten, lunch at
two, dinner precisely at eight. Precision lends a certain substance to that
which might otherwise be mundane."

When I didn't
disagree, he went on. 'The playwright Luigi Pirandello once noted that while a
man with consistent habits can be said to have character, a man with
ever-shifting habits can merely be said to be a character. Do you agree,
sir?"

I reckoned how
I did and waited for him to get to the point. His stock rose with me when he
got right to it.

"I have a
delicate and demanding matter with which I believe you can be of service, Mr.
Waterman."

"What
matter is that?" I asked.

"The
matter of various people staying in this hotel, whose very lives I believe to
be in mortal danger." "I don't do bodyguard work."

He pursed his
rosebud hps. "Really? And, pray tell, why not?"

"Because
when you take on a bodyguard job, you're saying you're willing to get hurt in
the client's place. Which I'm not. I mean, I'll take on physical risk as an
occupational hazard, that's part of the business, but not as an
assignment."

"Indeed?"

"It's like
saying the client's life and well-being are somehow more important than my own.
Could be I'm provincial, but I just don't see it that way. The way I figure it,
my life is every bit as valuable as anybody else's."

"What a
wonderfully American notion."

"Besides
that," I went on, "anybody who wants to kill anybody else bad enough
can't be stopped."

"You will
be pleased, then, to know that guarding a body is not what I had in mind for you."

I waited.
Before he could open his mouth again, someone knocked twice on the hall door.
The manservant twitched an eyebrow at Sir Geoffrey, whose attention remained
fastened on me. "Rowcliffe," Miles intoned, "I believe that will
be Mr. Alomar. If you would be so kind."

As Rowcliffe
left the room, Sir Geoffrey said, "I had hoped to have our business
concluded before his arrival but . . ."

I got the
impression that I was again supposed to apologize for being late. I hate a
repeater, so I shut up.

Alomar was a
tall, distinguished gentleman of sixty or so, in a splendid cream-colored suit
and a brown silk tie. Very smooth. His regal bearing and thick, layered hair
reminded me of Ricardo Montalban. I had the urge to call, al castrado,
"Hey, boss! De plane! De plane!" His sparkling presence also gave me
the urge to check and see if my fingernails were clean. I resisted both urges.