Slow Burn (9 page)

"Remind
me, who's that?"

"Your
uncle Pat's second wife. She's in Finance." "And?"

"Seems the
mayor got a call this morning from an animal rights group demanding he put a
stop to the cookout."

"Did he
faint and wet himself?" That’s just the sort of PC pressure that usually
gets old Norm to soiling his briefs.

"No. Quite
the contrary."

God, how this
woman treasured a good secret. I waited. "So guess who heads this
particular group?" 'Til bite. Who?" "Clarissa Hedgpeth."

"That
weepy woman with the white poodle? Meat Is Murder and all that crap?" As
far as I was concerned, the only people entitled to complain about animal
rights were barefoot, vegetarian nudists. The rest of us were guilty. Such is
life in the food chain.

"That's
the one," Karen said.

"Isn't she
the one who—"

"Yep, the
same one who threw a quart of blood on the mayor's wife during one of those
anti-fur demonstrations. Outside The Opera House a couple of years ago, when he
was just a councilman."

"Mink, as
I remember."

"Blond
mink and uninsured, I'm told."

"And you
know how cheap that man is, too," I said.

We shared an
"Ooooh."

"So His Honor
has decided that the shindig is going to go on, no matter what," she said.

"I'm not
going to get any help from you, am I?" "No can do, kiddo."
"Thanks anyway, Karen."

"So . . .
you're moving into the old house," she said before I could break the connection.
"Let me guess. Mallreen again."

"No,
Ruthie told me," she said, naming a cousin so distant I was unable to
bring any image of her whatsoever to mind.

I may have
growled before I hung up; I can't be sure. Either way, I carefully replaced the
receiver and went out to meet the Meyersons.

Spaulding,"
she said in a low drawl, "fetch the videotape."

"Aw, come
on. This guy doesn't want to . . ."

He was moving
toward the hall even as he whined. The fact that I'd known the boy for only
about ten minutes had not prevented me from forming an intense desire to kick
his pimply ass. Spaulding Meyerson was maybe nineteen. An oily-faced little
sack of shit, with a voice like fingernails on a blackboard and a thinning head
of black hair that was never going to see forty. He'd inherited the family
teeth from his mother.

She'd opened
the door herself, but she wasn't alone. On her right, leaning back against the
peach-colored drapes, was a guy in a gray silk suit and a narrow black tie.
Then there was the matter of the shadow behind the door being way too wide for
this tiny woman.

She was no more
than five feet tall in heels. Her perfectly arranged hair was the reddish color
of a calico cat. She had a shrewd pair of brown eyes, set in close to a
turned-up nose. The rest of her face was mouth. If she were a foot taller, she
could have been one of those Kennedy women. 

The ones who
don't even have to crack a smile to show a full square yard of carefully tended
dental work.

"Ms.
Meyerson, I presume," I said with my best rugged grin.

It's not like I
expected her to get all dewy-eyed or anything, but I don't think it would be
bragging to say that I can still muster a certain amount of boyish charm. She
looked me over like I was the last brassiere on the sale table.

"And you
would be?" Blanche DuBois on Valium.

"Leo
Waterman. I'm with convention security."

I presented my
ID, which she passed to the guy leaning on the drapes without so much as a
glance.

"Yes,"
she said. "Sir Geoffrey Miles himself called."

Drapeman passed
my ID behind the door.

She looked over
at Drapeman, who looked behind the door and nodded. "Won't you come
in," she said with a degree of warmth and enthusiasm' generally reserved
for a yeast infection.

The suites
were, indeed, mirror images of each other. What I had presumed to be an armoire
in Jack's suite was, however, actually an entertainment center, with a
big-screen TV and a videotape player. The Kansas City Chiefs were playing the
San Diego Chargers. A lank-haired kid was stuffing his face with Chee-tos and
watching the game.

Al Michaels was
doing the play-by-play.

". . .
third down seven on the KC thirty-six ..."

The guy behind
the door was pretty much another Drapeman. Both were about forty, well groomed,
and had mastered that stone-faced professional sheen so often seen on Secret
Service agents.

"Spaulding,"
she said, "please turn that off."

"Why do I
gotta?" he whined. "You guys go out in the hall."

". . .
three-step drop, Bono flares a little swing pass . . ." "You can
watch the game in your room," she tried. "Go talk in your room,"
he insisted. ". . . Allen finally steps out at the San Diego
fifteen."

Drapeman
crossed the room to the entertainment center and pushed the power button. The
big screen went blank from the center out. The kid jumped up from the couch and
tried to get at the controls. Working like a cutting horse, Drapeman kept his
body between the kid and the button as the kid jumped wildly about.

Frustrated, Spaulding
Meyerson turned my way.

"Yeah,
Gordo here's a big man when it comes to kids," he said, jerking a thumb
over his shoulder at Drapeman. "A real big man. Ask him about how Rickey
Ray cleaned both their asses up in about five seconds. Ask them about that,
whydoncha? How he sent the stooges here crawling back holdin' their 'nads and
crying like little girls."

"Spaulding,"
she snarled. "That's enough."

This time she
got his attention. Mine, too. He shut up, jammed his hands in his pockets and
started to stalk from the room. Halfway across, however, I could tell he wasn't
going to leave. He wasn't going to give us that satisfaction. Instead, he
ducked in behind the bar, pulled a can of Coke out of the fridge, popped the
top and took a healthy swig. The room was silent except for swallowing.

"Please
excuse my son, Spaulding," she said. "I assure you he doesn't always
act this way."

Sure he didn't.
Unless I missed my guess, Spaulding Meyerson was well down the road to a
lifetime of serious ass-holery. As if in confirmation, Spaulding belched and
gave us a toothy grin.

"These
gentlemen are Mr. Francona." She nodded toward Drapeman. "And Mr.
Hill." Neither man made a move to shake hands, so I stood still.
"They handle all of my security needs. As I told Sir Geoffrey, beyond
their able services I have no need for special security assistance."

"Except
for when Rickey Ray beats the holy hell out of them, that is," Spaulding
added.

I was getting
the brush-off, so I waded right in.

"I was
hoping we might be able to put our heads together on how best to stop Mr Del
Fuego's—uh—" I stammered.

She helped me
out. "Barbecue." "Yeah. The barbecue."

"Old
Jackeroo is gonna roast old lardass." Spaulding smirked.

She shot her
son a quick, murderous glance. "I assure you, Mr. Waterman, no such event
shall take place."

"You sound
pretty confident," I said. "The Lord works in mysterious ways."
"Care to share?"

"I'm
afraid not," Abby said. "For my daughter's sake, for the sake of
decency, this abomination must surely be stopped. Bunky must be saved. I have
faith." She said it like a chant.

"But
..." I looked around the room. "What if Bunky is already, you know .
. . shrink-wrapped."

"Have you
seen today's paper?" Abby inquired. "Haven't had the chance."

She stuck out
her hand like a surgeon waiting for a tool. The one she'd called Hill slapped a
section of newspaper into her small hand. She held the newspaper under her and
let it unfold. It covered half of her petite body.

"Come On
Down, Folks. Feed Yer Face at the FeedLot," was all it said. It was the
picture. That and the facial expressions. Ol' Jackeroo held a carving knife in
one hand and a leash in the other, his face a slanted mask of malignant
mischief. The leash was attached to the halter of an enormous black bull, whose
liquid eyes seemed to say he somehow had an idea of what in hell was going on and
didn't like it one damn bit.

Worse yet,
someone had taken a piece of white chalk and divided the animal's gleaming
black hide into a series of irregularly shaped quadrants. The sections were
labeled. The one at the rear read rump. T-bone, porterhouse, sirloin, short
ribs, chuck, tri-tip and London broil, they were all there. I changed my mind,
^he bull didn't look worried; he looked embarrassed.

When I was a
kid, I used to wonder if the cattle knew their fate. If maybe each herd didn't
have at least one cynic who walked around the pasture going: " They're
gonna kill us, ya know." While the other cows went, "Oh, Larry, chill
out, you're so paranoid. We're pettts."

"I have it
on good authority that the setting of that picture is here in Greater
Seattle."

"Gasworks Park," I said. "About a mile or so north of here."

No doubt about
it. The abandoned apparatus of the old gasworks rose from the hillside like the
conning tower of some buried battleship.

"Mr.
Francona spoke with the photographer."

I waited.

"The picture
was taken two days ago," she said.

I shrugged.
"Why? Wouldn't it be a whole lot easier to just have the animal dressed
out? I mean, That’s gotta be less trouble than keeping it alive."

"Obviously,
you don't understand Mr. Del Fuego," she said.

"that’s
probably true," I admitted. "So why is he going to all this trouble?
I hear he's got enough problems of his own."

"Because
he hates me. He blames me for his business failures. He claims I've been spying
on him." "Have you?"

"Certainly
not." She seemed genuinely insulted. "This is a difficult market. Not
at all like when we began."

According to
Abigail Meyerson, Jack had merely ridden a wave of prosperity, using the
initial success of every new restaurant to finance the next, and so forth, on
down the line, creating a nationwide pyramid scheme, rather than a
self-supporting corporation.

"It's easy
enough as long as interest rates are high," she went on. "Nobody
wants their investment back. Why should they? They're making a fortune on the
interest. Nowadays ..."

Abigail
Meyerson treated me to a five-minute primer on the trials of restaurant
ownership in the late nineties. Skyrocketing real estate prices, the perils of
the pluralistic workforce, the added strain of just-in-time inventory, the
heartbreak of psoriasis. I waited her out.

"Abby's
Angus can provide its customers with a full-pound, three-inch porterhouse steak
which is less than four percent fat. Did you realize that?" I confessed
that it had escaped my attention. "That’s the market, Mr. Waterman. If s
the fats against the skinnys and, unlike the generations preceding us, ifs the
skinnys who have all the money. Mr. Del Fuego is a relic from the CB-radio
period. I can't imagine what he thinks he's doing in a health-conscious market
such as Seattle. Ifs lunacy. I have no need to sabotage Mr. Del Fuego."
"Besides which," I said, "you're not that kind of girl."
Without altering either her voice or her facial expression, Abby replied,
"On the contrary, Mr. Waterman, I'm exactly that kind of girl. I readily admit
that it is my intention to drive Mr. Del Fuego from the industry. I have been
opening restaurants right on top of him for over two years. I consider it to be
my civic duty. I make no bones about it." "A little steak joke
there," I tried. I regretted the words the minute they escaped my hps.
"Oh," she said. "A joke. Yes. Bone." Silence. "Well,
here's a bone for you, Mr. Waterman. The only reason I'm not buying up Mr. Del
Fuego's back paper and demanding immediate payment is that somebody else is
saving me the time, trouble and expense."

It took a
moment for me to process this. "You're saying that somebody out there is
trying to put Jack out of business, and it isn't you."

"No. I'm
saying that somebody in addition to me is trying to put Mr. Del Fuego out of
business. And doing quite well at it, too, I would expect." "How
so?"

"I've been
told that his Toledo store was forced to close when a
three-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar note was suddenly and quite unexpectedly
called due. When Mr. Del Fuego was unable to meet his obligations, the property
reverted to the noteholders, who then proceeded to allction it off down to the
last rivet. They're supposed to have walked off with almost eight hundred
thousand."

"And Jack
thinks ifs you who's doing this to him."

"Which is
why he's started this preposterous charade with that poor animal and why he
must be stopped."