The Bum's Rush (25 page)

That one always worked. The mention of specific
sentences and institutions, talking of hard time, rife with the veiled
threat of unnatural acts always reduced the amateurs to jelly.

"F. Lee Bailey couldn't keep you out of jail," I added for effect.

"F. Lee Bailey couldn't keep himself out of jail," she sneered.

"My point exactly," said Jed.

"Maybe the public would like to know how its
cherished library system really works," she spat. "The Times has always
hated the library system. They've been waiting twenty years to get a
story like this."

"Like what?" Jed demanded wearily.

"Like about how this institution has no regard for
the people it's supposed to serve. Like how they put people out into
the ice and snow because it's too hard on their precious landscaping.
Like how public rest rooms aren't really public. About how people are
forced to do not only their own work but also the work of people who
quit, because the library always tries to circumvent the legal hiring
guidelines for as long as possible. Like how half the administration
are away half the time on these half-assed conferences which always
just happen to be somewhere where the sun happens to be shining. Like
how "

Jed wasn't listening anymore. I could practically
see the wheels turning in his head. Worst-case scenario. A zealot. An
articulate zealot, no less. God help us. Bring on the hemlock.

" and how departments, at the end of the year,
spend the last of their money on any old thing. Just anything.
Whether they need it or not. Whether they know what the hell it is or
not. We've got closets full of equipment nobody knows how to use. Not
only doesn't anybody know how to use the stuff, but nobody even knows
what some of the stuff was supposed to do in the first place. They
spend it just to spend it, because if they don't spend it, they'll lose
it in next year's budget. They do this while people are starving and
freezing to death right outside the building. And how ''

"Stop!" Jed bellowed in the voice that regularly
stopped courtrooms cold. "And when all of that is done when you have
disgraced and discredited everyone you can think of, you, my good
woman, are still going to jail for grand theft." He cut a line in the
air. "Unless "

Karen Mendolson gazed down at the bat beneath my feet and then over at Jed. "Unless what?"

"Unless this matter can be handled both legally and privately. Like adults, shall we say."

"Save it," she said. "There's no way they're going to "

"But there is," he interrupted. "Hear me out."

She wandered back into the kitchen and leaned on the counter. "Go ahead," she said as if bored. "Spin-doctor away."

"As you so astutely have reasoned, Miss Mendolson,
we I speak here, I think, for the entire board would prefer that this
matter be settled privately. Out of the glare, so to speak."

"Politics," she sneered.

Jed admitted it at length and then went into soothing mode.

"You have been at large now for the better part of
three weeks with a substantial amount of the county's money. Is that
correct?"

"A hundred ninety-three thousand, six hundred and twelve dollars even," she said with some pride.

"With a clean record, and complete restitution ''

It was Karen's turn to interrupt. "I spent some of it," she said.

"How much?" I asked.

"About thirty-three thousand dollars. Give or take."

Jed's mouth gaped. "In a month? Thirty-three thousand? In a month? What? Did you buy a yacht or something?"

She heaved a sigh. "I gave it away."

"To who?" I demanded.

"Whom," she said. "And I gave it where it was
needed. I gave it to that downtown food bank that had the fire. That
was five thousand. I gave some to a senior meals program in the
International District. Twenty-seven hundred and fifty dollars, as I
remember. Oh, and the literacy program over here. I gave them five
thousand too."

"And the rest?" Jed prompted.

"I gave that to the Eternal Mission for mattresses.
So people wouldn't have to sleep outside when the weather was--" She
hesitated.

"Like Earl," I said.

Her eyes went elsewhere. "Yes," she said distractedly. "Like Earl."

"Who in hell appointed you the champion of justice?" Jed demanded. For the first time, he was annoyed.

"I did," she shot back.

"For God's sake, why?"

"Why not?" she said. Then, "If not me, who? If not
now, when?" She spit it out quickly, as if she had been chewing it for
a long time.

"Nobody, and never," said Jed.

She bobbed her head up and down as if to say, "I know, I know," and was pulled in a full circle by her thoughts.

"It got out of hand," she said sadly. "I was really
pissed at the library for removing the homeless from the windows. Earl,
and you know--that was very painful." She paused. "I was pissed about
having to do two jobs." She took a deep breath. "I was depressed about
my life." She turned up her palms. "Once I started, it just snowballed.
Next thing I knew, I'd already cashed the check and given away money
that didn't belong to me. By then it was just--" She searched for a
word.

"Too late," Jed suggested.

She didn't hear him. "And you know what?" she
continued. "I never really had a plan. I just moved in here because I
didn't know what else to do." She looked around the dingy interior as
if seeing it for the first time. "But that's not the strange part," she
continued. "The strange part is that I've never felt better. Never felt
like I was getting more done or being more useful. Since I started,"
she mused, "this has been the best time of my life. I've never "

"Earth to Karen. Earth to Karen!" Jed shouted.
"What you better be thinking about is how you're going to beg, borrow,
or steal enough money to give the county complete restitution."

She gave a short, derisive laugh. "I don't have
that kind of money. I gave away all of my own to the Capitol Hill
Senior Center. That's why I started to you know "

"Let's get this over with, then," he said quickly.
"Perhaps Mr. Waterman and I can get back to our beds. The question,
young lady, is this. Are you or aren't you prepared to do prison time?"
Jed asked flatly. "I'm not going to bore you with those film noir
stories of women in prison. You're an intelligent young woman. You make
up your own mind. But do it damn quickly, because I'm about at the end
of the line with you. I'm working my way up to the politics-be-damned
stage of things."

She thought her response over. Turning it several times.

"No," she said quietly. "I don't want to go to jail."

"Well, then, what you're going to do is this. You
are going to move back into your regular apartment so that it does not
appear that you are atempting to flee prosecution. I am personally
going to see to that. Right here, tonight. All right?" He waited for an
answer. It took quite a while, but she agreed.

"Next, you are going to call everyone you know.
Your father and brother up in Michigan, everybody, and you are going to
beg for money."

She started to protest, but Jed cut her off.

"Cousins you haven't seen in years. Maiden aunts.
All of them. You are going to raise every dime you can raise. Then
you're going to go to your bank and borrow every dime they'll give you.
Ransom your body on Pacific Highway South if necessary. Do you
understand what I'm telling you? If you are going to avoid
incarceration, you must make complete restitution. Period."

For the first time, she seemed to deflate slightly. "I understand."

Jed wasn't through. "As I understand it, you siphoned this money off electronically. Is that true?"

"Yes."

"If you removed the money electronically, does that
mean you are equally capable of putting the money back in by the same
means?"

"Well, if they haven't changed the codes. But by now "

"By noon tomorrow, the codes will be the same. Can you do it?"

She was reluctant. "Yes," she allowed.

"As you get more money, you must put that back into the acquisitions account."

She nodded silently. "What if I can't get all the money?" _

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it." ^

"I'll still need an attorney, won't I?"

"Indeed you will," he answered. "Indeed you will."

He leaned on the opposite side of the counter from
Karen and examined his nails. "My options are extremely limited," he
announced. "I'm already on shaky ethical ground." Raising his head, he looked at Karen. "Give me a dollar."

"What?"

"You heard me. Give me a dollar."

Karen Mendolson leaned back, opened the drawer in front of her, and rummaged about. "Will four quarters do?"

As she counted them out, my beeper went off. I crossed the room and dialed the number.

"Leo. It's George." He was slurring, full-scale twisted.

"We found that old Charlie Boxer," he mumbled proudly. "Holed up just as snug as a rug in a jug." I knew what he meant.

Charlie Boxer had been talking for a full half hour.

"I can still see the pair of them. Tweedledee and
Tweedledum. Just like it was yesterday. They were firemen for Dave Beck
and the union. The teamsters, you know." Charlie gave me a meaningful
glance, as if I needed reminding. "That's what they used to call
themselves. Firemen. You started blowing any smoke"--he took a quick
drag from a Kent and a long pull from his drink--"and those two would
put your fire out in a hurry."

His eyes clouded. "Your old man, big as a barn,
with these hands the size of hay rakes." Charlie shook his head. "In
those days, he never could find a suit that fit him quite right. Always
a couple of inches too much arm sticking out. Not like later when he
had his own tailor and all. That little Eyetalian guy--what was his
name?''

"Hugo DeGrazia."

Another swallow. He waved with his cigarette, as if
scratching something into the air. "Always wanted to handle everything
peaceable if he could. Always wanted to talk first. Shoulda known he
was gonna turn out to be a politician."

As he laughed at his own joke, the laugh suddenly
became a phlegmy hack that slid in stages into a tubercular coughing
fit of truly epic proportions. He pounded
his chest, which sounded as if it were full of Vaseline. I pulled my
drink out of range and held on.

His arm flapping, whooping and wheezing he
eventually became sufficiently animated to distract the crusty quartet
from a spirited game of dollar-bill bullshit at the far end of the bar.
George, Harold, Norman, and Ralph were medicating themselves from a
second bottle of peach schnapps that I'd tried to buy from Charlie. As
with the first one, Charlie wouldn't hear of it. It was on the house.

"Go, go, Charlie, go," George sang to the tune of
"Johnny Be Good." This, of course, led to an inevitable round of
hip-thrusting Elvis-the-Pelvis impressions. Charlie, meanwhile, was
still sucking air and flailing about like a stroke victim.

"Sounds like he's got a hairball," suggested Harold
when they'd finally calmed down. This one reduced them to jelly.
Fist-pounding, backslapping, knee-buckling jelly.

"Here comes a lunger," intoned Nearly Normal above the din.

Beet-red, teary-eyed, but no longer gasping,
Charlie Boxer whipped a soiled blue handkerchief from his rear pocket,
lifted it to his lips, and deposited within its folds whatever deeply
rooted matter he had just so exhaustively excavated from his lungs.

After returning the hankie to his pocket and
mashing it with his right cheek possibly to forestall an escape he
picked up the still-smoldering Kent and scrutinized it closely.

"Gotta quit these things one of these days," he announced. He took a long pull on the butt and continued.

"Him and that friggin' Tim Flood. They were
partners back then. Little bastard could keep right on smilin' at a
fellow while he slipped the blade between his ribs.
Damnedest thing. Never got anything on him, neither. I hear from
reliable sources that back in the early fifties he slit a guy's throat
ear-to-ear in a warehouse over on Fourth and just walked off clean as
could be. Didn't even have to wipe his hands."

I made a mental note to remember this for Rebecca. This was firsthand proof of the validity of my born-to-squalor theory.

I lifted a glass to the old man. "Like that old
toast says: May you be in heaven before the devil even knows you're
gone," I said.

He tipped a glass my way. "Thank you, Leo. Have no
fear about it. I'll say a few kind words to your old man about you when
I get to the promised land."

"You figure that's where he is, huh?"

"Couldn't say for sure, but I'll tell you this,
wherever he is, is most definitely where I'll be going, my lad. I'm
damn well sure of that. Wouldn't have it any other way," he added with
a smile. "If I went any other place, I wouldn't know anybody."

He looked a little better but a lot older than the
last time I'd seen him. His hair was pure white and going thin. His
trademark mustache, once lustrous to behold, was stained a sickly
yellow and singed in places. His puckered hands looked as if they'd
been boiled.

It was three-thirty a.m. After hours. The Red and
Black Lounge had been closed to the public for the better part of an
hour. I'd watched and sipped while Charlie shot the bolts, turned off
the neon beer signs, counted the till into the little zippered bag, and
poured himself four fingers of Maker's Mark.

Charlie and I sat at the center of the bar, looking over the sink at a bronze hula-dancer lamp whose
undulating hips and key-chain skirt caused the fringe on the fancy
shade to tremble. Anticipation, I figured.

It was a cute little neighborhood joint up on
Phinney Ridge, directly across the street from Woodland Park. It didn't
take a detective to see that the place had recently been refurbished.
Four black Naugahyde booths, their decorative silver tacks still shiny,
ran down the right side of the room, across from the twelve-seater bar.
Little kitchen with a delivery window behind the bar. Unless he'd
stashed the bag in the freezer, there was probably an office somewhere
behind that. At the back, several small tables and a gaggle of chairs
competed for space with a new pool table. Behind that, the bathrooms.
One on each side. Buoys and Gulls, no less. Blue handicapped stickers
on the doors.