Homeless Murders
By Bert Brun
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2012 by Bert Brun
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2012 by Bert Brun
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Chapter 1
I gently eased the door shut, not wanting to disturb the sleeping bed and breakfast
guests. At the corner of John and l3th, an early Seattle Metro reticulated bus blocked the
crossing for the moment. A couple amused faces at the bus window watched as this tall,
lanky guy with thinning gray hair began jogging in place. I moved my knees up and down,
hoping to get the old joints and muscles cooperating.
"Six A.M.?” they seemed to shout, "You gotta be kidding!"
Up the hill to the right the sun attempted to pierce the morning fog behind the Group
Health Hospital at the top. I jogged slowly at first, northward on l3th East, heading toward
Volunteer Park. My mind lazily went over the breakfast menu Meg and I had agreed upon;
when I returned from my run and had showered, it would be my turn to prepare the
morning's meal.
I entered the crooked part of l3th East that I liked, past the little place with an
oriental roof and the brace of neat stuccoed cottages to its west and the big white art deco
place across the street, then I zipped across the little jog in l3th at Aloha and then up the last
curving block coming up to the park.
I had barely got inside when I saw the bum, lying under a rhody bush. Nothing new
about that, I thought until I noticed the red smear across his dirty gray sweatshirt. I detoured
over, not wanting to lose my pace, but with a sudden funny knot in my gut. I got close
enough to make out a typical enough face for these guys, forty-ish, bearded, with a wool hat
atop his bushy hair. Then I saw the blood on the unmoving chest.
Holy shit, I thought, "This guy is dead!
The odd part was that there was only the stain, no other visible marks on the
sweatshirt, like a gun or knife wound. Off to one side of the body was a knapsack that he
might have been using as a pillow.
I looked around; a big jolt of adrenalin had kicked into my blood stream. Nothing.
Too early for much traffic. In a few moments there'd doubtless be a car coming up or down
Prospect Street and maybe I'd be able to flag it down. On the other hand if I raced back
home, I could call the police within five minutes, then gulp down a big belt of scotch.
Nothing could be done for this poor devil right now.
The word murder seemed to put a little zip into the response at the l2th Street Seattle
Police District office. In a moment, I was talking with Homicide Detective Roosevelt
"Yes, Mr. Harmens, you did the right thing. I'll get a car dispatched out to the scene
soon as I hang up. I'm on days this week, but I came in a little early to catch up this
goddamn paperwork. Any chance I could come see you in the next hour? Maybe go over to
the scene with you for little bit?"
"Oh...yeah, I guess so. I can get my wife to do the breakfast.
"
“Do the breakfast?"
"Uh-huh. We run a bed and breakfast at l3th and John."
"Oh yeah...think I've seen the place. In about twenty minutes then?"
"Ok. I'll be looking for you. Still a little early for the guests, so I'll come out."
"That would be fine. I'm not a uniformed cop by the way, and I drive an unmarked
car."
"Good. See you soon." Smart cop it seemed. Knew I might be thinking about the
effect on business. All this meant going downstairs and rousting Meg from her sleep, not
always an easy matter. The little beauty was sleeping in the raw, as usual. One tantalizing
breast had snuck outside the cover.
"What...what time is it?" She opened those gorgeous brown eyes reluctantly.
"Abort 6:30”, I kissed her, a longer than usual workaday morning kiss, and she came
to life.
"Mm”, she murmured. "Special kiss this morning." She sat up against her big
pillow, her long dark hair cascading down to her bare breasts.
"More special morning than you know. Sorry babe, you‟ll have to do the breakfast."
"What's the matter?"
"Found a corpse in the Park this morning while I was running. A bum apparently
murdered. Cops are coming by in a few minutes and talk to me at the scene."
"What? Oh my heavens! That's terrible!"
"Yeah. Especially for the bum. Bled to death I guess. Or maybe his heart suddenly
stopped pumping. Sorry to start you off this way."
"All right, let me go up and at least start your coffee for you."
"Thanks, love. Here give me another kiss...poor baby”, she whispered, "having to
discover that unlucky man."
"Yeah. No fun at all. Well, let me get upstairs and get a slice of toast or something
before the cop comes. Detective Brown is the name. Roosevelt Brown."
"Think he's black?"
"Maybe. Probably. Doesn't matter. Anyway, he's tactful enough to think about our
guests not needing to know, too."
"Good. See you later, babe. Oh, you can let the kitties down."
I opened the door to the back porch where the two tortoiseshells slept at night. Kali
was complaining as usual.She bounded down the stairs to the basement apartment,
followed by the more cautious but always sneaky Kate.
By the time I saw Brown's car stop tentatively outside the house, the big coffee urn
in the kitchen was just entering its volcanic final belches. I had already slugged down a
glass of juice and piece of toast. I went outside, still clad in my running clothes.
A large black face covered my trot to the car with interest, and a ham-sized hand was
offered through the open window.
"You must be Mr. Harmens”, he said in a rumbling bass voice. "Get in over here."
He indicated the passenger seat.
"And you're Detective Brown. Call me Ed, o.k.?"
"O.K. And just in case you didn't get time for some coffee, I got a second container
at the Seven Eleven on Madison on the way over. If you don't want it, I'll drink it later."
"Another addict. Much obliged." I snapped off the drink cover and inhaled -- not
the greatest quality, but the jolt would be there --and took a sip.
"Yep. I must drink close to ten cups of this rotgut a day. At the precinct I keep some
better stuff than this."
"This is fine. What do you want to know”, I asked, as he eased across the same
intersection where I had started jogging only forty minutes ago.
"Gonna need some personal stuff for the paperwork later. Right now just tell me a
little about finding the body."
Brown eased the car around the little intersection island at East l3th and Thomas.
The Space Needle could be seen through the windows on his side of the car. The lights at
the top were suddenly extinguished, as if to say, the new day is official.
"l3th and Prospect, right?" asked Brown as the car headed north, pausing for each of
the steep cross streets careening down Capitol Hill's west side. It took less than five minutes
to get to the Park. A uniformed officer was there. Brown drove his car up over the curb and
onto the sloping grassy hill, parking next to two squad cars. A blanket was over the victim,
and a second cop was shooing curious early morning walkers or runners away.
"Hello Detective”, the cop by the body said, on seeing Brown get out. Now that
Brown had levered himself out of the car, I appreciated how really big he was. Easy six four
I figured, only an inch more than me, but add about sixty pounds to my l80.
"Morning Larry, Forensic folks coming up?"
"Yup. Said they'd try to get here by seven. Five or ten minutes now."
"That's fine. Let's have a look. Oh, this is Mr. Harmens. He discovered the body,
called the station."
I nodded at the uniformed cop. I felt torn between shrinking away this time and
getting another look.
Brown had squatted to get a close look at the body. "Hm”, he grunted. "What in the
hell caused the bleeding, I wonder...don't want to roll this poor sucker over to check an entry
wound on the back till the Medical Examiner shows up."
He rose up, and I distinctly heard his knee bones crackle, just like mine. Football
injuries, maybe?My knee symphonies were from skiing and volleyball (volleyball!).
Brown was almost a classical pro linebacker type, or maybe tight end, before the current
behemoths. He turned to me and said, "Now that we're here, can you give me some more
details?" He had produced a notebook and began writing in it.
I nodded."Sure”.
"Where did you enter the park?” he asked me.
“Just over there”, I gestured toward my right, below a row of sparse rhodies, where
the park grass came right to the street side.
"You came running, saw the figure on the ground and came over to him. See anyone
else around at all?"
"No. A little too early. I usually don't, and I come this way three mornings a week if
"But this morning, nobody."
"Right"
"Show me how you approached the body."
"I jogged up and stopped when I saw the blood. I knelt down."
"Touch him at all?"
"No. Just looked closely at his chest. I realized he was dead."
And then what?"
"Tried to figure out what to do. Decided to run home and call it into your station."
"OK. Nice and simple. We'll get it down on paper later, and it would be nice if
you'd sign that statement. Con you hold on a few more minutes and I'll get you back
home?"
"Sure”.
Brown went over a few things with the uniforms, and we were headed back down
l3th before 7:25, by which time the police and forensic and medical people had arrived and
fussed around and already removed the body.
It was beginning to all seem more acceptable now somehow, procedural, thanks to
all the violent garbage I‟d seen on TV. The shock of seeing a murdered man had almost
worn off in less than two hours. If it hadn't been such a short drive, it might have been
interesting to start a discussion with Brown about this. However, quickly, we were back
home.
Meg, who always seemed to know when I neared the house, opened the door and
quickly came out. In her hand she had a cup and something else that was covered. She came
around to the driver's side.
"Hi, I'm Meg, Ed's wife, as you must have guessed. You're Detective Brown, I
know. I just thought you might like this coffee and raisin bran muffin fresh out of the oven."
A delighted gleam came into the big black man's eyes. "My--oh--my”, he chuckled,
"us cops don't often get this kind of reception. Much obliged, Miz Harmens."
"Oh no, it's Ms Browning, but that's all right." She flashed her wicked feminist smile
at Brown. "We are nice and married legally though."
Brown had already sniffed the muffin hungrily and started to remove the paper cup
around it."Mm-mm! Good muffin, Ma'am. You folks doing all right with this business ?"
"Yep, going great guns”, I put in. "I got an early out retirement last year, which
evened up the work load on Meg. We started three years ago."
"You kind of young to be retired?"Brown munched large bites quickly,
Pac-manning at away the defenseless muffin.
"Fifty one. My agency was cutting back. I was more than ready. Twenty five years
of bureaucracy will fry your brain."
"Know what you're talking about. Speaking of which, I got a date with some
paperwork back at the station. Think you could come down in a couple of hours?”
“Sure, give me a call. Hope you guys can do something with this."
“Not real promising. Perpetrator could be anybody. Another homeless, anybody.
We'll get some ID for him, hopefully, and go from there. Hey, I got to go. Thanks again,
now."
We stood together in front of the gate of the Prince Edward, our B and B, and
watched the car cruise on down 13th. Nice man”, said Meg. "Let's go in or are you going to
run?" "
"No. I'll just pick up where you are with the breakfast."
"Uh-uh. I'm too far along. Get a shower and some coffee and eat with the guests
later, why don't you. You can do it all tomorrow."
Meg was a stickler for sharing the load. Fair enough by me.
Chapter 2
I walked down the hill to the police station at Twelfth and Pine. This was the great
thing about Capitol Hill, you could walk everywhere, whether it was to the restaurants and
shops on 15th or Broadway, the library at Harvard and Republican or whatever.
"Seattle Police Department, East Precinct" read the sign over the doorway. The two
story building with its painted gray brick walls and brown flower boxes, hanging like wattles
under large plate glass windows, had always puzzled me. The front desk resembled a small
hotel lobby. There never seemed to be much going on there either, but if you read the
"Police Beat" column in the Capitol Times, the local community weekly, you'd know
differently.
Brown's desk was on the second floor. He was surrounded by stacks of paper. I felt
sorry for the guy, remembering the nightmare stacks and document stuffed cabinets from my
own bureaucratic days. Brr! Was I glad I was rid of that. If there was anything a federal
agency did well, it was to generate paper and then lots of stupid, useless rules to handle it.
"Sit down, Ed”, he said gesturing to a chair beside the battered wooden desk.
"Lessee now. Here's a reconstruction of what you told me earlier this morning. You want to
look it over?" Brown was all business.
I did so. "Looks accurate to me”, I said.
"That's fine.Just a couple other things-your occupation.You want retired or
business owner?"
"Now that I share all the work, I guess it'd be owner, with my wife”,
"And the name of your place again?"
"Prince Edward.Seemed Victorian somehow. Place was built in 1903. “The
Edward part is from the crown prince son of Queen Victoria ,
"Yeah. I see that. What's your phone number there?"
I pulled out one of our cards. "Number's right there, 259-9896."
Brown looked the card over. "Mind if I keep this?"
"The Prince Edward”, he read."A turn of thecentury bed and breakfast.The The
charming, convenient and inexpensive alternative, when you're next in Seattle." Brown
seemed to ponder this.
"What's the matter?"
"Oh nothing. I just never stayed at a bed and breakfast. Don't know anything about
'em."
"Come by some time, and we'll show you around. We've got great views. You
could have some coffee and another muffin or two with us. We're big on muffins, got five
or six kinds we make."
Brown's face lit up, exactly the same big smile and teeth he had produced when he
engulfed Meg's bran muffin.
"All right!" he said with obvious delight.
I could see that this man enjoyed food. I signed the statement he'd produced for me,
and we wrapped up our business. Brown handed me his card.
"Give me a call if you remember anything else."
"Okay”, I said, getting up. "Detective Brown?"
His eyebrows rose quizzically.
"Could you let me know if anything important turns up? I feel kind of connected to
this poor guy in some weird way. I never found a body before."
"I guess I could do that, I get a chance sometime. Don't want you thinking you're
some kind amateur sleuth, however. Leave the police work to me. Okay? This man had an
unpleasant finish to him." The cop's expressive face got very serious.
"I know. What's your next move?"
"Try to establish an identity. No wallet or nothing on him, 'bout what I expected.
Apparent robbery is what I'm putting down in my report. But that's weak. Not enough
motivation to kill someone when it'd be easy enough to lift his wallet if he's just sleeping."
"Or if the man was drunk."
"No alcohol odor with this one, far as I could tell. The M.E. will give me more.
Coulda been a fight with another vagrant, who knows?"
"You don't like the word, bum?'
"No, I figure these guys get put down enough without me adding to it.”
Brown surprised me with this. I would have figured a cop to be more hard-boiled. It
made him suddenly very likable.
"Well, I'll get out of your way here, Detective. If I can help anymore you'll let me
know?"
Brown waved farewell and turned back to his work. On the way through the door I
heard a deep sigh as he picked up something from his paper pile.
I found my way out of the building. By now it was almost l0 o'clock, and the
morning had brightened a bit. There was still plenty to do back at the Prince, but maybe not
all the guests had cleared out yet so I decided to swing down a few blocks to Broadway and
get some stamps at the post office on the corner of Denny Way. I walked down Pine, past
the auto-painting place, the big bicycle shop and the REI store down the block on 11th. On
the right, across the street, was the red clay Broadway ball field at the far end of a park that
included a small reservoir and some tennis courts along Nagle Place. I could see a small
group of homeless men hanging out as usual around the benches and picnic tables on the far
side of the ball field. I wondered if they'd had yet heard about their buddy. From a distance
they seemed subdued in contrast to their frequent rowdiness.Sometimes, even in the
mornings, I'd see a bottle being passed around. Occasionally there'd be arguments, audible
even this far away. Was that how the victim bought it, a squabble over a bottle in the middle
of a June night?
I swung north on Broadway, past Central Community College, a massive red brick
complex several stories high. The Capitol Hill Community Council met here once a month.
Meg and I went to the meetings and three months earlier I had let myself get talked into
signing on as a vice-president. Actually, the meetings were sometimes pretty interesting.
They were a good way of getting the pulse of the Hill. With the murder probably making
the morning's radio news already, my guess was there'd be a hot discussion at the next
meeting, just two days away.
I did my brief business at the post office. Coming out I looked up at the flagpole
outside the low brick and glass building, remembering this was where the flag-burning
incident had occurred which went all the way to the Supreme Court. A quick look in at the
ninety nine cent shop next door brought me up to date on any possible recent stock brought
in by the enterprising Pakistani proprietors. Meg always laughs at my penchant for cheap
gadgets, and then smiles again when they don't work or break down soon after purchase.
Sometimes I get the last laugh, reminding her that she once considered a microwave a
gadget and now swears by it.
I turned the corner and chugged east on Denny, past the north end of the reservoir,
now on my right. The gulls screamed above the water spray. I saw another homeless guy
under a tree, this one apparently having an animated conversation with two dogs and a cat.
The man, a small, wiry fellow wearing typically motley clothes, baseball hat and
scraggly brown beard, was lecturing the two medium sized, brown and black dogs. The
amazing thing was the way they looked at him, as if they were grasping every word and
what's more being made to feel very remorseful about previous bad behavior. The gray cat
paid no attention.
"And another thing, you little bastards”, I heard as I passed. No more that fucking
sniffing around them female dogs. You hear me? Look at Danny here. (He indicated the
cat.) Minds his own damn business, don't pay no attention to things get you two all excited
about. You want to get on my good side? You better shape up you know what's good for
you."
Smothering a smile, I continued on my way. I made it back to the Prince Edward
just as the last-to-leave tourists were setting out for the day.
"Out to see the city?"
Meg appeared at the doorway as well. "I've been providing all kinds of options to
these folks. I think they've decided on the bus over to the canal locks to see the spring
Chinook jumping up the fish ladder, then back downtown to see the market."
The couple, a middle-aged pair from Chicago, nodded enthusiastically as they
headed out toward the gate. Meg was perfect for a B and B hostess, friendly, helpful and
sincere; and it was her winning ways that were mostly responsible for the successful
operation of the place. My style was a little different, but like Jack Spratt and his wife, we
did the job and did it well.
Besides, as I always told her, how boring it would be if we were just alike or agreed
on everything.
"What's to do?" I asked, once inside the door.
"Everything. If you'll give me a hand with the rooms please, I can start with the
kitchen. It's quite a mess today."
"Want me to take out the trash now or later?"
"Later's fine. How did it go at the police station?"
"Pretty well. Brown seems to know what he's doing. He's got next to nothing to
work with so far, though. I asked him to let us know what develops, if possible."
"Hope they catch him, whoever did it. Makes me nervous about walking in the
"Yeah. We go up there quite a bit, don't we."
“And you usually run there in the mornings.”
She was right; I'd forgotten how I made the discovery.
"Well, I doubt they'd go after a runner. Brown thinks maybe some other bum--no, he
calls them vagrants."
"You just be careful. I need my partner here." She came forward and pressed her
yummy little body against my taller more angular one. She tilted back her face and offered
up her shapely mouth for a kiss. First getting my sizeable Norwegian nose out of the way of
Meg's smaller little one, I obliged. She closed her brown eyes soulfully whenever we
kissed, and for some weird reason I loved seeing this. Then sometimes she'd catch me with
my green eyes open up against hers and chide me for not being romantic!
"Let's get to work partner”, she reminded me. "Before you get any other ideas." As
usual, she was one jump ahead of me.
Chapter 3
We arrived about one minute to seven at the Thursday night June meeting of the
Capitol Hill Community Council. Meg claimed it was one of my worst habits, 'cutting
things too close'. Inwardly I exulted when I barely made it; it made everyday life a little
more exciting.
As soon as I had settled in with the other officers at the front table, the president, J.
Raymond Forsythe, called the meeting to order.It was Forsythe's second year in the
position. He was clearly very effective. I hardly knew the man, despite his ownership of an
elegant antique shop just up the hill from our B and B. I had heard he had extensive other
holdings on the Hill, as well.
Forsythe in action was a smooth customer, befitting a fellow who could point totally
unapologetically to a ten thousand dollar price tag on one of his tasteful furniture pieces,
which could be seen through the large windows of his showroom. He was always turned out
spiffily for the meetings, and was tonight sporting a regimental striped tie to go with his
impeccable, double-breasted blue pin striped suit and polished black wing tip shoes
at over a thousand dollars. She and I were wearing our usual running shoes and jeans.
Meg's cute butt, even at age fifty, still turned heads. She was also in a sweatshirt, me in a
flannel shirt.
Forsythe's face was reminiscent of George Saunders, the British actor from the
forties and fifties, though the fine, well coiffed silver hair was more like Cary Grant. He
could have been any age from thirty to fifty and had kept himself in good trim. A resonant,
well-modulated voice and perfect diction contributed to the overall impact. Somehow he
seemed out of place on Capitol Hill, which was a wonderfully eclectic place whose
inhabitants ranged from crazed punk youths on Broadway to young and old gays on 15th
and in the Broadway Market to numerous interracial couples.
The buzzing attendees paid little attention at first to Forsythe's request for order. He
had the instinctive knack good teachers have of not needing to shout, simply staring at
certain offenders until they shut up, creating little eddies of silence which quickly became
total.
Forsythe stuck to the rules of procedure and whirled smoothly through the
announcements and old business. LuAnn Griffith, an excitable woman in her forties jumped
up when it came time for new business. LuAnn's frizzy red hair seemed to vibrate.
"What about this dreadful murder?” she wanted to know.
"Yes, what about the murder”, said Forsythe rhetorically.”Detective Roosevelt Brown,
Will give us as much of an update as he can."
My eyes caught Meg's, where she was sitting near the back of the room. I rolled my
eyes at the guy‟s chutzpah in grabbing the limelight and she smiled.
"Shall we use the time to go on with other new business?" asked Forsythe. Several
heads bobbed.. Meg's favorite, the expansion of the Conservatory in Volunteer Park to
include a tearoom, got a good hearing. I chimed in myself, remembering the wonderful
tearoom at the Botanical Gardens in Wellington, New Zealand, a city I‟d worked in about
ten years earlier.
Alvin Schmorr, a little guy in his early forties or so who served on the social
concerns committee, raised a hesitant hand.
"Yes, Alvin".
In a soft, timid voice, Alvin brought up his new business. He was a slight individual
with mousy brown hair, and a matching straggly mustache, which I guessed he had
encouraged to add a little authority to an otherwise underslung face. I suspected he was gay
but it didn‟t matter.
Alvin stammered. "Since this awful murder I've been thinking m-maybe we could
really be social innovators and endorse a recommendation to the -m-m-mayor and city
council that a s-s-special consumer tax be p-placed on city retail sales in order to create a b-
b-building or housing fund for these unfortunate people." Alvin looked around a little
fearfully for a reaction. "Or at l-l-least on sales on Capitol Hill”, he added, trailing off.
I could feel a sudden tension in the table where I sat. Both the treasurer, Edna Lilley,
and the secretary, Nora Burkhart, were sitting with their hands in their laps. Forsythe, at the
end of the table, had clamped his hands on it like a vise.
"Now, Alvin." Forsythe's voice was a mixture of steel and syrup. "Think about what
you're saying. In these times of virtually punitive taxes already, does that make sense?
Remember you're not seeing this from the retail side like I am, like Tony Taylor, at the
Emporium, or Helen O'Brien of the Consignment Shop might see it. We can't have our
customers drift away from the higher prices your proposal would bring."
Helen, a beefy florid faced woman with a shop on l5th next to the Wholesome Stuff
Food Coop, nodded vigorously."Besides", someone called out from the back, a youngish
guy I hadn't seen at the meetings before, "We didn't invite these bums up here. Let the state
or the feds worry about them."
Forsythe seemed satisfied, while Alvin hunkered down in his chair. The president
glanced at his watch.
"It's a quarter to eight. I believe we've time for one more agenda item, a report from
the Land Use Committee on the city's proposal to renovate the old Atkinson apartment
building and convert it into a special needs treatment center for chronic alcoholics. I believe
Arthur Meizner has this?"
Arthur got up to speak. Arthur was also about forty and short like Alvin, but stockier
with a more substantial brown mustache. He was a great buddy of Alvin‟s, and a little more
self-confident, hardly a dominating presence though.
"The Atkinson is not really a Capitol Hill structure. If you're studied the local
geography you'll appreciate that it's actually in the Pine-Pike Corridor.
"Never mind that,what about the property values down there?” interjected Forsythe.
"The Atkinson is currently very run down. The city acquired it for tax delinquency
two years ago, and it's just sat there ever since, not used for anything. It's a good thing
it’s brick or it would’ve burned down by now.
Phoebe Williams, the dark haired pleasant little local librarian at the Henry Library
spoke up. Whenever Meg and I strolled down to her place, she'd produce a nice smile and
some friendly words for us. By now she knew our penchant for reading mysteries.
"What treatment is proposed for these people in there?"
"The City hasn't been all that specific. Possibly some alcoholics in the last stages of
their illness might even pass away there."
"Sort of like a hospice, if it could be set up”.
Arthur shrugged and smiled.
A middle aged, heavyset man with black hair in the second row of folding chairs
raised his hand. Forsythe recognized him and asked him to identify himself.
"Joe Fortunato. I got a little convenience store on Pine, about three blocks away
from this dump of a building. Look, I feel sorry for these guys just like everybody else. But
goddammit, we get any more of these winos hanging 'round on the street, my business is
gonna go down the toilet! Already they're a goddam nuisance, panhandling my customers as
they come in or outta the store. And now they're killing one another! Brother, that's all I
need, is one of my customers knifed just because they didn't give a bum a quarter for his
next bottle of wine!"
This caused a good bit of consternation in the room.I figured about half the
council's membership were do-gooders, the rest all over the map, a few radicals, a few
conservatives and a couple of real strange-os, who luckily mostly listened. Occasionally a
wispy sixty-ish man would warn us all solemnly about wild dangerous air currents in the
area. The average attendance was only about fifteen, but tonight, more like twenty five.
"Way I see it, no new building for broken down old winos.” Fortunato ranted on.
“Maybe it'd be better if they kept on knocking each other off!" Fortunato completed his
tirade and sat down.
Little Alvin Schmorr hopped to his feet, outraged.
"B-B-Barbarian!” he cried. "If that's what C-Capitol Hill is coming to be, may the
Lord have pity on us. We n-n--need to be humane about these poor creatures, not wishing
they were d-dead!" His eyes flashed wildly about, finally lighting on Arthur, who nodded as
if to comfort his little friend.
"We're digressing, people”, said Forsythe. "Let's get back on track, shall we?" He
looked at his agenda. "Can you wrap this up for now, Arthur?"
"Well, I prepared a fact sheet on what the City wants to do. I'll pass it out. For the
next meeting I thought I'd prepare a response to the proposal, let the Council discuss and
amend it, and then finalize it in time for the deadline of July fifteenth."
"Very good. Hm, it's just past eight…oh, right on cue!"
In walked Roosevelt Brown. Tonight he had on a white shirt and plain red tie, and a
checkered sport coat, on the order of a forty-eight large. He looked as if he might have just
come from work.
Forsythe rose and shook Brown's hand, then introduced him to the attendees. Brown
gave me a smile and a wink as he waited a moment.Because of his size he had a
dominating effect on the group in the small college classroom. Or maybe it was his deep
voiced rumble, as he began to speak.
"You all know about the murder by now. Matter of fact, it was one of your officers,
Mr. Harmens here, discovered the body. Don't have a whole lot to tell you that hasn't been
in the papers. We did get a tentative identification on this man, just this morning, after some
little talks with some of the vagrants and homeless fellas who wander around the Hill... We
know he was a white male, age about thirty-eight. Went by the name of Davy. Last name
maybe Archer, maybe not. Probably drifted up here from California. We think he has a
sister somewhere. One of the guys who he talked with said he was kind of a loner, didn't
drink much if at all, and seemed depressed about being out of work. We're trying to find out
if he ever slept down at one of the downtown homeless shelters, on the nasty nights. They
might have some more info on him."
"And the cause of death, Detective, have you ascertained that?” Forsythe wanted to
know.
"Yep. Medical Examiner's report came in to me this afternoon. Narrow, sharp
instrument pierced the heart, then was wiggled around a little, making sure it was fatal.
Probably a kind of long ice pick, especially effective here 'cause it slipped right between the
"How awful”, said Forsythe. "Any clues?"
"Not at liberty to say much about that, Mr. Forsythe. Davy probably never woke up,
so there was apparently no struggle or anything. Not much to go at on this point, I can tell
you that."
A woman named Alice Hutchins suddenly spoke up. She was a tidy, dark haired
woman with glasses, wearing sensible shoes, probably in her forties. I"d seen her before at
the meetings.
"Will we be safe around the park now, Detective? It's such a lovely place to walk.
My partner and I look forward so much to our evening strolls there. And our little dog,
Sheba-my how she loves to dash around the big grassy space behind the Museum. You
know, where the other dogs like to run, too?"
"Yes, Ma'am. We've beefed up our patrol car activity up there. And all cars in the
vicinity have been instructed to look in on a random basis too."
"But what about back in among the trees and bushes?” a soft, high-pitched male
voice asked. The questioner was a slight young man with delicate features and blond hair.
Brown paused a moment, choosing his words carefully. "Department has tried to be
as watchful as we can about those areas. All kinds of stuff goes on back in there, pretty
common knowledge I guess. We got two things going here, homeless fellas like our victim
looking for a place to sleep and then the other folks, sometimes alone, sometimes not, for
other reasons. All I can say to you is we're deciding how to handle security away from the
roads. A prudent sort of person would be careful."
I glanced at Forsythe and saw his nostrils crinkle slightly with distaste, or maybe
even disgust. It was clear enough what Brown had been referring to.
"Well." Forsythe gathered his thoughts. "Good report, Detective. Anyone have any
additional questions for Mr. Brown?"
"What about the bums?” queried an overweight, well dressed man I had seen before
at the meetings. I thought he ran a shop on Broadway, somewhere, but I couldn't remember
his name. He appeared to be about fifty, with thinning brown hair atop a large, puffy face.
"What about 'em?"
"Are they moving off, are they scared, or what? This whole business with the bums
is terrible for Capitol Hill, if you want my opinion?"
Brown hesitated for a moment.
"Yeah, I want your opinion, Mr.-?"
"O'Connor. I own and manage the bookshop on Fifteenth."
Brown wrote something down in the same small black loose-leaf notebook I had
seen him use at the murder scene. "Way I read 'em, they ARE scared", said Brown. “A
homeless guy's life is not easy. Aside from not knowing where they‟re gonna sleep, or what
they can scrounge up to eat, there IS violence. They sometimes beat up on each other,
especially if they've been drinking. Same time, I see a camaraderie there too, sometimes,
kind of looking out for each other. They're all in the same boat, and it’s ‘ no luxury cruise
liner either."
I thought to myself of the man with his small family of the dogs and a cat, a couple
of days earlier.
"Could well be just a nasty incident, two of 'em having a quarrel and it gets outta
hand...on the other hand I'm not ruling anything' out. No motive yet, that I can tell."
"Didn't I read about a lack of identification?” asked Forsythe."A wallet or
something missing? A pitiful little robbery maybe?"
"Kind of looks that way, maybe . Killer wouldn't have got much though, be my
guess. But you're right, robbery's a possibility."
"Well”, said Forsythe, "by now we've taken up more than enough of your time. I
think the Council should let you go to get on with your investigation. Thank you so much
for coming."
Brown made his departure quickly. The meeting resumed, back to more mundane
things such as Council support for various grant proposals and the like that different
community groups were pushing. The meeting adjourned at nine.
Meg and I strolled up Broadway, at a more leisurely pace than the mad dash earlier
down the hill to the community college. The aroma from Chang's Mongolian was enticing,
but we'd eaten just before leaving for the meeting. A half moon scuttled behind wispy
clouds. For Seattle it was a balmy evening, maybe sixty degrees.
"You only opened your mouth once or twice tonight”, said my wife.
"You're the talker in the family...besides, with Forsythe in charge I feel almost like
Lyndon Johnson under Kennedy. Some people you just don't upstage. I was content to
watch and listen. Brown did well, I thought."
"Yes. I like him."
"And we found out as much as we could, about the murder for now. I wonder if
he'll call or come by for a muffin and some coffee."
Chapter 4
A couple of days after the Council meeting, Meg delivered to me the Seattle Times
along with a cup of coffee on my sleep-in Saturday morning.
"Thought you might be ready for this”, she said, bending down to the bed to plant a
kiss.
"Thanks. Just been lying here a few minutes thinking about that poor dead guy."
"I know, but there was nothing you could do...Only seven for breakfast, want to eat
with the guests?"
Our big oak table accommodated eight easily, and we had a little folding leaf trolley
table for extras.
"Let me get some coffee in me. I'll let you know in a little bit. The soufflé, right?"
She nodded.
"Getting a little sick of that, babe. What kind of muffins?"
"Blueberry."
"I'll be there."
She smiled and left me to my java and the news. The newspaper wasn't the greatest,
but we preferred it to the P.I., the morning rag. Ever since we'd arranged for the New York
Times, (the 'real' Times) Western Edition, weekday morning delivery, we'd been hooked!
For complete thorough news, you couldn't beat it. The only trouble was you needed half a
day to do it justice.
Before I could get seriously immersed in the Seattle paper, Kate and Kali began
madly galloping about the apartment. The 'flying tigers' Meg called them. As usual Kali had
started it, but now it was turning a bit too yowly for comfort, so I broke it up. Kate skittered
over to the foot of one of our dressers, and, with split second timing, leaped a vertical four
plus feet neatly onto its top, landing with all four feet on the proverbial dime. One
incredibly graceful kitty! She groomed for a moment, then looked over with her little owl
face at me on the bed and squeaked a tiny meow.
The Seattle papers coming in on Saturday and Sunday kept us at least partially
informed about local goings-on. I especially liked to catch up on how the major sports
teams were doing.Lately, the football Seahawks had been abysmal, and the baseball
Mariners not much better; but at least the Mariners had "Kid Ken Griffey" or Junior as some
called him. A Willie Mays reincarnation if ever I saw one. I'd been raised in New York
City, a long time ago (Staten Island, actually), in the days of the Mays (Giants) -Mickey
Mantle (Yankees) -Duke Snider (Dodgers) center field rivalry. Even now, despite Mays and
Mantle being genuine Hall of Famers, I thought the Duke, of my beloved Brooklyn Dodgers,
had held his own. The other Seattle team, the NBA basketball Supersonics (the only Seattle
team that had ever managed a championship) was doing quite well with some young stars
that were maturing into possible championship material.
I browsed through some other inconsequential Saturday news. Then, on page, two of
the Northwest section was the face I'd last seen dead, Davy Archer's. (The photo was one
that a social services agency had somehow got hold of.) The paper had managed to get
some background on the murdered man and written him up. Another photo was alongside
that of the victim, who was confirmed as 'David Archer, born and raised in Canton, Ohio,
age thirty-eight, laid off from an Ohio steel mill in 1988, a drifter about the West ever since.'
I looked at the second photo and it dawned on me that THAT face was familiar to
me, as well!The other man was none other than the wiry man I'd seen with the dogs and
cat just a few days earlier. Evidently, the newspaper's enterprising reporter had nosed
around, asking questions among some of the homeless on the Hill, and came up with one
Leonard Orford, who had talked on a number of occasions with Davy Archer. I wondered if
Detective Brown had questioned Orford. Even if he had, it wasn't likely he would have told
the Council.
The story in the newspaper wasn't very long but was interesting because it gave some
insights into the homeless way of life, at least as Leonard Orford described it.
"Davy was a real square shooter”, he was quoted as saying. "Wouldn't hurt a fly.
No way to figure out what happened to him, no sirree. Man loses a job he had for over ten
years, then nobody ever wants to hire him again! That didn't seem fair to Davy. It don't
seem fair to me, neither."
The reporter noted that, at times, Orford would stroke his cat that he addressed as
'Danny', or utter some remark or another to his two dogs. Yep, no doubt about it, this
Leonard Orford was the one I'd seen down near the reservoir. The article described Orford
as a transplanted Oklahoman, who'd been drifting his way westward and who had become
used to the homeless life style.
"See, I wasn't as ambitious as Davy Archer”, he was quoted as saying. "S__t, I'm
just a school dropout, but Davy, he had a high school diploma and all. Best job I ever had
was day labor for a while down outside L.A. Then that folded up when the whole defense
industry hit the skids down there...Yeah, some a them California yuppies probably sleeping
in the parks, now, just like Davy and me been doin!"
The reporter asked Orford if he was frightened by his friend's death, frightened for
"S--t, yes, I'm scared. Tell you one damn thing, Davy wasn't no kind of guy to pick a
fight or even get stinko. Someone just didn't like the sight of him, that's what makes me so
f------g mad! People think just 'cause we're sleeping in these parks we're all drunks or doing
drugs or crazy or something, hell I find work sometimes, get a little money together."
Asked if he ever panhandled, Orford was frank.
"Sure I do. Man's gotta eat, don't he? I get a bottle sometimes too, just some cheap
wine. Bet you like your nice little glass „a fine white wine, don't you?" Was he going to stay
in Seattle? Orford's reply in the article was, "Yeah. For a while anyway, long as the
weather's good. People are pretty nice here, don't look at you like you're some kinda
garbage or something. Davy felt the same way, that's why this thing really shakes me up!"
Orford also asserted that ' he’d be okay because Tom and Jerry, his two dogs would look out for him.
"Ain‟t that right you guys?" Mr. Orford asked his two canine friends, who seemed to
respond more or less affirmatively, concluded the newspaper story.
At this I laughed aloud. The reporter, Sam Williams, had picked up on the same
thing I had noted, the way Orford carried on conversations with his animals. I put the paper
down for a moment. What really was to become of poor devils like Davy Archer and
Leonard Orford, I wondered. An endless gloomy odyssey pointing in just one direction, a
totally wasted life with few or none of the comforts we who are more fortunate enjoyed?
There was an ominous uneasiness in the land, as more news of massive layoffs hit the
headlines every day. Would the ranks of homeless get even larger? Even here in Seattle,
Boeing, the city's employment mainstay, had just announced a big layoff. I had the distinct
impression that lots of folks never would get back the jobs and salaries they'd once enjoyed.
America seemed on a downward trend and it was depressing.
A yell came down the stairs from Meg.
"Want to eat now, babe?"
"Okay, be right up”, I called back.
The two cats had settled in on the bed cozily while I drank my coffee and looked at
the paper. Kali looked at me reproachfully as I withdrew my leg against which she was
resting. The neurotic cat often insisted on leaning on a human part. In summer, despite
expensive but useless flea collars, this sometimes meant flea expeditions onto Meg's or my
skin.
The last two of the seven guests were just taking their places at the table. I don't
know why but the guests usually left at least one of the chairs free at the head or foot of the
table, enabling me to play Poppa.
I sometimes found myself in this situation, on the days I wasn't doing the meal. I
usually tried to get a handle early on, as to how comfortable the guests were feeling with one
another. When there was stiffness or too many lulls in the conversation, I'd often try to act
as a facilitator, to get everyone loosened up a little. Meg said I was pretty good at this,
maybe because I had done so many things and been so many places that I often had
something in common with a guest or two. Like the New York background, for example,
lots of guests from there, though the frequency of Californians seemed the highest.
Actually, I'd lived in California too, briefly as a kid.
One of these small world situations occurred when a retired admiral, formerly a
deputy to one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon, described his serving a tour of
duty in Sasebo, Japan. When, I inquired. It turned out that he'd been there at the same time
and frequented the same hillside restaurant, the "Yumihari" as when I'd been there in 1969
while working for the Naval Oceanographic office. Moreover, the admiral now lived in
Annapolis, where Meg and I lived before I transferred jobs and came to Seattle. Small
world, indeed!
This morning's crew was pretty typical. The couple from Chicago I'd met the day
before as they headed out sightseeing. A young woman having finished a short business
trip, staying over a couple days (Women traveling alone like B and Bs, we'd learned--the
safety and friendliness appealed to them.) A young couple from eastern Washington, just
over for a night baseball game at the Kingdome, and a Texas couple, retireds, who'd been
touring around the Northwest and were heading home.
I thought about bringing up the homeless thing, but decided it was too much of a
downer. Our B and B breakfast events ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous. One
Sunday morning I found myself dragged into a spontaneous bit of chorus line dancing with
an exuberant bunch of teachers from Oregon, finishing up a meeting in Seattle. All in all,
one of the best things about the business was so many
interesting folks, each with a story. And, mainly because Meg was so perfect in the job, our
repeat and word of mouth guests kept growing in number each year.
This morning was, on the whole, routine. No one lingered.
On some occasions, if the conversation flowed, they'd be there still yakking until 11
o'clock, past the time we usually liked to start on tidying and cleanup chores.
After the guests had left, we paused a moment, while Meg had a bite of breakfast. I
told her about the article on the two homeless men, in the local newspaper, and she said
she'd read it as soon as she got some laundry started.
The old fashioned, ring-a-ling turn handle doorbell I'd installed sounded. We looked
at one another. All the guests were out, and we weren't expecting anyone. I went to the
door and opened it. None other than Roosevelt Brown.
"Detective! What a surprise, come on in!"
"Hope I'm not butting in on anything..."
"Not at all. We were just relaxing a minute. You remember Meg?"
"Sure do. The Muffin Lady. How you today, Ms. Browning?"
Meg's face lit up. She was pleased he'd remembered about the surname.
"Oh, I'm fine, Detective. You must be psychic. I was just wondering what was
going to become of those last two blueberry muffins, and I'll just bet--" she paused with a
gleam in her eye.
"Oh now, ma'am, I don't want you to think that's why I stopped by here, please don't
you believe that!"
We both reassured him.
"On the other hand, if they going begging, I think I might find just a little room for
'em. My mama taught me wasting food is a sure enough sin."
"Funny how many mamas had that same idea”, added Meg, "And there's some coffee
left, still hot in the jug." Brown beamed. It was clear he liked being fussed over a little. We
sat with him at the cleared table, as he downed the muffins and coffee. The real reason for
his visit come out.
"Actually, I'm off duty, Mr. Harmens--oops, Ed, 'scuse me. On the way back home
from the Fred Meyers store on Broadway. It's just a small one, but it's the nearest one to me
and they had what I wanted, a Chicago Bulls sweatshirt for my boy's birthday."
"How old is he?‟ asked Meg.
"Anthony's nine tomorrow. Big sport fan."
I nodded. "Nice gift for the boy."
"Sure hope he likes it. Coming out of the store I remembered about you folks being
up here near the top of the hill. Just thought I'd ride up this way and see the mountains. We
live down just south of the Central District over toward Madrona--we got some nice views
too, of the Lake, but not as good as homes up here looking west from the Hill. Saw I was
about to pass your place and just thought I'd drop in and let you folks in on some more
information developed about the murder victim--."
"Did you read the article in the paper today?" I asked.
"Sure did. We had interviewed that Leonard Orford couple of days ago, by the way."
"And you know what? I saw that guy with his animals on the way back from your
"No kidding? Now where would that have been?"
"This side of the reservoir, just down the hill on Denny, before you go up Broadway.
He was talking to his dogs."
"Yeah. He's a real character. He's a suspect too, you know. Anyone who knew Mr.
Archer's a suspect, till we get a better handle on this thing."
"I thought he was friendly with Archer."
"That's what he says, but you never know. I don't really think he's the perpetrator,
but we'll keep an eye on him."
So where did this leave us, I was wondering.
Brown went on. "I remember you‟re telling me you'd like to help if you could."
I nodded.
"Well, it just hit me as I was driving up the hill, if you could just sort of, you know,
study some of these vagrants as they traipse up and down the hill. We've established a
pattern that they walk up and down John Street a lot."
Meg had been taking all this in.
"And we go over to the Park often too."
"Now, Ma'am. Please don't get the wrong idea here. Whatever you do, DON'T get
directly involved with these people. But in your business I imagine you get out and about
quite a lot, right?"
We both nodded.
"Okay. All I'm suggesting' is that, if you hear any conversations, any arguments, see
any unusual events going on with these homeless folks, just kinda make a mental note of it,
give me a call while it's fresh in your mind. Fact of the matter is we really haven't got
diddly squat on this homicide, and I can use all the help I can get."
We looked at each other.
"Know what you're thinking. You'd be police informants. Truth is, a whole lot of
useful stuff comes into the precinct this way."
"No...not really that. Just that it's a new thing for us. Being on the lookout for clues
in a crime like this”.
"If you feel funny about it, or scared, then I didn't put it right. And you can just
forget I mentioned it. I won't feel bad at all."
Meg and I looked at each other. My wife nodded just a bit. "No, absolutely not that,
Detective”, I said. "I think we'd both be pleased if we could do anything at all to help."
"Just a matter of being observant." added Meg.
Brown relaxed a little. "You folks sure now? Don't wanna put you on any kind of
spot. But I would appreciate it."
"It's all settled”, said Meg. "How about a refill on the coffee?"
Brown accepted, remarking that he'd 'only had two cups' before leaving his home.
"Good coffee you folks got here”, he said, sniffing the aroma. "Something special in
there...?"
"Cinnamon”, Meg explained
"I'll just kinda forget to mention them muffins to my wife”, said the black cop. "She
made me what she called a 'healthy breakfast' (he made a face), and I also had to promise
not to grab any of them goodies at Broadway Market. Least I get to make breakfast for the
three of us on Sundays. I let it all hang out then, and she don't say a word. Bacon, eggs,
home fries, the works." Brown smiled blissfully as if he were smelling the bacon.
"You don‟t look that heavy to me”, said Meg.
"Did you play football, Detective?" I asked.
"Uh huh. Small college in Texas. How'd you know?"
"Easy. Your size. Linebacker?"
Brown nodded.
"Heard your knees crackling. Pretty common football injury. Mine do too, but from
skiing and falling down in a volleyball game. Stupid as it sounds I totally destroyed a
cartilage in that one...but I made the spike!"
Brown grinned at this jock talk.
"What brought you up to Seattle, Detective?" asked Meg.
"Well, ma'am, it's a kinda strange story."
"When my buddy, Michael Johnson and I got mustered out of the Army twelve years
ago, it was down at Fort Lewis. We were just two young guys with no strings on us or
nothing. We had us a real good time in Seattle for a few days, hitting the jazz clubs and
such, then we went home. Michael went on back to New York, and I flew down to Texas.
We had such a blast we told each other, let's meet up here again a year from now, see how
we been doing. We named a place to meet up on Capitol Hill as a matter of fact, on the edge
of the Central District. Well, I hit town the right day, went straight there about six p.m.,
looking around for ol' Michael. Nowhere to be seen. I sat around a while, had a couple
drinks. It got to be seven thirty, and he still didn't show."
"What a let down”, said Meg.
"Yeah. It really was. But you know what, long as I was in town, I hung around a
few days. 'Fore you knew it I ran into this cute little gal, Josie. Like they say, the rest is
history; and then, would you believe it, a year after that I ran into Michael Johnson. He'd
been in another booth the same night I was there. We never saw each other."
"Detective, that's a wonderful story”, gushed Meg. "kind of a love story in a way,
about Josie. She's now your wife?"
Brown nodded. "And of course, we got Anthony."
"Fate”, I added. "It'll nail you every time."
"Yep”, said the cop. "After I met Josie, I got me a job to tide me over. Started
taking courses in criminology at the U. Passed the SPD test 'bout ten years ago now, made
detective three years ago."
"Like it?" asked Meg.
"Yes, ma'am. Has its down days, but tell me a job that don't". He paused a moment.
"How 'bout you two, you got a story?"
Meg and I looked at each other, thinking the same thing, I was sure. In the B and B
business, you're always being asked the question Brown had put to us. There's something
about it that brings out the romantic in the guests; they just have to imagine there's a story.
And to tell the truth, there is. By now I was getting tired of telling it, but Meg, bless her
repetition-loving little heart, never did.
"Ed came into my life about five years ago”, she began. "Not exactly on a white
horse. In fact, his past was so checkered he almost scared me off. I'd been divorced several
years, and he was just out of a marriage."
"The second, to be truthful”, I put in.
"Not only that”, she went on”, he had done this and that, here and there, been around
the world and so on while I had only lived in three places, Vermont where I was born,
Virginia, and Maryland. Opposites attract, so they say, and I suppose this is an example."
"In a funny way, we complement each other though, babe”, I added.
She nodded. "We certainly share the work here fairly enough. Anyway, this beat up
middle-aged guy with all his experiences looked pretty, well, what shall I say”, she paused
and looked at me. A little grin started to crinkle the corners of her mouth. "Challenging.
That's how he looked. As if he'd be worth having a go."
Meg went on. "We began living together before too long, and we both went on
working for bureaucracies; Ed, with the feds and me with Maryland State."
"I was doing environmental studies on Chesapeake Bay. For a long time though I'd
been dreaming about the Northwest”.
"And trying to sell me on it, too”, added Meg. "Ed's quite the persuader when he
likes something. And a dreamer. Wants to try everything."
She had it pretty right, I thought, but kept quiet. "When he got a job offer in Seattle
four years ago, I had a bit of a quandary”, said Meg. "Did I want to give up my safe but dull
future in Maryland, or come out here like a pioneer?
"She took the risk." I said. "Only catch was I had to make an honest broad out of
her. So we got hitched."
"In the back of my mind I'd always wanted to start a business”, Meg went on. "And
I love old houses so a B and B seemed perfect when we found this place."
"And the rest, as you said, Detective, is history”, I concluded.
"And Ed, you got into it after you retired, I 'member you saying'?" said the cop.
"Yes, but all my weekends before then, I'd helped out. There's always something to
do in a business like this. You know the saying about an old house?" I asked.
Brown shook his head.
"Very little works except the owner. I'm always having to fix things."
. Guess now's your busiest time, having people in the house at all times."
"Ninety-eight percent occupancy for June”, said Meg.
"Mm--mm”, the cop shook his head. "Don't know if I'd care much for that. My job,
I kind of like to leave it behind if I can."
"Homicide, sure”, I said. "Mostly though we meet happy people...seeing that poor
devil the other morning, just lying there so still, I'm not used to it, like I guess you must be."
"Ed, you never get used to dead folks. 'Cause each one's got a story, just like you
and Ms Browning or like me and Josie and Michael. My job is gonna be to find out more
about what happened to poor ol' Davy Archer. With your help maybe, like we was saying'."
He looked at his watch. "Uh oh. Promised Anthony I'd be getting back by now. He's got a
Little League game on this afternoon."
The cop rose up, crackling again in the knees area. He handed his coffee mug to
Meg. "Sure do appreciate it, now”, he said.
"And we liked having you drop by, Detective”, said Meg. "Stop by again, won't
you?"
The big cop promised and made his departure. I looked at Meg, noticing a wicked
little twinkle in her eye.
"What?"
"Well you finally achieved it, Ed”, she said with a smile.
"What the heck are you talking about?"
"Your secret dream. You thought you'd kept it from me, ever since I met you."
"What dream?"
"A chance to be a private eye. A sleuth. 'The Sherlock Holmes of Capitol Hill'. Hah,
I know what!" There was no stopping her now, so I just listened. "I'm going to get you a
fore and aft cap, just like Sherlock. I can see you now, sneaking up on people, wearing your
cap, your magnifying glass at the ready--."
I finally burst out laughing. "You're crazy”, I said.
"No, I really knew it all along. Every time you'd check the TV schedule for a cop
movie of some kind. You finally got your chance. Well you've been so many other things,
an oceanographer, a rubber planter, a travel consultant, a hospital administrator, why not a
detective? You can do it, right?"
Meg got serious at last. "Well, honey, I can see us helping our policeman friend if
and when we hear something, but whatever we do, let's not get into anything over our heads.
Murder's no laughing matter."
I thought about it a moment. "You're right”, I said. "Someone nailed that poor bum,
and he never had a chance. This could be dangerous."
Both sobered, we got on with our chores.
Chapter 5
I eased my old Mazda pickup onto Twelfth Avenue heading south, my destination,
the Kingdome. We'd finished up a house load of chores, the guests had departed and the
Mariners were playing a rare daylight game, a Sunday two p.m. start. The kid still in me
leaped at the chance to go see a major league baseball game. As I cruised down the long,
gradual south slope off the Hill, Mt. Ranier loomed up, sun glinting off its snow. It
dominated the whole horizon. What a mountain!
Lucky for me, the Prince was located close enough to the Dome for me to be able to
reach a no pay parking spot in the International District within ten minutes, walk another ten
minutes and still make the opening pitch in less than half an hour from leaving the house.
I hotfooted it down King Street, enjoying the myriad, colorful shops, grocery stores
and restaurants in the District, Seattle's version of Chinatown. It was Chinese in character,
but with a strong Vietnamese veneer over the last twenty years. A horrendous murder had
occurred back in the early eighties when a gunman named Willie Mak shot to death a
dozen of the Mah Jongg players, then grabbed the money and ran, having invaded a
Chinese gambling club in the District.
Where King bumped up against the railway yards the two old railway stations
loomed up, distinguished buildings of red brick each graced by a large outside tower clock,
one usually not working. Union Station, the older one, had been recently spared from
destruction and was slated to become a commercial arcade alongside the new undergound
bus tunnel terminus for downtown Seattle. The other building was still functional and
served as the Amtrak station.
Beyond these, the flying saucer shape of the Dome hoved into view, late fans still
streaming toward it. It was a great Sunday for a ball game, but the irony was that it was to
be played inside! My first experience at indoor baseball had occurred here, quite a shock
after experiencing wonderful old parks in the East, like Brooklyn's Ebbets Field, Pittsburgh's
Forbes Stadium (both now defunct) and Wrigley Field in Chicago. The garish colors, the
reverberating sounds inside the concrete, the no-frills Kingdome seemed like some vastly
enlarged electronic game, instead of baseball. But what the hell. Griffey would be out there
in centerfield, and my heart felt like a twelve year old‟s again!
I got a five-dollar general admission seat that offered a plenty good enough view for
me, not too far down the left field line from third base. From my seat I could see the starting
pitcher, Rick Sutcliffe of the Orioles, warming up. Crafty bearded veteran, he looked sharp,
working on cutting those corners with his curve ball. My eyes strayed to the right toward
the stands behind third base. 'Well for Pete's sake,' I thought, 'there's Forsythe!' I really was
surprised because he seemed anything but a baseball fan to me. As I watched, I could see
him engaged in conversation with two other people, the three of them in box seats just off
third base. The couple with him was well-dressed, affluent looking folks in their forties, it
appeared to me through my binoculars. I studied Forsythe's face for a moment, as he
conversed. The guy was so smooth that, for the life of me, his animation, or lack of it, was
virtually no different than it had been at the Council meeting three days earlier. I finally
worked out that probably he had some wealthy clients in tow who had decided they'd like to
see a ball game.
The game was underway inside of ten minutes. Dave Fleming, the M's kid pitcher
wriggled out of a bad jam in the first with only one run scored against him, and the game
settled down to a pitchers' duel. Just as I'd feared, Sutcliffe was tough. The high point of
the game came when Jay Buhner, the M's right fielder, raced over into right center, leaped
against the wall to snare a drive, crumpled to the ground, did a somersault still holding onto
the ball, got up on his knees and tossed the ball back to Reynolds, who delivered it to
Vizquel near second base. With no outs the Orioles had been running with a little too much
abandon, thinking Buhner'd never catch up with the ball, and hoping to crack a tight game
wide open.In the ensuing traffic jam of retreating runners around the base, the M's
managed to secure two more outs and, miraculously, were out of the inning with a triple
play. First one I'd ever seen live! And even though the game ended up in a two to nothing
loss, I felt rewarded. Ah, baseball!.
I straggled out with the crowd, down Occidental Avenue, heading toward the turn
into the west side of King Street near where it dead ended into the entrance to the Amtrak
Station. Up ahead, the people were veering a little to the left to avoid a panhandler. I got
closer and saw to my astonishment that it was Leonard Orford. The two dogs were with
him, but not the cat. I felt in my pocket and came up with four bits, dumping the two
quarters into his laid out hat.
"Thank you, sir”, Orford recited, not really looking at me.
On an impulse, I spoke to him.
"You're Leonard, right?"
A wary look sprang into his raggedy bearded face. "I might be. Who wants to
know?"
"I do. Ed Harmens. Recognized you from the newspaper story."
"Yeah?"
"That's right. I'm the one who found Davy Archer."
Some look I couldn't fathom flickered through Orford's red-lined hazel eyes. He said
nothing.
"Just wanted to tell you how bad I felt finding the poor guy."
Orford nodded but still was silent.
"I think I've seen you up on Capitol Hill. You and the dogs and your cat. Where's
the cat today?"
"What? Oh, Danny. He don't like crowds that much. I left him with someone I
trust. I'll get him later."
"How's business?"
"Could be better. Ball club lost, didn't they?"
I nodded.
"Thought so. People usually in a better mood when they win; shell out a little more
change."
"You think any more about the murder?"
"Oh yeah. Makes me really watch my ass, I'll tell ya. Don't want no lunatic slicing
me up when I'm sleeping"
"You think some other b- ah, homeless guy, could've done it?"
Orford narrowed his eyes. "Only other guy 'besides me Davy talked much to on the
Hill was William Larson. He works the crowd down near QFC on Broadway. William is a
lot like Davy. He wouldn't do nothing to hurt nobody." He paused a moment. "You a cop
or something?"
"No. Just hoping they catch this son of a bitch real soon."
"Yeah, me too. Well, mister, I'm losing money standing here gabbing..."
"Oh. Sure. Got ya.
“Good luck to you. Be careful, okay?"
Orford nodded, his eyes wandering off into the crowd to his next prospect to mooch.
Tom and Jerry had rolled lazy eyes up toward their master only once during the
conversation, but hadn't stirred.
I wended my way through the still thick crowd toward the Amtrak Station. At the
entrance to the parking lot I once again caught sight of Forsythe, at the wheel of an
immaculate white Jaguar. He chatted over his shoulder with his two guests, for all the world
a sociable chauffeur, a ridiculous image, considering his seemingly natural aloofness. He
looked around, and I thought he saw me waiting for the light to change, but his eyes showed
no recognition whatsoever, not that I cared.
Reversing my earlier walk, I was back at the truck in short order, ready to head
home. Parking where I did, underneath I-5, I was completely removed from the clogged
traffic issuing from the Kingdome area. Though it was only about five p.m., I noticed a
couple of homeless fellows already settling in for the evening under the overhead, dully
roaring interstate.
Meg listened with a smile to my account of the ball game. She thought my passion
for sports quite amusing, but indulged me in a nice way. I guess she liked the glimpses of
little boy still rattling around inside my aging outer shell.
All I'd had at the ball game was some peanuts and a 'pop' as they say in the
Northwest (not a soda, as in the East. Soda in Seattle was something you might bake with).
Meg had been simmering a savory beef stew. I told her about Forsythe and Orford while we
ate.
"What a pair of opposites”, said Meg.
"The high and mighty and the down and out”, I said.
"Wonder what progress Detective Brown is making”, she mused. "Did I tell you I
like him?"
I smiled and nodded. This was Meg's way. Liking meant repeating. The brown-eyed
beauty seemed to be in a good mood. She'd even set a candle on the table, for atmosphere.
Something told me I might get lucky later on, in our big king-sized bed...the perfect end to a
Chapter 6
I
The next morning the breakfast table had its quota of eight, so I had remained
downstairs with cats, coffee, Bryant and Katie on the tube. Morning news shows were
awfully repetitious, but they beat going to work. Especially Mondays. I'd just turned off the
TV when I heard Meg from the top of the stairs.
"Telephone”, she called. I plugged in the phone in the apartment.
"Ed?"
"Uh huh." I recognized Roosevelt Brown's resonant voice.
"Got some disturbing news."
"What?"
"Middle of the night 'another homeless fella killed. Right down by the reservoir."
"Who!"
"Leonard Orford. Poor guy was mashed like a toad on the road by a heavy vehicle,
about three a.m. A couple coming down Denny from Broadway thought they saw a dark
van with no lights leaving the scene like a bat outta hell."
"Jeez. I can't believe it! I was talking to Orford just a few hours before that. In fact,
I thought of him right away."
"That so? Where'd you run into him?"
"Saw him and his dogs outside the Kingdome, right after the baseball game
yesterday."
"How long did you talk?"
"Just a few minutes. Last thing I said to him was be careful."
"Poor guy had no chance for that. Got squashed in his sleep apparently. Not pretty.
Since I'm the officer in charge of the Archer investigation, the precinct called me as soon as
they got word. Not pretty at all, blood all over the place, his and the dogs."
"Oh no! The dogs, too?"
"Yep. Apparently Orford had tucked everyone in for the night, kind of. All nice and
cozy like under a tree 'alongside the running path. Then some big old vehicle came speeding
up on them and crushed 'em all. One dog survived at first, but the vet up there on 12th had
to put him down."
"God almighty! How about the cat?"
"Cats' a lot quicker 'than dogs. Vet figures the cat managed to leap to one side just as
the vehicle was starting to roll over the whole group. Must've all happened real fast, in the
dead of the night. Cat's got a hurt leg, but will be okay."
"Shit! It's horrible."
"Yep. This is a bad one."
"Think it connects to Davy Archer any way?"
"Don't know. Maybe not. Awful different M.O. Investigation will bring out some
more, I hope. Just thought I'd let you know what's going on."
"Yeah, thanks, Detective."
"And Ed, you hear anything you gonna call me, right?"
"You bet."
"Anything special you can remember from your conversation with Orford?"
"Not really. Said he was scared, but he really had no chance, did he? Guess he
should've stayed out of the park for awhile."
"Yeah. Hindsight's always perfect, aint it? I remember him telling me he liked that
little area down there 'cause he felt secure. Close to panhandling activities on Broadway.
And convenient for his dogs, too."
"I was just thinking about telling my wife. She's gonna be upset."
"Well, good luck. You call me now, you notice anything at all. But stay out of
trouble. Might be two killers now, out in your neighborhood-copy cat sicko, something like
that."
"You think there's much of a threat to anyone but people like Archer and Orford?"
"All I know at this point is that killing seems to lead to more killing. You be careful
now, hear?"
Brown hung up. Almost immediately I remembered that Orford had mentioned
another name, William....William? Larson! I dug out the phone book and tried to get
Brown back, but the line was busy.
I held off a little before telling Meg the news. She was still taking care of guests.
The cats, who had been disrupted when I got up for the phone call, rejoined me. I stroked
them simultaneously. I thought about Brown's news. As William Bendix, who used to play
the Chester Riley character on the old television sit-com, used to say, "What a revolting
development THIS is!'
Capitol Hill had always seemed peaceful and tolerant, but now we had two
horrendous murders in less than a week. Was it some kind of warfare erupting among the
bums? How could a bum possibly have access to a big vehicle like a van though, to swoop
down and mangle Leonard Orford?It seemed more likely that the second murder,
Leonard's, was derived from the first, but only that. Both were done in the deep of night.
Was that a planned thing? Someone just waiting for an opportunity? But why? What could
possibly be gained from killing sleeping homeless men? Maybe a serial murderer had
started operations on Capitol Hill of all places! It gave me the shudders. I suddenly
remembered the Ted Bundy murders, which had started around Seattle! And even now with
Bundy executed, his motivation wasn't all that clear.
The phone bleeped and the cats leaped up, disturbed once again. Kali gave an
annoyed little yowl, as she skulked off to check the food bowl. I decided to take the call,
figuring Meg had her hands full with the guests upstairs.
"Harmens?"
I thought I recognized the voice but wasn't sure.
"Forsythe here." As usual his polished voice was fully controlled, the words precise.
"Oh...hi." I was surprised by the call. What was up, I wondered.
"Look, I've just heard about the terrible thing last night, down by the reservoir."
"So did I. How'd you hear by the way? Was it on the radio?"
"No. Detective Brown just got hold of me."
"Me, too. So what are you thinking about?"
"I think we ought to call a special meeting of the Council. For tomorrow night if
possible."
"Might be tough. We just met last week."
"Don't you understand, man, the seriousness of this?"
This was as much emotion as I'd ever heard out of Forsythe. It got my attention,
which was probably exactly its intent.
"Of course I do. What do you want me to do?"
"Help me call a few people. You've got the same lists of names and numbers of
attendees over the past few meetings?"
"Yes. I think so."
"I'll call the A's through M's, if you'll do the N's through Z's. I‟ve already called the
other two officers of the Council."
"It's a good idea. Maybe we could get each one we contact to call one other person,
for a good turnout."
"Excellent. We have to mobilize and DO something about this. I'm trying to get a
notice in tomorrow morning's newspapers as well."
"I'm glad you're taking such an interest, Ray; can I call you Ray?"
"I prefer Forsythe. Frankly, in addition to concern for the victims and public safety,
I'm worried about the effect these killings will have on business on the Hill."
"Oh. Yeah. Guess you're right, Forsythe. Come to think about it, our B and B
wouldn't be so appealing if our guests had to worry about two killings just a few blocks
either side of our building."
"Exactly.Now I've already lined up a larger meeting room at the community
college, for seven o'clock tomorrow evening. Will you give this your best shot?"
"Sure, Forsythe."
"I knew I could count on you." He rang off.
'J. Raymond, prefers just Forsythe...' I mused to myself for a minute or two. I had to
admit, he was taking charge of things.
Chapter 7
A restless crowd of about sixty or seventy had turned out in one of the larger
community college lecture rooms. On the stroke of seven, Forsythe banged on a gavel he
had obtained somewhere. He got their attention.
"Let's get started, shall we?" the Council president urged.
This was the first time I'd seen the Council president in anything but a suit. Forsythe
looked almost preppy in a beige cashmere sweater over a button-down, tieless shirt, above
dark brown wool slacks. Of all things, tan bucks completed the ensemble. Overall, as natty
as ever, but different.
"There's only one issue here tonight”, said Forsythe. You all know what it is.
Murders. Ghastly killings, right here on Capitol Hill. Still, what are we going to do about
it? Art Ditka has some ideas, and I want you to listen closely."
Art Ditka, no relation to the football player, was almost as big. Art was the guy who
looked after the Council's safety and traffic concerns on the Hill. A crew cut ex-Marine, he
was just the kind of guy we needed under these circumstances. Art had a gruff, no nonsense
kind of delivery.
"I just came over directly from the East Precinct”, he said crisply. "Lieutenant
Anderson and I shared some thoughts on this.He liked mine about expanding the
Neighborhood Block Watch I've been developing on Capitol Hill for the last three years.
Only bigger and better. We'll need at least one designated Block Watch contact in every
apartment building on the Hill, if we can get 'em. And the principal contact can develop
others in the building from there. But it'll take some legwork, people. I'm passing around a
sign up sheet for volunteers, both for their own building and to solicit others nearby."
Nora Burkhart raised her hand. Ditka saw her out of the corner of his eye.
"Yeah, Nora."
"What would a volunteer actually DO, Mr. Ditka?"
"Simple. Keep your eyes and ears open, and not just around your building and
immediate block areas.What the police need most of all is more people feeding 'em
information from wherever they happen to be, including the parks. If they see anything out
of the ordinary, they should call this police number, 321-9000. It's a special number East
Precinct has set up to get you through faster. It has call waiting so the officer down there
monitoring it can pick your call up right away. Lieutenant more or less guarantees there'll
be a car or a bicycle officer to your door inside of ten minutes."
Seattle had been one of the pioneer cities initiating bike cops, usually a pair of fresh
faced, firm-thighed youngish officers who seemed ubiquitous as they zipped around the Hill
constantly. Their yellow and black uniforms matched their sporty trail bikes' colors. They
reminded me of bees, good ones not stingers, buzzing about the area.
"Anything else, Nora?"
The Council's secretary declined.
"That was my idea”, Ditka resumed. "The message I got from the lieutenant is
this-NO HEROES! Things are ugly enough without some stupid jerk thinking he's going to
make a citizen arrest, follow someone or break something up on his own. Just get to a
phone, or seek out a cop pronto and get the professionals involved. You all got it?"
Some nods were produced. Nobody was feeling heroic.
"Any leads Lieutenant Anderson could divulge?" asked Forsythe.
"Nah. He wouldn't tell ME, anyway. One thing he did say, he's assigned an extra
man to help his detective pursue the investigations of both murders."
"Is Detective Brown still the main man?" I asked.
"Yeah. Pretty sure, anyway. I know Brown from some other stuff. I got a lot of
respect for him. Any other questions, people?" Ditka looked around the room.
"Should we just not go out at night at all, Mr. Ditka?" worried a sweet faced old lady.
I'd never seen her at any of the Council meetings. Ditka's face softened. Maybe she
reminded him of his mom.
"Now, Ma'am”, he said in a gentler voice than before. "I'm probably as scared of
what's out there as you are, but that doesn't mean we give up our city to fear, either. Just be
prudent is the thing. Nobody, but nobody, should be wandering around the parks late at
night, especially alone. If any of you are in the habit of doing that, cut it out right now."
Ditka's eyes seemed to linger on the effeminate sounding fellow I'd seen at our regular
meeting last week.
"So far the target is definitely these homeless guys. Doesn't mean it couldn't spread,
but my guess is the killer or killers are interested in vagrants, panhandlers, winos for some
reason the police don't know yet. Beats me, too. Just don't let fear get control of you. And
get active in this expanded Neighborhood Watch Program." He paused. "Anything else,
people?"
Forsythe, from the chair recognized a hand. It was Fortunato, who had spoken up so
vehemently last week about the winos on Pike Street
"Not everyone's scared, ya know”, said the burly convenience store owner, as he
stood up. "I got a persuader right here”, as he smugly patted a bulging area under the left
lapel of his sport jacket. "Any of these bums start something outside my place, they'll regret
it."
A look of disgust and cold anger come over Ditka's face.
"You got a license for that, if it's what I think it is?"
"Course I got a license. You think I‟m some kind of criminal?"
"No. But I think it's pretty dumb to be bragging about using a gun in a meeting like
this."
"Whaddya mean by that?" Fortunato sputtered.
"In the first place, the bums are getting killed, not doing any killing, as far as we
know yet. Second place, people waving guns around for no good reason get them stolen or
turned on themselves all the time. Last, guns aren't the answer. Too many guns on the street
already. Most of 'em not used right, either."
"I need it for my store. I got a right to protect myself”, said Fortunato sullenly.
"Not saying you don't. But only for that. Don't go waving that thing around where I
can see it. I'll get the cops down on you."
Fortunato subsided, unhappily.
The crowd in turn seemed subdued now. Ditka had whipped them into shape.
Forsythe recognized Alvin Schmorr.
Little Alvin seemed more timid than ever, with such a large crowd's eyes upon him.
I gave the little guy credit for getting up to speak at all.
"It...s-s seems to me that these k-k killings are a k-k kind of symptom of our troubled
society”, he began.
I wondered if this was going to be little sad soliloquy on the wrongs of the world and
man's inhumanity to man. But quickly enough, Alvin got to the point.
"Arthur and I”, Alvin indicated Arthur Meizner sitting next to him, "are g-g-getting
hold of a key tomorrow afternoon, to get into the old Atkinson Building and see if it c-c-
could be turned over by the city immediately for use at night by these pitiful homeless
people...isn't that right, Arthur?"
Meizner nodded, then added something.
“They said maybe we could go in briefly, look around and make a recommendation.
Alvin is getting a key to the place at the City Real Estate Division downtown and I'll meet
him at six o'clock after I leave work in Bellevue.
Forsythe chimed in."Yes”, he said. "Hm, let me think. Ah, yes, Arthur, I have a
question about the Atkinson. If this idea about emergency housing to get
these people off the streets WERE to pan out with the city, I mean, how would that affect
the longer term prospect of the place being used as the rehab facility for alcoholics?"
Arthur shrugged. He rolled his eyes around, once. "I couldn't say. I haven't even
drafted my proposed position for the Council to the City yet."
Joe Fortunato's voice could be heard again.This time he didn't stand, perhaps
hoping to avoid Art Ditka's laser gaze.
"I'll tell you what'll happen. That rat-infested hole's already got some bums sneaking
in there some nights. I seen them with my own eyes. You fill up the building with this
trash, killing each other off, that'll be the last straw. Whole neighborhood will go right down
the drain.
Alvin Schmorr was getting visibly agitated. Fortunato seemed to set him off so
much he even lost his stutter. “I think it‟s about time people showed some support for these
frightened unfortunates”.
Forsythe, sitting next to me at the table in front of the group, tried to smother a sigh.
"All right, Alvin”, he said. "Is that a motion you're making?"
Alvin nodded.
Phoebe Williams piped up, "Second!"
Forsythe took the vote. The ayes had it, but a couple of nays joined Fortunato's
rather subdued, 'not me'.
Several of those present didn't vote, outsiders, curious to see what was going on. I
spotted a young fellow who looked vaguely familiar, near the back, about three chairs away
from Meg. His clothes had the look of the homeless. The beard and the greasy looking hair
added to the picture. He seemed to be uneasy, under my brief gaze. I just couldn't place
where I'd seen him.
Forsythe steered the meeting along smartly. I had to admire his efficiency at getting
things accomplished but his personality sure didn't do much for me. He seemed to be a guy
who thought out everything. The meeting, I was convinced, was meant to be a safety valve,
as much as a call to some kind of action. He'd no doubt played on Art Ditka to take care of
the action part, the appearance of addressing a terrible situation, and in so doing enhancing
the Council‟s and his reputation. It was working like a charm.
What I had thought might be a long, excitable evening calmed down quickly. A few
more folks registered their concerns, but Ditka's little talk had had a remarkably soothing
effect. Just before bringing the single item agenda gathering to a close, at a little after eight,
Forsythe asked for last comments. He looked around, and his eyes met mine. Since I'd been
feeling like a bump on a log, I opened my mouth.
"Just a couple of kind words for Art Ditka, Mr. President. Thanks Art, good job!
And maybe one other thought, too. As it turns out, I had spoken with Leonard Orford, a few
hours before he was run over. Just a few words of kindness, is what Iam saying. We can let these guys know we don't hate them, that we're concerned about them and their
safety, that we want them to be careful. Maybe give them a little change to grab a bus down
the hill to one of the shelters for the night."
Forsythe's eyes were boring into me, but I didn't care. "A very Christian point of
view”, said Forsythe in what seemed to be a strained voice. "Anyone else?"
He gaveled the meeting over.
The crowd buzzed only a little before dispersing.One of the other B and B
proprietors joined Meg and me for a moment. Dorothy was someone you'd never forget. A
large, outspoken woman with a loud, easy laugh, she had strong opinions about everything.
Dorothy's eyes twinkled as she admitted in a loud voice, “If I were twenty years younger I'd
be ga-ga over that Art Ditka! Did you see the way he squelched that big bully from Pine
Street?"
We smiled at this Dorothy-ism and chatted a moment or two before we took off.
"Did you notice the guy about three seats away from you, the one with the beard?" I
asked my wife as we walked down the school corridor.
"Yes. Think so, anyway."
"He looked like a homeless. I should've gone back and followed up on my own
words and talked with him a minute. I'm pretty sure I've seen him panhandling on the Hill
somewhere-"
"Broadway?"
"Maybe. I'll look for him down there. I'll bet he's scared, probably why he came."
"Wouldn't you be, in his shoes?"
"Terrified. I hope he's not sleeping on the Hill these nights."
We headed up the Hill toward the Prince. In these long summer days it was still
quite light and still time for whatever else we had a mind to do I could think of a few things
Chapter 8
On the way to meeting Alvin and Arthur I ran into Joe Fortunato, sweeping the
sidewalk in front of his Pine Street convenience store. He spotted me and flagged me down.
I knew he'd make me late, but figured I'd hear what he had to say. The guy might even be a
suspect.
"Hey, Mr. Harmens”, the burly shopkeeper said.
"Call me Ed."
"Sure thing Ed. How's the big investigation going up to the precinct? Catch them
bum killers yet?" Fortunato seemed almost jovial.
"Not yet Joe. Not much to go on, the black cop was telling me."
"You and him buddies, huh? That's good, that's good. We gotta respect the law."
"What's on your mind, Joe? I've got an appointment."
"No kidding?" Fortunato's curiosity shot forth like garlic breath. "Down here, huh?"
"Not far. The Atkinson."
The location suddenly dawned on him. "Oh yeah! That old flea trap down the hill on
Pike. Yeah. Funny you should mention it."
"Why's that?"
"Was just yakking a few minutes ago with Mr. Forsythe."
"Ray Forsythe?"
"The same. Now THERE'S a big timer for ya."
I smiled. "So who mentioned the Atkinson?"
"He did. Forsythe. Was going on about how if they did make an alky place out of it,
a building he owns over near there wouldn't be worth much."
This was interesting. I let the talkative Mr. Fortunato go on
"Yeah. Forsythe owns a couple of joints down here. You wouldn't think so, would
ya. Outta his class."
I nodded.
"Yeah. I already knew he owned that little second hand antique place down the
block, but I didn't know about any other stuff."
"So he's got some interests in Pike-Pine?"
"Yeah, He figures it's gonna come up in the world, 'cause of the convention center
just down the hill."
"He might be right."
"Oh man! Don't I wish! Then my store'd pick up, get a little better class of stuff in
there. Some gourmet items for these fancy pants come strolling up the Hill, maybe get me
another store--"
I laughed. "Joe, you're getting carried away."
Fortunato snapped out of it. "Yeah...anyway, Forsythe was saying he understood
about the gun thing." I must've looked puzzled. "Remember how that Ditka guy bawled me
out about mine?" Reflexively he patted the bulge on his left side under his apron. "So
Forsythe says he got a licensed gun himself. He even looked my thirty-eight over real
close”, he said with pride.
"That's interesting. He doesn't look the type."
"You probably wouldn't understand like Forsythe. When ya got a store like we do,
anybody could walk in. And he's got all them fancy antiques. Hey, a man's gotta protect
what he owns, don't he?"
Without waiting for agreement, Fortunato went on, quickly whipping himself up into
a frenzy. "Shit, I wouldn't think twice about terminating one of these creeps around here.
Me or them, me or them!"
Fortunato was getting obnoxious, and I had to move on to the Atkinson. "Joe, I've
really go to get going now."
He came back to reality. "Oh, yeah, Ed, Sure, you run along. Good talking to ya."
I hurried away, looked back and saw him resume his sweeping. I thought I heard
him whistling.
At the Pike Street front entrance to the four story Atkinson building, Meizner was
waiting. My little talk with Fortunato had pushed the time to six-ten. Meizner had been
there about five minutes, he said, adding that the door was locked. We chatted a few
moments, watching the flow of pedestrian traffic up and down the hill.
At this time of day many of the shops, a mix of funky little secondhand places,
antique shops, miscellaneous small businesses were closed. The funeral home Helen had
dealt with was nearby. The little Thai, Mex and mid-Eastern restaurants, coffee shops and
the like were very much open, as the denizens of the evening came looking for food and
drink.
Meizner glanced at his watch for the third time. "Six-fifteen. This isn't like Alvin.
He's usually early to things." Frustrated, he suddenly pounded the door a couple of times.
I started to reply when we both heard a thudding sound from inside the building. We
looked at each other.
"What the hell was THAT?" I said.
Arthur, looking worried, rattled the locked front door, once again. We tried to peer
inside the dusty window beside the door. All I could make out was a once grand foyer
leading to a singlestaircase. Apartment rooms apparently fronted right onto the foyer with
no visible lateral hallways.
"There‟s probably another door, Arthur. Did Alvin say what door the key was for?"
He shook his head. There were no more sounds from inside. I went to the corner
and spotted another entrance on the side of the building on Summit Avenue.
"Come here, Arthur”, I called. "Let's try down here."
We hurried about seventy-five feet down the sidewalk. I tried the door. It was open!
It led only to an up staircase, and didn't connect with the front foyer. We tromped up the
darkened stairs. I thought I heard a faint noise from the other side of the building, far
removed from where we were at the moment. I couldn't be sure however. When we got up
on the second floor, a passageway led us over to the main staircase. In its day, the Atkinson
had been quality, judging from the marble stair treads and the fine wooden railing, now
covered with some ugly brown, flaking paint.
We went to the stair well, looking first up, then down. Despite the half darkness, I
thought I saw a heap at the bottom of the stairwell on the first floor. I poked Arthur, and he
peered over the railing too. Neither of us spoke as we careened down the stairs. I got the
same instant knot in my gut as when I found Davy Archer, only worse. Arthur knelt by the
crumpled form. It was Alvin. A horrible, long, wailing moan burst from Arthur. He buried
his face on the body of his friend.
"Oh, God." I muttered. I considered trying for a pulse, but there didn't seem much
point. Judging from his position, little Alvin had a broken neck and was lifeless as a rag
"Arthur”, I said. "Easy, Arthur." The poor man sobbed pitifully. I knelt beside him
and patted his back. With my other hand I touched dead Alvin‟s face.
I peered at him. The face was terribly bruised. He must have fallen on his head or
neck from way up, maybe the top floor. He was still very warm, of course. The thud we'd
heard, not five minutes ago, had been Alvin! How could it happen? Had the little guy
arrived early and decided to look at some of the rooms before we arrived? Had he somehow
misstepped, lost his balance and fallen over a railing up near the top? Maybe leaned on a
busted railing? But then it would seem we'd have heard a scream. Or was there foul play?
Someone who slugged him, then pitched him over the rail? I remembered the noise I'd
heard as we charged up the side stairway.
"Stay here, Arthur. Be right back."
Arthur wasn't going anywhere. He rocked back and forth over the body of his friend.
I dashed outside, again using the side door. There was a chain link fence blocking
the alleyway beside the old brown brick building. Remembering boyhood skills, I managed
to jam my shoe tips into it and scale it, leaping the last three feet down on the other side. I
hustled down the alley and into an open concreted space at the back of the building. A few
decrepit clothesline posts, sans lines, were the only contents back here. They weren't saying
a word. A movement across a window in the building across the concrete caught my eye. I
got just a glimpse of a man passing the window, but he failed to stop or glance down. I
looked around, at the backside of the long axis of the Atkinson, as it sat facing Pike Street.
There was one rear door, and as I looked at it, it swung just a little bit open. Everything was
quiet in the building. At this distance in the back, Arthur couldn't be heard, if he was still
grieving over Alvin‟s body. I peered into the entranceway, then up at a darkened back
stairway. Evidently the Atkinson had been designed quite logically, with a front, side (the
one Arthur and I had used) and back entrance (or exit), with stairways for each. Only the
front, Pike Street entrance was ornate, the area with the stairwell where Arthur and I had
found the body.
I picked my way up the back stairs, wishing I had a flashlight, as the light from the
half opened back doorway penetrated weakly up the stairs. A flick of the light switch beside
the door produced nothing -- either no juice was on or no good bulb in place, or both. I got
to the second floor where the stairs faced through an open door, which in turn opened onto a
short passageway to another door. It was really dark now, as I slowly made my way down
the passageway. My skin crawled with anxiety. Without my wanting it to, an image of Jody
Foster being stalked in darkness by the killer in “Silence of the Lambs”popped into
my head. A urine stink permeated the passageway, and, wafting through it, a whiff of stale
beer. Bums must have crawled up here on rainy Northwest nights, waiting for a gray dawn
to resume another day of dreary life on Seattle streets.
Finally I reached the door up ahead. Light from the main interior staircase area
immediately gave some relief from the dark. Down a flight I could now hear some muffled
sounds from Arthur. Whatever, or whoever, had made the noise in the building right after
we heard the thud, was long gone. Logic told me the noisemaker had exited by the same
back door I'd just entered. Or was it only a bit of breeze, catching the door, swinging it
open, bumping it? Pondering a moment gave my heart a chance to slow down.
I made my way from the second floor down the marble staircase and rejoined Arthur.
Gently I touched his shoulder. He turned a tear-stained face up toward me.
"Arthur...steady down. I'm so sorry, Arthur. Really. I just had a look around. No
one else about."
"How?" he wailed. "How could it happen?
"Just take it easy, Arthur. Stay here and I'll go call the police."
He nodded dully.
Rather than the up and around routine to exit the building, I was able to wrestle open
the deadbolt lock, emerging onto Pike Street. I spied a sign for a Mexican restaurant
halfway up the next block, and quickly went up there. I discreetly mentioned an accidental
death, and the cashier was only too happy to let me dial 911.
Since the East Side precinct was so close, I figured some sort of police response
would be made real quickly. I thought about asking for Roosevelt Brown, then remembered
that it wasn't his shift. Plus, the 911 response was no doubt very different than one from
homicide. As I hurried back to the Atkinson, my mind raced. What the hell was it all
about? There was no rhyme or reason to these deaths. To come upon Alvin this way,
minutes after he died was not kind to the nervous system, mine or Arthur‟s. Poor Alvin had
no more nervous system. I went back in the front door, rejoining Arthur.
"Arthur--" what could I say, I wondered. "I called the cops; they'll be here in a few
minutes."
Arthur looked awful, in shock.
"Sit down, Arthur." I led him back to the staircase, past Alvin‟s body, and sat him
down on a marble stair tread.
I sat beside him, patting his shoulder.
"It's a dream”, he murmured. "I know it's a dream. But when do I wake up?" Tears
streamed down his pale cheeks.
"It's not a dream, Arthur." I said softly. "Poor Alvin‟s dead. A terrible accident, I
guess..." I didn't want to bring this any further along at the moment. Let the police handle
it, get the body out of the building. There'd be time later for questions and an inquiry.
The 911 response car was there in about five minutes. The police were solicitous,
seeing Arthur's state. While we waited for an ambulance, the cops plied us with a few
respectful questions. I did most of the talking, with Arthur corroborating once or twice. The
two young cops left us for a moment, going out to their car radio.
"Arthur, can I do anything for you? I'm sure the police will take you home."
"A bath. I need a long hot bath, “he mumbled.
"Good idea, Arthur. Just soak, relax, try to calm down, God, I'm sorry. I know you
were close..."
Arthur looked at me dully.
"You don't really understand. We were soul friends. You probably think we were
lovers. A lot of people did. But we weren't. Just friends. Alvin was special."
"I know he had a big heart."
"Yes. Too big. Do you know he gave money all the time to 'causes'-maybe twenty or
thirty percent of his salary?A famine, a flood, an earthquake, Alvin was always
ready with a check. He cared, he really cared, about humans in trouble." Tears streamed
down his face. "I used to tease him about being such a pushover for hard luck stories”, he
sobbed jaggedly.
I patted his shoulder some more.
"He was a good man, Arthur."
"I'll miss him so much. We'd talk sometimes, on the phone, way into the night..."
The cops came back in with two ambulance attendants who promptly covered the
body with a blanket...that gesture that made a death so final.
"Any chance of a ride home, officers?" I asked. I figured maybe it'd be better if
Arthur didn't have to see his friend carted away.
"Sure, sir", one said cheerfully. "No problem."
One of the cops stayed at the scene; the other drove us home. We dropped Arthur
first at his place on Harvard. I told him I'd call him the next day. As the police car
continued up the hill toward the Prince, I felt a tremendous weariness creeping into my
bones. I knew how hard this would impact Meg and dreaded telling her. The idea of a hot
bath sounded good to me, too. A time to reflect on all this horror.
Chapter 9
When I met Brown the following day at lunch, we had more to chew on than dim
sum. He had arrived before me and was already ensconced at a small side table. The place
was small, maybe eight tables. The big man was munching on some shrimp flakes when he
"Hey, Ed”, he extended his big paw. Though my fingers were equally long, his were
twice as meaty. My hand virtually disappeared in his, but still came out intact.
I asked the black cop if he'd ordered yet. "Yep. Dim sum takes a while. Ordered the
works."
"You heard the news, Detective?"
"Call me Rosy, my friends do. Yeah. It's a shocker, ain't it? And I saw on the
precinct report that you were on the scene again." He shook his head. "My oh my, don't
know how you do it. You like the Angel of Death. Sorry to make such a bad joke."
"Don't mind telling you, Rosy, I didn't sleep so good. I called Meizner, he sounded
sedated. What do you make of it?”
"Sure beats the hell outta me. I'm not the investigating officer on this, by the way.
Death's called accidental but suspicious at the moment."
"Christ! Poor little Alvin. I was fond of him, in a way. You think -- you think this
hooks up to anything else?"
Brown shrugged. "Hard to figure what it might be. Three deaths in a week or so.
Highly unusual 'round here..."
"I'll say
"Three different M.O.s though, Ed. You gotta think 'bout things like that, you get to
playing amateur cop in your head. We got no handle on any motive for anything yet. I keep
harping on that, I know, but it's important, man."
He started to go on, but just then a big round platter of the first dim sum items
arrived. Steaming hot pot stickers lay there defenseless, awaiting an all out attack. In rapid
sequence other succulent little items began to arrive, "the works", as Brown had dubbed it.
Talk virtually ceased as we plowed through the food with a few grunts of 'pass this or that,
would you'. At last Brown paused. His plate bore a few mute remains of the devastating, no
mercy given, attack on the Chinese victuals placed on our table by our tireless waiter. We'd
also managed to down two bottles each of a Chinese beer. A satisfied belch echoed from the
depths of the big man's belly.
"Scuse me. Man, that's what I call good eating! If I did that every day, I'd be a
bigger tub than I am, I guess."
"You look pretty solid to me, Rosy."
"'Bout fifteen pounds over my playing weight. Wife's on my case all the time 'bout
eating. She makes me eat salads at least three times a week."
I couldn't help smiling. Brown grinned too. Women, what did they know about
good eats?
"Now, Ed. Let me just run a couple thoughts by you, okay?"
"Sure”.
"Let's just look at the way these three people died. And let's try to figure out why
they had to die. Now this Davy Archer. Kind of harmless guy, didn't go 'round looking for
trouble--"
"I heard the other day he got into a little argument with another panhandler a little
while ago."
"Who told you that?"
"This William Larson guy, maybe I never mentioned it, but Leonard Orford said that
Larson and Archer used to pal around."
"Where'd you see Larson?"
"Helen McGuiness and I caught up with him on East Broadway yesterday. He's
scared stiff, but he talked, mainly because of it being Archer's sister"
"Larson a suspect, you think? I seem to remember that name on a list of people we
interviewed right after the Archer murder."
I shook my head. "Don't think so. They were friends or so he says. Larson's pretty
shook up over the Archer killing. But he did mention this other thing."
"Did he give you an ID of the other vagrant?"
"Just a name, Razor Dugan."
Brown's eyes suddenly gleamed. "Oh, yeah, Know THAT name. We got us a file on
Mr. Dugan. Bad dude. Been involved in some assault incidents, disorderlies. We know
about him, all right!"
"So he's a suspect?"
"Definitely. See what I mean, Ed, 'bout you keeping your eyes and ears open? Now
you done given me a little lead here."
"What'll you do?"
"Go find Mr. Dugan, or try to ask around some more, see if anyone knows his
whereabouts the night either Archer or Orford was killed. Lieutenant was talking to me
today 'bout maybe assigning an undercover cop to hang out with that vagrant population, get
some information that way." "Miami Vice type stuff, eh
Brown smiled. "That's right Ed, but on the other hand, we got next to nothing else..."
He remembered something or other and scribbled for a moment in his little black notebook.
"Just a little note to myself”, he said.
"You think that Archer got it from another bum then, a violent type?"
"Makes some sense, as a theory anyway. It's that second murder that's driving me
crazy."
"Pretty bizarre way to kill someone."
"You telling me? Squash 'em in their sleep, like a bug? Don't make no sense to me,
some big old van running over that Orford fella in his sleep. I mean, talk about motivation,
that's real premeditation, that one is. We talking first degree stuff here, not like no little
disagreement between two guys, one pulls a knife or something! That kind of thing happens
all the time."
"But not always fatal”.
"That's true, but it happens. Squashing, way off the road, going out of the way to do
it." He shook his head.
"So. Two different perpetrators, you think?"
"Yep. That's the way I'm leaning. Still haven't a clue to the second perp, though.
What did occur to me is that poor ol' Leonard Orford made the mistake of getting his name
and picture in the paper that way. Kind of brought him to the attention of the killer,
whoever that might be."
"Someone who just doesn't like bums, I guess. You know we've been hearing that
kind of talk from some of these folks at the meetings, shopkeepers, people with guns...”
"Right. But to go to such lengths to kill this Orford fella. Highly unusual. Could
have been witnesses, evidence left behind, anything. Risky kind of homicide. Not smart."
"In the middle of the night--how risky is that?"
"That's true, ain‟t it? Not much chance then, is there? We're lucky someone even
saw that old van screeching outta there. Sure wish I had even a part of the tag number on
the van."
"Any tire tracks, evidence of some kind at the scene?"
"Nothing our forensic folks giving me. Dry grass at the scene, no mud, no traces of
the vehicle that I'm aware of."
"What about Alvin? I'm still in shock about that."
Brown shook his head."Don't know much yet.The M.E. will have a report,
probably tomorrow."
"Know what, Rosy?" The cop shook his head. "I ran into Joe Fortunato on the way
over to the Atkinson last evening."
"Yeah? Been wondering 'bout that guy, if he's the one I heard about. Spouting off
about what a good thing it was these poor souls were getting killed."
"That's him. Ditka put him down pretty good, though."
"You were saying?"
"He was out there in front of his store so I talked with him a few minutes."
"He still acting" like a jerk?"
"Sort of. Bragging about his gun again, how he'd be able to kill someone without a
second thought kind of stuff."
"Would you consider him a suspect, you in my shoes, Ed?"
I had to think a minute. "Maybe. But he talks so much. Not the smartest murderer,
if he is one."
"What else Mr. Fortunato have to say?"
"He was all pumped up about Forsythe stopping to talk with him."
"Yeah. Know the type. Love it when someone important notices 'em."
"You got it."
"Old 'J Ray', huh? That's what the Lieutenant calls our Mr. Forsythe."
"With his thousand dollar outfits."
Brown chuckled, nodding his head. "So what did these two unlikely folks talk about,
you think?"
"Joe was saying how Forsythe owns property down that way, concerned about the
"Hm. Makes sense I guess."
"Also. Forsythe's got a 'gat', as Fortunato put it."
"Don't surprise me either. Licensed, for sure. Tell me more about what happened at
the Atkinson."
"I got there late. Arthur'd been there a while already. We were just kind of standing
around, wondering where Alvin was when we heard this noise, inside. Now that I know
what it was, almost makes me sick to think about it."
"Alvin?"
"Yeah. We went around to the side. Thought I heard a noise from the far side of the
building at that point, but didn't think much about it, thought maybe it was Alvin. Then we
found him. I ran around to the back and found an open door. I dashed up the back stairs, up
to a pitch black corridor that really stunk."
The cop interrupted. "Ed, you fixing to get YOURSELF killed, you keep up that
kind of foolishness!"
"I know, I know. Sorry. I just wasn't thinking. Anyway by the time I found my way
through to the inside hallway, everything was quiet again. Except for Arthur bawling away
down on the first floor, that is."
Brown pondered all this. "Lot of good stuff here, Ed. Potentially good, leastways.
First time anyone been around anywhere NEAR an actual fatality at the time."
"You think it'll be called a murder? Alvin, I mean?"
"Just got a hunch... Now let's think about it a little more. Fortunato told you
homeless fellas a problem, same from Forsythe. Back door to Atkinson open, smells of piss
and other ugly stuff. Here's a possible scenario, at least--"
"Alvin surprised some bum, scene got bad in a hurry."
"'Exactly. Some addict or someone up there shooting up, who knows. Alvin comes
along, surprising ' both. Alvin maybe says the wrong thing, gets himself nailed. Addict
hears you all outside the front door, panics some, grabs little Alvin by the neck, don't let go
for a while. Then gets some fool idea in his dope filled head, decides to throw the body
down the stairwell, try to make it look like an accident."
"Pretty implausible accident, that part. Why not just leave the body, quietly sneak
out?"
"Then they find the body, close the place up tight, he ain‟t got no place to shoot up
any more."
"Maybe, Rosy. Maybe. But if it's called a murder, same thing will happen, won't
it?"
"Yeah. It will. But remember now, dope don't allow for real clear thinking, does
it?"
I shook my head, glad I didn't really know the answer to that, first hand. I'd tried
grass a few times, years ago. Like Bill Clinton, I had trouble inhaling it.
"Now what I kind of like about this theory is that the perp's got a reason to be in
there. I mean with that unlocked back door and all, vagrants could be frequenting the place
all the time. And it sort of ties into the idea that a vagrant or dope head or someone lost like
that did in Archer too."
"The same murderer?"
"No, no. Not likely. Two different situations, two different perps. But both were
'bums' as most people call 'em. Motivation can't help coming back into it. Who'd want to
kill these guys? Most murders come down to domestic flare ups, power trips, money, none
of which connects up with your typical vagrant having hard times".
"And the psycho individual. Don't forget that one."
"Maybe, Ed.Could explain Orford, I guess.Come to think of it, I just now
remembered something from a criminology course I took on homicide. Prof said there's no
more powerful motive than revenge. Gotta see if that'll fit someway."
Brown suddenly checked his watch. "Son of a gun”, he said. "One thirty. Gotta get
back.Later 'n I thought. Ed, would you mind taking care of the bill?" He peeled out
fifteen dollars from his wallet. "This should cover my part. Gotta scoot back up the hill."
I said that was fine, and off he went. On my own journey back I found it hard to get
little Alvin off my mind.
"What does Brown think?"' Meg asked me when I got back to the Prince.
"He's not on the Alvin case. But he said he'd let me know more, maybe after the
Medical Examiner's report"
Meg looked morose, all of a sudden. I guessed she was thinking of Alvin. Or maybe
Helen McGuiness and her brother.
"What's happening to our nice safe Capitol Hill, Ed?"
"Wish I knew, babe. Wish I knew."
"You know Helen McGuiness is still here..."
I'd forgotten all about Archer's grieving sister from California. "Oh! You're right.
So much happened yesterday--what's she been doing?"
"Well, she went out early this morning, right after breakfast, to see about her
brother's death certificate. I let you sleep in because of what happened last evening."
"And then I had to make the statement down at East Precinct, about Alvin."
"Did you see Detective Brown there?"
"No, but I knew I'd be seeing him soon at lunch anyway.He met me at the
restaurant. He's a prodigious eater. Then we had a long talk about the murders."
"What's he thinking?"
I related to Meg some of Brown's thoughts. Normally she abhorred violence, but all
this was happening so close to our lives that she showed keen interest. Meg's mind was as
sharp as a bear trap at times, and I had a healthy respect for her sense of logic. We traded
the merits of the various theories of each murder, over our usual late afternoon attitude
adjustment session, red wine for her, a light beer or two for me. She'd invited Helen
McGuiness to dine out with us so no dinner preparation was needed.
We were still in the living room when Helen walked in about five p.m., just back
from the funeral home.She accepted a glass of wine. We all relaxed, glad for the
opportunity. A couple of guests came into the foyer, but promptly went upstairs.
Helen was bearing up well. Her brother's ashes would be ready for pick up the next
morning at ten o'clock. (She expected to be on her way back to Fresno by bus right after
that.)I offered to drive her down to the funeral home then to the bus station. She
accepted.
The three of us went up the Canterbury about six. Meg sometimes referred, only half
-jokingly, to the Canterbury as 'the scruffy English pub'. It had been our first eat out place
after arriving on Capitol Hill four years earlier, and we'd sentimentalized the joint. Usually
after she'd received her red wine and me my half pint of Hales Pale Ale, I'd clink our glasses
and say 'here's looking at you, kid.'
Meg had been yearning for some of the pub's clam chowder, and we always enjoyed
the stroll up Fifteenth Avenue. Both Helen and I ate lightly, in my case because of my big
lunch. Meg usually ate just enough to maintain her great little figure.
Helen reminisced about her brother, but not to the point of tears. I purposely omitted
any mention of Alvin‟s death. At the close of the evening, I asked her if there was anything
more I could do for her.
She thought for a moment.
"I'd hate to impose”, she said finally.
"It's okay, Helen." I said. "Really. It seems almost like I knew your brother." Helen
smiled. I went on, "What I thought I'd do is go down to that center that William Larson
mentioned. Maybe I could find out something more about your brother."
"Anything more about David, of course, I want to know that, but I wouldn't want you
doing anything risky..."
All of a sudden this sobered me up. Here I had been sticking my nose into things, an
amateur playing detective, and two people, maybe three, had been murdered. Suppose a
killer took aim at me? I wasn't exactly the hero type.
"I'll be careful”, I assured her. I could feel Meg's worried eyes on me as I said it.
Chapter 10
Brown's rumbling voice over the phone was good to hear when I called next morning
just after eight.
"Hey, Ed. How's it going?"
"Pretty good, Rosy. Tried my luck at panhandling yesterday and managed to get a
little buzz on from some malt liquor."
Brown's chuckle was loud. "Oh, Ed, you something! Aside from this little
drinking problem, you staying out of trouble? Any unpleasantness with our Mister Dugan?
"No. Actually, Dugan's been okay. Helpful even. You should see the way he gets
respect down there."
"Don't doubt it a bit. Man's got a reputation. We know that, don't we? So what you
come up with? Any leads?"
"Not really, not yet. Going back out later this morning."
"Continue to act with care, will you, my friend? Anything else ol' Rosy should know
about?"
"Well, it turns out that Meg had an interesting conversation with J.R. Forsythe
yesterday."
"How so, Ed?"
"Well she said he was talking about Fortunato's obsession with bums and his liking
for guns. And also that J Ray seemed really curious about my friendship with you, sort of
nosing around for inside info, maybe."
"Hm. Wonder what that's all about."
"I was thinking about it, but no conclusions yet. Even woke up once during the
night, which sometimes happens when something gets on my mind."
"Man, I sleep like a baby.”
“I don’t usually have much trouble but I just seem to sleep shorter and not quite as sound as I used to.”
"Now, Ed. Don't tell me you're getting old or anything foolish like that. Why you a
lot trimmer than this ol' porky boy here. You do your running and everything. Brain cells
seem to be hanging in there pretty good too”,
"Thanks. So what's new on your end?"
"Not much. My associate on the Alvin Schmorr investigation, Tony Pellegrino, he's
been doing some undercover work posing as a homeless fella down there near the scene."
"Not far from the same Mr. Fortunato's place. And did you know that Forsythe owns
a little grade B antique shop down there?"
"No! Outta his usual class, I'd say. I stopped in his shop up there near you one time.
Early in the investigation, when he asked me to come to your meeting. Nice stuff. Very
nice. Way beyond a cop's salary though."
"Right. That's where Meg was talking with him. Did your guy Pellegrino pick up on
anything yet?"
"Haven't talked to him today or seen his report from last night yet."
"It'd be interesting if Fortunato or Forsythe is involved in this somehow."
"Seems unlikely, Ed. Different types, real different. Joe's not hard to figure out, but
J. Ray puzzles me some."
"You and me both. Well, Rosy, I'd better let you go."
"What time you going downtown?"
"In about an hour I guess."
"You meeting up with your pal Razor Dugan again?"
"Yes. If he heard you say that he'd dump me in a minute. I'll probably split again
and wander around town somewhere else today."
""Ed, do me a favor okay? Lay off the malt liquor. I'm serious. Could impair your
otherwise good sense."
"I promise."
"And give me a call again. Always glad to hear what you got to say."
Brown
hung up his phone. I made some breakfast downstairs and got ready to leave. I was just
about headed out the door, when Meg came tripping down the stairs.
"Honey, could you run up to the store for one quick item?"
"Sure”, I said. "What do you need?"
"Milk. One of the guests wants some cereal, and I'm short. Should have got it with
the half and half yesterday, but I forgot."
"No problem. One or two percent fat?"
She mulled for a moment. "Two, maybe. This man's hefty."
Clad in my working bum clothes, my graying stubble on my chin, I slipped out the
side door onto John Street. Safeway was nearly deserted at 8:30 a.m., but at five or six p.m.,
it was often a madhouse.
I headed back down John Street with the milk. As I walked past Forsythe's place, I
noticed his big black delivery van, parked outside. I'd seen it often before, of course. His
Jag was there much less frequently. I had no idea where he lived, maybe he walked to the
shop sometimes.
This morning the van faced out towards 14th Avenue East. Perhaps they'd unloaded
something. Usually it was parked face inward. Something caught my eye, a little spot on
the otherwise gleaming paint job, a nick of paint chipped away. If I weren't six foot three
inches tall I might not have seen it. It was just in my line of sight, at the front of the roof
before it curved back toward the rear of the van. Something clicked in my memory, back to
just a few days ago, when I'd checked out the scene where Leonard Orford and his dogs met
their untimely ends.
I walked into the little circular driveway, past the colorful flowers Forsythe always
managed to have blooming there, to the front of the van. I stood on tiptoe and tried to get a
better look at the chipped paint spot. It was only a half inch or so long, narrower in width.
The primer paint could be seen beneath the vanished black paint. I was at least partially
hidden from the front door of the shop. I tried to envision the vehicle careening down on the
sleeping forms under the holly tree, adjoining the little reservoir near the corner of East
Denny and Nagle Place. Sure enough, the height of the chipped place seemed very close to
the height of the nicked lower branch on the holly tree, as I could remember it.
I stood inspecting and pondering. Suddenly I turned to find Forsythe at my elbow.
The man startled me, he'd come up so quietly.
"Good morning, Harmens”, he said in a low but strong voice.
"Oh -- morning Forsythe...didn't hear you coming out."
"I'm known to walk silently."
"So I see."
"Anything I can do for you? You seem quite interested in my van."
"Ah...just checking out the paint job. I'm, ah, considering getting my old truck
repainted."
"Black?"
"Um. Maybe. Cover all my scratches and dents better, maybe."
"Yes. Well, now you've had a good look, haven't you?"
"Sure, Forsythe." I was glad he was closing off the conversation. Since his height
was about five eleven by my estimate, probably he'd never noticed the nick in the paint
himself.
"I had a nice chat with your wife yesterday. Lovely woman."
"Yes. Meg's a dish, isn't she?
"I meant her refinement, especially. Very attractive too, of course." Up till now
Forsythe had seemed pretty sexless to me, so his interest surprised me a little.
"Well, Forsythe, got to go. Meg needs this milk." I patted the bag in my hand.
"Of course. By the way, interesting get up you're wearing these days. And you're
growing a beard?"
Reflexively I rubbed my stubble. "Yes. Every once in a while I get the urge. Just
starting to get scratchy." I ignored the part about my clothes.
"Well, I'm sure you know what you're doing." He turned to go back into the shop.
"See you, Forsythe”, I called to his back. He continued toward the door without
response.
I hurried back to the Prince. I went in by the front door, skulking by the guests in the
dining room. Meg was totally engaged with preparing an apple crisp and also impatiently
awaiting the milk.
"What took you so long”, she wanted to know.
"Had a little chat with Forsythe myself. You're busy; I'll tell you about it later."
"Okay”, she said, her mind back onto the breakfast.
"I'm out of here in a few minutes”, I reminded her.
"See you tonight, babe." She puckered up for a 'bye' kiss, as she called them. I
snuck back past the dining room entrance, descending the stairs to the basement apartment.
The cats bounded around for a few moments, energized as they sometimes were by one or
another of our appearances. I tossed the little rubber ball a couple of times for Kate, who
pounced upon it with her amazing quickness. After a quick trip to the john, I eased myself
out the side door. The cats stared as I closed the door behind me. They were disappointed
to see me go.
Chapter 11
I finished making the last B and B bed and was nearly ready for my foray down the
Hill. I'd already made and served the breakfast. Meg had got her first good look at my mug
when she came upstairs after breakfast.
"How'd you explain that stubble to the guests, babe?" she'd asked, reasonably
enough. When I served I always shaved; when I didn't I hardly ever did.
"Told 'em I'm starting a beard. All men start a beard every couple of years or so.
About the second week when it really gets terrible, most guys shave it off."
Meg rolled her eyes and let it go. When she saw me about to leave, in my raggediest
blue jeans, an old beat up windbreaker and scuffed up boots, she couldn't help laughing.
"Going trick or treating?" she asked.
"Very funny."
"Where are you headed?"
"Pioneer Square, Alaskan Way, down that way."
"Did you set up an appointment with Mr. Dugan?"
Obviously the teasing covered her anxiety. I took hold of both her hands and looked
her in the eye. "I'm going to be fine."
"I hope so." She gave me a big hug for good luck or maybe to inspire me to be sure
to come back for more, who could tell?
"See you later”, I said, heading for the bus stop. It was about one o'clock when I
arrived in Pioneer Square. Lunch crowds and tourists milled about busily. Some bums were
lounging about on the benches near the wrought iron pergola at the southeast side of the
Square. They looked pretty laid back, enjoying the mild afternoon. One or two would
solicit a handout in what seemed to be a casual manner. Unobtrusively I sat on one of the
benches.
"How you doing”, I said to my neighbor.
He eyed me for a moment, then grunted noncommittally. He was an unshaven--
not bearded--white male about thirty five or so, dressed in grimy Levis and a plaid shirt. He
looked away and puffed at an unfiltered cigarette.
"Seen Dugan today?" I asked casually.
"What Dugan might that be?" he said lazily. Slyly he glanced at me out of the corner
of his eye.
"Razor Dugan. Don't know 'bout any others."
"Why you want to know?"
"Got a message for him from a guy up on Capitol Hill. No big deal, just thought I'd
pass it on."
The man considered this for a moment. "You a friend of Dugan's?"
"Never even seen him. Heard a little though."
The fellow relaxed. "And you probably heard right. Give the man some slack,
mister. I do. Razor'd chew a guy like you right up, spit you out again in a minute. if he
thought you were messing with him."
"I'm just gonna pass it on and be on my way."
The fellow nodded. "I did see Dugan this morning, panning people going in that
place over there." He indicated a handsome old building to the right. Pioneer Building, I
could make out on a sign near the archway over the marble steps.
"How's business down here?"
"Ain't been too bad. Tourists shell out okay for a while, then they dry up."
"Any idea where Dugan might be now?"
"You could try his car, down there near the Coast Guard building."
"Dugan's got a car?"
The fellow snorted. "How many bums you know got cars? Dummy. How long you
been at this? Course he ain‟t got no car that RUNS. Somehow he got hold of this old Ford,
and he sleeps in it, keeps his stuff there, I guess. It don't run, leastways I don't think it runs."
"What color?'
"Light blue. "bout a '’72 or something. Big mother, got some rust on it. You'll see it;
it ain‟t going nowhere."
I sat there a minute digesting this.Then I got up and ambled off toward the
waterfront. The guy gave me a half wave. As an afterthought, he called after me, "Watch
your step, buddy”.
I waved without turning back.
On the corner of First Avenue and the Square a group of midwesterners, from the
sound of them, were gabbing. A middle-aged woman caught my eye.
"Excuse me”, she said, “Could you tell us where the Klondike Museum is?"
I could see my recent bench mate taking all this in. "Just go down about a block,
take a left, in a half a block, you'll see it."
"Thanks so much”, she said, about to turn away.
"Say lady, could you spare a little change?" I asked, trying to look beaten down
A startled look came over her face. Her expression shifted to distaste, then to
something like sympathy. She dug into her purse and came up with a dollar bill. I took it
humbly.
"Many thanks, ma'am."
I could see the fellow on the bench smiling. A big strike near the Klondike. I
continued on my way, south on First, across South Jackson. I knew South Jackson pretty
well since I'd driven down it every day on the way to work. What I'd noted in the past
couple of years was the gradually lengthening lines of the homeless men in the late
afternoon, as they waited for the opening of one or another of the men's shelters on Second
Avenue or Alaskan Way. Usually they lined up underneath the elevated viaduct, out of the
rain. Then in the mornings I'd sometimes see them straggling up Alaskan Way from the
Saint Martin DePorres Shelter, near the Coast Guard Station, headed toward fruitful
panhandling streets to the north.
Although I hardly ever saw homeless women or children in this end of the city, I
knew that the Union Gospel Mission folks ran a shelter for them on King Street. Once I did
see a bag lady, a decrepit looking old black woman laboriously pushing a shopping cart
along Alaskan Way. It was enough to bring tears to my eyes.
I ambled down First, making a right on South King and headed over to Alaskan
Way. The hum of the cars on the overhead viaduct was only intermittent at this time of day,
but would get louder and constant in a few hours, as the more knowledgeable commuters,
by-passed the usually clogged I-5, headed north or south. Before I'd retired, I avoided the
interstate like the plague, from seven to nine and four to seven. Since Seattle had become so
popular as the last western frontier of civilized living, the interstate just couldn't handle its
weekday traffic volumes effectively.
I thought it would look odd to walk as purposefully as the well dressed office
workers still returning from lunch in the area, or the snappily uniformed Coast Guarders,
headed to and from their headquarters building, so I strolled at a leisurely pace. I was
scanning the vehicles parked on the east side of the street, looking for something resembling
Razor Dugan's abode. Since there were no parking meters along this particular part of
Alaskan Way, it was popular with savvy Seattleites,wishing to save expensive
parking lot charges. When the Kingdome had an event, the area was quickly gobbled up by
parkers.A number of restaurants were located nearby between the 'Dome and the
waterfront, and the patrons also sought these free spaces at lunch time or earlier.
I reached a point a little south of the Coast Guard building, almost to the vast
container storage yards where all the containers had Japanese names on them, serving the
big cargo ships parked at Terminal Thirty. Inside the yard fence and over toward the water,
several of the huge orange cranes hovered over a vessel being unloaded. They reminded me
of a scene from the old movie made of H.G.Wells' book, War of the Worlds, where
large unearthly machine-like creatures preyed on pitiful, ant-like men and their smaller
machines. Early, crude, science fiction film! Orson Welles' radio broadcast in the late
Thirties had been even more imaginative, evoking fear and panic on a vast scale.
Finally, where the more legitimate parked cars dwindled, a few obviously derelict
vehicles started to become evident at the side of the street. To complicate things, railroad
tracks were laid out along the east side of Alaskan Way. I remembered being made late for
work more than once while a Union Pacific diesel locomotive would slowly and laboriously
move and park railroad cars of one kind or another on the tracks which crossed the roadway
to a
dwellers had to be on the lookout for railroad traffic in and around the completely
unprotected tracks.
I spotted a blue Ford like the one described to me. As I crossed the street, all the
warnings I'd had about Razor Dugan leaped into my mind. Wasn't this really pretty stupid to
be bearding this lion right in his own cave? What if he were dangerous or crazy enough to
take real harm to a meddling do-gooder playing amateur sleuth?I thought of Helen
McGuiness and kept on walking.
Inside the faded blue Fairlane wagon I could see, by peering through the windows, a
front seat area spread out with assorted piles of clothes, a backpack and a propane burner.
The back seat had been pushed down and additional little clumps of belongings lined the
sides below the windows. And there, in a hollowed space was the sleeping form of -- who
else could it be, but Dugan himself?
The man's chest rose and fell rhythmically. I heard his snores, right through the glass
windows. I noticed his tousled auburn hair, remembering Mike Walters' description of the
day before. I also noted that, within reach of the large knuckled fingers of his right hand
was a nine inch length of lead pipe. Dugan had rolled up the back window of the old wagon
to about two inches from the top for security as well as oxygen, perhaps. I tapped gently on
the window.
Instantly the man was awake. His hand closed reflexively onto the lead pipe. He
scrunched himself up a little so he could lean against the back of the front seat. Eyes so
brown as to be almost black glared at me balefully.
"Who the fuck are you?" he growled through the opening in the window. It was
plain even in his sitting position, that Dugan was a powerful man. He was clad completely
in faded Army fatigues, right down to combat boots. He could have been a soldier, except
for the white bandana across his forehead. It gave him a strangely oriental look, like
Christopher Walken in “The Deerhunter” film just before he blew his brains out in the
Russian roulette gambling house in Saigon. Dugan's face was hardly lined at all except for
deep furrows above his nose, giving his visage a fierce, hawklike intensity
"Are you Dugan?"
"Never mind me, fucker! What do you think you're doing, sneaking up me like that?
I tried to stammer out an explanation, but he wasn't about to listen.
"I know guys got killed in 'Nam doing shit like that! Who the fuck are you?" he
repeated, keeping his baleful eyes on me as he opened the tail gate of the wagon and eased
himself out. He still gripped the lead pipe.
"I won't bullshit you, Dugan”, I said, keeping my voice as steady as I could.
"Thought about it, but changed my mind."
Dugan waited. By now he'd raised up on his feet for a moment. He was a couple of
inches shorter than me but easily thirty pounds heavier. Then he perched his butt on the
tailgate, still staring at me. What bothered me most was the way he tapped the lead pipe into
the palm of his left hand.
"I'm listening"
"Name's Ed Harmens. Live up on Capitol Hill. Somehow I got myself involved in
these murders of the bums up there."
Dugan snorted. "What the fuck you talking about, mister? You trying to tell me
you're a killer? You couldn't kill nobody if your life depended on it!"
"I found the first guy's body." I went on. "Then I accidentally ran into the second
guy, Orford, a few hours before he got run over."
Dugan chewed on this briefly.
"So?"
"Then the first guy, Archer, his sister got in touch with me. Pretty broken up about
it. She asked me to find out anything more that I could."
"So you think you're some kind of fucking cop? What's all this shit got to do with
me?"
"Well I heard you had a little dispute with Archer one time." Inside I shriveled as I
spoke, imagining Dugan would explode. Instead, he roared with laughter.
"Har, har, har whoo-ee!", he whooped. "That's a good one! Mister, if I was to do
everyone I had a beef with, the cemeteries 'round here'd be full."
Then he got serious again. He scowled at me, and suddenly leaped forward to grab
the lapel of my old brown jacket.
"Listen, mister fucking meddler and you listen good. Ol' Razor ain‟t killed nobody,
see? And you can just get your ass outta here before I split open your old bald head."
This was bluster, I figured. I met his gaze and pulled away from his grip.
"You listen, Dugan! What I came looking for was information, mostly. You're a
Vietnam vet I heard..."
He blinked. "So?" he muttered.
"So was Archer. Down on his luck, just like you. Got a sister who's real sad about
her dead brother. Poor bastard made it through over there and now winds up stuck with an
ice pick in his heart while he's sleeping, up in the Park. I just thought you might be a little
bit interested."
Dugan calmed down a little. He backed away and sat back down on the tailgate.
"What's this Vietnam shit all about." he growled. "You think you've some kind of
patriot or something, just 'cause you feel sorry for some dead vet? Give me a fucking break,
mister!"
"Ed."
"Mister. I don't care about you. I don't care about this guy, Archer, whoever he was.
I didn't kill nobody, see? You can just butt out, now."
"Okay. I see. Sorry. I thought there just might be a tiny piece of human being left
inside that fatigue jacket. Just forget it. I'll get back to the sister, tell her I couldn't find out
anything more about her brother's murder. I won't even mention you." I turned to go.
I got about twenty feet away, when I heard him growl something at me. Before I
turned around, I smiled --it had worked!
"Wait a minute, fucker. Come back here a minute."
I resumed my spot at the back of the Ford.
"Been trying to get "Nam outta my head for twenty years, mister. You trying to
mess me up here, ain’t you? Play on ol' Razor's sympathy."
I said nothing, keeping my eyes on his.
"Nam was hell and purgatory all rolled up together. Everybody knows that now, but
man it sure wasn't that way when we all came home. It was worse, for Christ sake. People spit on us, leaving the airport in L.A. '’Baby burners', they yelled."
"That's why you got messed up afterwards?"
"It sure didn't help. Used to have bad dreams, REAL bad dreams, 'bout being out on
nighttime patrols again, in the jungles in the Ashau Valley." Dugan shuddered a moment.
"VA gives it a fancy name--Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
“Shit!" he spat. "Live through that kind of hell for a year, you'd be fucked up, too. I
figured once I got out of 'Nam in one piece, every day was gravy after that."
"So what happened? Between then and now, I mean."
"What you think happened? Got a job on the assembly line back in Michigan.
Foreman got on my case once too often, and I broke his nose for him. Fucker's lucky I
didn't kill him. Got another job installing air conditioning, and a customer pulled some shit
on me, and they had to pull me off him."
"Tough readjustment sounds like."
Dugan looked at me pityingly."Stop sucking up to me, mister. Yeah, 'tough
readjustment, he mimicked me. "Listen, after a while I just didn't give a shit. What I
couldn't stand was people telling me what to do with my life. Didn't matter if it was a VA
doc or a boss, anybody -- couldn't stand it. Made me want to kill 'em. In those days I had
guns, too."
"Ah, you got any--"
He smiled, a cold kind of smile. "Forget it fucker. I finally got it that I better not put
temptation around me. I got rid of the weapons and hit the road.
"When?"
"'Bout eight years ago. It ain‟t living really, but it's a life. I like it as good as
anything, I guess."
"Didn't you ever think about a woman, a family, stuff like that?"
"Shit! You're breaking my heart! I had a girl all the time I was over in "Nam. We
wrote to each other and all that crap. When I got back it just didn't work. She said I was
different. You know what, she was right! Inside of a year we were history. I didn't miss
that so much. There's always whores around someplace if you need a piece of ass that bad."
I was silent. I never expected revelations from this man. He seemed to see an
expression on my face.
"Oh, now he's feeling sorry for me”, his voice rose. "Listen, mister, don't you do
that, see! Don't patronize me, fucker, or I'll knock your head in with this pipe."
"Sorry”, I mumbled. "I wasn't--"
"Yes you were! I know that shit when I see it. I see the look in people's eyes when I
mooch a quarter or something off 'em. I hate it! But I take the money."
"What do you do with it?" I asked, curious.
"What you think? Get some food. Buy me some grass, sometimes. It's the only
habit I still got from 'Nam. Helps me get by some nights."
"You pal around with anyone down here?"
"Mister, I seen too many guys I palled around with go back in body bags. I ain‟t too
interested in friends no more. I'm on my own, that's the way I like it."
I suddenly remembered why I was there. "So you don't remember cussing out Dave
Archer?"
He shook his head. "Where?"
"Up on Capitol Hill. Near the corner of Broadway and John."
He thought for a moment. "Remember staking out that corner for a while. Guy
probably crowded me some. I didn't do nothing to him, nothing I remember."
"So that's it?"
"Why'd you leave the Hill, anyway? Was it good panhandling up there?"
"Not bad”, he smirked. “Enough do-gooders like you to keep me in grass for a
while."
"Did you leave before the murder last week?"
"Yeah, a month ago at least. Just got tired of it. Down here's closer to the food at
the shelter, anyway. And I got possession of this heap here." He patted the rusted metal of
the tailgate. "'Home Sweet Home‟”.
I decided not to ask him about 'the possession'. I remembered something. "Ah, look
Razor. Maybe I better tell you this now. Might be a black cop, names's Roosevelt Brown,
showing up here. He's investigating the murder of the two guys on the Hill. He got hold of
your name, somehow."
"What?" he roared. "Who give it to him? Was it you, you miserable snitch?"
I backed away. "Calm down, Dugan. He would've got it anyway from the guy on
Broadway I talked to. I forgot his name”, I lied. "Look, you don't have to worry. Brown's a
pretty good cop. He cares about the homeless guys. I met him when I found Archer's body.
He's okay, trust me."
"Trust you! Fucker says trust him." he scowled. "Day I trust someone like you,
mister,‟s the day my brains have left town."
"Well, I just thought I better warn you."
"Oh, thanks! You put the fucking finger on me, and then you want some kind of
fucking medal for doing it!"
"Wait a minute--"
"No you wait, mother fucker! You come down here, try to wiggle me around, then
walk away back to your comfortable place never think no more about it."
"I told you. I'm trying to track down some more information on the murders."
"Sure. The little amateur cop!" He thought for a moment. "Shit! If you had any
real guts you'd go after it all the way."
"What do you mean?"
"'Stead of that pitiful get up, you'd really look mean. Walk the streets for a while.
Put yourself in some of these poor bastards' shoes. That's the only way anyone down here'd
trust you."
"Become a bum?"
"Become a bum?" he mimicked me. "Yeah, fucker. Become a bum for a while. See
what it really feels like. Tell you what. If you did something like that I'd take you out for a
day or two. Do some panning downtown. Meet some guys. We'd see how good an actor
you really are. Tell you one thing, you gonna have to improve a lot. You'd never have
fooled old Razor in a million years."
I stared at him. He was calling my bluff.
"Kinda blows your little middle class mind, don't it fucker?" he sneered. "Just get
the fuck outta here, mister. What was your name? Ed. Go on, Ed. Go back to your happy
little home, and don't come back sneaking up and bothering me again, hear? Or I'll beat the
living crap outta you next time."
I saw the bluster spitting out again. For some reason I wasn't scared. I just got mad.
"Go fuck yourself Dugan”, I said quietly. "You don't scare me. I could do it."
A little bit of light came into Dugan's eyes. "Well, son of a bitch”, he muttered.
"Mr. do-gooder, middle class Ed found him some guts all of a sudden." He actually smiled.
"Okay, fucker. You got a deal. You show up here at the car 'bout 9:30 tomorrow morning.
We'll see how good your guts hold up overnight. Now you'll go back and tell the little wifey
'bout how you stood up to old Razor."
I said nothing.
"If she's got any sense, she'll call you a fool. But ol' Razor'll do it. I'll go with you,
maybe two days. You still want the deal?"
I gulped. What the hell was I doing? "Okay. Deal." I put out my hand.
He looked at it for a second or two. Finally he shook it. "See you tomorrow,
fucker”, he said.
Chapter 12
Dugan was right about one thing. When I arrived home and told her, Meg thought
the whole idea was absurd.
"I don't believe it”, she said, dark eyes flashing. "You must be crazy! I knew those
TV cop shows would rot your brains out eventually."
I decided to let her rant on. It's pointless to get in the way of a runaway train.
Sooner or later it'll come to a stop and you can check for damage.
"Even your friend, the cop, told you it's a bad idea. You must have a death wish
problem or something."
"Look”, I got my word in edgewise, and then a few more. "I care about this. Brown
admitted he's got next to nothing to go on. He said I turned up one lead for him already. I
think I can help."
"How, by getting your own head cracked open by some wino? Mark my words,
darling, you'll regret this."
I always knew I was in trouble when she slid out the word darling.
"You don't owe these men anything." She went on. "Let the police do their jobs.
You're a skinny, middle aged innkeeper, that's what you are. God knows why sometimes,
but I love you. I want to keep that beat-up old body around for a while. Sometimes it's
useful."
These remarks could have drawn a saucy response, but, for once, the sexist piglet
still barely alive in me kept quiet."I'm not stupid, babe”, I said. "You think I'd go looking
for trouble?"
Not listening, she raged on. "And another thing. You're beginning to resemble the
stuff Kali vomits up!"
I smothered a smile. Kali, the neurotic cat, had a bad habit of bolting down her food
sometimes, especially after her first morning visit to the replenished food bowl, and
promptly regurgitating it.
"How do you think you're going to look to any guests I have to introduce you to?
Prince Edward, hah! You look more like Freddy the Tramp. This is beginning to affect
business, you fool!"
Somehow I had to slow this tirade down.
"I promised Helen I'd do something. And what about Alvin? You said you felt bad
about him, too."
She finally softened her gaze and her tongue. "Oh honey...I do feel bad, about all of
it, all those poor men. But do you really think you could do anything that could help?
You're not a cop or a hero. Just MY hero. That's enough." She moved forward for a clinch.
Her soft warm body felt wonderful.
She turned her face up to be kissed, eyes already closed. They flickered open for an
instant when my two-day stubble grazed her chin, but closed again.
Having got past the outraged wife problem, I didn't think I'd press my luck any
further by telling Rosy Brown of my upcoming date with Razor Dugan. I did, however, try
to give myself a little reality check.
It was true that I wanted to help out the investigation since I found myself so
strangely entangled in it. Also true that I had kind feelings for Helen McGuiness, Davy
Archer's sister. And the death of Alvin Schmorr, I guy I actually knew, was troubling. The
only possible thread in all three murders was that, somehow, homeless men were involved.
So what better way to try to understand it all than by temporarily becoming one of them?
I didn't see that much real danger in what I was proposing for myself. Hell, if I could
survive Razor Dugan's wrath, I'd probably hold up all right with other bums, or so I told
myself. All of this seemed very rational. When I tried to dig one level deeper, I came
across something maybe a little more interesting, about myself.
Here I was at fifty-one, having lived a basically comfortable middle class life.
Hadn't had a fist fight since high school, hadn't even had a respectable hangover in over ten
years. 'Mr. Dullness' in a sense this wasn't especially easy to acknowledge or tolerate, but
there it was. Something else, though. Suppose that things had turned out a little different
for me. Suppose I'd worked at one of those big companies like IBM and suddenly got
permanently 'laid off', unable to land another job, started drinking, became permanently
unmarried for one reason or another, gone on the skids really bad. Maybe I owed it to
myself to try to understand what that was like, superficial as the experience might be. What
the hell, it was becoming the American experience of the Nineties! How do you cope with
it?
It would be a challenge to become a bum, no doubt about that, and Dugan had seen
right through me. The fact of his having dared me to do it, that more than anything had
made me want to do it, I finally figured out. Like a little kid, I found it hard to resist a dare.
I woke up early thinking about the day to come. Bed time had been very nice, with
Meg in a loving mood after our little spat. Afterwards, we nestled in each other's arms and
completely shut out the harsh, murderous world. I should have had a good sleep. As so
often happens though, when there's something really special about to happen the next day,
the subconscious is stirred up, and I slept fitfully.I kept dreaming about different street
people coming up to me, peering in my face, then getting either angry or totally mocking
me.
I'd sensed an evening of amour coming on and had cleaned up the body
appropriately, all except the stubble. Now I had to purposely get grungy again. One easy
way was to run then not bathe. I eased out of bed at six, glancing at my pretty little
helpmate. As usual she was sleeping in the raw, a habit of hers which invariably made me
amorous. She lay on her stomach, long dark hair in profusion about her head, one visible
little rosebud nipple squashed against the bed sheet. I don't know why I was so perpetually
thrilled with Meg's gorgeous, shapely bosom -- guess I'm just a breast man, basically. I
could see a few red scrapes at the side of her chin and knew I‟d get some grief later about
the beard, now in its third day. Guests will see, and smile, and know all about us, she'd no
doubt grumble. But tell me who doesn't like being thought of as desirable or sexy?
I threw on some shorts, a sweatshirt and running shoes and slipped out the front
door. All was quiet upstairs. Getting into a comfortable running stride at about 13th and
Republican, I found myself thinking about all that had happened in the last ten days or so, all
starting out with that morning's run had the discovery of Davy Archer's body. The old song,
'What a Difference a Day Makes", had it about right.
It was almost full morning light in Volunteer Park when I reached it. Early summer
is pretty amazing in Seattle for its length of daylight, from before five a.m. to well after nine
p.m.
My usual was to go up to the Park on 13th East, around the reservoir once, circling
back through the grassy area where the dogs romped in late afternoons while their owners
gabbed, behind the museum building, and then returning south on 14th East.It was one
block higher than 13th East with even larger and more imposing homes and a wonderful
view to the western Sound and mountains. It was about at the top where Capitol Hill
crested. On one of our early evening walks some weeks before, Meg and I had seen a movie
starring Tom Hanks in the process of being filmed, using as a set the wonderful, white
columned mansion at the corner of 14th East and Prospect.
Back at the Prince, it felt strange to be cooking while still so sweaty. I made the
crescent soufflé. It was still fun to knead the biscuit dough down to form the base of the
soufflé, inside the pan, then painting the sweet mustard on it, but by now I couldn't stand
eating the stuff (as leftovers). I guess I'd taken it too many times to be warmed for lunch at
work, before my retirement.
I had the coffee ready, as usual, by about seven. I heard a timid knock at the door
a few minutes later. A comely young woman was there, a pitiful coffee addict look of
desperation in her eyes. Big and blue were those eyes and they widened when they saw an
apparition of what seemed to be a bum in her hostess's B & B kitchen.
I offered her the needed potion, making some little covering explanation for my
appearance. Barbara, as she turned out to be named, informed me that she'd told Meg she
had an early appointment downtown and only wanted a glass of juice and a muffin.
"Give me ten more minutes, and they'll be out of the oven."I suggested, "Juice
now, if you wish”.
She left with her juice and coffee, reappearing about 7:30 looking very well turned
out in a smart dark blue business suit, and ready for her warm raspberry muffin and another
cup of coffee. Barbara had found time also to apply some makeup, especially around the
eyes.
What a difference! Before just pretty, now she was a knockout. By now convinced I
was legitimate, she was relaxed enough to sit for a minute to eat and finish her coffee before
leaving. I had a few minutes before the soufflé was ready to be removed from the oven, so I
chatted briefly with her.
Without a doubt, the best aspect of all in operating a B & B is the guests. The
spectrum of people we'd seen come through the Prince was truly amazing. Doctors, lawyers,
cops, actors, beer makers, bakers, and many more, including people from about thirty
foreign countries. All had slept in the Prince's beds at one time or another.
Barbara, as it turned out, was with EPA in Washington, D.C. and was headed
downtown to the regional headquarters for a morning meeting. I suggested that she'd find it
an easy walk, all downhill. I also said she might look up a couple of people I'd had some
dealings with there before I retired. She was out the door by 7:45, just about the time I was
ready to finish up in the kitchen and turn the day over to Meg.
"Phew”, she said the wife, wrinkling up her nose when I went downstairs and tried to
kiss her. "Smelly old bum! What're you doing in my bed? I'll tell my husband on you."
But I got my kiss anyway.
I lounged with some food, coffee and the Times downstairs for a while, listening to
the sounds of the breakfast party upstairs, right over our big king-sized bed. Some mornings
were sedate, this one, even minus the gorgeous blonde, sounded uproarious. Meg was
probably in good form, regaling guests with her stories. By now they were old stuff, but she
didn't mind the repetition at all. In fact, they helped add to her reputation as a great hostess.
People came back, for Meg.
The cats kept me company. They loved to have one or both of us in the big bed,
giving them an opportunity to stake out a position next to, or on our bodies. They'd already
had their usual game of 'you chase me, then I'll chase you'. These little encounters served as
both stimulus and exercise, I'd figured out. Within minutes of a tiff they'd just as likely be
curled up together at the foot of the bed.
Meg looked in on me with more coffee at nine o'clock. "When are you leaving?” she
asked.
"Soon”, I said. "I'll go out the side door."
"Someone asked if I had a rash”, she said ruefully, rubbing her chin. "I haven't had
that said to me since I was a teenager. It's embarrassing!"
"Sorry, babe."
"Well, don't count on any more snuggling till you get this silly business over with,
hear me?"
Meg was hardly ever cranky, but just now her chin hurt.Then she softened.
Ignoring the dried sweat, she gave me a hug.
"Listen to me, babe”, she said. "If it gets scary or you can't handle it, just come
home, all right?"
"I promise”, I said, sealing it with a little kiss.
At 9:10 I sneaked out the seldom used side door to the apartment, locking it from the
outside. Normally I would have walked downtown, but, figuring it for a long day on my
feet, I grabbed the Number 43 bus across the street. By now, commuter time was over, and
the fare was lower. As I fished my eighty five cents out of my grimy jeans, a little old lady
on the seat behind the driver made a face and looked away. When I sat down next to her she
shrank back, giving me plenty of room. Good, I was thinking, wretched bum gets a reaction.
The streets of downtown Seattle still bustled plenty. Late arrivals to work, office
workers dashing out for coffee or a quick bite of belated breakfast, early tourists, plenty of
life on a still gray Seattle morning.
I made my way down the gently sloping First Avenue hill to Pioneer Square, past the
pawn shops, lunch counters and other nondescript businesses, passing at one point the new
art museum at University and First. Some, Meg included, didn't much care for the building
which had transposed the facility from Volunteer Park. The huge black sculpture of a man
of metal striking a hammer loomed above.The pink granite and glass, modernistic
structure, with its angled front entrance and grand stairway, glimpsed through the
front doors, was to me pretty impressive. I noticed the steep admission charge, designed no
doubt to keep riffraff like me from lounging away the day in the place. At least the libraries,
where I'd noticed the homeless hanging out before this, had no such barriers.
Pioneer Square, really a sort of triangle, was relatively unpopulated today, except for
a few vagrants in a knot near one corner. They eyed me as I went past, but I didn't stop, or
catch their glances. On Yesler I crossed the tracks and continued south on Alaskan Way.
The nearby overhead shook and rattled with the late morning traffic. Tourist-looking types
were awaiting the next boat while snacking in the McDonald's at the front of the ferry
terminal, and they too gave this tall slender grizzly fellow the eye, as I went past.
I approached Dugan's car domicile with more nervousness than the day before, for
some strange reason. I guess I was afraid he wouldn't go through with it, after all this
preparation on my part. I was aware of new sweat adding to that already layering my body.
Dugan was awake this time, sprawled in his back sleeping area. He was, of all
things, reading USA TODAY, a paper cup from McDonald's clutched in his hand. This
struck me somehow as incongruous. I almost burst out laughing. Dugan saw me at the
same moment.
"What you laughing at, fucker." he growled, scowling at me.
"I don't know...the paper”, I trailed off.
"Think I can't read or something, huh?"
"No, no, just -- I can't explain it. Forget it, okay?"
"What you doing here, anyway. Thought I told you to leave ol' Razor alone."
"And I thought you said we had a deal. Remember? You said I didn't have the guts
to go out on the streets with you."
Dugan remembered all right. "Never thought you'd come back. Little wifey couldn't
talk you out of it, huh?"
"Never mind that. You gonna do the deal or not?"
"Listen, fucker. If Razor gives his word, Razor follows through. You got that?"
I nodded. Dugan pushed himself on his tail out the back of the car, finally perching
on the opened tailgate. He squinted at me in the strengthening sunlight.
"You're serious, ain‟t you?"
"Sure. Aren't you?"
"Never mind the smart mouth, mister. If we don't get along, the deal's off."
"I heard you're hard to get along with. I'm just the opposite so maybe it'll even out."
Dugan scowled. "A wimp, huh? I thought so. Surprised me though, you coming
back."
"Whenever you're ready, Razor."
"What's this Razor stuff? Who said you could call me that? I just use that for
professional purposes, see? You don't have to know my real first name, ain‟t no business of
yours anyway."
"Just Dugan, then?"
"Good enough for the Army, good enough for you. Been called by my last name for
the last twenty years anyway. S'all I know anymore."
Dugan stood from the tailgate and stretched, a long luxurious stretch much like that
of a big cat. At the same time he yawned, so loudly it startled me.
"Let's get going then. You look pretty good for this line of work. Scuff up your
shoes some more, along the way." He shut up the back of the wagon.
"Where we going?” I said as we started to walk north.
"Up to the Market. I got a spot there. You ain‟t getting it though, understand?"
"Yeah. But what happens? You want to just turn me loose up there?"
"What was you expecting a welcome party? Get real, fucker. If we meet anyone I
know I'll just say I know you from somewhere else or something"
"Okay."
"I gotta take a piss first. Stop at McDonald's up there."
"Want another coffee?"
"Nah. Listen, don't suck up to me, hear? I don't need no new buddy, like I told you
yesterday."
"Okay"
"This here's a temporary little deal, you got that straight? Ol' Razor kind of felt a
little sorry for you, I guess."
"What do you mean?"
"What I mean is you got more shit than brains in your head. If I was in your shoes --
not that I wanna be -- you wouldn't see me hanging 'round these streets, no sirree--"
"Where'd you be?"
"Where you think? Having a good time someplace. Drinking some good bourbon.
Sleepin' in a bed, next to some gorgeous babe. Who knows? But I wouldn't be doing what
you're doing."
"I told you why."
"Okay. I heard you. Someone‟s gotta nail that mother fucker's been doing people.
Like I said, I felt sorry for you. Show you the ropes a little so you don't get yourself killed or
something."
I held my tongue. Kind words were a rarity from this man, but to notice them was a
mistake. We made our way up toward the market. On the corner of Second and Pike, at the
multi-route bus stop, several winos were congregated, slightly harassing passersby. Some
were native American, two were blacks, one a white man. Dugan said hello to a couple of
them. One of the blacks gave Dugan a high five.
"How they hangin', man?” said Dugan.
"Okay, bro, how you doing?"
"Not bad."
"Who's your buddy?” the black guy wanted to know.
Without batting one of his auburn eyebrows, Dugan replied, "Ed here just showed up
on my doorstep yesterday. Says he knew my folks back in Michigan."
"No shit?” the black man looked me in the eyes. He grinned, showing a gold tooth
among an otherwise good looking natural set of choppers. He looked to be about Dugan's
age and was clad in the usual jeans, fatigue jacket and beat up running shoes.
"Hey man, give me five, okay? Any friend of Dugan's is okay by me."
"Hold on Jonesie”, Dugan snarled. "I didn't say nothing 'bout no friends or nothing.
Razor travels alone, you know that. I just took pity on this poor fucker, that's all. He's new
to the game."
Jonesie looked at me quizzically. "That so? How you come to be here with the rest
of the riff-raff, man? How you manage to find old Dugan here, anyway?"
"Somebody up to the center by Denny Way mentioned him. Sounded like a family I
knew back in Detroit. I think I went to school with his uncle, Mike Dugan."
Dugan took all these lies in impassively.
"If that don't beat all", chuckled Jonesie."The man tell you how we be
acquaintances?"
"No, but I can guess. Vietnam."
"You ain‟t so dumb, no sir. Dugan and me never caught up with each other in 'Nam,
but we was both in the same regiment. Both saw some action, too much action, in the
Ashau, him a little bit ahead of me."
I nodded. So did Dugan.
"So listen, Jonesie, we gotta move on, hear?"
"You headin' up to the Market?"
"Yeah, If you see Ed here scrounging up a few coins, you'll know who he is now,
right?"
"Sure, Dugan, no problem."
The others on the corner had taken all this in, in a sideways sort of way. Covertly,
they'd been giving me the eye. So far everything seemed okay.
"See you later, man”, said Dugan.
"Okay, bro." Jones winked at me as we moved on.
"Thanks, Dugan”, I said.
"I told you don't suck up to me, fucker! You're gonna be on your own any minute
now. I just wanted to get you recognized by one bunch of guys, anyway."
We made our way north on Second to Pike and turned left toward the Market. At the
southwest corner of First and Pike, a tough looking individual solicited change from the
tourists headed in or out of the market. He was about thirty, blond bearded and possessed of
hard, unsmiling blue eyes cold as an iceberg. He wore a hooded grimy sweatshirt and
surprisingly spiffy green twill pants.
Dugan growled at me, "Wait here”.
He sauntered up to the fellow, very close. He said nothing and just stared. Finally
the other had to respond.
"What's your problem, fucker?” he snarled.
Still Dugan didn't speak. As intimidation it was effective. Dugan was older, but a
couple inches taller and maybe twenty pounds heavier than his adversary.
"Beat it, mother fucker”, blond beard said gruffly. "Find you some other spot."
"This is my spot”, I heard Dugan say softly. "My name's Dugan."
Instantly the look in the other's eye changed. "Oh”, he said, pausing. "You're
Dugan, huh? Yeah. I heard you're working the Market lately. Guess I made a little mistake
here."
"Guess you did."
"No problem, though. Plenty good other places 'round here, ain‟t they?"
Dugan smiled or at least his lips did. His eyes had never left the other guy's face.
"Guess I'll go get me some coffee or something."
"You do that."
With as much swagger as he could muster, the interloper headed south on First.
Dugan turned to me. "Lesson number one?"
"Don't ever back down."
"Son of a bitch”, the Vietnam veteran actually smiled. "This fucker's smarter'n he
looks." He added a guffaw and a short whoop. "Ol' Ed might survive his big scary
"What's lesson number two?"
Dugan suddenly scowled. "Don't get pushy. Time for you to sink or swim, mister.
Go on up to Post Alley”, he waved vaguely toward the north. "Ain‟t much going on there
till lunch time, but at least it don't get worked over much, this time of day."
I knew that the Alley sliced along the hillside between Western and 1st.
"Know where the Irish Pub is?" Dugan asked.
"Kell's?"
"Yeah.They got a lunch meal they put on.Stand outside there. Get some
experience mooching. Look forlorn or some dumb thing. People cough up some coins if
they feel sorry for ya. You can make a few bucks.
"I'm not in it for the money, remember?"
"I'm not in it for the money”, Dugan mimicked. "Listen, chicken liver, you better
start thinking like you ARE in it for the money, see? If you don't do this right, someone's
gonna start getting real curious about you. And you ain‟t gonna like it."
He probably had a point.
"Go on, get outta my sight”, Dugan dismissed me. "Come back later if you need to,
otherwise let me be, hear? I got better things to do than hang 'round with crazy old do-
gooders all day."
With those kind words in my ears I headed toward Post Alley. I walked north on
Pike Place. On my left the colorful stalls backed out onto the cobbled street, their fronts or
business counters facing inward onto the jam packed, slow moving central corridor of the
market itself. Some carts did business parallel to Pike Place, obstructing traffic which
consisted mostly of tourists foolish enough to try driving through the area. On my right a
hodgepodge of shops and restaurants fronted onto the street. Here and there street musicians
were tuning up for the upcoming lunch trade.
I made the little right turn, up the steep hill toward First Avenue and then across and
into Post Alley. It was narrow, with an almost medieval feel to it and wasn't as alive yet as
the Market area. Crossing a couple of streets, I pushed deeper down Post Alley, landing up
finally at Kell's. I hadn't been there since a couple of after work blasts, long ago. Weekend
nights there were Irish folk singers or the like on hand. It was getting on toward 11:30, the
hour the place was supposed to open. Some signs of life could be detected inside. I felt
apprehensive about my new profession. Though I'd pulled it off yesterday, it now felt
strange, very strange, to be asking for handouts. I leaned up against a lamppost across from
the restaurant and eyed the few passersby.
I heard a scraping noise and turned to my left. A heavy set, brown complexioned
bum came straggling down the way, dragging a large, half full plastic bag of aluminum cans
along behind him.He stopped when he saw me and eyed me for a moment.After
producing a large belch, he started up again, moving almost past me.
"Hold on”, I stopped him.
"What you want?" he got out in a low guttural voice.
"Nothing. Just wanna talk a minute."
He regarded me impassively. he was a stocky Native American, maybe five eight,
hard to tell his age, maybe as much as fifty. Black eyes looked impassively at me. His long
black hair was contained at the back in a rough ponytail. Unlike a lot of bums and winos, he
wore neither jeans nor Army fatigues. Instead he was clad in a green parka, too heavy for
the day, disheveled and shapeless dark trousers and cheap tennis shoes
"Where do you get the cans?" I asked him.
"All over”, he grunted.
"How much you getting?
"Ten cents a pound."
"Gonna get some malt liquor?" I asked, for I could smell an old residue of the
powerful stuff emanating from him. Something flickered in his eyes. I regretted the remark
now. It wasn't only Indians who got drunk.
"Uh”, he grunted unintelligibly and started to move off. I hated to let him go, despite
the fruitless encounter. This was the kind of guy getting killed in the middle of the night,
not a jungle fighter, like Dugan.
"Wait”, I said. The Indian did. "Where you staying these nights? I need a place
myself"
For the first time, some interest stirred in the dark eyes."How come?"
"Just got here. Don't know the ropes."
"Best place is the Mission. Get there early though. Maybe four o'clock. Where you
from?"
"Michigan”, I lied.
"Never been there."
"Where you from?"
"Up north. Lummi Tribe."
"How come you left?"
"Nothing up there for me. Been down here three years now."
"Somebody told me there's gambling up there now."
He snorted. "Gambling! Hell, yes there's gambling. Gonna ruin those people.
Forget all about fishing, hunting. just clean up the casino, that's all they do now. Least I
know how to fish and hunt."
I nodded sympathetically.
"Even if I go dragging cans around now, I learned how to fish and hunt once upon a
time."
"Could you work at the casino?"
"Huh”, he snorted. "I ain‟t smart enough to do the tables or nothing. They got
enough janitors. John'll just stay here, that's okay."
"You worried about the streets at night?"
He looked at me, not understanding at first. "Oh”, he said finally. "You mean the
killing? Yeah. Some. I don't sleep in no parks no more."
"You hear anything about who's doing it?"
He shrugged. "Some crazy fucker, I guess. Somebody don't like trash like us."
"You think maybe just two guys getting into a fuss or something? One guy comes
back later and does the other one, something like that?"
The Indian digested this. "Could be. Maybe. Least the first guy. The guy with the
dogs, don't make no sense. Winos don't drive no cars that I ever seen."
"Yeah. That's what I thought too. You hear about the third guy getting killed?"
Real interest shone in his eyes now.
"Uh uh."
"Up on Capitol Hill near the freeway somebody choked this guy, threw him down a
stairwell. Cops think maybe the dead guy surprised someone shooting up some dope or
something."
"Shit”, the man snorted. "Blame everything on street people... don't sound right to
me. How you know so much about it mister?"
"Was in the paper today”, I lied, hoping I was right. "So you don't think bums are
involved?"
"Hell, all I know is they're getting killed. No business of mine, is it?"
"Just trying to stay alive, ain‟t we?"
He looked at suspiciously. "That's all, mister. Just trying to stay alive. I gotta be
going now." He shuffled off down the alley.
More people now were moving up and down the narrow thoroughfare. Lunch trade
at Kell's picked up. Between twelve and two I made $4.35, which I figured would be
enough to purchasea good sized can of malt liquor up on First Avenue. Because of its
alcohol content, the city had banned the sale of the powerful brew in the Pioneer Square
area. Too many vagrants had become fired up on the stuff and then harassed the nearby
tourists in the area.
This ban had the effect of displacing some of the homeless elsewhere like up toward
the Belltown District of hot night spots, an area just to the north of the Market. I wandered
up in that direction and came across a convenience store which sold wine and beer. The
malt liquor idea had stuck in my head so I purchased a large can of Colt 45 and some peanut
butter and cheese cracker snacks.I wandered south again. Dugan wasn't at his post and I
continued on, past the statue of the pig guarding the south end of the Market, down the many
steep flights of stairs, all the way down to the waterfront.
Now that the lunch hour was finished, some benches had opened up in the little
waterfront park up the way from the Aquarium. I swigged at my brew which was discreetly
contained in a paper bag, and nibbled at my crackers. On the next bench a homeless man,
judging from his clothes, had stretched out full length and snored loudly. Every few minutes
a jogger would pound past the bench, behind me on the sidewalk along Alaskan Way,
evidence of Seattle's craze for fitness. A grayish haze produced a glare over the water, as
ferry boats plied their way back and forth across the Sound, occasionally tooting their
navigational intentions.
After finishing off the crackers and downing half the can of malt liquor, I began to
feel quite mellow. It was funny how alcohol affected people. Some grew morose, others
hilarious, still other belligerent. I could remember at least two depressive bouts with booze
in my misspent younger days, but mostly I'd been a happy drunk when I overindulged.
The sky gradually darkened, and so did my mood. Maybe it was the malt liquor,
which I'd never tried before.For some reason my thoughts reverted back to my
conversation with Indian John, poor old bastard, trailing his bag of aluminum cans behind
him like the tail of a whipped dog. What did he have to look forward to in life? Nothing.
Not a damn thing. And here I was, play acting at being a bum, knowing full well I had a
good home, a good meal, a good wife, waiting for me, just up Capitol Hill. Life's a bitch, I
thought. I suddenly realized I was well on the way to intoxication. With a huge effort I
raised myself off the bench and went over to a nearby trash can, where I deposited the
remaining ounces of liquid.
I lurched down the Alaskan Way sidewalk, the telltale malt odor preceding me and
rolling off to both sides of my scruffy body, somewhat like the bow waves off a ship. I
looked up the hill at the massive back wall of the Market. Whereas ordinarily I would have
taken some pleasure in the climb, feeling the old quadriceps getting a good workout, right
now I knew I'd never make it. With exaggerated care I crossed the street at a light and
continued on to the base of the Market where I knew an elevator would get me up to Pike
Place again. A yuppie looking tourist couple averted their eyes and wrinkled their noses in
the elevator, giving me plenty of room.
I reduced the lurch factor a little bit, and, successfully avoiding oncoming pedestrian
traffic near the Market, made my way back to Dugan's spot at First and Pike. This time he
was there. He saw me and got a whiff of my breath. I smiled foolishly.
"H'lo Dugan”, I said.
"Whoo--ee”, he howled. "If it ain‟t old Ed, boozed up like any other happy wino."
He guffawed again, vastly amused.
"How's business, Dugan”, was all I could think of to say.
"Oh, business is good. And you look like you mooched you enough to get a buzz
on...son of a bitch, that's funny! You're doing better at this than I thought."
"Made almost five bucks”, I said proudly.
"You get any of that information you looking for?"
The question made me think, and it hurt.
"Ah, no, guess not. Talked to an Indian guy, he didn't know anything, though."
Dugan looked me over pretty thoroughly. “What time is it, fucker?" he wanted to
know. Neither of us had a watch, in my case because I'd purposely left it off. "Clock by the
pig in the market said about 3:30”, I remembered.
"I think you had enough for one day, mister Ed. You're gonna get in trouble if you
go staggering 'round here anymore. I seen you walkin' up here. Funniest thing I seen all
day."
All I could I do was smile. Maybe he was right.
"Just get your ass over to the bus stop and go on home. At least you got the hang of
it. If you still wanna do this I'll meet you here again tomorrow."
It was all okay with me. I started to head down the street.
"No, no!" Dugan grabbed ne. "That way, you pathetic wino”, he said, pointing.
"Stumble over to the bus stop where we started out this morning, when we met those other
guys."
He waited till the traffic light turned to Walk, then shoved me along in the surge of
pedestrians. "Be careful, you old fart”, he called after me. I waved back without looking.
A half hour later I was getting off the Number l0, which had come along before the
43, in front of the Group Health Building at the top of Capitol Hill. The last two blocks
down John Street helped wear off the effects of the malt liquor a bit more.When I
jangled the door bell at the Prince, I felt playful. Meg came to the door, trailing some words
off the side of her mouth toward the living room. Her eyes widened when she saw me.
"Spare some change, lady? Got a yard here needs some work?" Her face struggled
between a smile and a frown.Finally she gave a little nod of her head toward the
living room, from which voices were emanating.
"I'm sorry, I don't think so. Not today anyway."
"Please Ma'am." I went on with my malt driven pretense. "Back yard maybe? Mow
your lawn or somethin'. I ain’t et nothing all day."
"All right. Just go round to the side entrance, will you?" she gestured left. "I'll look
at the yard with you. I can't promise, though."
"Oh thanks, lady! Down that way, is it?"
She wrinkled her nose at me and closed the door. By the time I reached the side
entrance and fumbled at the lock with my key, she was there, flinging it open. She grabbed
me by the collar and dragged me in.
"Joker!" she whispered fiercely, as she pulled me to her wonderful chest. "I don't
know whether to kill you or kiss you! Stinky old drunken bum!" She settled for the kiss.
"Ma'am you gonna work me hard for that?" She burst out laughing.
"I'm just glad you're home, all in one smelly piece. Whoof! WHAT have you been
drinking?"
"Malt liquor. All us bums love it. Great buzz for the money."
"Hm, I hope there was more to your day then boozing. Let me just get back upstairs
and finish giving the standard poop on the local restaurants to these people from Texas.
They just checked in. Then I'll come down to hear the rest of the story."
I smiled. She hurried upstairs. I flopped on the bed. What a lucky bum I was, I
couldn't help thinking. Too bad there were so many unlucky folks, both alive and dead out
on those cruel streets.
Chapter 13
When Meg came back downstairs she had her usual attitude adjusting glass of red
wine in one hand. In her other she carried a glass of fizzy something.
"No, it's not your regular afternoon beer”, she said as I reached for the glass of soda.
"You've had enough for one afternoon."
The bartenders always think they know best, I thought to myself as I sipped the diet
Seven Up.
"So tell me everything. What about Dugan?"
"Dugan was fine. I think he's beginning to like me. Called me an old fart."
She wrinkled her nose. "That's liking?"
"From him it might be. He introduced me to some other homeless guys."
Meg laughed. "This is too weird. You got presented downtown! And now you're
going to tell me they bought it, am I right?" She shook her head. "Hard to believe. So you
hung around with Dugan then?"
I laughed. "He doesn't like me that much. Steered me over to Kell's Pub."
"I remember. That Irish place your old office crowd went to sometimes."
"Right. I panhandled over four dollars there."
"You old fart. Dugan's right. It's hard to believe my husband mooching money for a
malt liquor buzz."
"I didn't mention the Cheezeits."
"A man with a master's degree. It's disgusting."
"Thank you, thank you."I tipped my glass toward her."One of my finest
moments."
Meg sniffed. Then she took a sip of wine. "What else? Did you actually learn
I had to admit I hadn't. "I did talk to a Lummi Indian guy, down on his luck. He was
collecting aluminum cans."
"What a revelation! They do that up here."
"I know, I know."
"So what's next?"
"I'll try it again. Dugan said meet him tomorrow morning."
"Dugan said, Dugan said”, she mimicked. "My husband's taking orders from some
wacko Vietnam veteran and he doesn't even realize it."
That smarted a little.
"You‟ve got it wrong, 'darling'! I know what I'm doing. Dugan's obliging me, not
me him."
"Oh sure. You go out stinking, four day's grizzly on your face, in other words,
looking just like one of these people getting killed, and you're doing the controlling! Ed.
you're amazing."
"I'll try it one more day, at least”, I said stubbornly. I still think I could turn up
something."
“Oh, let's drop it, babe”, she finally agreed. "Want to hear about my day?"
"Sure”, I said, glad to be off the griddle. One of the things Meg had always said she'd
appreciated about me, in contrast to her previous husband, was my interest in her doings,
like at her old state bureaucracy in Maryland. Her place was frequently as boring and
frustrating as my federal agency was, but at least we could commiserate together.
"Most of it was just the regular things needing to be done."
I suddenly remembered that, to make up for these days out on the streets I'd
promised to do consecutive breakfasts and solo cleaning, once I got back to work. But for
now I kept quiet about it.
"But then, on the way up to the Safeway for some half and half and fresh fruit, I saw
who else but Raymond Forsythe standing outside his shop. He was supervising his workers
putting a beautiful cherry wood cabinet inside the window."
"So it'd look good from the street."
"Exactly. Well, you know me. I love old furniture, and this was gorgeous. I stopped
a minute to tell him so. He seemed pleased."
"And then--?"
"Well, he surprised me by asking if I'd ever been in the shop."
"And we haven't. That always surprised me, that you never stopped in. You must
walk by several times a week."
"I do, I do, but always on some errand."
"You went inside with him?"
"Uh huh. I have to say the man has good taste, if nothing else. He had some great
pieces in there. Wonderful chairs and tables. Some of the clocks and things too ornate for
my taste, but very impressive."
"Expensive, no doubt."
"Oh yes. More than we could ever afford."
Meg was right. Her tastes in antiques were champagne, but our budget was more at
the beer stage. Our own antiques, such as they were, were decidedly of the bargain variety,
most needing refinishing.We figured the "Prince's" charms related more to "people
chemistry" than to any fancy trappings.
"Did you stay long?"
"Oh, maybe ten or fifteen minutes."
"That was it?"
"No. As I was leaving Forsythe brought up the last community council meeting."
"That sounds like J. Ray. He seldom does things without a reason."
"Well I thought it was a little peculiar."
"How come?"
"He went on about Ditka and then about Joe Fortunato and his thing for guns. He
seemed to be implying that Joe's a reckless vigilante, sort of."
"Strange”.
"He even brought you into the conversation."
"What about me?"
"Somehow he seems to know you're friendly with Roosevelt Brown."
"Hm.
Wonder how come. Maybe he figured it out from my finding the first body."
"Or something you said about the man with the dogs."
I shrugged. Who could tell much of anything about Forsythe, the inscrutable one.
"Well even though his curiosity was fairly obvious, I kept on talking to him,
"Why? Sounds like he was pumping you for information."
"Yes, but I figured I was just as clever as he is, and maybe I could find out
something about him!"
"Did you?"
"No”, she said ruefully. "When I mentioned Alvin‟s death in the old building on
Pine, he seemed to get...cagey, I guess I'd call it."
I suddenly remembered that Fortunato said he'd seen Forsythe just before the murder
at the Atkinson.
"Did he talk about the Atkinson or business stuff at all?" I asked.
"No. Not really. Just sort of clammed up at that point."
"Did he say anything else?"
"For some reason he went on a bit about how remarkable it was that you had some
connection with every death."
"As if I were a suspect?" I burst out laughing."He's smarter than that."
"Well, my reaction probably indicated the same thing. How silly that was, I mean.
Anyway, that's about when the conversation ended."
"Wow!" I reflected. "You know the word 'nonplussed'? That's about how I feel
about our friend Forsythe."
"Oh. One other thing."
"What?"
"He happened to say, earlier in the conversation, that he'd seen you waiting for the
bus one morning dressed in a very peculiar fashion. That was the way he described it, 'very
peculiar fashion'."
"That got his curiosity, eh?" No doubt it was the first morning I went downtown
looking for Dugan.
"It sure did. Said he'd seen you out running too, early some mornings."
"This guy doesn't miss a trick. I wouldn't have thought he'd be up that early."
"Nor would I. As usual he was all dolled up. Another thousand dollar outfit."
I smiled. Meg's eye for fashion seldom slept. Interestingly, since we'd become B
and B people, her very sleek and tidy office duds, the fancy blouses, suits and dresses, had
hung in her closet, virtually unused. Now, she said with great relish, she dresses 'out of
L.L.Bean'.
"Well, babe. I'm glad you told me all that. You're quite the little sleuth yourself.
Worth thinking about. Maybe I'll give Rosy Brown a call, let him know what we've been up
to."
"Tonight?"
"No. I wouldn't bother him after hours. Tomorrow morning, before I go
downtown."
"Think you're up to fixing our dinner?"
I smiled to myself. Clearly Meg was thinking it was high time I became a bit more
useful.
"Pizza okay? And a salad?" We usually kept a spare emergency frozen pizza or two
from Costco, the local bulk place where we bought our coffee and many other B and B
items.
"All right, babe...I'd hardly call pizza a dinner preparation, but you do toss a mean
salad."
"I'll do it”, I said, rising up my somewhat weary bones
Chapter 14
I decided to walk downtown, to try to catch up again with Dugan. Angling south, I
passed the little reservoir next to which Orford was killed. I checked again the branch of the
holly tree I'd noticed before. Yep, the nick was still visible, about six feet up, slightly
browned over by now. There were no bums today at their usual nearby bench.
Continuing south on the running path between Nagle and the reservoir, I did spot a
couple of raggedy guys straggling from the direction of Broadway and the community
college, toward the empty picnic tables near the ball field. I wondered where they were
sleeping these days.
I walked briskly down the gentle part of the hill on Pine Street, approaching Joe
Fortunato's store. As I neared the place I could hear voices raised and then burly Joe himself
burst out the door holding someone by the back of the collar and seat of his pants, just like
in the movies. Fortunato dumped his victim in the gutter, appearing to restrain himself at the
last split second from delivering a kick to the downed man's ribs.
Much like Muhammad Ali, taunting a felled foe in the ring, Fortunato pushed his
chin out and shouted down at the guy, who appeared to be a bum.
"You ever come back in my store, I'll tear your stinking head off!" delivered the irate
shopkeeper. He stormed back inside, without catching sight of me, since I was still up the
block a ways.
I winced as I watched the man slowly pick himself up. That looked like it had hurt.
The fellow was slight of build, no match physically for Fortunato. Without a backward
glance he ambled off slowly down the hill, pausing at the corner of Pine and Bellevue to
light a cigarette. I caught up with him there.
"Hey buddy, you okay?" I asked.
He glanced at me, shifting his eyes downward at my own down and out clothes. I
got my first close look at this face. It was sharp and rather pinched, with intelligent, close
set, brown eyes. His nose was slightly beaked and a two-day black stubble sprouted out of
sallow skin, over most of the lower half of his face. Unlike most vagrants, he wore a fedora,
a battered gray job. It gave him sort of a Depression era appearance, coupled with his
nondescript dark trousers and a shapeless brown suit jacket.
"Yeah”, he said in a low voice. "Mother thinks he's tough."
"What happened in there?" I asked.
"Ah, it was my fault partly. I was asking the guy a couple of questions."
"Questions? You picked the wrong guy, buddy. I know the man. Joe Fortunato. He
hates bums."
"So how come you know him? You're in the same boat I am, right?" The question
seemed more than rhetorical.
"How could you tell?" I answered with a question.
"You're not fooling me mister”, the guy flashed me a brilliant smile, surprising me
no little.
"Whaddya mean?"
"You're Ed Harmens, right?"
Then it dawned on me, too. This was Pellegrino, Brown's fellow cop.
"Yes." I finally admitted. "You pegged me before I got you. You're Pellegrino."
"You got it. Don't worry about the I.D. Remember I had the info. Rosy told me to
be on the lookout for you."
"Thanks. I'm doing all right, though. On my way downtown."
Pellegrino looked around. "Just checking on our friend. Probably not a good idea if
he sees us talking together."
"Why not?"
"He knows you, right?"
I nodded.
"First of all, if he recognized you in that outfit, he'd wonder what the hell's going on.
Second, seeing the bum he just threw out talking to a guy with two identities would really
maximize his confusion."
"You're right. I'm heading downtown. You going the same way?"
"Nah. I'll hang around here till noon. I'm working twelve on twelve off next few
days. Coming back at midnight. I'm trying to get some idea of the action going on around
the Atkinson."
"Criminal always returns to the scene, right?"
Pellegrino smiled. "Any leads around here?" I asked.
"Not so far. The building where the little guy died is boarded up now, no access.
But there's a couple of others just like it, and I've been meeting up with a few vagrants,
nosing around a little."
"What got Fortunato so fired up?"
"Ah, just a simple question. I asked him if any addicts, or what seemed to be
addicts, came in the store."
"Oh my. Bet he thought you were looking for a fix or a buy of same kind."
"Yeah. Probably. It was dumb of me. I should have known better."
"And you didn't want to blow your cover."
"No. If that happens, it's all over. Word gets around real quick."
"So nothing much yet?"
He shook his head.
"Painstaking work, isn't it? Cops are more patient than I'd be."
"You live longer, my friend."
I smiled and said so long, turning to go downtown. Pellegrino‟s parting words
echoed in my ears, slightly ominously.
When I reached 'Dugan's corner', as I thought of it now, sure enough, there was the
proprietor. He caught sight of me approaching through the usual throng of tourists, seeking
the Pike Place Market experience. He immediately demanded to know the time.
"About ten, I guess”, I said. "Why?"
"Lazy fucker. Little wifey let you sleep in after a hard day? Can't you figure out
nothing for yourself?"
"What do you mean?"
"Time to hit up these folks is bright and early. You want to make any money in this
profession, you get here earlier, see?Then they're all feeling pretty good, didn't spend no
money yet. You look at 'em real humble like, and mumble 'spare somethin' for a cup of
coffee, mister'?"
"I get it. Make them feel guilty for having just finished THEIR cozy cup of coffee."
"Now you catching on. It's all about guilt. They got the bread; we don't. Oh, I
forgot, you're just play actin', ain‟t you? You got it too. You're just slummin', hanging
around old Razor for God knows what reason."
I ignored this flak.
"Told you, Dugan, just trying to get a handle on these murders."
"Oh, yeah. Mister amateur private eye. Wish I was a real criminal, in a way.
Wouldn't be hard to see through you, rough you up a little if necessary."
Dugan seemed to alternate from lashing out with ridicule and intimidation then
swerving to include some common sense. Actually, his common sense wasn't bad, it was
the rest that was hard to take.
"Ah, Dugan, close your trap, will you? You got no reason to treat me that way.
Okay, so you're a tough guy, I‟m not gonna get into a fracas with you, and you know it.
Give me a break, will you?"
"Give me a break, give me a break -- now he's Mister Whiner Ed."
I stared at him bleakly. Finally I gave him the finger. To my astonishment he burst
out laughing, a raucous howl which made startled passersby look curiously at these two
animated bums.
"Well, whaddaya know”, he grinned at me. "Had enough of Dugan all of a sudden,
huh? Fighting back. Might be some hope for you yet."
After a second or two I grinned back. What a strange guy. At times he was almost
likable.
"Now, what's your plan today, you old fart?'" he wanted to know.
"Thought I'd poke around downtown a while, then maybe go over to Seattle Center."
"Downtown's still okay, but it'll be too early for the Center. Try that later maybe.
Too many kids there though. Know how much I took in here last hour, hour and a half?"
"Ten bucks?"
"Try eighteen. Eighteen fucking bucks from these yokels. Hell, easy living in the
Emerald City, what you know about that?" He was in excellent humor.
"So where then? Later I mean, if nothing's going on downtown?"
He thought about it. "Could try over to the University in the afternoon. Grab the
Number 43."
I nodded, with no intention of mentioning how familiar I was with the 43 bus. It
didn't seem at all essential that Dugan knew where I lived, or that the B&B was right on the
43 line. I didn't see us becoming close friends.
"I used to have pretty good luck sometimes around Forty-fifth over there in the U
District. Students ain‟t all rich kids, that's for sure, but sometimes they got some heart."
"Get outta my sight now, you old fart. I got work to do here. Too many pockets full
a' change jingling by me, not contributing to Dugan's welfare."
I left him and began to wander generally south. At the very end of Union there was
an overlook of Elliott Bay, reminiscent of the East side of Manhattan, overlooking the East
River. Just as in New York, an elevated roadway, here Route 99, instead of FDR Drive, lay
between the viewer and the water. Part of Route 99 had a lower deck like the one in San
Francisco which had pancaked in the earthquake. I'd driven up and down 99 plenty of times,
glancing sideways at the backsides of office buildings and up at luxury apartments as I
drove. Remembering the bums who huddled out of Seattle's rains beneath the elevated road,
I marveled at how close the rich folks high up in the penthouses bordered with shrubs were
to the destitutes beneath, a separation small physically, so huge economically and
psychologically.
Plenty of people were bustling about downtown. At Union and Third where I rested
my feet by sitting on the tiny bench at the bus stop, I surveyed the scene for a few minutes.
Across the street, gastronomic fare quickly ranged, from the ridiculous to the sublime --
terriyaki, pizza and fine Danish pastry shops all in a row. I started to feel a bit hungry and
remembered a McDonald's just up the road on Pike. Was it on Second or Third? Couldn't
remember, so sat a few moments more.
A big Seattle Metro bus pulled up to the curb. After the mobile passengers were
discharged, a beeping began and one of the wheelchair access contraptions was extended
outward by the bus driver's controls. In due course a little old lady was deposited on the
sidewalk, ready for her day's adventure somewhere in her motorized chair. The driver
overseeing the operation looked as proud as a mother duck just producing a big fat egg in
her nest. Seattle bus drivers had a great, deserved reputation.
My eye scanned the block to the south. It was amazing the variety of apparent dregs
of society which seemed to be tossed up here. So many of the faces seemed sad and
depressed. These were poor folks, clearly down on their luck. Mostly over thirty, with lots
of black, brown (Hispanic), and Indian faces in the mix. Halfway down the block a man in a
tank top, sitting in a wheelchair, solicited handouts. On the side of the chair was taped a
small American flag. He seemed about Dugan's age. I wondered if he was Vietnam torn.
Even as civilized a city as Seattle had these numerous swirls of human flotsam. Depressed
by the realization, I got up and moved on.
I did find the McDonald‟s. Using my 'take' so far of $1.75, I got a cheap hamburger
and a small 'pop'. I sat by the window, staring out. Right before my eyes I saw another bum
arrive and set up business. He was fairly clean shaven, with long redhair, done up in a
ponytail, and wore the telltale fatigue jacket. He walked directly to the garbage container
outside the Mac's and rummaged around for a plastic coffee cup. Then he settled himself
down with his back against the wall of the place, pulled out a little pre-lettered sign asking
'Can You Help?', placed the sign and the coffee cup (with a quarter he placed in it for a
primer) between his spread legs, reached into a jacket pocket for a paperback, and settled
down for a day of low effort panhandling. Evidently the Mac's was a good location. I
wondered what this young man's story was.
I finished my food and left. Interesting, in a philosophical sort of way, as the aimless
morning had been, nothing of value was turning up. I hadn't even spoken to any other bums,
besides Pellegrino and Dugan, neither of whom counted. Was this a fool's quest? I decided
to take Dugan's advice and headed toward the bus and the U-District.
It felt funny passing the Prince, on the 43. No signs of life apparent. I hoped off the
bus at Pacific and Fifteenth Avenue East and started walking north up the long sloping hill.
To my right, the manicured campus of the University opened up. A stream of students
flowed by in both directions.
I saw a couple of apparent homeless guys near the corner of 15th and NW 40th
Street.
"What's up, Pops?" the younger fellow asked, when I paused near them. For some
reason the "Pops" rankled, though Dugan's 'old fart' had not.
"Who you calling Pops, sonny?" I snarled. "I could still take YOU, any day." The
young guy was taken aback. He glanced at his fellow vagrant a few feet away, who'd
witnessed the exchange. Both men appeared to be well under thirty, different somehow than
the hard core men downtown. The first was slender and blond, not yet capable of a full
beard perhaps, but with a light stubble around his chin, fading to his sideburns. He wore a
gaudy, but soiled, "Huskies, Number One 1991" t-shirt and faded Levis with a large hole in
the left knee. His companion had a luxuriant black, glossy beard and a roguish look in his
eyes. He was taller and burlier than the blond, who was a skinny five foot eight at the most.
Blackbeard who was clad in black t-shirt and black jeans, smiled lazily at his blond buddy.
"Aint you got no manners, Cody?" he said. "Apologize to the gentleman. He didn't
mean no harm, mister, he just gets hisself mixed up with thinking he's a student."
I couldn't really tell if Blackbeard was mocking me or not, but his buddy, Cody,
seemed contrite.
"Sorry, mister. Didn't mean no harm."
Blackbeard strolled closer.
"From the look of him our fatherly friend here's down on his luck, just like us,
Cody."
I nodded. "You got it. I don't need people putting me down, top of everything else."
"Yeah”, came from Cody. "Guess we all gotta stick together, ain‟t that right, Sam?
You always say that, too."
"So what's your story, mister?'" Sam wanted to know. "Why do I have the feeling
you ain‟t been doing this too long?"
"It's a long story."
"Hell, we got all the time in the world, ain‟t we, Sam?" said Cody.
"Just came to Seattle couple of weeks ago. Heard it was pretty nice and just decided
to do it."
"Where from?" asked Sam.
"Michigan”, I said, hoping they weren't
"We're from California”, Cody put in.
"Plenty of you guys around."
"How'd you get here -- what'd you say your name was?" asked Sam.
"Didn't say. It's Ed -- Ed Harris."
Cody grinned. "We don't need no last names, Ed. Nobody 'round here remembers
'em anyway."
"You mean how'd I get to Seattle? Got here by bus. Used up most of what little
money I had left."
"Where you been sleeping?" asked Sam.
"Down at the Bush Hotel. Real cheap."
"Oh, yeah”, said Cody. "Flophouse down there in Chinktown."
"Looked around for some work, but haven't found any. Figured I'd come up here, try
and mooch a little dinner money."
"Hell man”, said Cody, reaching into his pocket and pulling out several rumpled
dollar bills. "Take a coupla bucks off me. Get you a burger or something anyhow."
For some reason this amused Sam no end
"Good old Cody. Give you the shirt off his back. That's why we're pals, I guess."
He grabbed his friend in a mock ferocious headlock, quickly releasing him.
Cody was suddenly embarrassed. Almost shyly he said, "You know what Ed, you
kinda remind me of my Dad. And I'm real sorry I called you Pops, a while ago. Didn't
mean no disrespect at all."
"That's okay, Cody." Secretly I was touched. I took the proffered money, feeling, of
course, more of a phony than ever. "And thanks. Thanks a lot."
"So what you up to, Ed”, Sam wanted to know. "You say you're looking for work?"
"Sure. I'll work. Worked most of my life, didn't I? Still feels funny NOT working"
"What happened, Ed? I mean how come you had to leave Michigan and all?" asked
Cody.
"Wait a minute, Cody”, said Sam. "Before we go getting old Ed's life story here, I
suggest we repair to the local pub for a cool brew or two."
"That sounds pretty good, guys, but I only got a couple of bucks on me. Didn't do so
good downtown today."
"My man”, said Sam adopting a tongue-in-cheek lordly benevolence, "the party's on
us this time. Cody and me have had a pretty good morning here, haven't we old son?"
Cody nodded.
Sam went on. "Yes, some of these little pampered babies feel this tremendous social
conscience overwhelming them when they see us poor downtrodden young men, just as glad
as they can be it's us, not them, panhandling change in the streets."
My two new buddies steered me to a dark looking bar on Forty-fifth Street. It had
the appearance of a student hangout, though at this hour of only three p.m. there was hardly
anyonein the joint. A sign on the wall mentioned a live rock group playing on
Friday night.
We grabbed seats in a booth and ordered a round of brewskis, as Cody called them. I
settled for a Miller Lite, but the others preferred Henry Weinhards dark ale, on tap at the bar.
Sam was still in his grand mood.
"We have done so well by ourselves that I feel we can take a long break, resuming
our heavy duties this evening. What do you say to that, partner?" he queried Cody.
"Anything you say, Sam." Cody, clearly a follower, went along.
These two were interesting, I thought.Particularly Sam, with his gift for the
"How come you guys are working this game, anyway?'" I asked.
Sam suddenly was serious."You mean the old handout routine?" he asked.
"Yeah. I mean you're younger and smarter than some of the old timers I've been
running into."
"I'll tell you why. We don't even bother trying any more, Cody and me. Why should
we? Forget about jobs in California, man, that's hopeless. And not having an address here
is no good for anything either."
"Hey”, said Cody. "You could get a job maybe, Ed. You got an address at the
Bush, right? Betcha MacDonald's, some place like that would give you some hours”
"Maybe I'll try it. Meantime, this kind of life is okay for you?"
"Shit, man!" now Sam was bitter. "If this is all the world's got to offer us, why not?
It's all we got. We ain‟t got no skills or anything."
"Neither one of us graduated high school, even”, said Cody.
"Total waste of time”, added Sam.
"You've just been drifting around all this time?"
"Sure”, said Sam. "We're doing just fine, ain‟t we, Cody?" He suddenly yelled,
"Barkeep! "'Nother round here for me and my friends." He leaned back and smiled at me.
"What about you, Ed? Been looking forward to hearing your tale of woe."
"Well, it's not that bad. Getting worse, I got to admit, but I'm hanging in. Had a
pretty good job for years in an auto parts inventory warehouse in Ypsilanti. Nobody ever
gets that right, that's IP with a Y in case you didn't ever hear of it." I was making it up as I
went. Maybe it was the beer talking, but it wasn't that hard to do. "I even belonged to the
warehousemen's union. Hah! Lot of good that did me when they computerized all the
stuff."
"You lost your job to a computer?" asked a wondering Cody.
"That's what it amounted to. Hell, I would've learned it if they'd given me a chance.
There just wasn't enough work anymore. After a year or two there were a couple of rounds
of layoffs. And we were selling less American car parts 'cause there wasn't so many
American cars being sold anymore. Foreign car parts got to be the big thing."
"Fucking Japs made all the money, right?"
I shrugged. "Guess so. Them or the Mexicans-lots of parts made down there now by
poor little brown guys, making a buck an hour or less. Anyways, third round of layoffs they
got me. Twenty years at the place, and they canned me.
“Son of a bitch!" I slammed my fist on the table, almost spilling Sam's beer.
"Take it easy, Ed”, he advised.
"Severance pay?"
"Sure. Five grand. Know how long that lasts, if you got house payments?"
"You actually owned a house?” asked Cody incredulously.
"Yeah. For a while. Eighteen years worth of it."
"Then what?" asked Sam.
"Couldn't get another job. Nothing. Started hitting the bottle more than I should."
"You had a family?" asked Cody.
"Just a wife. Millie. She couldn't handle it. She'd never worked, liked staying
home, cooking and stuff. Things got worse and worse. She finally walked out, went to live
with her sister in Ann Arbor. To tell you the truth I was so far down I didn't even miss her
that much. Man, I cried myself drunk every night."
"Jeez, that's tough”, said Cody.
"Finally, I lost the house. I was fed up with Michigan, anyway. Good thing we
never had any kids, Millie and me."
"So you came out here?" asked Sam.
"Yeah. Here I am."
"What you expected?" asked Cody
"Yeah. So far. It's okay. Pretty and all. Got hardly any money left though. Worries
me."
Sam grinned. "You'll do all right. Consider panhandling your new profession!"
"The hardest part for me's been swallowing my pride”, I said.
"Takes a while, don't it?" said Sam.
"Sam and me figure if someone gives us some change it's a kind of distributing
things different, right Sam?, said Cody.
"Wouldn't you rather work?" I said. "I would, tell you the truth."
"Well, you see Ed, you was brought up in a different time. You expected things to
get better, we don't. You still planning on some kind of wonderful future?" asked Sam.
"No." I had to admit. "Sure don't look that way."
"See?" said Sam. "Pride don't matter much, you look at it that way, does it?"
"You seem so damn cheerful about it."
"That the way it seems?" said Sam. "Way down deep inside I feel like killing myself
sometimes. It ain‟t right, the way things are. Cody and me know that. But there ain‟t
nothing we can do about it, is there?" But I'll be fucked if I'll give in! If we got ourselves
all depressed and hopeless somebody would've beat us, right? So we just go on this way.
Maybe someday things'll change a little”, he concluded wistfully.
What would I say to this? Nothing. I changed the subject.
"So where do you guys sleep at night?"
"Most warm nights we just stay around the U.”, said Cody.
"Only till nine or ten though”, added Sam. "After we get done panhandling the
swingers in the evening. We used to find a place on campus to put our sleeping bags”, he
gestured toward the nearby wall, where two backpacks were lying. "But now the University
cops chase us away."
"Yeah”, said Jody. "A year or so ago some guy went crazy and stabbed some girl to
death, right on the street. So the cops got tough on all the suspicious looking characters."
"Like us”, added Sam with a bitter smile.
"Now we hike up to Ravenna Park”, said Cody.
I pretended to look blank.
"It ain‟t far. It's kinda wild in places. Cops don't bother nobody back there."
"And there's rest rooms at the edge of the park”, said Sam.
"Aren't you scared someone's gonna do you some night?" I asked.
"You mean like Davy Archer?" asked Sam.
I looked at him sharply. "How'd you know about him? Read about it in the paper?"
"Hell, yes! We read about it, but we knew Davy. He used to hang out up here
sometimes. Restless kinda guy, but nice as they come. Cody and me couldn't believe it
when we heard about it. Made us so fucking mad!"
I almost blurted out that I'd been the one to find Davy Archer's body.
"Did you know the other guy, too? The one got run over?"
Both men shook their heads.
"So what do you think?" I asked. "Who did it?"
"Beats the shit outta me”, said Sam.
"We both got us a big knife in easy reach, when we sleep”, said Cody.
"Plus we got each other to look after us”, added Sam.
"Ed, you wanta come join up with us some night, you more than welcome, man!"
said Cody.
"Save laying out your dough at that old fleabag hotel”, said Sam.
"Maybe. Nice of you guys. I 'preciate it. Guys I talked with downtown more scared
than you two. And I was up on Capitol Hill a couple of times. Man those guys are
REALLY scared! I don't think anybody sleeps up there anymore."
"Can't blame 'em”, said Sam. "You want another beer, Ed?"
"Nah. I better not. I gotta take couple of buses back downtown."
"How come?"
"I'm paid up till the end of the week at the Bush."
"So what's the difference then? Stay up here tonight. Try it out. Hey man, we don't
say that to everybody, you know!"
"Yeah”, put in Cody. "We like you, Ed."
"Tell you what. I'll come back up on Sunday. Hang around the U District all day,
try it out, then join up with you guys that night?"
"Hey man, that's great!" said Cody. "Come on Sam, let's buy old Ed here one more
beer to see him home tonight. I'll buy this round, you got the others." He motioned for the
bartender.
I was thinking to myself, panhandling must be better up this way than downtown.
Also that I'd be accused of all sorts of bad habits when I rolled in with beer on my breath
again.
"How the heck do you guys manage to stay clean, anyway?" I asked. "The Bush
ain‟t exactly the Hilton, but at least the room's got a shower."
"Ed, you got a lot to learn”, said Sam.
"We can teach you some stuff”, put in Cody.
"You'd be surprised what you can do in a washroom”, Sam went on “Even a
MacDonald‟s, if you're fast."
"I know. In my day you'd go to a gas station to take a pee or clean up. Now
everyone goes into the fast food places."
"Simple”, said Sam. "They're cleaner. And there's a lot of 'em. Trick is not to let
the manager see you too often in any one. And at least buy some coffee now and then."
"Kinda of gets you the right to use the bathroom, you know what I mean?" asked
Cody. I nodded. "And maybe once every couple weeks, we get us a cheap motel room,
clean up real good, right Sam?" he added.
My expression must have changed, and quick Sam noticed.
"Hey man, don't get the wrong idea! We get separate beds and all. Just 'cause we're
friends don't mean we're gay or nothing."
"Besides, where we go, over on Aurora, that's whore alley. A faggot would likely
get his brains beat in over there, if he wasn't careful”, said Cody.
"Sometimes, if we've had a good week, we'll splurge on a whore. Split the deal, so
to speak, two for one, especially if it‟s late, and the girl's about ready to pack it in."
"You gotta be careful these days, though”, added Cody. "All kinds of stuff going
around."
"I was gonna ask how you guys handled that kind of thing."
"Why, Ed, you still got some ideas along these lines, ain‟t you?" asked Sam, with
what seemed to be a twinkle in his eye.
"Jesus, guys, I'm not dead yet!" I responded. In my mind's eye I could picture Meg
doubling up with laughter over hearing this conversation. 'Horny old fart' is the way she'd
probably chime in. The beer arrived, terminating this little dangling discussion. I sipped
mine, glancing up at the clock over the bar. My gosh, after four already. By the time I
bussed it back it'd be past five. And I'd be under the influence, too. I forced my mind back
to why I was here in the first place.
"Tell me more about Davy Archer."
"Nice guy”, said Cody. "Almost sweet...didn't seem that much older'n than us. We
was surprised to read about his age, wasn't we, Sam."
"Uh huh. Cody's right. Davy wasn't real good at panhandling, though. Not that
tough."
"Hey, Sam, remember the time Davy was with us, and we chased that guy back to
his Jaguar?"
"Jaguar?" I asked, suddenly alert.
"Yeah. Three of us were strung out in a row, which ain‟t the best way to do it, but
we'd be able to talk a little that way. It was up on the corner of Fifteenth and Forty-fifth.
Lot of people pass by there. Anyway, this kind of distinguished looking joker comes out of
the museum."
"Best clothes I ever seen in the District”, Cody chimed in.
"He walks down the sidewalk”, Sam went on”, past Davy, then Cody, then up near
me. I saw him kinda curl up his lip, like, when he looked at the other guys, so I gave him a
little extra attention. Kept after him a little, like 'come on mister, you can spare it,'
like that.
He finally got past me, looked back at me and spit! Well man, I just about lost it!
Nobody spits at Sam Colson and gets away with it!"
"Then what happened?"
"I sort of chased him up Forty-fifth, yelling at him. By this time, Cody and Davy
caught up with me and were trying to pull me back."
"We was afraid you'd get arrested."
"He finally turned right inside the U grounds toward the parking area there. He kept
on walking fast till he got near his car. That was the first time I could see it was a Jaguar."
"What color?" I asked.
"Some kind of light color. White, I guess. Why?"
"Just curious. Go on."
"So the fucker gets near his car, feeling safer I guess, and he looks back and spits
again! Well, I wasn't quite so mad as before, but I made a run at him."
"Yeah”, said Cody. "It was so cool."
"Fucker nearly fell all over himself. Turned around and ran the last few feet to his
car. Locked up the door real fast, started the engine and tore outta the lot like a bat outta
hell!"
"Wow”, I said.
"He drove by the three of us and shook his fist. Man, if looks could kill!"
"And we was all three just laughing at him”, Cody remembered happily.
"That was maybe the last time or two Davy was over here”, Sam said, sobering.
"Think he went back over to Capitol Hill after that”, added Cody.
My mind was racing.
"Can you describe the guy with the Jag?" I asked.
"Sure”, said Sam. "I won't ever forget that dude. Had what looked to be a $500
jacket on him. One of them special weaves in a light blue color."
"And real nice pants. Creamy, kinda”, said Cody.
"What about his face?"
"Maybe forty, somewhere in there. Tan looking. Silvery kind of hair. Kind of dude
you see in the movies sometimes. The brains behind the gang or maybe some real smooth
lawyer." Sam went on.
"How tall?"
"Five ten, eleven. Stocky but sorta trim at the same time, if you know what I mean."
I nodded. Indeed I did. Only one image had come into my mind--J.R. Forsythe!
But wait a minute. So what if Forsythe got run out of the U-District by some homeless
guys? It proved nothing at all. But it was sure was interesting.
"How come you wanta know about this guy, Ed?" asked Cody.
"Oh, nothing. Just sounds like someone I've seen before."
"Here? In Seattle?" asked Sam.
"Maybe”, I answered.
The beers and the conversation were starting to make my head swim. It must have
showed on my face, because Cody noticed.
"Hey, Ed, you look like you could use a nap, man”, he said. "Sam, we oughta be
putting our pal Ed here, onto his bus, let him get back downtown."
Sam agreed. We drained our last beers and, sure enough, the two good Samaritans
walked me to the 43 stop and waited till the bus came along.
"See you later, man”, Sam bid me farewell.
I waved from the window, as the bus pulled away. All the way back to Capitol Hill I
kept thinking about Forsythe. My mind kept racing back over some of the stuff I'd just
heard.What had J.R. Forsythe been doing there in the Distinct that day? What was he
thinking as he drove hurriedly away off into a spring afternoon, having just been made to
look a coward for all the world to see? Had he inwardly raged, remembering that he,
wealthy and influential, had been humiliated by three powerless and destitute young men, a
chasm apart from him in every way? Or had he just laughed it off and gone about his
business, that of making money, generating the respect and admiration of nearly everyone he
met in his daily routine? It was an interesting little set of questions. I wondered what Rosy
Brown would make of all this.
Chapter 15
When I arrived back at the Prince, I forgot and went in the front door. Meg was
doing her perfect hostess routine, warming up the Lowells, a young couple from
Massachusetts, who'd just arrived for a week in Seattle. Sometimes a week can be a long
time for guests, as Meg likes to say, quoting Ben Franklin, "Guests, like
fish, begin to smell after three days, “but from the bed and breakfast perspective, the city
took care of any entertainment needed.Typically by the time they got back to us each
evening they'd be tired but glowing. We'd steer them out for seafood and by the time they
returned they'd be ready for bed.
Meg took one look at me and frowned, ever so slightly. The Lowells knew from
nothing, so I covered myself by making some remark about what a dirty job it had been
hauling the yard trimmings down to the garage for trash pick up.I went out and then into the downstairs apartment.
As usual, the cats, which tended to get lonesome if we both were
upstairs all day, went into their little bag of tricks. Kate rolled over and over, like a
corkscrew, inviting me to rub her soft furry little tummy. Kali wandered about, uttering a
plaintive little cry or two and brushing her tail against my legs. After I paid them the
attention they thought was due, I wadded up a bit of paper and tossed it a few times, for
them to pounce on and torment.
I heard the upstairs door open and had the presence of mind to dash into the
bathroom and gargle away the telltale beers off my breath.
"We need to talk, Ed."
"I know, I know”, I said. "I've been letting you down. I'm sorry."
"And for what? This little private eye fantasy of yours, what's it all about? Do you
think it's helping anyone? Those dead men won't come back, ever."
"No, but maybe their killer will pay”, I responded.
"What? What do you mean? I swear Ed, you're beginning to sound like some weird
mixture of cheap mystery character and courtroom judge!'Killer will pay'?What in
heaven's name are you talking about?"
I told her of my day. It had been a long day, out there on the streets, discouraging
until that moment in the Forty-fifth Street bar with Sam and Cody. I had a hunch I'd hit pay
dirt with them.
In spite of herself, Meg was fascinated by the tale of Forsythe turning tail and being
run right off the street into his expensive car. And by such an unlikely trio.
"But are you sure it was him?"
"Who else could it be? And you know the most interesting part? Davy Archer was
there!"
She nodded. "I see that. But now what? This proves nothing, really. Just that
Forsythe's a scairdy cat."
"Would you ever have believed that about him?" She shook her head. "Well, then
maybe there's other things about him we don't know."
"Are you going to call Rosy Brown?"
"Yes”, I said, “Right now."
I tried the precinct. He'd gone home. I asked about his home number. Generally,
said the desk sergeant, they wouldn't give a cop's home phone number out unless it was an
emergency. Since I couldn't really say that, I let it go, asking them to have Brown call me
first thing next morning.
Meg and I had a modest dinner. I didn't mention Forsythe again. I turned the TV on
a while later. What I watched the most was sports, news and old movies. Give me an old
murder flick, say with Philip Marlowe himself, and I was utterly happy. I read mysteries
too, and Meg was addicted to reading them. Tonight, nothing appealed so we both were
reading. About 10:30 I had a brainstorm. I sat up abruptly from my propped up pillow,
thoroughly upsetting Kali, who departed quickly with a low yowl. Kate, usually less jumpy,
leaped off the bed too.
"What in the world's the matter?" Meg said drowsily, looking up from her book. As
often as not she falls asleep around ten.
"There's a way I think I could get the goods on Forsythe!"
"What?" I'd got her attention. "How?"
"I'm gonna go up the street right now and if the van's there, check out the tires very
thoroughly."
"Why?"
"Think about it. If Forsythe's van is the one that ran over Leonard Orford and his
dogs, there just might be some trace of blood or something left on the wheels. I intend to
find out, if I can."
"Wait a minute. Someone else probably drives the vehicle a lot more than Forsythe.
If it had been used in a murder, don't you think it would've been thoroughly cleaned?
Forsythe's seems so meticulous."
"True”, I had to admit. "But they could have missed a little spot here or there." She
still seemed doubtful.
"Worth a try?" I asked. I was already putting on my shoes.
"I guess so...you'll be careful?"
"Sure. There'll be no one up there now. It's pitch dark. I'll just slide under the van,
nice and easy, and check each wheel with a flashlight. Maybe I'll get lucky." I was almost
ready to leave.
"How long'll you be?"
"Twenty minutes, babe. Don't worry about a thing."
I wore dark clothes, thinking I'd be less easy to spot as I did my dirty work. The last
thing I needed was to be embarrassed by a cruising cop and hauled down to the 12th Avenue
station on suspicion of car bombing or some such ugly thing. I was headed up the hill in a
few seconds. No pedestrian traffic in sight. I reached the corner where the shop was and
quickly got down on my back beside the van. I scrunched and wiggled my way under it.
For a skinny guy like me the belly room was sufficient, but Forsythe's Jag would've been a
different story.
Finding just enough room to hold the flashlight I'd brought along, I inspected the two
front wheels first. They'd have been the ones to make the first bone crunching impact on
Orford and the dogs. Probably only one side of the vehicle would have done the nasty deed.
I remembered how the skinned bark in the limb was positioned, relative to the tree trunk,
and looked especially closely at the right front wheel. It was very clean. Then I checked the
left front wheel. The same. 'Damn', I muttered. I shut off the flashlight as I angled back out
from under the vehicle.
I could hear a whistling pedestrian as he proceeded east on John, across 14th, toward
Group Health. It struck me as odd; you didn't hear people whistle much nowadays, maybe
because melody had pretty much surrendered to the beat, in current music. In my younger
days folks seemed to whistle a lot, but back in those deceptively simple Fifties the songs
were recognizable, with easy lyrics.
I re-positioned myself toward the back of the van, finding that the muffler made
things considerably more snug. Left rear wheel under the flashlight beam seemed clean too,
not as clean as the front wheels, which seemed unusually clean, perhaps a clue in itself, but
not an incriminating one. One more wheel, the right rear one. The last chance.
I moved the flashlight's beam around some. What was that little smudge there, just
where the rim met the rubber? I very carefully put my finger on it. It felt odd, kind of fuzzy
and gummy at the same time. It was maybe three quarters on an inch, at most, in length. I
sniffed at my finger, where I'd touched the smudge. A faint, funny smell. The odor
suddenly bought back a terrible memory of a collie I'd had once which had been shot by
some cowardly unknown neighbor and bled all over my car seat as I rushed him to the vet.
Poor Geordie had died, a week later, but the smell of his blood on the back seat seemed to
forever haunt the car.
Bingo! The rest of the rim and tire were clean, like the left rear wheel, but someone's
brush or hose had not budged this one particular place. I carefully scraped about one half of
the smudge off the rim and into an envelope I'd tucked in my shirt pocket, using my tiny
Swiss Army knife. Once I'd got it safely inside, I inspected the material more carefully, in
the flashlight's close up beam. It looked like bits of brown hair and a darker, dried substance
I was virtually positive was blood.Looking again at the remaining smudge on the
rim-rubber interface, I reckoned it was enough to refer to if future evidence was needed. I
carefully tucked the closed envelope in my pocket and eased myself out.
I dashed down the hill to the Prince. Meg was dozing, but awakened as the cats
scattered again off the bed.
"What's up, babe?" she asked sleepily.
I showed her my treasure. She was dubious.
"You really think you got something important?" she asked.
"Yeah. I do. Enough to call Rosy Brown right now."
Pleading real emergency, and mentioning the fact that I'd provided a signed
statement earlier in the case, I got hold of the black cop's home number.
"Brown here”, the unmistakable voice came through.
"Rosy, It's Ed. Hope it's not too late."
"Nope. I'm kind of a night owl. Usually awake till midnight, at least. Like to get
the sports news, catch a little of Johnny, oops, no I watch Leno now. They ain‟t
as good, though."
"This'll give you something different to think about tonight”, I said.
"What you got Ed? You sound fired up."
"Just pulled some stuff off Forsythe's delivery van. Back tire, I think it's dried dog
hair and blood."
"No kidding?"
"Yeah. Got it in an envelope. Should I bring it down to you tomorrow?"
"Sure, Ed. But what's it gonna prove? Even if it is the stuff you think it is?"
"Well. um...gee, I was thinking somehow your lab could check it out, compare it--"
"To what, Ed? Ain‟t sure what's become yet of Orford's body. Prob'ly disposed of
already, especially after it was autopsied and all."
"What about the dogs?"
"Hm, lessee, think the vet disposed of 'em"
"Well, shit! Isn't there anything we can do with this stuff?"
"Hold on a minute. They're probably holding Orford's belongings for thirty days, till
someone claims 'em or not. Then they sometimes auction 'em off."
"You mean his clothes and such."
"Yeah. '’Course in this case they were pretty bloody, sure of that. The sleeping bag,
though. They might've hung onto that."
"And it could have some dog hairs on it, or in it. He snuggled those dogs up pretty
close, saw him doing it myself.
"Yep. Could be."
"Well, if your lab matches the dog hairs from the sleeping bag to this stuff I scraped
off Forsythe's van tire, that must mean something, right?"
"Circumstantial. But you're right. Best lead we might have, till now. Worth a try."
"So I'll bring my evidence around tomorrow?"
"Okay. I'll be in around eight. I'll line up the lab for a rush job if possible."
"That's great, Rosy! I'll be there in the morning. Oh, I forgot to tell you something
even more interesting."
"What's that?"
"I moved my panhandling operation over to the U-District in the afternoon. Guess
who I ran into over there?"
"The killer."
"Rosy! No, but remember you talking so much about motives?I think maybe I've
got something for you."
"Now Ed. Don’t play games with old Rosy. Come on man, what you got?"
A long low whistle came sliding over the phone when I related the Cody and Sam
account of chasing Forsythe.
"Damn”, said the cop. "Now this time maybe you really onto something, Ed. I been
wracking my brains in these killings trying' to come up with a good motive."
"Humiliation and possible revenge kind of grab you?"
"Yeah. They truly do. especially a dignified important dude like Forsythe. No way
he would have enjoyed that experience, is there?"
"And Davy Archer in on it. And then Davy coming back over to Capitol Hill, where
he could be spotted by Forsythe."
"Son of a gun." the homicide dick said. "You're getting to be a regular old' crime
stopper, Ed. Might be you’re really onto something here."
"I got lucky."
"Maybe so, but you kept right after it. Showed some patience. Proud of you, my
man. Let me think some more about all of this, and we'll talk more at my place in the
morning"
"Sounds good."
I hung up. Meg had been listening. Both of us were keyed up now. It wasn't often
this delicious creature was so bright-eyed late in the evening. Fortunately,
I'd bathed earlier and even removed my stubble. We talked about the day for a while until
finally we stopped talking and started doing.
Chapter 16
It had been a while since I'd had a morning run so, when I woke up at six fifteen, I
decided to pull on my Nikes and '’just do it'. The conjugal activity had relaxed us both. I'd
slept well, and the luscious Meg still slept, a dreamy smile on her face. I flattered myself
that I had something to do with it.
I started the big coffee urn and slipped out the front door. I started to settle into a
good stride between Thomas and Harrison, heading north as usual on East 13th. Behind me I
heard a motorcycle, a powerful Harley, from the sound of it. The sound seemed to turn
right, then cut to idle. I didn't bother turning around. I was nearing the brick apartment
building, halfway down to Republican Street when something swift and incredibly nasty
zinged by my left ear. Total instinct made me hit the dirt, immediately. As I did so, diving
into the weed choked vacant lot beside the apartment alley, another shot zipped through the
air, just where my head had been. I sprawled on my face in the tall weeds, ignoring the
scraping my chin, belly and knees were absorbing, too intent on trying to stay alive. Though
I couldn't see it from my face down position, I heard the motorcycle rev up again and
quickly roar up the hill on Harrison. I never did get a view of the noisy machine.
I lay there quivering with fear and relief. My bowels and bladder had held tight, but
just barely. After a few moments I cautiously turned my head and looked out at the now
silent street. Not a sign of life though it wasn't that early. Not a soul had witnessed this
abominable assault on my poor old ass (as in assassinated). The shots must've come
from the motorcycle rider who'd just turned the corner at 13th and Harrison. Maybe he
counted on the noise of the engine masking the sound of the shots. The vibration could have
thrown his aim off, though those bullets were close enough! After getting off the two
rounds, he'd immediately ridden off.
I struggled to my hands and knees and literally crawled back out to the sidewalk.
Just then a pedestrian came into view, but from the north.
The fellow gave me a strange look as I shakily rose to my feet. I didn't even
bother to talk to him. Instead, I slowly trudged back home. I still felt weak.
Back in the Prince's kitchen, the coffee was now done. I poured a big mug of it,
added some brandy and slowly sipped the hot stuff, trying to bring my wits back to normal.
Things had taken a decidedly ugly turn. It was all well and good to be playing the
amateur dick, even the masquerading part, but bullets were something I wasn't used to. And
definitely didn't like. I racked my brains to remember about motorcycles. Who even owned
one? I could think of only one fellow, a guy I'd been friendly with at work. Yes, he owned
a Harley, but rather than try to hurt me, I was certain he'd be there to help me, if I ever
needed it. Vic was a Harley fanatic and maybe could've offered an opinion about the type of
machine my potential assassin had ridden, but I had nothing really to give him. In any case,
I needed to report it to the cops.
I went downstairs to the apartment. Meg was stretching and emitting one of her
world class noisy yawns. She noticed the scrape on my chin.
"Honey, what happened?” she asked.
The truth would scare the daylights out of her so I lied.
"Tripped on the sidewalk, like a clumsy oaf”, I said.
"Oh, poor baby!" She came over to inspect.
I knew she'd see it later anyway, so I pulled up my sweatshirt for a view of my chest.
It was scraped, but not as raw as my chin. One knee oozed some blood, as well.
"Hurt my knee a little too, so I quit."
Being Meg, she gave me a quick series of light kisses, one on each point of damaged
anatomy.
"Need any help patching yourself?" she asked.
"No. I'm okay."
"Then let me into the bathroom first so I can head upstairs to start the breakfast. You
already made the coffee, right?"
I nodded. We'd agreed that I'd be leaving early to go down and see Rosy Brown
another morning I'd not be involved with kitchen duty.
My knee, the one with the six inch scar front a volleyball game gone bad, really did
feel gimpy, so instead of walking, I drove down to the Twelfth Street police station.
I hobbled up the stairs to Brown's office, remembering my last visit. Today some
guardian angel had prevented me from becoming a corpse like Davy Archer.
Brown was on the phone. When he hung up he looked concerned.
"That was Jan Pellegrino, Tony's wife”, the big cop said. "He usually calls her
around seven when he's doing a long shift, especially an undercover one. Gives her a
wakeup call, sort of. He didn't call this morning. She's worried."
"You look the same”, I said.
"Tony's reliable. Real reliable. Don't know what to make of it...well, sit down Ed,
let me clear off this chair for you."
He noticed the band aid on my chin.
"What happened, anyway?" he queried with a grin. "Someone take a poke at you?
Told you to watch the rough stuff when you doing this private eye stuff."
"More than a poke. Some son of a bitch tried to kill me this morning when I was out
running. Two shots, just missed my head."
"Oh my Lord! Ed, I'm really sorry! I mean, glad you're okay, but sorry it happened.
Where'd this all occur?"
"Right up the hill. Not three blocks from home."
Brown wanted all the details. I gave him what skimpy information I had.
"It ain‟t much to go on, my friend."
"I know it. Someone scared the crap out of me, and I haven't a clue."
"We gotta think motive again, Ed. What good would killing you or at least taking
you out for a while, do anyone?"
We both thought for a minute. Then looked at each other, sharing the same light
bulb between and over our heads.
"You thinking what I am?" asked the cop.
"Someone's getting nervous about my activities."
"Someone with something to hide, don't like nosy people messing with him."
"Only one name lighting up on my screen, Rosy."
"Uh huh. J. Ray. But we got nothing on the man."
I pulled out the envelope of hair and blood.
"We got this."
Brown took it gingerly and examined it.
"You might be right”, he said. "I checked first thing I came in and found out they
were still holding onto some of Orford's stuff. Lab thinks there might be a few dog or cat
hairs on it. Could have something back by tomorrow, if we're lucky."
Brown made a quick call, and someone came in immediately for the envelope, on
which Rosy had already lettered some Seattle P.D. identifying information.
"About those shots, Ed. Maybe I can get some protection for you for a while. You
interested?"
I hadn't really thought about it. Instead of fear, I now felt mad as hell. Wanted to get
my hands on the bastard, more than anything else.
"No, I guess not. Just gonna be extra careful for a while."
"Wise move. By the way, there ain‟t no way Forsythe could know you talked
yesterday with those guys over at the U-District, is there?"
I shook my head. "Don't see how. What I'm thinking though is that he knows I'm
curious about his van even though I'm positive he couldn't have seen me crawling under it
last night."
"Anything else?"
"He seems interested in the fact I've been dressing like a bum lately."
"He's one natty dude himself-he would find that kinda thing strange."
"Maybe he's connecting the whole investigation into the homeless murders with me,
even though I'm not a cop."
"Yeah, but you playing like you a cop. Smart man like J. Ray would find that
peculiar, seems to me."
"Enough to try to kill me?"
Brown shrugged. "Does the cat own a motorcycle, do you know?"
I didn't. "Could you check on that, though?" I asked.
"Sure can. Maybe check on his weapons holdings too. See what the man owns in
the way of handguns, et cetera. Oh. And here's what we oughtta do, check out the area the
shots came from, look for shell casings."
"Police work. Yeah! Save my skin, officer!" I said with a grin. "Have your guys
call me, and I'll go over there with them."
"All right, Ed, I'll try to get on to that this morning." His phone suddenly rang.
"Brown here”, he told the mouthpiece.
In a few seconds his whole face seemed to sag and go ashy gray brown. Very large
tears squeezed out one from each eye and rolled silently down his cheeks, stopped and
became absorbed into his neat black mustache. He didn't say a word, just listened.
"I'll be right down there”, he finally said dully. When he hung up he reached for a
handkerchief from his pocket and blew a suddenly sniffly nose. He looked at me, tears now
flooding his eyes.
"They just found Tony Pellegrino dead down on First Hill”, he said in a choked
voice.
"My God!"
"In an alley 'bout a block away from the Atkinson, that place where Alvin Schmorr
got killed."
I nodded. Tears had sprung to my eyes, too. "How?" I asked.
"Shot in the heart. "'Nother one in the stomach. Probably just as well the heart shot
got him. Stomach's a bad way to check out."
"Shit. I'm really sorry, Rosy." I said. Impulsively, I patted the big man's shoulder.
"Yeah. Me too”, he said in a low voice which broke just a little. "Tony was a good
man. Good cop."
"He seemed to be looking out for me when I ran into him yesterday morning."
"Yeah. I talked with him when he finished that tour. You two met when Fortunato
threw him out, right?"
"Right after that, yes."
"You think Fortunato's capable?"
I had to ponder a minute. "Capable maybe. However, Joe's not quite as dumb as he
seems. I think he does believe in law and order in his own violent way. It's possible, I
guess, but I don't really think so."
"Give me something here, man! Anything! We gotta get this mother fucker, real
quick!"
It was the first time I'd ever heard serious cuss words out of Brown's mouth.
"Rosy, I'll do anything I can."
The black man calmed down a little.
"Wait a minute, Ed. I'm sorry. I was just thinking 'bout somebody having to tell Jan
Pellegrino...No, man, you best stay out of it, hear? Cop killing. That's something special.
This is now way too dangerous for you, hear me? Especially on top of them shots at you."
I nodded"I'd best get out of your way, Rosy."
"Keep in touch, Ed. You been helpful, real helpful in this thing. If we find any kind
of thread in these killings' it'll be partly your doing. I 'appreciate it, I really do."
I drove home again, feeling depressed.The cool and gloomy day, with rain
predicted, matched my mood. I didn't have the heart to tell Meg about the latest violence,
especially when she had guests in the middle of breakfast. As luck would have it, she saw
me sneaking down the stairs and insisted on introducing me to the seven guests. Then she
asked if I wanted to eat with them since there was an empty place and they were just
starting.
It was only a quarter to nine. Somehow the last forty-five minutes, to Rosy's office
and back, had seemed much longer, and I felt drained. So drained I realized I was hungry,
so I decided to take Meg up on her offer. Maybe the guests would take my mind off the
whole murderous mess.
As I worked my way though the fruit, the muffins and the salmon quiche, that's just
what happened. In fact, one young couple, in their early twenties (considerably younger
than our usual guests) was fascinating. They'd essentially run away, eloped, a couple of
years ago from their suburban New Jersey homes, totally fed up with that scene. I could just
picture them, innocent young, misplaced -in -time hippies. Their old heap had barely made it
to Spokane and died, so there they settled. Ned, still fuzzy cheeked, with bright blue eyes,
had some considerable skill as a mechanic (You could see his line of work in his
fingernails) and got a good job. Nan, a fresh faced appealing young blonde, was more
bookish than her boyish husband, and about to enter her junior year at a small local college.
But the really wonderful thing about these two was their dreams, or mainly Ned's next
dream, to hitchhike to Mexico and roam from coast to coast, over the mountains. Soberly,
they'd agreed that it'd be too rough and wild for Nan, but Ned was absolutely confident he
could handle it, in fact, he burned to do it. The sweet thing was the complete confidence and
trust that Nan had in Ned's competence. I felt like warning him, telling him there'd be
bandits and maybe bullets out there, but hadn't the heart. The other guests, older than the
young couple, may have felt the same, but they too kept their own counsel. If you can't
dream and have adventures when you're young, when will you ever?Actually, I myself
still yearned for such adventures. Maybe not the kind with bullets, but anything to break the
more monotonous interludes of life.
The breakfast ended, and the guests all trooped upstairs. I helped clear the table,
troubled again by the morning's events, still uncertain as to what to tell Meg. I decided to
wait till later. While I stacked and scraped the dishes, loaded the machine, took out the trash
and mopped the floor, Meg collected for a couple of rooms, bade all the guests out of the
house, finally or temporarily, and had just settled down for a bowl of cereal and her first
brief look at the New York Times. Later she'd go back to it, if there was time, and succumb
to her addiction, the crossword puzzle.
Aware of the extra load I'd put on her for the last few days, I offered to do the
complete job upstairs: "re-do" two rooms, make over the other two, vacuum all around,
clean all the bathrooms, wash and dry all the linens-in short, all the mundane things needed
to keep our business running. In a strange way I looked forward to it, my mind would get a
chance to try to make some sense of everything that had happened, slow down the whirl of
events that seemed to be spinning almost out of control. As far as Meg was concerned, my
proposal sounded wonderful (and high time too, though she was too tactful to say so.) In
effect she'd have the rest of the day off. She allowed as how she needed to do some
shopping on Broadway, not just for food, but also '’for fun', for a change. I'd never quite
understood why going into stores was fun for women, but concluded that I simply lacked the
shopping gene, like most men. Men had sports talk genes, to make up for the lack of
shopping and clothes genes.
Three hours later I got a chance to pause. Interspersed with the chores had been
phone calls and the paperwork connected with new bookings, but all the work was pretty
much done.
It was about two p.m. I'd just finished a late bite of lunch and was glancing at the
Times myself. Meg waltzed in, excited. She looked even prettier than usual. Her eyes were
dancing with hot news she couldn't wait to impart.
"Honey”, she said. "Guess what!"
"You shrunk the kids!" I said, attempting humor.
"Bad joke”, she crinkled her adorable nose. "No, I tailed a suspect!"
This sounded so outlandish I burst out laughing.
"You what?" I said, struggling to keep my face straight.
"I was coming out of Fred Meyers in Broadway Market when who do I see ahead of
me but Ray Forsythe, heading north on Harvard."
This sobered me up fast.
"I thought to myself”, she went on, "I'll bet he's walking on back to his home,
wearing an impeccable trench coat, by the way. He was carrying a small package, just like
me."
"So?"
"So I figured, wouldn't it be good to know where he lived, how he lived and so on,
just in case...?'
"In case of what?"
"I don't know, just in case." The wind was going out of her sails. I guess she
expected me to get excited, like she was. It was time to give her some bleak news.
"Babe, sit down”, I said. She did.
"Somebody tried to kill me this morning."
Confusion, shock and fear contorted her face.
"Could've even been Ray Forsythe, who knows?"
Her eyeswere big with terror.
"That scratch?" she gasped.
"Uh huh. I hit the dirt and just missed getting nailed by two bullets. That's not all."
She held her breath.
"Rosy Brown's police partner, a man named Pellegrino, was killed last night down
on First Hill."
Meg covered her face with her hands. I went to her and
gathered her into my arms. I cradled her till the shaking stopped.
"That's why I want you to be real careful, babe. I mean REAL careful! We're not to
be amateur detectives any more, understand me?"
She nodded, sniffling.
"There's just too much killing going on. We got caught up in something a little too
big. Damn if I know how, but we did."
Meg had regained her composure.
"Why'd you mention Forsythe, honey? About the shots, I mean."
"I don't know. He just seems to be popping up too much lately."
"Did you discuss any of this with Rosy Brown?"
"Uh huh. In fact, I was with him when we heard about Pellegrino. He took it pretty
hard."
"I can imagine”, she shuddered. "Poor man."
"Yeah. That poor dead cop. Brown had just talked to the wife when I was walking
into his office."
"What does Rosy say about Forsythe? Your information from yesterday, I mean?"
"Promising. That's all. Circumstantial, but promising. The police lab is checking
out those hairs and blood today."
"Four killings now. This is terrible. Oh--and you know what else?"
"What?"
"This is definitely not good for business."
"Right. Cop killing. That could make the papers outside Seattle."
"And all on Capitol Hill. We've always felt safe up here."
"We will again, babe. We will."
"So”, I said. "Tell me about your tailing our man."
"Well, I'm sure he didn't see me. I stayed at least two blocks back. I had a rain scarf
in my bag and threw it over my hair, and also some dark glasses. I made believe I was
taking a pleasant walk, kept looking up at the big houses and trees and gardens."
"He kept going north?"
"Yes, on Harvard up until East Roy Street, you know up there near the Greek
restaurant we like, next to the DAR Building?"
"Across from the Cornish school?" It was a fine arts college where some of our
guests sometimes had a connection.
She nodded. "Then he continued north on Harvard, after it takes that little jog at the
Cornish."
"He went past those big mansions."
"Right. Then, where Harvard curves around to the right, sort of becomes Highland,
he finally went into a large old house on the hillside.
"That house with the view of the Bay and Lake Union."
I knew the place she wasdescribing. We'd walked by it a number of times
“I just turned around and came back down Harvard. I felt so clever."
It sounded like she'd been careful enough. You never knew though.
"Forsythe never turned around?"
"No. When he undid the lock to his driveway gate, he glanced up the street for a
second, but I was at least a block and a half away."
"In your disguise."
"Uh huh, " she smiled. "I'm sure he didn't 'make me', like they say in your cop
movies."
"Only one man I want making you, you tough little broad”, I said, producing a
mediocre Bogy imitation.
"Who's that?"
"Yours truly." I pushed her down suddenly on the sofa and delivered a passionate
kiss square on the smacker. When she recovered, she was smiling.
"So I did good?"
"I guess so." I got serious again. "But I meant what I said. We're both ex-private
eyes, from now on. No dangerous moves, okay?"
We got back to some additional chores. At five thirty or thereabouts we quit, for a
Glass of wine and a game of cribbage. She suddenly paused after dealing a hand.
"Honey”, she said. "I just remembered something."
"What's that?" I said distractedly as I sorted through the cards in my hand.
"There's a meeting of the Conservatory expansion group tonight."
"What time?"
"Eight, I think. I'll have to check. Usually they're eight to nine thirty. I'd forgotten
all about it because of everything else happening."
"You want to go?"
She pondered for a moment. "I think so”, she said. "They're about to accept the
final design for the proposed tea room expansion."
"Okay. I'll make the dinner. Turkey burgers, microwave potato and a salad all
right?"
"Perfect”, she said. It didn't take much to make this sunny creature happy. It was a
wonderful quality which helped a lot to temper my sometimes dark moments.
"Oh”, she said. "I forgot something else."
I waited.
"Both the new guest arrivals are late ones."
If there was a bane to B and B life it was the late ones. Guests who, usually through
no fault of their own, didn't arrive in Seattle until after eight, usually the witching hour for
our descent downstairs. Arriving at eight wasn't so bad, but when it got to be ten or eleven
or sometimes after midnight, it wasn't much fun waiting up.Amtrak folks were often the
worst, with trains delayed from two to ten hours. As hosts, of course, we had to let them in,
put on a smile and show them their room, sometimes as late as two A.M., even if it killed us.
"That's all right. I'll do the honors tonight." Usually Meg did it, was better at it with
her store of ready small talk.
I checked my cribbage hand again; not bad, twelve points. Then it was my turn to
remember something.
"Wait a minute. No way you're going to a late night meeting; look at what's been
happening around here."
"Oh, honey”, she said. "It's all right, really. If you want to run me up there in the car
to the park, instead of my usual walk, that's fine, though."
"I'll just leave the 'back in a few minutes' note on the door." It was something we did
sometimes, when guests were expected momentarily, and we had to run a quick errand.
Infrequently, they'd arrive and just sit on the porch chairs and wait a few minutes.
The first guests, a Texas couple with a broad twang, actually arrived while we were
having dinner at the upstairs dining table, at seven fifteen.Usually, whenever this
happened, guests would have the social grace to head upstairs quickly.
I dropped Meg off in front of the Conservatory just before eight. It was still quite
light.
"See you here at nine thirty, babe”, I said as I drove off.
Back at the Prince I plunged back into the Times. At about nine, the second guests
still hadn't shown. Their scheduled arrival time seemed vague, and I was beginning to feel
uneasy about picking Meg up. It was starting to darken outside now.
The phone rang as I passed by it. I snatched it up, thinking it was guests. Instead it
was Rosy Brown.
"Are you doing all right, Rosy?" I asked.
"Yeah. I'm okay. Still at the precinct. So much extra to do when another officer is
killed. We decided to hold up on a statement though. Afraid it'll make the perpetrator lay so
low we'll have a tougher job nailing him. Maybe we'll make the announcement tomorrow.
Meanwhile the place is a nuthouse."
"I can imagine."
"Extra meetings with the brass, reviews of the cases Tony and I were working on.
Whole bunch of stuff."
"Anything new?"
"Yes and no. Tony got it a little after midnight. Nobody heard shots .
Killer apparently backed him into the alley and just gunned him down at close range, maybe
five feet. Just left him there with the garbage. I went down to the scene right after you left
and saw the body. Made me sick. I literally threw up there in that mean old alley."
"Any clues?"
"Only one; we think we got a casing from the gun used. Forensic boys have been
sifting through the trash all day. I talked to some of the vagrants in the area. They're all
scared shitless."
"Maybe that's what the killer wanted."
"Could be. Could well be. Been trying to figure a motive on this one. Ain‟t no
homeless guy did this. Kinda throws out that angle on the Alvin Schmorr murder. Though
the two killings could be unrelated. This sort of goes back to the Leonard Orford squashing
thing, in my mind.
"Deliberate, kill a homeless guy, probably to scare the others, or maybe because the
killer just hates 'em."
"It's a working premise, Ed. Good as any other, I guess. What we don't know, and
man, what I'd give to know the answer to it, is did the killer know Tony was a cop...I suspect
not"
"Did you interview Joe Fortunato?"
"Matter of fact, I did. Man seemed shook up. Not his blustery self. I let him get it
out himself that he'd tossed Tony out of his store in the morning. Then he fell all over
himself about his gun, showed it to me, you know. Guess he figured he might be a suspect.
Smelled his gun. Hadn't been fired."
"I can picture Fortunato's dilemma. Thinking Pellegrino was a doper, when he really
was a cop. You don't list Joe as a suspect, do you?"
"Not a very hot one. Our big problem in all these cases is we ain‟t got much to go
on. That old van leaving after Orford's murder is the nearest thing we got to a crime being
witnessed in all four of these killings'."
"Oh. What about the dog hairs and blood?"
"Forensic's working on it. We expecting something on the slugs they dug outta poor
Tony first though. Don't hold much hope for that because those slugs just kinda exploded in
the man. Got a feeling someone was using crude dum dum bullets, split at the end or
hollowed somehow."
"Can the lab still get the caliber?"
"Yeah. From the casing. We were lucky to find it. When we did, I figured, hm, this
is gonna be real interesting checking it out against any we might could find up there where
you got shot at. Remember? We said we'd go looking up there?"
I'd forgotten. It had been a wild day. "Oh! yeah, but I haven't had a call from any of
your people yet."
"Sorry about that. Things just got out of hand today. Hope them casings still there.
How 'about tomorrow morning?"
"That's okay."
"Good. I'll call you then. Right now I'm thinking 'about heading home. Long day.
Bad day. Oh, meant to ask you, you interested in attending Detective Pellegrino‟s funeral
on Friday?"
Rosy surprised me with this. I had to think about it for a minute.
"Why, sure Rosy. I would be. I mean it's kind of an honor."
"It's real solemn, Ed. Sort of military, I guess you could call it. Slow walking
pallbearers-I'll be one incidentally. Casket with the flag draped over it. White gloves and
all. Very impressive, especially when they fire into the air."
"Thanks for asking me, Rosy. I'll be there."
"I figured it that way. You got more than a passing interest in this case”, he paused.
"Worst part of it with this kind of thing happens”, he said sadly”, is the widows. And the
kids."
"They have any?"
"One little girl, about seven”.
I'll let you go.You being extra careful?”
"I am..." I considered for a moment telling my cop friend about Meg trailing
Forsythe, but decided not to. It didn't provide anything new. Let the poor guy go home.
"If the lab calls through on them dog hairs, I'll give you a call. Otherwise, see you
tomorrow, Ed."
"Okay." I hung up.
It was 9:20. The hell with the guests, I thought. I'll just put the note on the door and
ride up to pick up Meg outside the Conservatory.
Just as I was turning away from the phone, it rang again. This time it really was Bill
and Alice, the incoming guests from Tampa. Their plane had had a mechanical problem in
Dallas and delayed them over an hour, but they had arrived, they were happy to say, had
picked up a rental car and were now calling from a pay phone down on Broadway. Said
they'd be arriving at the Prince in five or ten minutes. I could hear youthful voices in the
background.
"Where are you anyway?" I asked.
"What?" asked Bill. "Oh, wait a minute. Dick's. Dick's Drive-in is right near here.
We've parked in the lot."
That explained the vehicle noises then. I smiled as I pictured the out of towners,
who sounded like typical B and B ers, that is to say white middle class Americans in their
forties or fifties (though there were plenty of exceptions, like the young couple I'd eaten with
that same morning), taking in the scene at Dick's. Dick's was a Seattle original, with two or
three locations, places where the very young and restless stoked up on stratospherically high
cholesterol hamburgers, probably igniting their equally high testosterone levels. In days
past, rumor had it that the occasional drug deal was negotiated by the nighttime denizens
hanging around the drive-in.
I decided to hold on at the Prince and quickly admit them, before dashing off to the
Conservatory. I sat in the wing chair in the living room, a magazine in front of me but my
eyes more often on the street, hoping to see their rental car pull up. It got to be 9:28, then
9:32, still no Bill and Alice.
My anxiety mounted, as I pictured Meg exiting the Conservatory, dark now in the
surrounding park, and not finding me waiting. If others came out with her at the same time,
and waited around a bit, she'd be fine. But what if they all took off, leaving her alone? Not
a happy thought. Finally, at 9:40 I saw some braking red lights in front of the house. There
was no parking space, but as I dashed outside, I was figuring I could pull my car out, double
park it for a couple minutes, giving them the space, then head quickly up to the park.
Bill and Alice were nice, but chatty. They'd had a spot of trouble with house
numbers. Guests sometimes did, because, confusingly, only a block away, the numbers on
Thirteenth were high, then they suddenly got low again, in the "East Zone", where we were
located. I should've explained this on the phone, but hadn't.
Finally I got them up in their room, rushed out to my truck and roared off toward the
park. It was almost ten to ten.
Chapter 17
I swung into the Park from 15th and screeched to a stop in front of the Conservatory.
Aside from the light over the entranceway, the large, mostly glass building was darkened.
No wife could be seen, which seemed at once ominous.
Could they have switched the meeting to the old art museum just up the hill to gain
more space for a large turnout? It seemed unlikely, but, on the chance, I gunned the truck
quickly up to the parking area, just in front of the doughnut sculpture. Here there was
considerable activity proceeding as the night deepened. I poked my head out the rolled
down window and looked around. Several pairs of male eyes gave me a semi-interested
once over, before deciding, no doubt, they'd hold out for younger meat. After all, it was still
early in the evening.
I backed up abruptly, narrowly missing a male couple strolling hand in hand, then
burned rubber back down to the Conservatory. Still no Meg. I got out of the truck and
charged around in several directions, feeling like John Belushi in a scene from Animal
House. Nothing. A clammy feeling was starting to congeal over my sweaty body. I almost
felt nauseous.
I saw a lone figure prowling among the trees, just off the path to the right. I rushed
over, startling the poor man as I grabbed his arm roughly.
"You!" I barked.
"Wh-what? What do you want?" the fellow stammered. In the faint light of a street
lamp up the road I could make out a youngish male face, maybe late twenties. He was
wearing a pair of running shoes, shorts and an aqua tank top, and had a slender build.
"How long you been hanging around here?" I demanded to know.
"A...about a half hour”, he said in a high, frightened voice. "Are you a cop?” he
asked.
"No. No, I'm not a cop." I realized what I was doingand belatedly let go of
his arm.
"Relax, buddy”, I said. "I'm looking for someone. You see anyone come out of the
Conservatory a little while ago?"
"Why yes, I did. Right after I got here, I was strolling up the hill, hoping to meet a
friend or two in the parked cars there. I heard some voices and looked back, and I did see
people."
"Coming out of the Conservatory, right?"
He shrugged. "Suppose so. Then I turned around again and kept going. I could hear
voices though, behind me."
"Including a woman's?"
"Yes. I'm pretty sure I heard a woman. More than one, though some men have
rather high voices, you know."
"Yeah, I know”, I said impatiently. "That's it? You didn't see anything else?"
"Well, as a matter of fact, I did. I was strolling back down the hill, not having had
any luck, with my friends I mean, when I saw this van drive up."
"A van! What color?"
"Dark. There was one person still waiting in front of the building. A fellow got out
and went over and said something to her."
"Are you sure it was a woman?"
"I think so. There was only a little light from the lamp post, but it was a small
person, probably a girl or a woman."
"How about the man?"
"Oh, really! Too hard to tell much. Not as tall as you, but very athletic looking.
Wearing a rugby shirt and some chinos, I believe."
"Jesus Christ! Never mind the fashion notes! What happened?"
"Well, excuse me! They just talked a minute or two, then he sort of took her arm,
no, her hands actually, I couldn't see this very well, and they walked toward the van."
"She went willingly?"
"As far as I know. But here's what I thought was odd. He took her into the back of
the van."
"The back?"
"Yes. I smiled to myself, thinking 'I bet I know what they're up to...' I mean that sort
of thing goes on all the time up here."
"I bet”, I growled.
Then he locked the door from the back, got in the front of the van
and drove away, just as fast as he could. I said to myself, 'THAT'S a new one!"
"Holy shit!" I groaned aloud. "Which way did they go?"
"Why, you can't go back onto Fifteenth so you can either go by the museum, where
the cars are usually parked, or directly down the hill, where it's darker. This van went down
the hill, rather quickly as I said."
A wave of shock swept over me. I tried to think straight. The fellow peered at me
in the gloom.
"Are you all right, sir?" he asked.
Yeah, I guess so”, I said, trying to shake off my panic. If it was Forsythe-and who
else could it be- what the hell was he up to? Why this crude kidnapping of my wife? He
must be thinking that no one is on to him, that he can get away with-what? I didn't allow
myself to even finish that question. Most important of all, where in God's name was he
taking Meg?
I forced myself to take a couple of deep breaths. My informant was still looking at
me strangely.
"Are you far from your home right now?" I asked him.
"I beg your pardon?"
"I said--"
"Oh. I heard you, I just didn't know--"
"Look, buddy! This is a fucking emergency. I need your help, understand? You
could be saving someone's life!"
"I'll try”, he gulped.
"So, are you close to home?"
He nodded. "I have a little apartment over on 16thEast." He pointed vaguely
toward sthe west.
"Can you get over there in a few minutes?"
"I suppose so. What--"
"What I want you to do is get back to your phone as fast as you can and call the
Twelfth Avenue police station. Ask for Detective Roosevelt Brown. Got that?"
"Detective Brown. I have it."
"If you talk directly to Brown, tell him to meet Ed right away at Forsythe's place. It's
at Harvard and Highland. If you can't get him, have somebody pass the message on to him,
and then start over again and call 911. Tell them there's a kidnapping taken place with the
victim maybe being taken to the same place I just told you. Now, where was that again?" I
grabbed the guy's arm.
"Ah...Harvard and ah...Highland. Hey, that hurts."
I let his arm go. "Buddy, I owe you for this”, I said. "Thank you. I gotta go."
I sprinted to my truck and took off like a shot down the tree lined drive toward the
southwest exit of the Park. As I screeched to a halt at the stop sign, I was already having
doubts. Was Forsythe bold enough to take Meg to his home? If not, where? If it wasn't to
his home, I'd never catch up with them. My only chance was to rush over there.
It wasn't far at all, hurtling down the hill, darting across Tenth and over to Harvard,
down the quiet street of palatial old homes. I stopped immediately after turning the corner
from Harvard onto Highland, killing my lights and engine. I gazed up at the fortress-like
place Meg had followed her quarry to, only hours earlier. The bad luck was that the son of a
bitch had evidently seen her then and had thought about how he could snatch her this
evening. Being J. Ray, he'd probably remembered she had an interest in the Conservatory
Project, had staked it out and gotten lucky. The good news was that at least I knew where to
go, thanks to Meg.
The place was formidable, made of stone and three stories high, with a continuous
long stone balustrade, forming a margin around the entire roof. Most of the mansion's
windows were dark, but there seemed to be a penthouse, a boxy looking structure in the
middle of the roof, in a corner of which I could barely make out some brighter light. The
top feature had been built, no doubt, to maximize the gorgeous views to the west and north.
The gates in toward the ground floor garage were closed and locked, as was the one
leading in toward a little stone staircase. Steps from the latter ascended toward an elaborate
vestibule area, with stone columns and a smaller balustrade atop it, duplicating the bigger
one around the roof.
The first thing I had to find out, and in a hurry, was whether Forsythe had brought
Meg back here. The gate had a cross horizontal bar and was scalable, though I had to
maneuver my crotch delicately over the pointed tops of the vertical bars. I moved quickly to
the window of the double garage and peered in. By the distant light from a street lamp I
could make out-yes! the Jaguar and next to it, thank you Lord, the van! And it was almost
always up the hill at the antique shop. So J Ray had a special use for it tonight, yes indeed.
As I turned away I caught sight of one more vehicle, against the far wall. Its tail reflector
gave it away, throwing out just a glint of red.
It was a motorcycle!
I sneaked up the staircase. The door, of course, was locked. I couldn't hear a peep
from inside. Another gate closed off a narrow alley beside the house so I hopped the gate
facing the staircase, back out to the street. When my right foot hit the dirt, next to a big
hedge, it felt squishy. Shit! I thought, and that's exactly what it was, a big pile of fresh dog
shit which I hate! I scraped it off as best I could and stared up at the house again. How in
hell to crack this nut? Where could Rosy be? Where were the 911 cops when you needed
them? That creepy little guy back up the Park probably hadn't bothered to call at all.
Although I hated the damn thing, and all the rigamarole to use it, I suddenly wished I had
our business cellular phone in the truck. Maybe I should've stopped somewhere on the way
over and called 911 myself, but I hadn't and that was that.
I looked at the huge old building again. There was a very long drain pipe up to the
top, along the street side, but only one cross bracket on it.Even Stallone or
Schwarzenegger, wouldn't try that. At the back of the building it looked more promising
because the rising hill made the building a story shorter there. There was a back entrance,
with a door certain to be locked, but with a little roof I thought I could climb up to. From
there it was only one more story to the main roof level. Another drain pipe ran down from
the rooftop to the side gutters of the little roof, and next to it was a big window with a ledge.
I hoisted myself up on the small lower roof, by means of standing on a railing, and
looked up. It would be precarious going, up to that last level, but I really had no choice.
Meg's life might be at stake. I edged out on the window ledge and grasped the drain pipe.
A couple of brackets held it against the wall. Somehow, inches at a time, I pulled myself up,
fingers aching and knees hurting from squeezing the drain pipe. At last I made it to a small
ledge encircling the building, a couple of feet below the balustrade arrangement. I looked
down and around at the street. Where were the police?
Now my problem was that the roof flared outward in a slight overhang. Well, why
quit now, I asked myself. A broken neck would be quick anyway. Eventually the cops
would arrive. I got my fingers firmly onto the base of the balustrade and slowly, painfully
pulled myself up. I blessed every one of the chin ups I did regularly to keep in shape, as I
finally hauled my quivering body up and over the balustrade.
I got my first good look at the penthouse. Indeed the room inside was lighted, but
there were drapes over these rear windows. I crept forward, and put my ear to the glass. If I
strained, I could just make out the low drone of a man's voice and most of the words. It was
a curious sort of total monologue with no response at all. What the hell did that mean, I
wondered. Had he already dumped Meg somewhere else? Maybe she was still in the van! I
cursed myself for not thinking of that when I spotted the vehicle down in the garage. If she
was in the penthouse with him-still intact I prayed-she was probably bound and gagged.
This mental picture made me crazy. A whiff of dog shit wafting up from my shoe brought
me back to reality.
"Yes, things are coming along extremely well”; I could faintly hear the voice droning
on. "The Convention Center is finished, and, just as I‟ve been expecting, prosperity is
slowly inching up First Hill.Carefully, and very discreetly I might add, I‟ve been
purchasing this property or that. My plan is to have at least ten holdings by 1995."
The voice paused a few moments. Was he saying all this to Meg? If so, why?
"The last few months or so though there's been a distinct turn for the worse. These
despicable, stinking vagrants have been spreading all over both First and Capitol Hills. The
big investors are thinking twice about new projects. Who could blame them, the way these
scum have taken over the streets; why, I myself was threatened by a gang of thugs near the
University. But I took care of THAT!"
Bingo! It hit me. Was this the smoking gun? Forsythe now admitting that he'd
reacted so badly to the confrontation with Cody and Sam and Davy that he 'took care of it'?
If only I had a tape recorder!
"Yes indeed. You know the wonderful thing about it? It was so much fun! One of
those same awful faces that had tried to humiliate me, turning up right under my nose, so to
speak, on Broadway. I can't tell you how delicious it was, to begin stalking the wretch. I
got to know his habits. Where he'd beg so disgustingly for money to keep his worthless skin
alive. Luckily he never recognized me. I'd avert my face when I passed him on the street."
The voice paused again, as if to savor the account more.
My ear was glued to the window.
"Finally, late one evening, I saw him heading up toward Volunteer Park. I suspected
already that he slept up there, but this time I decided to find out exactly where he'd stretch
out. It was closer to the road then I would have liked, but I decided that this would be the
night.
"About two A.M. I got ready.I felt exhilarated, even to the point of sexual
arousement. I wasn't scared at all. I got out the extra long ice pick I'd purchased down at
Fred Meyers. You know Fred Meyers on Broadway? Of course, you do."
That did it. Now I was sure he was talking to someone. He was mentally torturing
my Meg! I groaned inwardly.
"I took the Jaguar out of the garage very deliberately. I love the car, it purrs just like
a real cat, when it's running, and I counted on keeping it idling when I did it. Now, you see,
I thought that his being near the street helped me, because I could leave the car running, go
and quickly pierce his heart as he slept, and return directly to the car. I actually timed
myself. Forty-five seconds. Forty-five seconds!" He roared with laughter. "Less than a
minute to snuff a large vermin"
I looked back down at the street from my high perch. Still no cops. If I ever caught
up with that twerp in the park, I'd castrate him! I had to do something before this swine
started working on Meg. I creeped as soundlessly as I could around the square box of a
penthouse. As I neared the front, or west facing part, I realized that there was much more
light being thrown out there. The big picture window was actually clear of the drapes that
covered the other, side and rear, windows. I cautiously poked my head around the corner
and looked in.
The sight froze my blood. Forsythe stood with his back to the big window, the
scenery outside as a backdrop. To all intents he was addressing a theater audience, but one
made up only of Meg. He was only about five feet in front of the glass. The bastard had
spread-eagled Meg on a big bed with manacles holding her wrists and ankles to the four
brass posts. She was naked except for her blue bikini briefs. Her beautiful, slim body was
stretched so taut it couldn't even tremble, it seemed, but I could see the terror in her eyes.
She didn't look damaged as yet. He'd duct taped her soft little mouth, probably way back in
the Park. Her dark hair tumbled down upon a big white pillow.
I couldn't stand this another moment. Covering my head with my arms, I moved
back a step and then crashed through the window pane. I intended to careen forward far
enough to catch Forsythe somewhere on his body, enough to drag him down to the floor and
then strangle him. I counted on surprising him, and my rage gave me courage.
Unluckily for me the glass broke jaggedly. A huge wicked looking shard jumped in
the direction of Forsythe, as I veered the other way to avoid it. Forsythe darted sideways,
avoiding the glass and snatched up a gun. It looked like a semiautomatic. Even worse, it
looked like a silencer on the end of it.
"Aha”, said Forsythe."The intrepid, ever -meddling Mr. Harmens." His gun
motioned me back from my kneeling position on the floor, where my charge had landed me.
I felt a little groggy and was also forced to notice a big slice on my left forearm. It bled but
not arterially. I glanced over to Meg.
"Meg! Are you all right, babe?" I called to her. She nodded yes, but her eyes said
'no, I'm terrified!' I slipped a handkerchief against the gash.
"I wouldn't worry about your wife or your cut, Harmens”, said my adversary.
"Nothing like that matters now. Tell me, how on earth did you find us? I thought I'd
covered my tracks quite well”,
"A little guy in the park. He saw you forcing Meg into a van. That van, Forsythe.
It'll be the death of you. The evidence, it's about to catch up with you. Give it up, man." I
tried to sound persuasive and confident. "The police will be here any minute. I heard
enough to know you're a real sicko. You can cop an insanity plea and still save your skin."
The antique shop owner's smooth face darkened.
"Sicko, eh? Did you think that when I ran the show at those meetings? Do you think
there's anything less than brilliance at work when I can build a half million dollar showplace
of fine antiques in only five years? Don't insult my intelligence, Harmens!"
His nose suddenly winkled. "What IS that foul odor? I've only noticed it since you
crashed my little party."
"Dog shit. It's appropriate to your stupid party."
Forsythe smiled. "Bravado. I rather like that. You see Harmens, I don't pay any
heed to your bluff. If you'd actually called the police, they'd have been here by now. And
you wouldn't have been forced to climb up and break in here in this ridiculous
swashbuckling fashion. You've ruined a rather expensive window, you know."
"You're wrong, Forsythe. They're on their way." Inwardly I felt panicked by his
words. If he was right, if they didn't show, we were goners.
"I don't think so. You've complicated things quite a bit, Harmens, I'll admit that.
You two have run me down, and I have to think now. I have to deal with this problem."
"Think about death by hanging, Forsythe. You're supposed to be so smart; do you
really think you'll get away with this? That cop, Brown, and I know all about you. He'll be
here with the rest of the cops any minute. Two more killings won't help things at all."
"It's probably impossible for someone like you to conceive, Harmens, but I've rather
come to LIKE killing. Quite a lot, in fact. Hm, let's see now, how do you like this scenario?
I'm going to toss you this roll of duct tape-it's such a useful material, I find-and let you tape
your own feet and mouth, then finish up by looping the tape from your feet up to and around
both your wrists. Sort of a hogtie effect. When I see you've done a nice tight job of it, I'll
come over and just finish the work."
"The hell you say."
He cocked the gun and shrugged. "It's up to you. It would be easier to finish you
right now."
I glanced over at Meg. Her eyes were closed, out of exhaustion or fright, I couldn't
tell. Our only chance was to stall.
"All right”, I said sullenly.
"Good. I hoped you'd be reasonable." He tossed over the duct tape. "Get busy, and
I'll discuss the rest of the scenario."
"You know, I have to admit it, Forsythe”, I said. Maybe if I flattered him, he'd slow
down his 'scenario'. "It was hard as hell trying to get a clear pattern in all of this. What
mixed me up was that everyone seemed to die in a different way."
"Yes”, he said smugly. "On purpose."
"Orford, for example”, I said. I held the tape casually in my hand, but I didn't make
a move toward running any off the roll.
"Why him? And why did you run over him?"
"You think you're clever don't you, Harmens? Start taping your ankles. I'll talk
while you tape."
Reluctantly, I started with the tape.
"Orford was an irritant, like all the others. The fact that he knew Archer made me
hate him, too. That newspaper article sealed his fate. He seemed so obnoxious, confident
almost in an obscene sort of way. I made up my mind he'd have to go, too. Crushing him
and his dirty curs was just as much fun as eliminating Mr. Archer."
"You're not as clever as you think though”, I said, taping as slowly as I could. "You
nicked your van on that tree."
"Yes. That's when I first realized you could be suspicious. Even before that though,
I'd found you and your do-gooding mouth irritating. I rather fancied your wife though." He
glanced over at Meg, who was all terrified eyes again. He ran his eyes over her body
caressing her breasts with his glance. Impotent fury choked in my throat. Forsythe saw my
expression.
"Ah, Harmens. Don't much care for this, do you?" He chuckled. "You've no idea
how much nicer that makes it for me."
"You overlooked one thing, Forsythe”, I said. He looked at me quizzically. "You
didn't clean the van thoroughly enough. I crawled under it and found dog hair and blood on
a rear tire rim." I could sense his mind working. "The cops have a sample I took. They're
comparing it right now. They'll match the hairs from Orford's sleeping bag. They're going
to nail you, creep."
"It's a nice try, Harmens”, he said slowly. "But it's imaginary. Those wheels were
scrubbed and cleaned. It's just another bluff, isn't it?"
I shook my head. "You're cooked, Forsythe."
"Even if it was true, I could go down to the van and scrape any possible clue away”,
he said thoughtfully. "If there's no match, there's no evidence. You outsmarted yourself,
you idiot."
I gritted my teeth. I had to stall some more. "Well what about Alvin Schmorr?" I
said."You overstepped yourself there. You were known to oppose the Atkinson scheme, so
it was logical you'd try to discredit it somehow. And then you were seen on First Hill just
before the murder."
"Get busier with that tape. Schmorr?" he shrugged. "There's no proof whatever that
I was connected to him. He just got in the way of my plans for First Hill. He and his fruity
little friend."
"Meizner?"
"Yes. Fairy queens if I ever saw them. And both, oh so noble”, he sneered. "If they
had their way, every stinking drunk would find a luxurious home up on the Hill. And my
properties would be worth zero."
"Someone in the next building saw you in the Atkinson, you know."
"I doubt that. I knew the two gay blades would be there that evening, looking at the
building. I dressed roughly myself, slipped in the back door and anticipated them. No one
saw me. When Schmorr showed up early and went inside, I saw my chance. Getting my
hands on that puny little neck was almost like having an orgasm. I gradually choked the life
out of that pathetic sniveling runt."
Meg had closed her eyes. She hated violence. I wondered if she'd passed out
"You took a chance."
"So what”, Forsythe shrugged. "By now I was having too much fun to stop. Even
the memorial to Alvin Schmorr was fun in a strange sort of way. While everyone was
sanctifying the little pervert, I was reliving his strangulation. Last night I found myself
drawn back to the same locality. I was hoping I'd find some filthy drunken sot, daring to
sleep it off at one of my properties. Instead, I stumbled across a curious fellow. He just
didn't fit, and I didn't like the arrogant way he spoke to me. Luckily, I had my '’gat' with me
as that oaf, Fortunato, would put it.It was rather pleasant pumping two rounds into
someone's mid section. I got to see the expression on his face, as he died."
"Do you have any idea who you killed, Forsythe?"
"How could it possibly matter? No one cares about the trash hanging around down
there. Even the evening newscast failed to identify the corpse."
"For a reason. This time you miscalculated. It was a cop, an undercover cop named
Pellegrino."
For once Forsythe was taken aback. His eyes narrowed as his brain waves went into
overdrive.
"Another bluff, Harmens. I don't believe you. He was just another bum prowling
around the alleys. He never identified himself as a policeman."
"Why would he? Once he'd figured you out as the possible perpetrator he'd know
you'd probably stop at nothing. And you seem to have had the drop on him. It sounds like
you never gave him much of a chance anyway. By the way, the police found a bullet casing
at the scene."
"Now you're grasping at straws, Harmens. It doesn't matter now. 'In for a penny, in
for a pound', as the Brits like to say. Get on with that taping and stop stalling."
"Just one more question. The gat, as you put it, was it the same one you fired at me
this morning?"
"Yes. Very irritating, that. I did so want to get you off my trail. I'd have preferred a
body shot, but the sideways angle made it more difficult. So I aimed at your head. If you
hadn't been bobbing as you dived you'd be dead. I'm an excellent shot."
"You know, they'll be looking for a matching bullet casing there, too. Eventually all
these little miscalculations are going to nail you."
"I'll get rid of the gun, you fool! I'll say it was stolen." Suddenly, Forysthe gestured
impatiently with the gun. "Enough chit chat, Harmens. Start getting that tape across your
mouth, and then I won't have to listen to any more foolish questions. Then your wrists. I'll
finish the taping myself, nice and tight. THEN, what a treat we're all going to have!"
Seeing my expression darken only seemed to stimulate him.
"Get on with it”, he said. "I couldn't believe my luck when your wife found herself
alone for a few minutes this evening. In no time I swooped over with the van, got her
attention with the gun and managed to get some tape on her wrists and mouth."
"I'm going to kill you, Forsythe”, I muttered.
"What? Did I hear some more bravado? Some foolish threat? No, old chap. You've
got it quite backwards. It's I who is going to kill you. But not before I enjoy myself a little.
I might as well, don't you think? I'm way out in the deep water now anyway."
I glared at him. Fear was fast rising up to join my anger though. Slowly getting
immobilized didn't help. My feet would now be pretty useless, even though I'd tried to leave
"First, I'll have my way with your pretty maiden, as they used to say in the old
movies. You'll get to see it all. Even if you close your eyes you'll probably hear a few
muffled groans.Yes, those breasts.I wasn't prepared for such a magnificent prize.
Something sharp perhaps...I know! The ice pick! And those wonderful little panties, when I
cut them off I expect I'll think of many more interesting things I can do."
Meg was not reacting to any of this filth. I hoped that she really had passed out.
"This is so much better than my former arrangement”, Forsythe went on. "Every
couple of weeks I'd have a certain prostitute come up here. She understood my peculiar
needs, and she usually healed quickly. But she came only because she needed the money,
which I paid quite cheerfully, because I felt it helped me. She didn't come cheap either. But
therapy usually is expensive. Now I have this wonderful gift before me, and it's costing me
nothing!"
I spat at him, as far across the room as I could. It angered him.
"You'll regret that! I'm afraid I've been blabbing. And you've been stalling. Right
now! Finish that tape around your mouth. Go ahead”, he gestured with the gun. "Tightly.
Wrap it around your head several times."
He watched me work.
"That's it. Oh yes, the last part of the scenario. You might as well know. First I'm
going to have my fun. Then I'm going to practice something I learned in martial arts. I'm
going to just give each of you a nice little chop at the base of the skull. That should do the
trick as far as eliminating any resistance after that point. Then I'll carry you and what's left
of your wife down to your vehicle-I'm sure you have one down there. A little whiskey in
your mouths, some gasoline on your bodies and then partway down the hill we'll all go. At
that sharp curve high up and overlooking the freeway, I'll stop and get out, then release the
brake and simultaneously light your fires. It'll be quite spectacular, I think. Over the edge
you'll go, and then you'll tumble down the ravine. Very likely there'll be a boom! Think of
the money to be saved on your funeral costs. Instant cremation!" He smiled at the thought.
I stared at this lunatic. Hope was fast draining away. It appeared now that there'd be
no cop rescue. The sorry little jerk at the park had probably run into one of his 'friends' and
promptly forgotten all about me.
Forsythe wrinkled his nose again.
"There's that awful odor again!" he said. "I won't have that distracting me. Before
you start to fasten your wrists with the tape, get rid of that shoe, Harmens. I'd rather have
you getting that disgusting stuff on YOUR hands than mine. Just the one shoe will do."
I did as he asked, removing the shoe gingerly.I peered at the sole.It was
disgusting. I didn't want it on my hands either.
"Now, very gently, toss it through that broken window."
I made a pretense of fumbling with the shoe, to get a safer, less odious grip on it.
Then I pretended to be aiming it at the gap I'd created when I crashed through the glass.
Though it was a large target, there were still jagged pieces of glass hanging from the sides of
the window frame. With a quick sideways, rather than a forward toss, I slung the shoe hard
at Forsythe. He was only about ten feet away, having come closer to oversee the final duct
taping. It caught him squarely in the face. The gun went off, but wildly, the silencer
creating a slight whuffing sound.
Forsythe grunted something like '”oof'” and fell to one knee.I seized the last
opportunity this side of corpsehood I might ever have and sprang at him. It wasn't easy,
lunging from a sitting position on the floor. My ankles taped together didn't help much
either, but somehow I made contact with my free arms and tackled him.A surge of
adrenalin gave me the strength I needed.
My charge brought him down on his back. He tried to maintain a hold on the gun,
but I got one hand free and onto his wrist, griping it like a vise. I banged his hand down on
the floor. The gun came out and clattered away a few feet. I figured I'd have to keep
contact with him and keep him on the floor, so he couldn't use leverage and space for his
martial arts tricks. He was stronger, younger and more powerful than I, but my rage made
us equal.
I kept burrowing into him and bulldozed him back against the wall, where his head
made a loud thump. It didn't hurt him as much as slow his struggle down for a second. I
had just enough time to shift my hands up and grab his neck and start to pound his head
against the wall some more, but he squirmed around, sliding down on the floor. His arms
and feet were getting busier all the time. The tape around my mouth seemed to restrict the
amount of air I needed for the struggle, as I started to pant heavily through my nose.
Suddenly a shaft of bright light pierced upward through the broken window. At the
same time a familiar voice rumbled through a bullhorn from the street below. It was Rosy!
"Ed Harmens! J.R. Forsythe! We know you're up there."
I was close enough to Forsythe's face to see his eyes widen in surprise. I kept one
hand on his neck and tore away at the tape for a moment, getting just my upper lip free of
the miserable stuff.
I yelled, as loud as I could, considering the tape was still on my lower lip.
"Mm-osy!" I muffled the sound out.
Forsythe snapped his attention back to me and tore my arm away. He spotted the
gun across the room near the bed where Meg lay straddled. If ever there were a captive
audience to a desperate show, it was she.
"Coming up, Ed!" I heard distantly from the street.
I tackled Forsythe again, just as he lunged for the gun. He came about three inches
short, and I dragged him back a little. He turned and started to rain karate style blows at my
head. I ducked some but not all the blows. One felt like it broke my nose. We both were
wheezing now from the struggle but at least I could breathe through my mouth.
I put my head down into his chest and tried to hang on doggedly, feeling he was
starting to have the edge in mobility and strength. From somewhere downstairs in the
mansion I heard a shot. Then, the sound of a door being flung open. Rosy's voice could be
heard, louder now.
"Ed! Hold on, man. We're coming up."
Now it was Forsythe's turn to appear panicked. He made a last try for the gun, but I
held on to his feet. Turning back at me, he delivered a wild chop which stunned me and
almost made me lose my grip.
At the same time Rosy Brown could be heard again, much closer now. It sounded
like he was at the stairway up to the penthouse. Another shot rang out, taking care of the
last lock, for sure. Forsythe's exit was now cut off.
"We're coming up, Forsythe”, Rosy yelled. "It's all over."
Forsythe gave up on the gun. He finally fought free of me and got to his feet. He
steadied himself, then leaped toward the window. Jumping through the gap, he landed on
the roof and took off instantly toward the right out of my sight
A second later, Rosy Brown and three uniformed officers broke through the last door
and into the room. It was almost comical the way all those male eyes did a double take at
the sight of Meg, stripped on the bed. It helped me regain my wits.
"Mo-sey”, I said, still struggling with the tape, still hobbled by my bound feet. The
big cop understood. Quickly he folded some of the overhanging cover on top of Meg. She
closed her eyes in relief.
"Where's Forsythe?" Rosy asked. He held his service Smith and Wesson in his hand.
I gestured out the window. Then I took care of removing the tape from my mouth.
Rosy and two of the cops stepped carefully through the window. The third cop
helped me get the tape off my ankles, finally producing a pen knife to help the job along.
I got to my feet and went over to my wife.Meg's eyes were still closed. I gently
touched her cheek. Her eyes fluttered open. When she saw me, quick tears formed. I
carefully removed the tape from her mouth, having to use the cop's knife again. The sticky
gray tape had mangled her long hair.
"You all right, babe?" I asked softly. "You covered up okay?"
She nodded, sobbing a little. "All over now." She nodded
again, unable to speak just yet.
"You'll be okay for a minute?" I asked. She looked questioningly at me. Her eyes
darted toward her manacled wrists.
"Forsythe probably has the key to these handcuffs on him. I'll be back as soon as I
can."
She understood now. The remaining cop was peering
out the window. I stepped past him and out onto the roof. I remembered now I was wearing
only one shoe.
Though it was quite dark out there, there was enough city light reflected back from
low hanging clouds to make out the scene. Over at the far right corner of the roof, Rosy and
the two uniforms had Forsythe cornered against the stone balustrade. I quickly joined them.
"Still think it was a bluff? Forsythe?" I said when I got within earshot.
J. Ray didn't look his usual dapper self. Our roll around on the floor had disheveled
him. There seemed to be a smudge of dog shit on his forehead, which would particularly
trouble him, once he discovered it. He glared at me but said nothing.
"Man threatens to pull us over if we come near him”, said Rosy."Could be he's
strong enough to do it, too. Ain‟t worth the risk. We got cops at every corner of the house."
"So what happens?" I said.
"Radioed for a stun gun. You know, like the Rodney King thing?"
"Forsythe'll love it. You should hear what he was planning for Meg and me."
Forsythe turned his hate filled glance away from us and looked out over the corner of
the building. It was probably forty feet down.
"By the way, Ed”, said Rosy. "Just before I got the message to come over here, the
lab called. They made a match on them dog hairs."
"Great! But what the hell took you so long? I thought we'd had it. Must be half an
hour at least since I tried to have someone get you."
"Call didn't come through to me at first. Maybe 'cause I was home. Then I was on
my line with the lab."
"What about 911?"
"That's how I finally heard about it from a squad car that 911 had radioed. Then we
tore over here from Madrona, screeching tires, blowing sirens all the way."
"Jesus. I wish 911 had sent someone directly over."
"Seems like there was a little confusion over east or west Highland."
"Shit! What else could it be but east at Harvard? Was it that little guy who called
in?"
"Don't know, Ed."
"It was just a little too close, Rosy."
"Yeah. Can sure see that, all right."
The cop's radio suddenly signaled. The voice said they had the stun gun downstairs
and would bring it up.
"Hear that, Forsythe?" I said."Now you're gonna squirm, you son of a bitch!
They'll be carting you out of here like a side of beef in a few minutes."
Forsythe had been staring out at the city. He turned his face back. To my surprise
he had tears on his cheeks, glistening in the flare of light from one cop's flashlight.
"So you think you've won, do you?" he said in a low but firm voice.
Rosy took the opportunity to quickly read the antique shop owner his Miranda rights.
Forsythe nodded. "It won't do you any good”, he said.
"Why's that, Mr. Forsythe?" said Brown, curious.
"There won't be any charge. There won't be any trial."
"You mean you'll plead guilty? We don't even have your charges drawn up yet."
Harmens”, he stared at me. "Nosy, meddling nonentity stumbled
onto something he could never understand in a million years."
"What's that, Forsythe?" asked Rosy.
"The ecstasy of killing. And how wonderful to have such a delicious secret. The
ultimate secret. I've always loved the secrets I had way down inside my head..."
"It's just like I told you, Forsythe”, I said. "You're really sick."
This time he didn't get angry. He simply smiled.
Another cop stepped through the glass and over toward the knot of the five of us at
the roof corner.
"Here's the stun gun, Detective”, he told Rosy. Brown took it, studying it a moment.
"Don't get to use these things often”, he said.
"Wait a minute, Rosy”, I said. "Forsythe, how about the key for those manacles you
slapped on my wife." He stared at me. "Come on. It's all over now."
"Find them yourself, Harmens." said Forsythe. "And you won't get a chance to use
that thing, Brown. You're not treating me like some dumb wild animal."
He turned away and calmly but quickly straddled the three foot balustrade, then
moved outside it to the very edge of the roof.
"It's been good while it lasted”, he said. Brown and two cops started toward him, but
too late.
J. Raymond Forsythe had already plunged to his death.
"Shit!" said an agitated Brown, peering over the balustrade. "He really did it."
I felt shocked myself. It had happened so fast.
"Oh, man, now I'll have even more paperwork”, groaned the cop. From down below
came shouts from the police there
"I'll have to go down and look in his pockets for that key, Rosy."
"That's all right, Ed. Come on, I'll go with you. We'll get Ms. Browning outta them
manacles in no time."
When we moved back through the penthouse, I tried to reassure Meg about the key
to the cuffs. She responded to the news about Forsythe in two waves, first with surprise and
then with a convulsive mixture of tears and anger.
"Are you sorry?" I asked. Even with the tears welling from them, my wife's eyes
shone with hate, an enormously bitter expression, one I'd never seen before.
"For that bastard?You only heard a part of it.Before you got here, he was
describing in great detail what he intended to do to me." She shuddered at the thought.
"Oh, babe!"
"I'm just sorry he didn't suffer more”, she spat out.
I had to leave her for a few more moments. It was awkward with some of the police
still mulling around, but Brown had covered her near nakedness well. I found my smelly
shoe, put it on and went downstairs. Rosy was already outside the building by Forsythe's
body.
"Neck's broken”, he said.
"Just like Alvin‟s”, I remembered.
Rosy let me rummage through the dead murderer's pockets till I found a small key.
The cops thought it looked like the type that would release Meg from her steel bondage.
I hurried up the stairs. More cops had arrived, it seemed, police photographers, lab
people. There must've been twenty people inside and outside the place. It was a good thing
there were only one or two residences within an easy range of the mansion or a crowd
would've gathered. All I could think about now was getting Meg out of there and home.
The key worked on all four manacles. Meg wasn't sure where her clothes were or
where to dress. Keeping the bedspread draped around her, we made our way downstairs.
Rosy was directing activities, still near the body. Meg didn't even want to look at Forsythe
now.
"Look, Rosy, can we just take off?" I asked. Mainly I wanted Meg's ordeal to be
over.
Instantly he understood.
"Absolutely, Ed”, he said without hesitating. "There's gonna be a pile of paperwork
on this thing, but it can wait. You take Ms. Browning and go on home, now. We can get
back into this tomorrow."
He spied Meg, standing off to one side in her bare feet and now shivering a little
under her covering bedspread.
"Ms Browning”, he said softly, going over to her. "You okay?"
She smiled assent. "I just want to go home, Rosy”, she said.
"I told Ed that's just what you're gonna do, too."
"About Meg's clothes--“, I said.
"Don't you worry, Ed. They'll be up there somewhere. We'll find 'em later on, and
I'll have 'em for you tomorrow. You two get on outta here now. Take a nice warm bath or
something. Get some rest."
Meg smiled again at the cop. She did warm baths very well anyway.
We got in my truck and left. We were home in ten minutes. The Prince had never looked so
welcome. The guests, all accounted for, were up in their friendly lighted rooms. We slipped
downstairs, back toward some sort of normalcy.
Chapter 18
The time was 10:30 the next morning, and the guests had all left. I'd done it all, so
far, and still found time to pamper my sorely tried Meg. Coffee, the cats, the TIMES
crossword, all the little things had conspired to go a long way toward mending her battered
nerves. Now she'd just come upstairs for some cereal
A heavy step started up the front stairs. It was Rosy. He rang the jangle bell before I
could beat him to the door. He came in, carrying a file folder and a copy of the local
morning newspaper. He seemed fresh, in spite of the high drama performed only twelve
hours before.
Meg was still in her robe, but not in the least discomfited. After all, Brown and a
few other surprised cops had seen a good deal more of her last night.
"Good morning, Ed. Good morning, Ms Browning”, he said cheerily. "First really
good one we've had lately, I was thinking to myself as I drove into work."
My offer of muffins-I'd made the orange spice walnut recipe this morning-and coffee
was accepted.
"Thought you'd like to see what the P.I. had to say about J. Ray Forsythe”, the big
cop said, laying down the paper.
"It can wait”, I said.
"If you two are up to it, we could start to generate a statement 'bout last night, or I
can leave some of this material, and you can get it back to me. You shouldn't let it go too
long though, else folks begin to forget little things."
"I'll never forget it”, said Meg. "But it's all behind us now”, she went on.
It ran through my mind that we literallyowed our lives to Rosy and the other cops.
As he dug into his fourth muffin and third cup of coffee, Rosy reminisced.
"You know, if it hadn't been for that Ms McGuiness we might not've got this guy”,
he said. "It turned you into a regular ol' private investigator, Ed."
I snapped my fingers. "Rosy, you reminded me. I want to give her a call today."
Meg said, "I'm sure I've got her number. It won't bring her brother back, but she'll
know at least his death was evened out."
I still had to get used to the idea of a vengeful Meg.
"So I guess I won't get to see you two much anymore”, said Brown, almost wistfully.
"Now, Detective, I suspect you're fishing”, said Meg with a mischievous smile.
"You'll always be welcome to stop by for a cup of coffee. And we almost always have
muffins to spare."
Brown was both embarrassed and touched.
"Now, doggone it, Ms Browning, there yougo you teasing me again. I just got kind of
used to seeing you both, mostly Ed, I guess, but it wasn't for the muffins and coffee."
Meg laughed. "Oh we know it, but it's fun to tease. You know, most teasing is done
Brown relaxed and broke into a big grin.
"Well, that goes both ways. And somehow I got a feeling I'm gonna be seeing you
two again, one way or another."
“We'll be here, Rosy”, I said. "And, if I forgot to say it last night, thanks. Thanks
for everything."
"Hey, it's me could be thanking you too, Ed. And Ms Browning kinda forced Forsythe’s
hand, or so it seemed. Ed, you had you some interesting times with ol' Razor Dugan,
didn't you?"
I'd already figured that Razor'd probably heard the news about Forsythe, and the way
the case had ended. Cody and Sam too. These two had supplied such an important clue.
Maybe some time I'd take it on myself to look them up again. For now though I was more
than happy to be sipping coffee with Rosy Brown and Meg in the good old Prince, out of
bullets and the way of harm .
The End