Chump Change (30 page)

That was Wednesday. I got the call just before eleven on Friday morning, as I rolled along Western Avenue, heading for the Trader Joe’s in Ballard.

George. Well along in his daily buzz.

“Leo. He’s here,” he slurred. “Sittin out fronta Pomodoro.”

Which was the little Italian bistro across the street from Louisa’s Cafe.

“Keep an eye on him,” I said. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

Promises, promises. Traffic was gnarly. Had to drive all the way up to the Magnolia Bridge before I could turn around. I would have cut up over Queen Anne Hill and come down Mercer, but that route, of course, was under construction, so I just went blasting all the way up Western and fought the lights up Denny to Fairview.

The dashboard clock said I’d been en route for seventeen minutes when I crested a little rise on Eastlake Avenue and the Zoo came into view.

Rockland knew my car by sight, so I hung a hard right into the 7-Eleven parking lot and got out. The roar of the freeway filled my ears.

As I hurried across Lynn Street, I pulled out my cell phone. Dialed 911.

“What is your emergency?” she asked.

“I’ve got a wanted felon sitting in a car on Eastlake Avenue,” I said, as I jogged over to the front of the Zoo.

“What is your emergency, sir?” she repeated.

“He’s got multiple felony warrants out for his arrest in both Asotin County, Washington, and Nez Perce County, Idaho,” I said.

“This line is for emergencies only, sir.”

“You mean to tell . . .”

She broke the connection.

I cursed and began to jog up the sidewalk.

I was halfway up the block when Rockland Moon got out of his car. I flattened myself into the doorway of a real estate office. Pulled out my phone and dialed 911 again. They put me on hold. I cursed again. In this town, Uber would get you a Lincoln Town Car and a liveried driver way faster than you could get a cop. I stole a glance around the corner of the glass. Moon was standing by the street side of the car. I watched as his head swiveled back and forth, checking traffic in all directions, before starting to cross the pavement.

I stayed put until he pulled open the door of Louisa’s Cafe and Bakery and disappeared inside. I leaned back against the window and took a moment to weigh my options. Such as they were.

The doorways between me and the cafe were few and far between. If Rockland moved this way, he’d make me in a second. Worse yet, I was still way too beat up for scuffling with anyone more ominous than a coupla Campfire Girls. I’d been counting on the cops to do the heavy lifting. Never occurred to me that they wouldn’t be interested in a guy with multiple felony warrants. I cursed again. At myself, this time, for living in a world where Officer Friendly still came to the rescue.

I considered junking the whole scheme. Calling the Boys off and going home, until I could figure a way to get the authorities involved. Tempting as bagging it was, though, that left Rockland Moon hanging over my head like a cartoon anvil, and that wasn’t something I was willing to live with. No . . . this thing needed to be settled, so my life could return to normal.

So, I bolted across the sidewalk, slipped between parked cars, and mamboed my way to the far side of Eastlake Avenue. Soon as I hit the sidewalk, I stretched my legs out and began walking quickly. I rolled up my collar and hunched the bottom half of my head down into my coat. Looked like Bazooka Joe.

I kept my face averted as I hotfooted it past Rockland’s rental car and down to the corner of Louisa, where I picked my way across the lumpy cobblestones to the shrubbery at the near corner of the tennis courts.

Up to this point, I think I can rightfully claim that things were more or less under control. Sure, we’d had a major setback, what with the cops refusing to show and all, but things were still fairly copacetic.

I could see George now, peeping out from the back parking lot, and Large Marge lurking back among the ornamental cypress trees.

I’d found a seat on a low concrete wall, with a nice piece of shrubbery breaking up my outline. Seemed like we were about as well-positioned as we could be. I tried 911 again. Got a busy signal. Cue the cursing.

Lasted about three minutes. That’s when Rockland came out the door, holding coffee in a white Styrofoam cup. Instead of crossing the street to his car, Moon turned left and ambled down toward Eastlake Mail.

I figured he was making a reconnaissance run. Scoping out the place to see if I was there, and then moving on by. No such luck. He stepped through the doorway and disappeared inside. I waited. Nothing.

On the street, a tandem Metro bus came roaring by. When the diesel din began to fade, I heard heated voices. Angry shouting coming from Jules’s place. Two voices.

I didn’t have much of a choice. Way I saw it, my problem had spilled over onto Jules, which made fixing it my responsibility, so I came out from behind my bush and sprinted across Eastlake Avenue.

As I vaulted the curb, I could see that George had heard the same thing I had. He’d hustled up the sidewalk and was peering in the door. Shouting something now. Still yelling as he stepped up into the doorway.

And then the doorway spit him back out like a watermelon seed. He came tumbling backwards, head over heels across the sidewalk, finally bumping to a stop against a sickly looking tree.

Instinctively, the crash of breaking glass spurred me forward. When I got to the door, Rockland Moon had two hands full of Jules’s polo shirt and was pulling him over the counter. I put my head down and plowed into Rockland’s back, sending all three of us to the floor in a flailing, grunting pile of humanity.

The pain from the impact left me dizzy and gasping for breath, so I’m not quite sure how Rockland Moon managed to scramble to his feet, but somehow he did. Just in time for George to throw himself onto his back, legs wrapped around Rockland’s torso, hanging on for dear life.

He shrugged George to the floor the way a dog rids himself of a flea, and then gathered himself and stumbled out the door. I looked up just in time to see Large Marge haul off and hit him in the mouth hard enough to send him staggering two steps backwards. He roared like a beast and backhanded her to her knees.

I pulled Jules to his feet. “What the hell is—” he started, but I was off and crunching, kicking my way through the debris toward the door.

By the time I reached the sidewalk, Red Lopez had joined the fray. He was a human whirlwind, swearing, spitting, swinging, and kicking, all at the same time. Rockland ran over him like a fullback crossing the goal line. Never even broke stride.

When I look at it now, I don’t think Moon knew I was part of the tussle. From his point of view, it musta seemed like a concerned citizenry had risen up against him.

And then, instead of heading for his rental car, Rockland Moon inexplicably turned left and began running down Eastlake Avenue, toward the University Bridge.

Wasn’t until I’d limped up to the corner that I saw why. Nearly Normal Norman was sitting cross-legged on the hood of Moon’s rental car. If you counted the foot and a half of red Ronald McDonald hair, he looked to be just slightly under twelve feet tall, and even from this distance, one could plainly see that this man was not watching the same TV channel as the rest of us. I’da run the other way too.

Large Marge was struggling to her feet, with a trickle of blood running down over her ragged plaid shirt and her nose pointing in a direction never intended by nature. Red was out cold on the sidewalk, his right foot twitching to the beat of some unheard song.

I turned back toward Jules. “Call the cops,” I yelled. Jules began pawing through the carnage, looking for the phone.

George appeared at my side.

“You okay?” I asked.

He nodded. I handed him my car keys. “Get the car,” I said. “It’s up at the Seven-Eleven.”

George took off stumbling uphill.

I forced myself into an uneven lope, and started after Rockland. Don’t ask me why. It’s probably something hardwired into my DNA. Like cats and shiny things. If it runs . . . chase it. Wasn’t like I had any chance of catching him either. I mean . . . he wasn’t an Olympic sprinter or anything, but I was moving like The Mummy on dope. Orson Welles would have blown by me like I was standing still.

By the time Rockland passed Edgar Street, he’d left me in the dust. If he’d just kept running, and then ducked in somewhere, he’d have lost me for sure.

As it was, it seemed like hours before I lumbered past Hamlin and around the bend, where I could see the long straightaway running up to the University Bridge.

Rockland was all the way down by the Eastlake Bar and Grill by then, but he wasn’t running anymore. Nope. That would have been too smart. Instead, Rockland was standing out in the street, engaged in a spirited fistfight with a guy who’d apparently been driving a red Volvo station wagon.

If he’d asked me I’d have told him. You don’t want to start anything with the local station wagon set. For all you knew this guy ran thirty-five miles before breakfast every morning and hadn’t eaten anything but wheatgrass for the past twelve years. Maybe not as big and bulky as Rockland, but with one percent body fat and a physique stringier than an Ethiopian chicken, these guys could be dangerous.

I kept moving, as fast as I was able. They were wrestling now. Pushing at one another like a pair of bulls. Wasn’t till I lumbered past the Little Water Cantina that I snapped to the fact that traffic had stopped.

I looked farther up the street. The bridge was up.

Guy in a Ford truck saw me coming in his rearview mirror. Rolled down the window. “Son of a bitch tried to carjack him,” he yelled as I passed.

“Come on,” I yelled back.

I’m very seldom inspirational. Mostly I do my thing and let you do yours. But today, I seemed to be a leader of men. By the time I’d covered half the distance, I was leading a posse of half a dozen civic-minded Seattleites who strongly objected to such politically insensitive behavior as brawling on city streets in the middle of the day. This could, after all, be a hate crime.

Rockland saw the mob approaching and took off running. The bridge was coming down now. A white panel truck came up from under this side of the bridge and started down the empty side of the street. Rockland ran in front of the vehicle, waving his arms, trying to flag the driver to a stop. No go.

The guy behind the wheel put the pedal to the metal. Rockland had to dive to his left to avoid being pancaked. By the time he’d scrambled back to his feet, George had arrived with my car. Barreling down the wrong side of the street like Mario Andretti, George swung hard left toward Rockland, who then jumped up onto the sidewalk.

George screeched to a halt. Rockland Moon took off running up the sidewalk. I could see it coming. Georgie didn’t like people putting their hands on him. I was no more than twenty yards away when George decided he didn’t give a shit if it
was
a sidewalk, he was going to run that motherfucker down, no matter what.

I grimaced as he threw the Blazer in low gear, bumped up over the curb, and started roaring down the sidewalk, turning potted plants and outdoor furniture into airborne litter as he swerved along the storefronts.

Only thing that saved Rockland from becoming roadkill was a pair of utility poles at the end of the block. To avoid having the poles for lunch, George had to veer hard left and bounce down onto Fuhrman Avenue, pointing in the wrong direction.

The bridge was nearly down by the time Rockland Moon ran through the bells and around the flashing barrier, headed, apparently, for the center of the span. The bridge tender immediately began to blow the whistle at him, but Moon seemed not to hear. The PA system began to squawk warnings over and over. People on both ends of the bridge began to blow their car horns. Rockland kept going.

Looked like his legs had turned to jelly by the time the pair of SPD cruisers appeared at the north end of the span. He slid to a stop. His mouth hung open. His chest was heaving, fighting for breath, as he walked over to the rail and looked down.

The assembled multitude caught its collective breath when he climbed up onto the rail. The SPD cruisers stopped coming this way. The cops got out of the cars.

I staggered up onto the bridge and looked down at the water. A red and white Crowley tugboat was motoring slowly toward Lake Union.

Without further ado, or seemingly another thought, Rockland Moon jumped. All things being equal, he should have landed in the tugboat’s wake. Problem was . . . the tug was towing a gravel barge that came out from under the bridge when Rockland was about halfway to the water.

Quite frankly, it didn’t look real. Looked like some cheesy special effect when Rockland hit the front of the barge and pinwheeled into the dark water of Portage Bay.

Took the water cops three days to find the body. From what I was told, the impact with the barge had very nearly decapitated him. My nerves were still pretty raw, so when the buzzer for the front gate went off when I wasn’t expecting anybody, first thing I did was stuff the .38 into the pocket of my pants. I hit the intercom button and turned on the cameras.