The Deader the Better (22 page)

I hadn’t thought of it before, but I said, “I don’t think
she’s ever been scared like that.”

“Most people haven’t.”

“I don’t think she knows how to handle it.”

“Most people wouldn’t.”

“Stop being sensible, will you?”

“Have you thought that this may not be the best time in your
life to be making decisions?” he said. When I didn’t answer, he
continued. “Like when a spouse dies, they say not to do anything
drastic for a year. Don’t quit your job, don’t sell your house,
that kind of thing. The suggestion being that trauma quite often does
not for wise choices make.”

“What happened to us in Stevens Falls just amplified what was
already going on,” I said.

“Which was?”

“I think that would depend upon which one of us you asked.”

“If I asked you?”

“If you asked me, I’d say…maybe I’m feeling a little
chafed. Like my relationship isn’t so much part of my life as much
as it’s becoming my life, and I don’t know how I feel about that.
It’s like for the first time in my life, I pretty much know what
next week is going to look like.” Before he could say anything, I
held up my hand. “But I don’t want it to sound like it’s
something Rebecca’s doing to me, because it’s not. Lots of it is
internal.”

I got to my feet and walked over to the fire and turned my back to
the flames.

“I’m feeling like an old fart. There’s nothing on the radio
I like anymore. It’s like I’ve been banished to either the jazz
channel or the oldies station. I watch these TV shows and they’ve
got kids who don’t shave yet playing grizzled homicide dicks, on
programs I can’t remember the names of. The only programs that sell
anything I might even remotely want to buy are golf tournaments, and
I’m telling you, man, that just scares the hell out of me.”

“What is it you’re afraid of…ending up like everybody else?”

I wouldn’t have put it that way, but, “Yeah, I guess it’s
something like that.”

“Notice how we keep getting back to the things about you that I
love.”

“You lost me.”

“That’s where we were a while back, on the question of why
you’ll never be one of those guys calling his broker at six in the
morning. It’s the same answer. It’s because you’ve got your own
thing going on, your own set of standards, your own set of goals
about which…”—I started to speak, but he raised his
voice—“about which—and this is the crux of the issue—about
which you do…not…compromise, Leo. And that, my old friend, while
a noble and romantic stance, will get you old and alone.”

I could feel the blood rising to my cheeks.

“So what, then? I take a job for one of the big outfits? Wear a
tie? Spend my days tracking skip traces by computer?”

“Certainly not. Not only would it kill you, but you’d be lousy
at it.”

“Being a PI is all I’ve ever done.”

“You’d be useless at anything else. A clockwork orange.”

As usual, Jed had hit it right on the head. At this point in my
life, whenever I pictured myself in another career, the image I saw
always seemed as unnatural and unnecessary as a piece of mechanical
fruit. I tried to lighten things up.

“Well, of course, there’s playing lead guitar for the Stones,
but you know Keith’s already got the gig.”

“Dreams die hard,” he said. I took a sip of the cognac and let
it roll around on my palate before swallowing. For the first time in
weeks, the burnt smell was missing from my nostrils. I swirled the
liquor and took another sip.

“About a month ago, I’m having lunch with Charlie Cook. You
remember Charlie?” Jed nodded. “At the Two Bells Tavern on
Fourth. Anyway…before I start this story, I should give you a
little history. Charlie’s about three years older than I am. I used
to look up to him like the big brother I didn’t have. We used to do
a lot of crazy things together.” I took another sip of my cognac.

Jed raised his glass in a toast. “Ah, youth.”

“The one that comes to mind is the time he had a date with this
Italian girl. Name of Carlotta Something or othera. Very strict
old-school parents. They wouldn’t let Charlie take Carlotta out
unless he got a date for her little sister Rosie, which, of course,
is where I come into it. So we show up on Friday night. The family
had this delicatessen down in Garlic Gulch. Parents have gone home
for the day. The only one there is this brother Mario, who, while the
girls are on their way down, tells us all the things he and the
family are going to do to us if we put so much as a hand on their
girls.”

“Sarah’s father threatened to put my scrotal sac through an
offset press.”

For the first time in weeks, I laughed. “So the girls show up
and they’re both gorgeous and nice and we take ‘em out to a
movie—
A Shot in the Dark
, I think it was the first Pink
Panther flick. Anyway, we’re bringin’ ‘em home when they say
they want to stop at the deli. So we stop. They drag us inside, where
they snag a couple of bottles of chianti from the shelves and lead us
up onto the roof, where, much to my and Charlie’s amazement, they
turn out to be the horniest creatures either of us had ever
encountered. Within minutes I’m naked and doing all the things I
always thought I wanted to be doing. Charlie’s over on the far side
of the roof with the sister, but, you know, I can hear that the same
thing is going on over there.”

“Your first time?” Jed asked.

“No…but pretty close. It was the first time it wasn’t
pitchblack and there wasn’t a gear-shift lever involved.”

“Go on.”

“Okay…to make a long story short, about the time we’re
halfway to paradise, the brother Mario shows up and can hear what’s
going on up on the roof. Thank God one of the sisters locked the door
to the roof. So Mario goes ballistic. He’s throwing himself at the
door, screaming in Italian. By then we’d put away the wine, so
we’re all laughing our asses off while we’re trying to get it
down, but you know…I’m young and I’ll be damned if I’m going
to stop until I get some relief…but I’m laughing my ass off,
which is not helping the matter at all.”

“A dilemma.”

“Well, anyway, about the time the fire axe starts to come
through our side of the door, Charlie and I figure it’s time for
our withdrawal.”

“Literally and figuratively.”

“Except there’s no way down. Not even a drainpipe to climb
down, so, in order not to become geldings, we end up having to jump
two stories into a dumpster full of spoiled fruit.”

Jed gave me another toast. I did my end.

“So…thirty years later, I’m sitting in a tavern with this
same guy and he’s got his glasses on and he’s studying the menu
like there’s going to be a test, when he looks over at me and he
says, ‘I’m gonna be really bad today. I’m gonna have the
chicken.’”

Jed burst out laughing.

“I mean, it was like a moment of epiphany for me. What the hell
has happened to us? How’d we get to where being‘really bad’
involves ordering the chicken instead of the fruit plate? What
happened to those kids on the roof? To the spontaneity…the joy?”

“Same dilemma you’re faced with now.”

“How’s that?”

“Whether to follow your instincts and get the hell off the roof,
or stay with the girl and risk being neutered.”

“
Neutered
is too strong a word.”

“What would you prefer?”

I thought it over. “
Diminished
, maybe.”

“Or maybe
tamed
.”

“Something like that,” I admitted.

“I’m sure it won’t be news to you if I say that life is a
system of trade-offs.”

I started to speak, but thought better of it. I could think of
thirty more things to say, but in the end, all of them, in some
manner or another, validated my feelings and trivialized Rebecca’s.
So I shut up and finished my cognac in silence. I set the empty glass
on the mantel and said, “Hey, man…thanks for putting up with me.”

He got up and gave me a hug. We were embracing and patting one
another on the back when Maria poked her head in the door to say she
was going home for the evening. I gave her a salacious wink over
Jed’s shoulder. She closed the door. “Maria’s going to think
we’re gay,” I said.

“Who cares?” he said and hugged me tighter. Used to be I could
count on Jed to come to my aid at a moment’s notice. These days
it’s not that simple. “Hey,” I said as we patted ourselves back
into shape. “First week after the new year, I’ve got a little
something going on…I was wondering if you could maybe lawyer for
the crew if necessary.”

“Are you anticipating problems?”

“No,” I said honestly. “Just as a failsafe.”

“This wouldn’t include a little fishing vacation, would it?”

“It might,” I said.

He motioned toward the half-empty cognac bottle. “Care to tell
me about it?”

I shook my head. “Couldn’t possibly do it,” I said. “Not
with you being an officer of the court and all.”

SOME PEOPLE YOU PICTURE IN YOUR MIND’S EYE AS A smile or a
unique tilt of the head. Others are most readily recalled by the ear
as a hearty laugh or a breathy tone of voice. Floyd was the only
person in the world whom I associated with a smell. On three prior
occasions, I’d hired Floyd to protect me. In each case, someone had
died violently. The last one heaved his final breath in the front
seat of my former car. It had probably been my imagination, but after
that night in west Seattle, I’d never been able to get behind the
wheel of that car without the sweet smell of brains tickling my
nostrils, and to this day, the mention of his name carries that
faintly metallic odor to my nose like a breeze.

Even now, the smell loitered in the air around me as I dialed the
number you started with, if you were looking for Floyd. “Windjammer,”
the rough voice answered.

“I’d like to talk to Floyd,” I said.

His routine never varied. “Got nobody here with a name like
that,” he growled.

“In case you do,” I said. “Have him call Leo Waterman.”

I left the cell phone number.

“Whatever floats your boat, buddy,” he said and hung up. I
snapped the phone closed, turned the ringer all the way up and put it
in my jacket pocket. Floyd would get back to me when he could. Time
to find Kurtis Ryder III. Kurtis was the black sheep of the socially
prominent Ryder clan. A solitary stain on an otherwise pristine
landscape of old money and privilege that for four generations had
occupied the very apex of Seattle society. And what a black sheep he
was.

Kurtis came out before most people were aware there was a closet.
He was neither flamboyant nor apologetic about his preferences, but
merely went about his life in the manner he saw fit. Despite the
narrow-minded attitudes of the time, the family, to its credit,
closed ranks around Kurtis, and for a while became ardent financial
supporters of the burgeoning gay and lesbian rights movement.
Interestingly enough, Kurtis’s problems had nothing to do with his
sexual preferences. Kurtis liked to gamble. By the time he’d
graduated from Stanford with an electrical engineering degree, he was
over three hundred thousand dollars in debt to a pair of Oakland
bookies. He claimed he was so naive he figured he’d just move home
to Seattle and that would be the end of it. Predictably, the bookies
didn’t see it that way. A week after graduation, two gentleman in
bad suits pulled him from his car, dragged him into the alley behind
what was then the Green Parrot Lounge and beat the living crap out of
him with iron rods. They told him they hadn’t broken his knees only
because they wanted their money and breaking his legs would have
delayed that process. They gave him ten days to get even or, as they
put it, get measured for a creeper. Kurtis, naturally, went to his
father.

His father, naturally, said no. Not only no, but he forbade anyone
else in the family, on pain of disinheritance, to assist his
irresponsible and ungrateful son in any way. Kurtis made the rounds
of the relatives, but it was no go. By the time the family dust
settled, Kurtis had six days left until he became differently abled.
He spent a day and a half considering everything from suicide to the
Alaskan wilderness and then came up with the plan that was to change
his life forever.

He remembered a party he’d been to a couple of months before,
during spring break. A friend of a friend of a friend. Some people
with a big new house up on the Magnolia Bluffs. He remembered his
amusement at how eager they had been to show off their newfound
wealth in an obvious and ostentatious way that would have appalled
the bluenose members of his own family. Money and jewelry strewn
about. How she’d insisted he look in her jewelry collection, and
how the husband had dragged him around by the elbow showing off his
new burglar alarm setup, and how he’d stood there thinking that
anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of electronics could walk
right through something like that.

I still remember when he told me about that night, and the look he
had in his eyes while he recounted the story of bypassing the alarm
with a piece of tinfoil, creeping around the house, with his heart
pounding out of his chest, and then finding what he was looking for
right there in the bedroom with the couple. “And when I was
standing there in the dark,”

he told me, “I’ve got all this stuff in my arms, and it’s
deadly quiet and both of them are laying there snoring…man, I’m
telling you, I had a religious experience. I felt like electricity
was running through my body, and in that moment I knew that all that
money I’d pissed away gambling had just been for the risk…I
didn’t like gambling. I like risk. I knew right then that burglary
was my calling.”

At forty cents on the dollar from a fence, he hadn’t pulled
enough jewelry out of the Magnolia house to pay his whole debt, but
he had bought himself some time. Time that he used to get himself
reestablished on the local highbrow party scene, where his scandalous
presence brought an air of insubordination to what might otherwise
have been a series of opulent but dull gatherings. Like clockwork,
however, a couple of weeks after the party, the hosts would brush the
sleep from their eyes to find their family’s most treasured baubles
missing and presumed fenced.