Who in Hell Is Wanda Fuca? (30 page)

"You got it, Leo?" asked Ralph.

"Yeah, Ralph, I think I do. It's insane, but I've got it. It's not the
boat shed. It's that construction site out by the road. They're just using the
shed for storage. They're going to burn down the research lab, either before or
during the dedication ceremony."

"What are we gonna do?" asked Ralph.

"Let's call the cops," suggested Earlene, cackling madly.

"We can't," I said.

"Why not?" asked Harold.

"Because that's not what we're getting paid to do. Caroline's going to
be with them. The cops will get her too."

"So what?" asked Ralph. "Burning buildings is not nice. Maybe
she'd be better off with the cops." In the abstract, he had a point.
Unfortunately, this wasn't the abstract. This was Tim Flood. I turned to
George.

"You want to go back to where you picked up the cash and explain to
those folks that we didn't get the job done?"

He didn't bother to answer.

"Maybe you could make a deal with the cops," suggested a little
guy wearing about twelve sweaters. The bulk, when combined with his round,
cabbagelike face, made him look a bit like the Michelin Man. As I remembered,
his name was Waldo.

"We tell them what's happening and they let the girl go," helped
Mary.

"They'll never go for it."

"Why not?" she asked.

"Because, from what I hear, this is maybe not the first time they've
burned the goddamn thing down."

"You mean - " George.

"You got it. They're dedicating a new building because the last one got
burned down. This Save the Earth bunch are the prime suspects in the last fire.
No ay the cops are going to let anybody skate on this thing. Besides that,
there's probably state and federal raps involved here too. No way."

"So, what are we going to do?" asked George.

"We have to stop them ourselves."

"What does this have to do with finding out who killed Buddy?"

For Ralph, this was a most astute, if somewhat ill-timed, question. A moment
of silence came over the group.

Daniel's admonition notwithstanding, it was now time to lie.

"The girl we're going to keep away from the cops was the last person to
see Buddy alive. We need her. She's the key."

While the first part was the truth, the second part was, at best, highly
suppositional. I changed the subject.

"How many of them have been going out there every night?"

"Five," said George. "Caroline and four guys.

"Same five every night?"

"Yup."

"You said you guys saw a dry run."

"Waldo and the Speaker saw it," corrected George.

Waldo spoke again.

"The four guys go in first. Caroline stays outside keeping lookout,
then follows then in, maybe five minutes later. They went through the whole
thing night before last, before the doors were on. Did it twice."

"Chances are that they plan on burning it tonight," said George.

"Why not tomorrow during the dedication?" asked Waldo.

"Sure would make a lovely picture in the papers," mused Mary.
"All of them muckety-mucks standin' around while the damn thing burns to
the ground. What a picture. Can you see it?" Her eyes glowed at the
thought.

Pyromania became pandemic. The crowd was universally enthralled with the
prospect. They all joined in, each adding a few more details and victims to the
bonfire of authoritarian doom and destruction until, as nearly as I could tell,
everyone in the city who wasn't presently in my apartment had been consumed by
the flames. It had even begun to sound good to me until, having run out of
victims, they began to cast furtive glances in my direction. This brought me up
short.

The phone was now making horrible sirenlike noises in an attempt to tell me
that it was off the hook. I replaced the receiver. Silence settled in like fog.
The sound of scraping plates filtered in from the kitchen. I tried not to think
about what it was they might be eating.

"George is right. It's got to be tonight," I said finally.
"The site will be crawling with cops tomorrow night. They may be crazy,
but they're not that stupid."

"You sure?" asked Harold. "They looked pretty stupid to
me."

"It's either tonight or it's a kamikaze mission. Tonight there's some
chance of walking away. Tomorrow night, they'd be better off going up with the
building. No, it's gotta be tonight."

I was talking more for my own benefit than for theirs. It was now ten after
five. Whatever we were going to do, it had to be soon.

"What time have they been going out?" I asked.

"Between ten and ten-thirty," George answered quickly.

"Who's watching the building now?"

"Bob and Leroy and the Speaker," George said.

"We gonna take her before they go?" asked Ralph.

"Won't work," I said. "They'd just call it off. We're going
to have separate Caroline from the others after they got there. We need to get
them into a position where there's no turning back."

"What then?" asked Mary.

"Then we separate Caroline from the others."

"Then?"

"Then we call the cops." A collective groan went up.

The idea held very little appeal for the assembled multitudes. Very few of
their own problems had ever been satisfactorily resolved by the powers that be,
and they were loath to believe that the system could be of any use here.

Finally, George broke into the discussion, waving everyone to silence.

"Okay, Leo, suppose we go along with the program. Maybe you're right.
If we don't call the cops on the little shits they'll just do it some other
night. What I still don't see is how in hell are we going to separate Caroline
from the others. I'm lost here."

I told them. They listened intently. When I'd finished, the room erupted in
a chorus of complaints.

"You mean we're going to wait around for the cops?" demanded
Earlene. "We'll all be busted."

"Not busted, heroes."

I'd learned years ago, when I'd first started using street people as
operatives, that in spite of their meager circumstances, they were no more
immune to the hopes and dreams of our society than anyone else. Nobody aspires
to be a bum.

As I'd hoped, they massaged this scenario to death. Before they were
finished, Ralph was mayor and the rest of them were inventing new city
ordinances when George lost his patience and put a stop to it. "Shut
up," he yelled above the din.

"I don't see it, Leo. I just don't see it," he said after they'd
quieted.

"What don't you see, George?" I asked patiently.

"I don't see her acting the way you say. People just ain't like that
anymore. Ten, twenty years ago maybe, but not anymore. They got that flat look
in their eyes these days. They won't even look at you."

A buzz of agreement sailed around the room. "You could fall dead right
in front of them on the sidewalk and they'd just step over you. And you're
tellin' us that she's gonna - "

"She will," I assured him.

George wasn't ready to quit.

"If she's such a goody-two-shoes, how come she's hangin' out with these
Save the Earth assholes? Huh, tell me that?"

"She's not a goody-two-shoes," I said. "She's just incapable
of minding her own goddamn business."

"I wish I still smoked," said Saasha Kennedy, as she nervously
fidgeted about in the front seat of the camper. The mercury vapor lights
surrounding the buildings across the street reflected off her oversize lenses,
making it impossible to see her eyes.

"The waiting is always the hard part."

"I think the police would be a better option."

"The craving for certainty is a vice, Ms. Kennedy. Didn't they teach
you that in school?" She ignored the dig.

"What if she refuses to come with me?"

"Then I'll take her back to her grandfather."

She fidgeted some more. "I don't know how I let you talk me into this
fools' errand, Waterman," she said disgustedly.

"Guilt," I suggested. "You think you owe me. Your brain is
telling you that if it wasn't for me, Thomas Greer would have splattered
himself all over Third Avenue. You feel guilty. That dubious emotion combined
with your highly cultivated sense of professional duty has brought you here, to
the very brink of disaster." She was too nervous to rise to the bait.

"It's the unprofessional nature of this that causes me concern."

"Why?" I asked. "This is what you do, isn't it? I looked you
up in the book. It says you specialize in adolescent therapy."

"My patients don't generally come in under this sort of duress."

"Don't kid yourself. Their parents just do it with a tad more subtlety,
that's all. None of those kids wakes up one day with an intense desire to see a
shrink. Trust me."

Before she could come back at me, I changed the subject.

"You did a nice job on Earlene, by the way. She looks great."

"That's another thing." She wagged a finger at me. "When you
asked me to bring a change of clothes and my cosmetics case, I thought it was
for the girl. If I'd known - "

"Don't worry, you'll get the clothes back."

"I don't want the clothes back," she snapped.

"Hey, Earlene's good people. A little crusty maybe."

"A little crusty? There was moss growing on that woman."

We were interrupted by a tapping on the window. George was tight-lipped.
"Here they come," he said.

"Everybody in place?" I asked.

"For all the good it's gonna do."

I turned to Kennedy. "We'll be back." She responded by frowning
and locking the door behind me.

I slipped from the truck and followed George through the parking lot toward
the eastern end of Pacific Avenue.

In the space of four hours, it had turned bitter cold. The winter storms
that usually kept the Northwest in a perpetual cloud bank had unexpectedly
blown to the north.

The night was clear, and a multitude of randomly scattered stars seemed to
hover no more than a couple of blocks above us. In the curb-lined beds
surrounding the dormitory lot, the rhododendrons provided curled their leaves,
hunkering inward against the cold. My breath swirled around my ears, leaving a
vapor trail as I walked. George's wing tips scuffed scratches in the rapidly
forming sheen on the asphalt.

We stood in the artificial shade of a massive walnut tree as the black van,
driving well within the speed limit, rolled slowly by.

"They'll park over by the stadium and walk back."

"Only smart thing they've done," I commented. "Gives them
three possible ways out of the area."

We stood in the shadows until the light at the end of the street changed and
the van turned left, then we hastily crossed the street, jogging into the driveway
of the new lab, all the way to the back of the lot.

Forty yards of the new sod separated the back of the laboratory from Ship
Canal. The water slid silently by like a piece of moving black glass. A thin
blanket of fog floated inches above the sliding water.

The new laboratory was surrounded by ancient yew hedges, which had somehow
managed to survive both the fire and the ensuing construction. The twisted,
interlocking bramble, now bare of leaves, formed a solid wall, separating the
back of the laboratory from the grass bank leading down to the water.

I was counting on the fact that Caroline would be able to hear, but not see,
what was going on in the little park next door.

    Covering our faces with our sleeves,
George and I pushed our way through the hedge and skied down the icy embankment
into the park, angling toward the farthest corner, hard under the bridge. There
was no need to look for the crew; their collective breath rose into the air
like smoke signals.

Norman, Waldo, and Earlene were huddled around a one-piece metal picnic
table, silently rubbing and hugging themselves in an attempt to stave off the
cold. I stopped by the table, using a finger to signal for silence.

I watched as George crossed the open area to the farthest edge, parted the top
of the hedge, and forced his body through the tangle. Satisfied that he was in
place, I turned to the crew.

"You guys ready?" I asked.

"I'm freezing my ass off, is what I'm doing," whispered Earlene.
"No wonder those businesswomen are always in such a shitty mood; I'd be in
a bad mood too if I had to walk around with my twat freezing off like this all
the time."

I waved her off. "Let's stick with the business at hand." As I
continued, Earlene folded her arms over Kennedy's blue wool coat and sulked.
"That bitch threw my clothes out, Leo," she muttered.

"George will tell us when they're on the way," I said.
"They're going to pass right behind us here, on the bank by the water, so
we're going to have to be quiet. Any last-minute questions?"

There were, but the moment had come. From the far side of the little park,
George squeezed out a "Sssssst." He pulled himself back through the
hedge and, as we'd arranged, hurried diagonally across the park to the front
corner, by the street.

Norman, Waldo, Earlene, and I lay down on the brittle grass, listening
intently. I crawled over to the hedge, peering out between the twisted stems,
looking for feet. Nothing.

I tried to control my breath. I didn't want it to signal my presence. A
block away, the overhead lights lit a gray-blue science-fiction moonscape. I
breathed down the front of my jacket and listened. Nothing.

The crew was looking anxiously my way. The urban commandos should have been
here by now. When we'd run through it earlier this evening, George and Harold,
a pair not renowned for great dispatch, had been at the boat shed by now.
Something was wrong. Maybe George had been mistaken. I decided to have a look
for myself. I was halfway to my feet when Norman slashed the air with his arm.
I ducked.

They came silently, only the muted sound of crunching grass announcing their
presence. Five pairs of closely grouped feet passed before my vantage point,
moving steadily downhill toward the shed. I couldn't identify which feet
belonged to Caroline. The squeaking of the door told me that they were inside
the shed.