Deadly Detail (11 page)
“I hadn’t really thought about it, but you might be right. Do you suppose Dave is blackmailing Reginald, or something like that?”
“Could be. Wouldn’t it be fun to find out?”
“You mean play detective? Alex, did I tell you you’re an exciting date?”
I didn’t have to answer that. The band blasted into the tango and Celeste pulled me onto the floor. I kept reciting my mantra, “let-your-knees-go loose, loose, loose …” I didn’t disgrace myself, and no one would have noticed anyway. All eyes were on Celeste, including mine. Interesting, she wore her panties over the garter belt. That was probably very practical. We were panting and beaming when we got back to the table.
It took me several seconds before I had enough control of my breathing to talk. “Maybe Dave has a history of fraud or extortion or something. We almost owe it to Reginald to find out.”
“How do we do that?” She finished her Grasshopper. Apparently the waiter knew her because he brought her another when he took her empty glass. I nursed the rum, mostly because I was going to have to drive back to town.
“Well, one way would be his fingerprints. If you could snag something with his prints on it, I could get them checked out.”
“Yeah, I could probably do that. Dave and Reginald sometimes have a glass of brandy together and leave the glasses for the janitors to wash. Would a glass be good for fingerprints?”
“Couldn’t be better.” The band struck up “The Skater’s Waltz” and we were the first couple on the floor. We did the box, got the feel of each other, and Celeste floated away like a cloud. Dancing in space with a weightless partner must be like waltzing with Celeste. She even made me look good.
We finished the evening with a foxtrot, bodies fused together as if Super-Glued. I drove us back to town in a reasonably straight line, keeping the speedometer on sixty. My reflexes weren’t up for any faster, but when you suspect you couldn’t pass a sobriety test, you don’t want to drive too slowly. That attracts cops like grayling to butterflies. Celeste was snuggled against my shoulder with thigh contact so solid I had to push back to keep my foot on the gas pedal.
We parked in front of her house and she melted against me like butter on hotcakes. A probing tongue, even one flavored by crème de menthe, does elicit an instant physiological response.
“Oh, Alex, that was divine. I wish I could invite you in for a nightcap, but my mother is here for a visit.” She caught my hand and cupped it over her breast. It was infinite softness with an India rubber nipple against my palm and all the mystique of femininity. The physiological response ratcheted up, if possible, and something was about to rip.
I managed to croak, “You won’t forget about the glass with fingerprints?”
“I won’t forget a single second of this night, and I can hardly wait until next time. Oh, Alex, when mother leaves, it’s going to be so wonderful.” She detached from my chest, but reached down and squeezed the startled protuberance. “Call me.” She was out of the car and running up the steps before I caught my breath.
***
Angie was tucked up in bed, leaning against pillows, wearing her pajamas and watching one of the late night shows. She switched it off instantly when I came in. No one wants to be caught watching that drivel.
“You survived. Did you remember to learn anything? Sorry you didn’t get lucky.”
“Why do you say that?”
“It’s written on your forehead in capital letters.”
“Angie, I never strayed from business for a moment and I’m immune to blondes. I kept thinking about your shining ebony tresses, your exotic amber eyes that suck men in like whirlpools, your….”
“Okay, knock it off, Cyrano. Maybe I’ll have breakfast with you, maybe not. Did your blonde bimbo reveal any secrets that I’d be interested in?”
“Maybe. She’s going to steal a glass with Dave Marino’s prints on it. He’s getting mysteriousher and mysteriousher.”
“Now you’re making up a new language? You’d better get to bed before you fall down and injure something besides your libido and your dignity. By the way, tomorrow night is my turn to howl.”
“You are going to date Dave Marino?”
“Nope, a cousin and her husband are coming into town and I’m meeting them at the Silver Dollar Bar around seven.”
“The Silver Dollar? Jeez, Angie, those native bars are dangerous.”
“So, who isn’t native, you racist son-of-a-bitch. You can just drop me off, if you’re scared.”
“Not on your life. If you’re going to Second Avenue, I’m going with you and I’ll be packing iron. But why there? We can buy your cousin a very nice dinner at Club Eleven.”
“Not good enough. Maybe the native bars are just a little loud and frantic, but that is the whole idea. They’ll be in town just one night, heading to Seattle the next day, Virginia Mason Clinic and sober propriety, or proper sobriety. In the village, they haven’t had a drink or heard music to speak of for two years, and they have one night to make up for that.”
“Okay, okay, they’re from Crooked Creek?”
“No, Clyde and Angie Williams from Holy Cross, part of the Yukon contingent.”
“I know Clyde, but another Angie? And she would be your cousin?”
“Right on. Must be a dozen cousins named Angela, spread for two hundred miles up and down the rivers. We’re all named for our great-great, I don’t know how many greats, grandmother.”
“From Crooked Creek?”
“No, from Piamute. She had twenty-one babies with four different husbands, all of the babies boys, and eighteen of them lived to grow up.”
“Twenty-one babies? You sure about that?”
“Yep, one every year from the age of fifteen until thirty-nine, but she missed a couple of years between husbands.”
“Okay, she was a saint. Do Indians believe in fertility goddesses? No wonder you worship her. I can hardly wait to meet this other Angie.”
“Alex, you have no idea. I predict a night you’ll remember for the rest of your life.”
Angie rearranged her pillows, slipped down between the sheets, and snapped off the light. I felt my way to my bed and passed out with my clothes on.
***
She did have breakfast with me. We had mushroom omelets to die for and enough coffee and orange juice to stifle my impending hangover. Service had been embarrassingly good because the last tourists had checked out. Angie and I were now the only residents of the River’s Edge, with vacant cottages on both sides of us.
I dropped Angie at the Lathrop Building, promised to meet her in time for the party with her cousins, and didn’t know what to do next. If ever a situation called for decisive action, this was it, but the only action I could think of was banging my head against a wall. I decided that wouldn’t help.
What kept niggling at my mind were the two first-class tickets from Seattle that were on Reginald’s computer. Two tickets from Detroit and two assassins from Detroit could not be coincidence, so someone with access to Interior Air’s account had to have done the hiring. Then there were two more tickets from Seattle. There could be a dozen innocent reasons for those, but they could just as well be two more hit men. Worse, this time I wouldn’t recognize them, but whoever hired them would certainly pinpoint me, and this time, Angie, too. For all I knew, they might have pictures of us.
Mostly, I spent the day worrying and trying to think. After I dropped Angie, I took a drive out the Chena hot springs road. This time there were no map-reading tourists at the club, and again, no cars beside the road. Turk was happy to see me. He was standing at the end of the drive with his tail wagging when I turned in, so the house was safe. I filled his water pan and found more dog food under the sink. He dived into the pans, and I didn’t have to tell him to stay.
I turned right on the road and drove on into the hills, alternately trying to enjoy the fall colors and wondering what to do next. If determined killers were looking for us, how long could we avoid them in tiny little Fairbanks? I decided the one thing we were doing right was moving around and being unpredictable, until I suddenly realized that Angie came out the front door of the Lathrop Building every evening at six forty-five.
She had a low-profile job, but in a high-profile industry. How long before someone figured out her schedule, and if I met her, so much the better for them. We were even ripe for a drive-by shooting. It did seem like meeting Angie’s cousin at the Silver Dollar should be safe. It certainly qualified as something we wouldn’t be expected to do.
At six-ten I found a parking spot between the Lathrop Building and the bars, got the pistol lodged firmly in my belt under the windbreaker, and ambled back toward the corner to loiter under the theater marquee. People were already trickling in for the seven o’clock show, and another guy seemed to be killing time. If he was an assassin, he was good, cold calm, reading the posters for upcoming shows, and checking his watch every few minutes. He was between nondescript and good-looking, razor haircut and a snappy sports jacket. There was no bulge of a shoulder holster, but he could have a good-sized weapon in the back of his belt, like I did. He struck me as a shoe salesman, but that’s the perfect disguise for an assassin.
I was between him and the Lathrop Building, and was satisfied that he didn’t recognize me, so if he was waiting for Angie, I had him covered. When he crossed the entrance to check posters on my side, I strolled a few steps closer to Angie’s expected arrival and leaned against the wall of Monty’s Department Store, all casual, hands behind me but gripping the revolver.
Six thirty-five, ten minutes to go. A blonde dressed ladies-ready-to-wear, but with long sheer nylons came striding down the street, turned into the entrance, and caught my nemesis by the arm. He pulled two tickets out of his shirt pocket and the couple disappeared into the inner sanctum. I turned my attention back to the street, just in time. A boxy gray Volvo pulled into the spot right behind the Buick and the driver just sat. He was between me and Angie’s door, and if he’d parked there because the Buick was known, he’d probably recognize me.
The driver seemed to be staring straight ahead, and he hadn’t rolled down the window on the passenger side. He’d surely do that before he shot? I had a clear view of the back of his head, so if the window went down and a weapon came up when Angie appeared, I could take him out. The shot would be through the back window, but that’s an advantage of the .357 magnum. The bullet will go through the window, through a head, out the front window and probably lodge somewhere in the Buick.
I edged a few feet closer to the door and could see the driver’s hands resting on the steering wheel. As long as his hands stayed there, I could leave the revolver in my belt. The front door of the Lathrop Building swung open right on schedule and Angie emerged, earnestly discussing something with a fortyish woman wearing a tight cap of blonde curls and a sharp business suit. The driver’s hand stayed on the wheel. The executive type gave Angie a little wave and crossed the sidewalk to climb into the Volvo. Angie spotted the Buick, looked around in surprise when she found the door locked and me not inside. I grabbed her elbow and dodged the traffic to steer her across Second Avenue into the Coffee Cup Café.
Angie went where I steered her, but her expression wasn’t totally compliant. “What the heck was that all about? We could have been killed crossing the street.”
“Angie, we could be killed anywhere, so watch out for banana peels in the bathtub. In the meantime, tomorrow night, if there is one, come out the back door of the building.”
“Not just a little paranoid, by any chance?”
“Sure, paranoid and still alive. Remember the moose that always drinks at the same place? He will not survive the fall hunting season. It’s just not smart to be predictable.”
“Well, this qualifies. I never would have predicted dinner at the Coffee Cup.” Angie was glancing around, and I saw her point. At a quarter-to-seven, several customers were already drunk and sagging over coffee. The general impression was between homeless derelicts and guttersnipes, but two stools were vacant at the near end of the counter. I steered Angie onto the end one.
I sat down next to the ancient mariner who was mumbling into his cup, mustard from his hamburger staining his beard. I turned my back on him, so my view was Angie, the front window, and the pinball machines that lined the far wall. They accounted for most of the din in the place. Traffic on the street appeared innocuous. The parking spot behind the Buick was grabbed by a young woman who ran toward the theater. Angie’s view could have been me, and the curtained door at the back that led into the dark room with the peep shows, but she stared straight ahead. “Shall I order the lobster with Dom Pérignon?”
“May I suggest that madame try the hamburgers? Chef’s specialty, and with that Doctor Price prescribes at least two glasses of milk.”
“Milk? I quit drinking milk when I saw those horrible commercials with milk mustaches.”
“That only happens to celebrities. The rest of us manage to get it all inside, and tonight it’s important. Milk coats the stomach, makes it possible to keep the Coffee Cup hamburgers down, but it also cushions the blow of the first several gallons of beer. Take it from an old boozehound, milk before a binge creates the illusion that you can hold your alcohol.”
“Boy, does that sound appetizing, but I’m lucky to be in the hands of an expert. Since when do you drink beer?”
The matronly waitress finished mopping the mess off the other end of the counter. Her worldly-wise expression indicated infinite but suffering tolerance. She wiped her hands on her apron, and came to take our order. She nodded at the hamburgers and understood exactly what the milk was about. She clipped our order slip to the wire that hung in front of the cook. He had his back to us, busily flipping hamburgers and buns on an eight-foot black iron grill. He paused to lift a basket of French fries from a cauldron of boiling grease and shake off the unabsorbed drops.
“Now, what was the question? Since when do I drink beer? Since we’re going to the Second Avenue bars, that’s when. Don’t drink anything there that doesn’t come in its own bottle and be sure to watch the bartender take the cap off.”
The waitress set down two glasses of milk. We toasted each other silently and drank. No white mustaches, and it was good for milk in Alaska. About half of it is reconstituted, but mixed with fresh milk from Creamer’s Dairy.
We scarfed down greasy hamburgers with wilted lettuce, and two glasses of milk each, but were running late. We jogged the block to the Silver Dollar Bar, but stopped at the Buick while I slid the revolver under the seat. One does not carry a weapon into a Second Avenue bar. If the Silver Dollar sounds familiar, it probably is. Bar owners are not big on originality. This particular Silver Dollar was nestled between the Union Club and the Malamute Saloon, and those, too, can be found in every city in the northwest.
The Malamute Saloon that Robert Service made famous by shooting Dan McGrew was probably in Dawson City, Yukon Territory, but today even tiny villages like Ester that have only one bar, have the Malamute Saloon. Music met us half a block from the bars, loud enough to rattle the parking meters when we got close. Every bar was blaring, each one different. You had to get inside to sort one out of the din.
When you step into a Second Avenue bar, you have to pause a moment while your lungs adjust to the alcohol fumes and perspiration in the atmosphere, and your ears go numb. It’s dark, just enough light to read the label on your beer bottle, and fifty couples stomping out the beat on the dance floor keep the beer sloshing. The wooden building appeared to be over fifty years old, and the foundation was threatening to collapse.
Clyde was sitting halfway down the bar, next to two vacant stools. He was wearing a white shirt and sports coat, which I did not recognize, but Clyde is five feet one inch tall, and that’s hard to miss. That’s the only way he’s small. He’s been the BIA school maintenance man forever, and that’s the best job in any village. Means he’s a jack-of-all-trades, can handle plumbing, heating, electricity, carpenter work, whatever comes up.
He was watching for us, waved his bottle and indicated the empty stools. I waved at the bartender. He produced two Budweisers, popped the tops and traded them for a ten-dollar bill. One does not run a tab on Second Avenue. No one was speaking because the music was overpowering, seeming to vibrate the walls.
I recognized the woman with Clyde, but didn’t know her name and had never made the connection. I’d seen her around Holy Cross, and once you’ve seen her, you don’t forget. We bachelors aren’t really knowledgeable about C cups and D cups. I don’t even know if there is such a thing as an E cup, but it doesn’t matter because she doesn’t wear bras, just counts on the stretching sweater and a remarkably provident nature to hold her up.
Angie…I couldn’t quite think of her as
my
Angie, so I dubbed her number one, went around and hugged Angie number two. She made introducing gestures, but a speaker right behind her had a ruptured cone and the buzz was so loud there was no point in her trying to talk. Angie Two reached behind Clyde to shake my hand, and we all settled down at the bar to suck beer bottles.
We finished that round and the bartender brought four more beers, trading for a twenty. Clyde reached for his pocket, I slapped his hand, and he capitulated gracefully. There’s a lot of symbolism there, but it’s a guy thing, and maybe Alaskan. His allowing me to pay without an argument meant that he was perfectly secure in his manhood, didn’t have to prove anything, and he was correct about that.
The front half of the room was bar and dance floor, tables and more dancing toward the back. Most of those Second Avenue bars reach halfway through the block and connect with another bar on First Avenue. The Silver Dollar did that, but the First Avenue bars are quiet, at least comparatively, usually peopled by hard drinking working stiffs. There are seldom any women and definitely no dancing. Angie One, seated beside Clyde, did some pointing and beckoning, and the two of them got up to dance. I noticed that his nose came right to Angie’s cleavage, so being height-challenged isn’t all bad. That left two vacant stools between me and Angie Two, so I made the gestures and we met on the dance floor.
The way she snuggled against me would have been salacious in Seattle, unthinkable in Boston, but she was just being honest. In her view, men and women dance together to cop a feel, and there’s no point in being coy about it. She led off, so I followed, and we did the Texas Two-Step. That’s two gliding steps to the man’s right, then one to the left, back to the right again. The woman is backing up and you slowly progress around the floor. It’s not a very exciting dance, but it certainly makes for togetherness.
After two more beers and two more dances, four people got up and left a table. Clyde and Angie One grabbed the table, Angie Two and I shagged our beers, and we were finally established. At that point a waitress came around with more beers and collected more dollars. We took turns dancing, because one couple had to stay and guard the table, but it was so hot in our corner behind the bar that a little respite felt good.
Most tables were occupied by natives, both Indians and Eskimos, and all of them intent on having fun. The atmosphere was cordial. When you caught someone’s eye they nodded and smiled. The few Caucasians scattered around, including me, were accepted and welcome. It was altogether a pleasant, if deafening, scene.
I found myself relaxing in a way that I hadn’t since Stan’s death, and was starting to think I was having fun when four big Caucasians came swaggering in. These guys were not assassins; they were from one of the military bases, I guessed military police, and they were radiating attitude. They were head and shoulders taller than most of the crowd, and if they had come to have fun, it was a different sort from the rest of us. They strode down the length of the bar, forcing dancers to dodge out of their way, and actually bumped a couple of guys.
It was like they didn’t notice anyone else was there, or didn’t concede anyone else the right to be there. They arrived at the end of the bar and grabbed an unguarded table. The table had been occupied by one couple, but they were dancing. The waitress came, moved the couple’s drinks to the end of the bar, and served the newcomers. One of them patted the back of her skirt, she slapped his hand, and they all laughed, including the waitress. I didn’t think she liked it; I thought she wasn’t making waves, and that probably was smart.
The newcomers attacked their beers and the party continued, but the mood had changed. The new guys were lounging back in their chairs, taking up way too much room, so people around them had to adjust chairs and scoot tables. They were looking around the room, making remarks and gestures to each other, and it wasn’t long before they focused on our table.
Clyde and Angie One got up to dance, and I didn’t need to hear to catch the threat. The biggest guy stood up, crossed the floor in four strides, and picked Clyde up by the shoulders. He tossed Clyde aside like a rag doll, but when he turned back to reach for Angie, he found me instead.
I buried my left fist up to the wrist in his solar plexus, and it felt wonderful. He lunged forward with a satisfying
oof
, eyes and mouth wide open and leading with his chin. That requires finesse. As tempting as it is, you must never hit a chin with a closed fist, unless you’re making a movie. In real life, you’ll break your fingers and probably sprain your wrist. Use the heel of your hand, wrist stiff, roll your shoulder to get every muscle in your body behind the blow and raise up on your toes for the follow-through.