Last Lie (7 page)

The legendary Tom's Tavern was right across Pearl Street from the
Camera
. The prime corner restaurant had dished burgers and beer to generations of Boulderites from a storefront parcel that was tiny compared to the land Raoul was eyeing.

Raoul corrected me. "A developer redid Tom's Tavern. Brad Heap is food, not bricks. Although it's only a guess--these things are blind--I suspect we've been bidding against the same developer for the
Camera.
He's probably waiting for us to stumble so he can sweep up the crumbs. But si, the land is expensive," he said. "My partners in the LLC, most of them at least, are in development. This project will take years to bring to . . . fruition.
Fruition
is the right word?
Fruition"--fru-i-see-on--"yes
? So we are confident that the building will come online during the period of the coming economic recovery, not during the dark days we are in now."

Over the years, Diane and I had listened to more than a few proposals from developers eager to flatten the Walnut Street property and do something else with the land. Because the dollars we were offered for our nest egg often took our collective breaths away, we always considered each proposal's merits seriously before rejecting it. For me, the process had been an ongoing education about urban planning, development, and the nature of developers' hope. The experience that I gained examining the proposals had also left me with more than a passing acquaintance with the hurdles involved in bringing redevelopment endeavors to a conclusion in downtown Boulder.

I said, "I'm sure you know all this, Raoul. But there are height restrictions downtown. You can blame those rules on the Colorado Building." I pointed at the Colorado Building, which was four blocks due east of us. And I growled.

Raoul had heard my rants about the Colorado Building before. In unaccented English, he said, "Don't go there, Alain. Please? Not again."

I demurred. "The
Camera
block on Pearl? There are setback restrictions. Historical guidelines. God knows how subjective that will turn out to be. And off-street parking requirements. Off-street
bicycle
-parking requirements. And if you're including residential in your building? There'll probably be off-street
kayak
-parking requirements. Maybe ski-storage lockers. Who knows what else? You have to be ready for view plane controversies. Solar easement problems.

"When you start digging, you may find undiscovered archaeological treasures under that parking lot from the storefronts that fronted Pearl before the last big flood." Boulder's last hundred-year flood had filled the downtown basin with silt in 1894. The thick muck from Boulder Creek had buried treasures from Boulder's pioneer past. Subsequent development was built right over it.

"Flooding, Raoul?" I hit myself in the forehead with the heel of my hand. "The floodplain. This land is in the Boulder Creek floodplain, right? Is it the fifty-year boundary? The hundred-year boundary? God knows what the flood-management people will require of you. Every activist in town--and that's at least half the population--is going to want a say in what happens to this land. The planning meetings for this project will be standing-room only. They'll have to hold them in Macky."

Raoul looked at me with infinite patience in his eyes. I envied his graciousness much more than I envied his attractiveness to women. Okay, I envied both.

He said, "Yes, all of those things you mention will be complications. But you know what they say about real estate, Alain? Location, location . . ." He spread his arms toward the depressing parking lot in front of us. "Well, this is . . . location."

He sighed the contented sigh of an investor who was not interested in discussing risk after he had just been offered ten thousand shares of Google's IPO. "It doesn't get any better than this in Boulder. Not downtown. Try to assemble this amount of land within a mile of here. Not this quality of land--the quality can't be duplicated--just this amount of land. Maybe with enough money, the Ideal Market site could be assembled--
peut-etre
--but that fronts North Broadway, not Pearl, and it's blocks from downtown. The Liquor Mart block? Nice, but too far from
le coeur.
" He placed his hand over the center of his chest. "Not the same. You can't assemble land like this near the Mall. Remember what it took to get the St. Julien built? That was perimeter, and that land was vacant for years. It will never happen again.
Jamais.

"If you ask the experienced developers on our team to identify the single best location for a high-end multiuse development in Boulder, every last one would point to this block. I know. Because we asked almost every one of them."

Raoul didn't need my help doing due diligence on his redevelopment dreams. I refocused my attention on my tiny corner of the Boulder redevelopment universe. "Where does Walnut fit into your grand scheme? Walnut is what, a block and a half away? I don't see the connection."

He turned to me and smiled his best gender-neutral, seductive, Casanova smile. A young woman walking down the alley toward Walnut noticed and assumed Raoul's irresistible grin was intended for her. She smiled right back at him and added a definite arc to the curve of her hips as she sashayed by us.

Raoul winked at her. She dropped her chin as she tucked her long hair behind her ear. My mouth fell open in more than mild disbelief. If I had winked at her, she would have hit me. Literally, verbally. Somehow. One way or another, I would be in pain.

Raoul said, "You are wondering why are you here, Alain? Si?"

"Other than to be humbled, yes."

He ignored the compliment. "We may need Walnut to make the deal work."

"I don't get it."

"Long story. Trust me. For later."

I considered pressing him but realized that my effort would be in vain. "But the end of the long story is that your LLC wants, or maybe needs, to purchase Walnut Street? If Diane and I don't sell, the redevelopment of the
Camera
property is in jeopardy?"

"It's all a little more nuanced than that, but yes."

"Diane knows about this?"

He made a dismissive noise. We had both known Diane for a long time. That meant we each knew that keeping secrets from Diane was like trying to keep news of your misbehavior from Santa Claus.

Raoul turned and began walking. I followed him around the corner so that we were heading west on Pearl, toward the mountains that stretched toward the sky ten blocks away. After a hundred feet or so, Raoul stepped inside the door of the West End Tavern, a destination I knew well. We climbed the stairs to the rooftop deck.

The West End's outside space was packed with the late lunch crowd. Tourists and locals. On pretty days, and even days that aren't quite pretty days, the rooftop deck of the West End was packed. Why? Because of the remarkable views.

From the deck of the West End, patrons can see the gentle rise of The Hill as it climbs from the edge of the flagstone Italianate buildings of the university campus. The backdrop of the foothills. The luxurious expanse of Chautauqua's unspoiled acres below the vault of the Flatirons. The miles of protected green space.

"You remember this view?" Raoul said. "Before?"

Raoul meant before the recent construction of a new building to the west. "Yes. Before they built the monster wall next door."

"Well, my Diane wants that view. For herself. In perpetuity," he said. "The one from up here, from before."

"Ah," I said. "I think I'm finally getting this. You are not only developing a massive real estate project that promises to make you a ton of money you don't need and promises to change the public face of Boulder's West End forever. You are also buying a condominium in your new building? A home, a real home, for you and Diane."

"The top floor. Facing south and west. With a big, big terrace"--
tear-oss
--"for the sunset. A lap pool for me. A fire pit. An outdoor kitchen. A fountain. Diane is hoping for a gazebo too, with curtains. Like Morocco? She dreams . . . I think the architects will say no. A gazebo on top of the building? With the chinooks? But she is hard to refuse. We will have a hundred square meters of terrace overlooking the Rockies. Maybe more."

I considered asking him to translate that hundred square meters into hectares. "So this project is personal," I said.

"Si
. Amor.
"

10

T
he dogs and I went out for evening rounds.

For a while after Jonas's puppy joined our household, we'd had three dogs. The second was a miniature poodle foster dog we were caring for as a favor to an enrollee in the witness protection program, WITSEC.

Over the previous Labor Day weekend, a federal marshal had knocked on our door and told us that he was there to collect Anvil, the foster dog. Just like that. Anvil had been ours for so long, I'd stopped believing that his aging mafioso owner would ever return to claim him.

"Carl is okay?" I said to the marshal. I knew the protected witness as Carl Luppo. I also knew it wasn't his real name.

"Don't know," the marshal said. "I was told to get the dog. To tell you thanks."

While the kids and Lauren said a sudden good-bye to our little tough-guy poodle, I packed up his crate and toys and food, and worried about the effects of the loss on the kids, especially Jonas.

Minutes later we were again a two-dog family. Our poodle had returned to witness protection. I hoped Carl was okay.

EMILY HAD A DESTINATION IN MIND FOR THAT NIGHT'S WALK. She had taken off uphill, on the path that ran near the basement walk-out on the south side of Peter and Adrienne's house. I thought I'd take advantage of the fact that our neighbors seemed to be gone, and I took the same route with the puppy.

I guided Fiji uphill toward the ridge at the top of the Boulder Valley. Fiji, of course, started searching for prairie dogs. I phoned Sam. The top of the hill was five-bars country.

He answered with, "Sorry about breakfast. You catch the way the Avs lost this afternoon? Pitiful. Defenseman has to slow that guy. Goalie has to stop that shot. Has to." He sighed. "I know they're young, but I don't care. Defenseman has to slow that guy."

Sam had been, was, a defenseman. He took certain failures personally.

"Happens," I said. I was talking about the missed breakfast, not the bad hockey. I added, "No worries," mostly because I had kids in the house and needed practice employing their always-ephemeral vernacular.
No worries
was one of those phrases that would finally begin rolling off my tongue about two weeks after my children had officially started considering it lame.

Gracie, though a child in all ways, would be the first to note my bad timing. She would find it hilarious that once again I'd caught on to some fleeting social idiom a smidge too late. When I'd recently stumbled into a similar swamp, she'd announced deadpan at the dinner table, "Dad just hit another three-pointer right after the buzzer."

Although I knew Grace was repeating something she'd heard from her brother, it stung me even more that my barely six-year-old daughter had zinged me with an almost perfect use of a sports metaphor.

"So you were home last night?" Sam asked me.

Interesting,
I thought. Last night would have been Friday, the night of the damn housewarming. I was giving him some latitude to see what he was going to reveal about his morning visit to Spanish Hills in the company of the sheriff's investigator.

"I was," I said. "I think I'm getting boring."

" 'Fraid that ship has sailed," Sam said.

I waited for a good fifteen seconds to see if Sam planned to continue the conversational thread. When it appeared he didn't, I said, "Heard you came up this way after you ditched me at breakfast. Lauren saw you."

"She's still using the cane? Yes?"

I recognized Sam's attempt to hijack the conversation. "Why were you here? Must have been some kind of big deal to bring both you and a sheriff's investigator out on a Saturday morning."

"Don't make assumptions, Alan. The less curious you are about my visit this morning, the better."

"I'm already curious."

"You're not listening. You don't want to know why we were there. Understand?"

I let the air go dead between us. I still had questions. "I need to ask a question before I take your advice."

"I wish I was surprised."

"I'm a father and a husband. With responsibilities. Is there something that a couple of detectives know about my new neighbors that a father and a husband with responsibilities would want to know, too?"

Sam hesitated again. Only seconds, but still.
God damn,
I thought.

No more than three seconds later than he should have, he finally said, "You're good . . . on that."

Sam lied to me. What the hell happened during that party?
"But your visit here today had to do with last night. I'm basing that assumption on your question about whether or not I was home."

Sam didn't reply. "Diane and Raoul were at the party, Sam. Diane will tell me every last detail. You know her. Once I ask her how the housewarming went, the only way I won't know what happened is to put fingers in both my ears and sing
la-la-la-la-la
until she stops talking."

"Diane and Raoul were there?"

Sam hadn't known that?
Huh?
"They're friends with our new neighbors."

He said, "Doesn't matter. I think you'll find that Diane's natural inclination to gossip is on hold. Let it go, my friend. You don't have the finesse to play in this league."

"Should I be insulted?"

"No," he said. "It's not a nice league."

"I'll consider your advice. As a friend." Sam laughed. "You were a little out of your jurisdiction up here," I said.

"Things get confused sometimes," he said. "Police work isn't always science."

"What is it? Art?"

"Some art. Mostly just not science."

"What about forensics?"

"That's the part that's science. But they don't pay me to do the science. They pay me to do the analytical part, the art. They don't pay me much, but . . . hey, I got work."

"Even, it turns out, when the work is out of your jurisdiction," I said.

I didn't expect to get any more of an explanation from Sam about the jurisdiction issues beyond his "things get confused" headline, but it turned out that he was willing to add some detail. "Complainant came into 33rd. Thought the events in question took place in Boulder. Almost nobody in Boulder knows where Boulder begins and Boulder ends. People think Boulder's bigger than it is. Gotta be a metaphor there." I was tempted to chime in, but Sam was on a roll that I didn't want to interrupt. "But since the person in question didn't know the city limits and didn't have a street address for the residence . . . we didn't know to hand off to the sheriff. By the time Lucy got it sorted out--and discovered that the cul-de-sac in question is in the county--I'd already screwed my Saturday."

"I prefer to think of our lane as a dead end. Not a cul-de-sac."

"Call it whatever you want. But I did get a chance to see your lovely wife." Sam paused right there. "She's still moving . . . I don't know, slowly."

"She's kind of plateaued, Sam. Mobility-wise. The recovery has been more gradual than we'd like."

"Give her more time. Healing? It's about time."

Sam knew a little about the slow healing of significant others.

"I want to make sure I get it--you and Lucy are off this case? It's the sheriff's?"

"You got it."

"Just tell me why I don't want to know what happened. Why all the secrecy?"

"Ever noticed we don't say a whole lot about active investigations? That includes to neighbors, in case you're feeling special. Trust me on this--you're better off not knowing any more than you know."

"Lauren will find out, Sam. Someone in her office already knows."

"If she finds out, she finds out. But she's too smart to tell you."

"Sam, I have kids," I said. "A wife who's home a lot. By herself. I need to know if I should be concerned. You hesitated earlier."

"How well do you know your new neighbors?"

"Barely. Not at all. I know him like you know him. From TV."

"Lucy told me he's a daytime TV darling of some kind. I don't watch a lot of daytime TV. I never, ever watch television darlings."

"Okay."

"Keep things the way they are. Your family will be fine. Understand?"

"No."

"Tough shit."