Red Tide (2 page)

3

W
hen the hand grasped her elbow, she twitched at the touch, caught her breath and aimed an icy stare down at her arm. She’d seen him many times before but could never recall his name. Always at some artsy-fartsy social function or other. Invariably, he came over to chat, like they were long-lost friends or something. Worse yet, he not only recalled her name but also remembered whatever it was they’d talked about the last time, almost like the previous season’s inanities were part of an ongoing dialogue to which they alone were privy. A wave of musky fragrance arrived a moment later, as if his cologne had followed him across the room like a stray cat. He gave her elbow a second little squeeze and treated her to a baby grand worth of teeth. “It’s fabu, darling. Absolutely fabu.” He slid the hand up to her shoulder and began to gently knead her flesh.

“I told you so,” he said knowingly. “Remember…I told you so.”

She didn’t remember and had no idea what he was talking about.

He was late-forty-something and quite obviously had spent more time primping for the evening’s events than she had. Perfect gray suit and hair. Custom-made shirt. Cufflinks no less. Probably had his tootsies pedicured inside the tasseled Bally loafers. Very slick. Very money. Very annoying.

Meg Dougherty mustered a tight smile. “Thanks,” she said. For the umpteenth time in the past hour, a sigh escaped from her chest. She caught herself. Made a rueful face. “I guess I’m a little nervous,” she offered.

He reproached her with a scoff. “Don’t be silly. You’re the star, my dear.” He wagged a reminding finger. “As I predicted,” he intoned. Having made his point, he used the finger to point along the length of the nearest wall. “Look at all the red dots. Looks like the show’s got measles or something.” He flashed another toothy grimace and laughed at his own little joke.

He was referring to the little red stickers used by the Cecil Taylor Gallery to denote items which had been sold. Whats his name was right. Fully two-thirds of her photographs were sporting little red dots in the lower right-hand corners. For some reason, the sight failed to cheer her.

She threw a glance over the man’s shoulder. To the far side of the room where Corso stood alone…looking her way. He could sense her discomfort, and found it amusing…caught in the act, he swallowed a smile and looked down into his wineglass.

She heard her name being called. “Meg. Meg,” the insistent voice repeated. She peered out over the sea of heads. There was no mistaking Cecil Taylor, resplendent in a gold brocade caftan, winding his way through the crowd with a flourish denied all but the most unrepentant drag queens. As he moved, his pear-shaped body seemed to take on a life of its own, rippling and rolling this way and that beneath the flowing folds of fabric, coming fully to rest a second or two after his feet slid to a stop at her side. He smelled of cognac and baby powder.

“I’ve got some patrons who are just dying to meet you,” he announced.

Before she could respond, he took notice of the man with his hand on Dougherty’s shoulder. “Ah…Michael. I’m so sorry to have to pull her away from you, but…”

Reluctantly, the hand left her shoulder. “No problem at all, Cecil,” the guy said. “I understand. Business always comes first.”

Cecil Taylor rearranged his agile features into an understanding face. “A regrettable factoid of the trade, I’m afraid.”

Using her other arm for leverage, Taylor began to move Meg Dougherty toward the north side of the room, where the collection of art enthusiasts was a bit thinner and the roar of conversation a bit dimmer. They allowed the crowd to wash their footsteps and then stopped and watched the other man make his way to the wine bar by the window.

“You looked like you needed a rescue,” Taylor said.

She nodded wearily. “Thanks.”

“The least I could do,” he said. “Michael can be quite a bore.”

“I can
never
remember that man’s name.”

“Michael Marton.”

“He a member of the Arts Commission or something? I see him at nearly every opening I go to.”

“If you went to more events, you’d see him more often. Michael lets no opening go unattended.” His lip began to curl. “Never buys a piece either.” He waved a dismissive hand. “Just another little man with too much money and not enough to occupy his time.” He anticipated her next question. “His granddaddy made a bundle in sand and gravel down in Portland and, as far as I’ve heard, nobody in the family has done much of anything useful since the interest began to accrue.” He looked across the room toward Corso. “Quite the opposite of your famous friend Mr. Corso there.”

Dougherty glanced at Corso, who now stood with his back to the room, staring out through the drizzle onto First Avenue.

“Amazing how he commands a room by ignoring it,” Cecil Taylor observed. The sound of his own words caused him to flinch slightly. He looked down at his sandals. When he looked up Dougherty was regarding him in amusement. He chuckled. “It’s those big strong silent types. The ones with all that hurt locked up inside. Always bring out the bitch in me.”

Dougherty heaved another sigh. “I shouldn’t have badgered him into coming,” she said. “He hates this kind of thing.”

As if on cue, Corso turned back to face the room. His eyes found Dougherty’s. She shivered as a finger of electricity coursed down her spine. From fifty feet away, she could feel the icy, silent space at the center of him and again wondered at his ability to be alone in a roomful of people. His need to stay disconnected from his fellow creatures in the very way they strove so insistently to be connected to one another. She turned her eyes away and then shivered again.

Cecil Taylor cleared his throat and changed the subject. “Well, my dear…it’s official. You’re a hit. By the time the papers make the streets in the morning you’ll be the darling of the Northwest art scene once again.”

She cast him a skeptical glance.

“Pleeeeease,” he insisted. “Look around you. These people are in awe of you…of your talent. The show’s going to be completely sold out by the end of the week.” He patted her arm. “It doesn’t get any better than this, my dear. I’d suggest you wallow in it while you have the chance.” He gave her a wink. “As you, above all people, know so well…fame is fleeting.”

Something back over her shoulder caught his eye. She turned that way. Cecil’s partner Maury Caulkin waved a diffident hand. “Seems I’m needed,” Cecil said with a smile. He excused himself and started for the back of the room. Glad-handing as he went along, he left no hand unshaken, no elbow unfondled, no smile unreturned.

Dougherty watched for a moment and then started across the room toward Corso. She watched as a woman in a red sweater said something to him. Saw Corso step aside, allowing her to retrieve a pair of coats from the antique rack behind the door. The man she was with hung his black raincoat from the crook of his arm and then helped her into her gray wool coat. “Great stuff,” she heard the man say.

“Wonderful.”

“She finds life in things…you know…you normally…wouldn’t…”

She shrugged herself into her coat. “Some people just have the eye.”

“I feel like I’ve seen her before somewhere.” He waved his keys. “Maybe one of Todd’s pool parties or something.”

“In the papers, silly,” his companion said.

The man suddenly noticed Dougherty’s approach, closed his mouth and stood at attention. He cleared his throat once and then again…louder.

Busy with her purse and gloves, his companion failed to pick up on the distress signals. “Her boyfriend doped her up and tattooed her all over. Remember?”

The man didn’t respond.

“Guy looked like Billy Idol,” she went on.

“Uh-huh,” he mumbled.

“They say she’s got some really bizarre stuff tattooed on her. You know what I heard? I heard…she’s got…”

Finally, she glanced up at his face and got the message. She looked around; the sight of Dougherty standing so close stopped the breath in her throat. “Oh,” she began, “I didn’t realize…I…” A pair of red spots appeared on her cheeks. “I mean…” she stammered. The air was suddenly thick.

The guy recovered first, gave a couple of uncomfortable nods, pulled open the door and ushered his stiff-legged companion outside. Meg watched as they hurried away, chattering between themselves and casting furtive glances over their shoulders as they hurried down the sidewalk. “Loose lips sink ships,” Corso said.

Dougherty took the final three steps to his side, looped her arm through his and leaned her head on his shoulder.

“I probably should have tried to make them feel better,” she said.

“Why would you want to do a thing like that?”

“Cause it’s what people do when other people are embarrassed.”

“Funny. I always figured they just gloated and thanked their lucky stars it wasn’t them with the mouthful of foot.”

“You always think the worst of people.”

“And they never let me down.”

She stepped back a pace and looked up into his cold blue eyes. “You can go,” she said. “I know these things drive you crazy.”

“And miss your moment of triumph? You gotta be crazy.”

She made a rude noise with her lips.

His eyes got serious. “Don’t be snatching defeat from the jaws of victory,” he said. “You’re knocking ’em dead here tonight. You’ve waited a long time for this. Worked real hard. Enjoy it while you can.”

Another sigh escaped. “That’s what Cecil said.”

“Cecil was right.”

She let go of his arm. Shrugged. “It just doesn’t feel like I thought it would.”

“Things never do.”

Before Dougherty could respond, the tinkle of a bell drew Corso’s attention toward the door. He put his hand around Dougherty’s waist and pulled her aside as a pair of Seattle police officers pushed their way into the room. He sipped at his wine, watched one of the cops lean over and speak to a woman in a green sequined dress who stood just inside the door. She moved her wineglass to her left hand and waggled a long manicured finger out over the crowd, toward Cecil Taylor, now entertaining the multitudes along the back wall. The woman said something, but, by then, the cops had begun to elbow their way through the crowd, showing considerably less finesse than was usually exhibited at gallery openings, thus leaving a trail of wrinkled brows and jostled drinks as they forced their way toward the rear of the room.

Something in the way they moved stiffened Corso’s spine.

Dougherty felt the sudden tension in his arm. “What?” she said.

He inclined his head toward the back of the room where the taller of the two officers leaned over and whispered something into Cecil Taylor’s ear. The roiling din of conversation prevented them from hearing what was said, but whatever it was most certainly pissed Taylor off. His diffuse features gathered themselves in the center of his round face before the cop was through talking. His jaw was set like a bass. He snapped a response. Then another, before chopping the air with the edge of his hand in a gesture of finality. The cop held up a hand of his own…fingers spread, as if to indicate five of something.

An older woman in a shiny black dress swooshed up to Dougherty.

“This is wonderful work, my dear.”

“Thank you so much,” Dougherty said.

“You should be so proud of yourself. I’ve never seen—”

Ding. Ding. Ding.
Cecil Taylor was tapping the rim of a glass with a spoon. The woman scowled and sought the source of the noise.

“People…people,” Cecil Taylor shouted.
Ding. Ding. Ding.

Slowly…in stages…the crowd noise began to diminish.
Ding. Ding. Ding.
“People. Please.”

The room fell silent. “Apparently there’s been some sort of…”—he looked over at the cop—“some sort of toxic spill or something in the neighborhood. It seems we’re going to have to evacuate the building immediately.” His tone suggested it was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. “These gentlemen…”—he threw a glare at the pair of cops—“insist that we be out of here in the next five minutes.” He set the glass and spoon down and raised his upturned palms to shoulder height. At that point the whispering cop took over.

“When you leave the building, please move south. Down toward the stadiums. The area between Cherry and King Streets has been cordoned off. Transportation is available at Safeco Field.”

“My car—” someone in the crowd began. The cop waved him off. “If your car is parked between Cherry and King…from the waterfront to Fourth Avenue, you’re going to have to find some other way home tonight.”

A flurry of protests and questions filled the air. The cop shouted them down. “Move, people,” he yelled. “Let’s go. MOVE.”

Slowly, one and two at a time, the crowd began to head for the door.

Cecil Taylor stood in the opening alternately offering agonized apologies and casting scowls at the cops, who continued shaking their heads at shouted questions and herding the disgruntled patrons like sheep.

As the final guest disappeared into the darkness, Taylor turned to the cops. “I know Chief Dobson personally,” he was saying. “I’ll be on the phone…first thing in the morning. This damn well better not be some goddamn training exercise…I’m telling you right now—”

The cop cut him off. “Let’s go, sir,” he insisted. “We’d appreciate it if you’d leave the lights on.”

Before Taylor could muster a comeback, Maury Caulkin appeared carrying an armload of coats. He handed Corso two and kept a pair for himself. Cecil Taylor shouldered his way into his long black cashmere overcoat and then turned his attention to Dougherty. “I’m so sorry, my dear. I can only imagine how you must feel…on this of all nights…to have something like this—”

“Let’s go, people,” the short cop shouted. “Need you to move now.”

4

“G
ive it a rest, huh?”

Corso stood in the street and watched a ragged pair of street people lurch around the corner and disappear. “What?” he said.

“You’ve braced every person we’ve run into. You’re down to winos. Rate we’re going neither of us will ever get home.” She waved an arm. “Let’s go.”

“I’m just curious.”

“Be curious while you’re walking.”

“I’ve got a feeling.”

“You’ve always got a feeling.”

The plan had been to walk down to the stadiums and grab a cab. Fifteen minutes…tops. That was an hour ago, before Corso began stopping everyone they encountered. Asking question after question. Picking everybody’s brain. Getting absolutely nothing for his trouble, either. Nobody knew a thing.

The night air was heavy with mist. Fluid and gray, it dampened their cheeks as they walked. Behind them, a single strip of yellow police tape marked the southern edge of Occidental Park. Beyond the yellow plastic barrier, the park itself, normally awash in crack dealers this time of night, was now completely deserted, its trimmed trees and tourist trap totem poles swallowed whole by the liquid night. The sound of hooves on stone heralded a pair of mounted cops. Corso turned his head in time to watch the white-helmeted officers bounce along the line of demarcation at a brisk trot.

Dougherty kicked at a retreating pigeon and missed. “I don’t fucking believe it,” she said. “This’s gotta be a joke.”

Corso merely grunted. First Tuesday of the month—Art Walk Night—and Occidental Square had taken on the look of a science fiction movie. One of those end-of-the-world disaster flicks where the city stands deserted after the Martians take over.

Inside the brightly lit galleries, bottles of wine and trays of hors d’oeuvres waited like jilted lovers. In front of the Parker-Holmes Gallery, a cigarette still smoldered on the rough stones, sending its thin plume of smoke up into the dark night sky.

“Don’t worry about it,” Corso offered.

“What do you mean don’t worry about it? The most important night of my life goes right down the toilet, and you tell me not to worry about it?”

“It’s out of our hands.”

Her boot made another pass at the pigeon and, once again, missed. “Easy for you to say. You’re the big-time famous author, not the town freak.”

“Stop it.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but Corso beat her to it. “I can’t imagine what somebody might have spilled that would necessitate evacuating eight square blocks of a major metropolitan area.”

“That’s what they always do. Evacuate the city.”

“Only in the movies. Anybody in emergency response will tell you—”

“Whatever,” she snapped. “All I know for sure is that my big show is going to sink beneath the waves without so much as a ripple. I’m gonna be back in obscurity so fast it’ll—”

“Gotta be something super toxic.”

“Four years of work, and there isn’t gonna be one goddamn thing in tomorrow’s paper but whatever disaster they’ve got going on back there.” Before Corso could reply, she went on. “You know how they love a disaster. By now, they’ve worked up a fanfare and a logo.” She lowered her voice. Waved an arm. “Spill Oh Three,” she intoned. “They wait all year for something like this. A storm. A pileup…any damn thing they can beat to death for a week. It’s like…”

She skidded to a halt, hands on hips. Corso had stopped and turned around. He looked up into the swirling fog and shook his head. “Where’s all the sirens and lights?” he wanted to know. “This whole area ought to be lit up like a Christmas tree.”

“Swear to God…I’m cursed.”

“Stop it.”

“It’s true.”

The sound of someone humming filled the spaces between their footsteps. What was the tune. “Time After Time,” Corso thought. He stopped and watched as a middle-aged guy in a green canvas coat cut diagonally across Occidental Street and headed their way. “Looks like we’re the last ones outta here,” the guy said, looking around at the deserted streets.

“That’s what I keep telling him,” Dougherty said.

“Where were you?”

“Smith Tower,” the guy said. “I’m the maintenance supervisor. Had two guys call in sick, so I’m holding down the fort by myself…next thing I know the place is crawling with cops and firemen.”

“They tell you what’s going on?” Corso asked.

Guy shook his head. “Just told me I had to get out. Like right then. Said I had five minutes to beat it.” He shook his craggy head. “Hell…I can’t even get to my car.”

“I hear every taxi and bus in town is down by the stadiums,” Corso said.

“That’s what the cop told me too.”

Corso turned to Dougherty. Spread his hands. “What’s all this tight-lipped shit about? A spill is a spill. You send in the haz-mat team; you clean it up. So what? B…F…D.”

“It’s on Yesler. That I know for sure,” the guy volunteered.

“They told you that?”

“It’s right behind the building. I was there when it first started.”

“When was that?”

“Coupla hours ago. Buncha aid cars. Fire trucks. The whole nine yards.”

“Where on Yesler?”

Corso heard Dougherty cough. Could sense the heat of her impatience.

“Down in the bus tunnel. They got the whole entrance sealed over with plastic. Everybody’s wearing gas masks. Cops got their little robot thing out.”

“You saw this?”

“Damn right.” The guy shook his head again. “What a pain in the ass.”

“Let’s go,” Dougherty said through bared teeth.

She turned and walked away, her black cape fanning out behind her like a pair of ebony wings. Corso and the other guy fell in beside her, striding out now, stretching their legs as they stepped out into King Street. To the east, a pair of SPD patrol cars blocked the street. Two more down at the waterfront.

“Lotsa overtime tonight,” Corso said.

“You think maybe it’s got something to do with that terrorism thing they’re having up at the Weston?” the guy asked as they walked along.

Corso stopped in his tracks. Looked north. Up toward the center of the city, where the International Symposium on Chemical and Biological Weapons was presently being held at the Weston Hotel. Experts from fifty countries were jammed into the Weston’s twin towers doing whatever it was they did when experts got together. Predictably, the confab had brought the loonies out of the woodwork. Every political, environmental and social action group that could drive, walk or hitchhike its way to Seattle was in the streets demonstrating for and against everything from capitalist incursions into third world nations to the pitiful plight of sea turtles, leading to a series of day-long demonstrations which had virtually closed the center of the city for the past two days.

“Jesus…I hope not,” Corso said.

A shout echoed through the silent streets. The sound of scuffling feet filled their ears like static. The new Seahawks Stadium loomed ahead, its metal brows arching a question into the gauzy night air. They angled across King Street, turned left onto the disjointed arm of Occidental and suddenly they weren’t alone. Two blocks ahead, a couple dozen other stragglers moved south toward the bright lights on Royal Brougham. Seemed like everyone had a cell phone glued to his ear.

Halfway down the block, Safeco Field came into view; the field lights had been turned on, casting an eerie halogen glow over the herds of buses and cabs that filled the streets. The wail of a train whistle seemed to come from everywhere at once. Once…twice and then, after an interval…a third time. Ahead in the distance, the giant spoked locomotive wheel that opened and closed the stadium’s retractable roof seemed to take kindred comfort in the sound.

“What can you spill in a tunnel?” Corso groused. The long shadows of their fellow refugees swirled around their legs. “There’s no trucks, no tankers, no railroad cars. Nothing in there but buses. How do you get a haz-mat spill from a bus? I don’t get it.”

Half a block to go. The refugees began to fan out. Corso could hear people wishing one another well as they wandered off in all directions at once.

The cops had been correct. A herd of Metro buses lined up two deep along the north facade of the stadium. Corso read the signs as they walked along: Montlake Terrace. Kent via Southcenter. Northgate. Bellevue. Most were about two-thirds full. The acrid smell of diesel fumes now mixed with the mist, leaving the skin feeling oily and unclean. Inside the buses, people seemed more animated than usual. Looked like everybody was talking at once, instead of hiding behind newspapers and Walkmen. “Amazing what it takes to bring people together,” Corso thought as he hurried along.

“See you guys.” The guy in the green jacket waved good-bye and made a beeline for the number thirty-eight bus and the University District.

Corso and Dougherty cut in front of the buses, crossed First Avenue and made their way toward the line of cabs along the curb. As they approached, here and there along the line, cabs peeled off like yellow leaves blown south by the wind, rolling away from the city, toward the next freeway entrance five blocks down the road.

The three nearest cabs all cut their wheels and started down the street before Corso and Dougherty got there. The fourth was empty. Corso put his hands on the side of the cab and leaned down. The window slid open a crack. Driver seemed to be holding his breath. “Need to go up on the hill and then down to Eastlake,” Corso said.

The crack in the window disappeared. The locks popped. Corso pulled open the door and ushered Dougherty inside. He waited while she scooted over and then put one leg into the cab. That’s when he heard the voice. From across the street. Right away, Corso knew who it was. He stifled a shudder and pulled himself upright.

The voice was tentative. “Mr. Corso?” it called again. Corso looked around.

“Close the door,” the cabby said. Corso did so.

His eyes found the figure. Standing alone in front of the first pair of buses. Slobodan Nisovic. Black raincoat. Long red scarf, looked to be hand-knitted, wound around his throat. Corso started across the street.

In his mind’s eye, he could see them both. Walter Lee Himes and Albert Defeo. Two of the most disgusting human beings Corso had ever met. First time Corso saw Walter Lee in person was the week before his scheduled execution for a series of rapes and murders known as “The Trashman Killings.” Ten young women savaged and then left lifeless in trash containers all over the city. Walter Lee Himes had been convicted of the crimes and was sentenced to die by lethal injection, when Corso got wind of another murder, same MO…same demeaning ovine ear tag hanging from the victim’s ear. Much to nearly everyone’s chagrin, turned out Walter Lee wasn’t guilty. At least not of the murders for which he had been convicted. Turned out a skinny little gun nut had been getting back at his dear departed mother by raping and killing young women like Petra Nisovic. Made him feel better, he said.

Slobodan Nisovic was thinner than Corso remembered.

“You look well,” Nisovic said.

“You too,” Corso lied.

“Anna…” he said, naming his wife, “would want me to give you her regards.” He looked down at his shoes. “We owe you a debt we can never—”

Corso cut him off. “How’s the boys?”

“Nicholas entered high school, this year. Serge…” he smiled a little. “Serge is at that awkward age.”

A moment passed. “I guess you saw the news about Albert Defeo,” Corso said.

Nisovic nodded. Shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

Little less than a year ago. McNeil Island Penitentiary. Another inmate had beaten Albert Defeo to death with a mop handle in a dispute over a deck of cards.

Didn’t much matter to Slobodan Nisovic, though. Either way, his only daughter was dead, and, no matter what else happened, life was never going to hold the bright promise he had once imagined. A refugee Croatian dentist, whose foreign credentials would not allow him to practice his profession in the United States, he’d risen from sweeping the floors in Doc Maynard’s bar to owning the place. He ran the Seattle Underground tours out of a box office in the bar. Half a million tourists a year paid Slobodan Nisovic six bucks a head to stumble through the maze of dank cellars running beneath Pioneer Square. That the business was a gold mine…that he’d risen from the outhouse to the penthouse…that he was the living embodiment of the American Dream…none of it mattered anymore. He’d have traded it all for an hour…hell, a minute…with his beautiful daughter Petra, whose raped and sodomized body Albert Defeo had left decorating the top of a flower-strewn Dumpster behind Freddy’s Flowers on the Ave.

Like Corso, Slobodan Nisovic was famous in a way he’d rather forget. In front of his wife, his mother, the five hundred or so people who packed the hotel ballroom for the press conference and a national TV audience numbering in the millions, Nisovic had pumped four bullets into Walter Lee Himes, as Walter Lee was explaining that in his worldview “them bitches that Defeo fella had kilt” probably deserved to die anyway. Just for being bitches. If’n you knew what he meant.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending upon one’s outlook, Himes had not only survived his wounds but had eventually extracted a four-million-dollar wrongful prosecution judgment from King County, a princely sum with which he had returned to his ancestral home in Husk, North Carolina, from whence, in a recent interview, he claimed to be “livin’ high on the log.”

After some deliberation King County decided it couldn’t have people taking the law into their own hands and commenced to prosecute Nisovic for attempted murder, aggravated assault and reckless endangerment. Problem was it proved impossible to find a jury of his peers who were similarly disposed. The first two trials ended in hung juries. Convinced that the emotional climate in Seattle had poisoned an otherwise open-and-shut case, the prosecution requested and was granted a change of venue.

The third trial was moved twenty miles north to Everett. A blue-collar jury of seven men and five women, after being admonished at length by the judge…told that another hung jury could well lead to charges of contempt of court being filed against each and every one of them…thus chastened, deliberated for a full nineteen minutes before unanimously finding Slobodan Nisovic not guilty of all charges.