Slow Burn (29 page)

"Isn't
that What’s in there?"

"The top
layer. We gonna use that to sear him nice and pretty and to heat up the lava
rock. 'Cause, ya see, under those coals is another ton of lava rock."

He reached into
his pocket and pulled out a small round stone. It was a deep red and its small
face was cratered like a miniature moon.

"Finest
intense dry-heat source you can have. Charcoal be gone after a couple hours,
then we roast him nice and slow. These little boogers hold a heat charge for
ten hours, maybe more. Feel it," he said. "Don't hardly weigh
anything at all."

He dropped the
rock into my hand. It weighed almost nothing.

I tried to give
it back, but Jack magnanimously told me to keep it.

He looked up at
the sky, as if to marvel at the wonder that was the Jackster. "Ain't
nobody since the Romans had the giblets to cook up anything as big as what we're
gonna do." He jerked me closer. "Couldn't nobody but the old
Jackalope do it neither. Nobody else got the vision." He pointed to his
right eye and then tapped his temple. Candace parted him lovingly on the
shoulder.

"See over
there, with the handle?" He pointed to the far end of the apparatus.
"That's how we're gonna turn that good old boy so's we cook him up nice
and even. Got me the granny gear out of a bus down there in that gearbox at the
bottom." He pointed again. "We can put over a ton on that momma, and
a child could still turn the handle. Whadda ya think of that?"

I like to think
that I would have taken that last opportunity to tell him what I really
thought, but we'll never know.

Rickey Ray
appeared in the doorway. With all of us standing in the late-afternoon sun, I
could see what Spaulding had meant. Rickey Ray and Candace did indeed have
similar light brown hair, right down to the glinting highlights.

"Jack,"
Rickey Ray said, "we got us a bread supplier here who says you got no
credit arrangement and he ain't leaving nothin' les'n you give him the cash ...
as in no check, cash."

Jack detached
himself from Candace's arm and strode toward the door. "Double R, what say
we teach this redneck how to be polite?"

"Might
just as well sort it out now as later” Rickey Ray agreed.

Candace
Atherton and I stood alone in the garden. "Openings are always a
rush," she said. "You can't be serious," I replied. "About
what?" she deadpanned.

"You
encourage him," I said. "He stands there and talks this
lunatic-asylum stuff, and you stand there and encourage him."

I couldn't read
her expression, but she said, "Jack's following his star, Mr. Waterman.
Don't you believe in following your star?"

- "Yeah,
but not by helicopter."

"Some men
just dream bigger than others," she mused. I shook my head. "I think
I'm having a deja moo attack." "What's that?"

"The
strange feeling that I've heard this bull before." She didn't think that
was funny. Her face closed like a leg trap.

"Desperate
situations call for desperate measures," she said and then walked off into
the restaurant.

That was the
point in my recitation where Rebecca lost it and broke in. "And none of
his entourage seems the least bit concerned?"

"Not as
far as I can see. It's almost like they see it as fate or something. They seem
perfectly content to watch Rome burn."

"Sounds
pretty weird," she remarked.

"These are
the same folks who thought so little of that Bound, they got up and left after
the first half hour. Said it bored them."

"Bound?"

"That
movie we saw at the Metro with Jennifer Tilly and what's-her-face. Remember how
it started?"

"The one
with the ..." Rebecca gave me a sly smile. "Kinky sex. Yeah. That
one."

"The one
after which we made that short stop at your apartment and were late for our
dinner reservations."

"The very
same. And then, if I recall, the movie moved right along into the gratuitous
violence."

She gave a
chuckle. "You're right, Leo. It's downright un-American to walk out on sex
and violence. Maybe they're Commies."

The champagne
had my mind moving in slow motion. Every time I turned my head, my eyes took a
second to catch up.

"Then I
ran down and tried to get Normal and Hot Shot out of the slammer. Jerk-offs let
me stand around for four hours before they bothered to tell me that Hot Shot
had three outstanding warrants and wasn't going anywhere." I sighed.
"Cost me six hundred for Normal."

I'd slipped Normal another of Sir Geoffrey's fifties and sent him off to keep George company.

"That
reminds me," she said. "There's a message from Jed on the phone. He's
had calls from several others who've been picked up. Judy and Frank and, I
think, Red and somebody else."

Morning was
going to have to be soon enough.

"Is that
lovely new bed still upstairs?"

"I believe
it is," she said.

"What say
we try it for sleeping this time?"

Rebecca stood
and stretched. I heard her neck pop as she rolled her head in a circle.
"I'm not due in until noon."

"Me
neither," I said around a yawn, but she knew what I meant. "I'll get
the lights down here."

Is he out of his
mind?'' he demanded. Sir Geoffrey was dressed in an impeccable gray suit and a
plum-colored tie, in retrospect a rather prophetic color choice, as it
presently matched his face.

He held out his
hand and Rowcliffe placed a small pink tablet in his palm. Sir Geoffrey brought
the palm to his mouth, as if to stifle a yawn, popped the pill past his hps and
again extended the hand. Rowcliffe, of course, was ready with mineral water in
a crystal tumbler.

I waited as
Miles drained the liquid, dabbed his lips with the proffered napkin and got
back to scowling at me.

"That
question brings us directly to Miss Dormer," I said.

"Must
we?" he inquired. "I'm afraid so." "Go on, then."

"I told
you yesterday that she spent the day in the King County Office Building. This morning I called a couple of my contacts."

The phrase
"a couple of my contacts" sounds so much more professional than
saying, "I called my aunt Karen, and she called my cousin Nicole's
roommate, Noreen, who works in County Records."

I'd struck out
on the first try. I caught Karen just as she arrived at the office, and she'd
gotten right on it. She called back before ten.

''Nothing,"
she said. "No Jack Del Fuego. No Dixie Donner."

"Really?
Nothing?"

"No
documents on file, none pending. Sorry, kiddo." "Well, thanks,
darlin'," I said. "Looks like I'm going to have to knock on the
doors." "Later, Leo."

As I began to
lower the phone from my ear, I had my first intelligent thought of the week—not
bad, considering ifs only Thursday. I wondered how in hell you spend all day
doing business in the county building and manage not to use your real name.
Anything you were doing in there was official; you were gonna need . . .

"Karen,
Karen," I shouted into the mouthpiece.

She came back
on.

"What is
it, Leo?" Methinks me sensed a bit of exasperation.

"Try
Wogers. W-O-G-E-R-S. Willie. Will you do that for me? I promise to leave you
alone after that . . . promise." She was back at me in ten.

"You have
the family nose for smut, Leo," she said. "Ifs being filed under
Donnareen L. Pye versus Wille Wogers. No middle initial."

"What’s a
Donnareen L. Pie?"

"It says
the plaintiff is one Donnareen L. Donner-Del Fuego-Horowitz-Pye. Heck of a
moniker. Kind of makes you wonder who Liz Taylor would be if you strung them
all out."

"Horowitz?"

"that’s
what it says. Hubby number two." Sir Geoffrey listened with his eyes
closed and his hps pursed as I told him what Dixie was up to.

"I should
gladly witness on her behalf”' he announced when I'd finished. "Her
petition is manifestly valid. The man is patently out of his mind. The fact
that she is attempting to have him declared incompetent to run the business
should not be a surprise to anyone even remotely familiar with the
situation."

According
to
Noreen, that was pretty much Dixie's position. In documents filed
before the
court, Dixie claimed that Willie Wogers, a.k.a Jack Del Fuego, had
slipped a
major cog as a result of long-term alcoholism, and thus she requested
that he
be immediately remanded for psychiatric evaluation. Her petition asked
that the
court remove Willie from any and all control of the day-to-day business
of the Seattle operation. It held that Willie-Jack had driven the
business into the ground and was
at present so heavily leveraged that the Seattle operation now
constituted his
company's sole unencumbered asset and, as such, must, in the interest
of the
plaintiff, be protected. The petition asked King County, as the county
presently containing the corporation's sole asset, both to claim
jurisdiction
and to issue a restraining order. The remaining documents consisted of
descriptions and depositions concerning the recent debacles in Atlanta
and Cleveland, along with a rundown of the accrued litigation.
According to Noreen, there were
pictures, too.

"Does any
of this advance our cause?" Sir Geoffrey asked.

"Not as
far as I can see. Short of laying hands on a Sidewinder missile and shooting
him down, I don't see how we can prevent the revenge of the Jackster from
taking place."

"Perhaps
Ms. Meyerson's aggregate forces . . ."

"The cops
will keep them a block away. The city is with Jack on this one, I'm
afraid."

"How,"
he blustered, "with that man's disastrous history, can any governmental
body lend its support to his undertakings?"

"Actually,
ifs fairly simple. The city is real hot to renew that part of Fourth Avenue. Its a major priority with them.

Its the last
great downtown eyesore in a city that sees itself as being way above eyesores.
They figure Jack can be a cornerstone for that whole three-block area."
"But surely—"

I kept talking.
"I'm willing to bet the city gave him a hell of a deal on everything.
Nobody seems to be able to figure out why Del Fuego would choose to make his
last stand in the heartland of the granola head, but I'll bet ifs because they
cut him a sweetheart deal. I'll bet they made it pretty enticing to a guy with
bad cash flow."

I had his
lordship's undivided attention.

"And ifs
also personal," I concluded.

He arched an
eyebrow as I related the tale of the mayor's wife and the uninsured mink coat.

"Indeed,"
was all he said. 'You know, Mr. Waterman . . . and I trust you will take this
in the positive manner in which it is intended . . ."

"Of
course," I assured him.

"But if
you don't mind me saying, it must be quite an asset in your profession to be so
much smarter than you, on first impression, appear to be."

I'll never be
precisely sure how he meant it, but for the sake of civility, I decided to take
it as a compliment.

"It do
come in handy," I allowed.

"The media
situation is intolerable. The convention will be lucky to get a full column in
the second section. Have you seen today's paper?"

I had. This
morning's Post Intelligence had squeezed world news into two pages and devoted
the remainder of the front section to the murder of Mason Reese. They'd come up
with a picture of everyone involved, including Sir Geoffrey himself. For me,
they'd used a five-year-old shot taken after I'd been living in the Fiat for
three days while staking out a South Seattle crack house. I made a note to call
the paper and complain.

"Something
must be done," Sir Geoffrey declared. "Have you a plan of
action?"

"Yes, I
do. First, I'm going to go upstairs and change my clothes. And then I'm going
to find my associate Mr. Paris and persuade him to, as Jack said the other
night, do his civic duty."

"And what
would that be?"

"He's
going to surrender to the district attorney."

Sir Geoffrey
was still chewing on that one when I left.

I never did
catch the Lola show itself. I'd gone upstairs to see Sir Geoffrey Miles at
about one-o-one, right as the Afternoon Northwest music started, and I walked
back in the door thirty minutes later to find the credits rolling and the music
playing. Only this time the music was the Doobie Brothers, "Takin' It to
the Streets," and Lola was doing the cheerleader voice-over. "Join us
live tomorrow when we'll be takin' it to the streets. Make your voice heard.
Make a difference. Until tomorrow, this is—" I hit the power button and
went looking for a suitable ruse.