Who in Hell Is Wanda Fuca? (4 page)

Other than a sadness for the past and a taste for the grape, there seemed to
be two factors keeping these guys together. One was their financial status.
Each had managed to hang in there long enough to have garnered a meager monthly
stipend from his respective employer. Not a full pension, not enough to make it
alone, but enough, when you added it the money I paid them, to collectively
keep them in liquor and out of the rain.

The other factor was their wardrobes. None of them had yet reached the
Dumpster stage. Each was attired in the last remnants of his executive
wardrobe. Finely tailored costs and slacks, stained and worn to a shine, hung
mismatched on their bloated, sagging bodies, a credit to their tailors and a
link to their pasts.

We drank to the good old days. I sported them to another round. We drank to
my father. One by one, as it became obvious that a third round was not
forthcoming, Harold, Ralph, and George said their good-byes and drifted back to
their deeded spots along the bar, leaving Buddy and me alone. Buddy stepped in
close. He smelled like an attic.

"You got anything going that we can help you with, Leo?"

I often used Buddy and his friends as field operatives. The destitute and
the homeless had become so prevalent and so bother some in Seattle that they
were able to operate under a cloak of cultural invisibility. They were there,
but nobody saw them. They could hang around places for days at a time without
being noticed. It was as if they had their own little socioeconomic force
field. Even better, they took great pride in their work and didn't require much
in the way of fringe benefits. When they worked for me, they stayed relatively
sober. When I paid them, they got drunk. It worked.

"Things are a little slow right now, Buddy. Mostly paper trails, but if
I get anything, I'll let you know."

Buddy eyed me closely. His eyes were filigreed with red. I watched as he
went through one of those instantaneous mood swings that only drunks and
menstruating women can manage.

"You wouldn't be getting self-righteously sober on us now, would you,
Leo? Maybe too good to be working with a bunch of old drunks like us
anymore?"

"No way, Buddy. I'm just a mostly sober drunk, that's all."

Buddy relaxed. "Good," he said, downing a Scotch followed by a
beer chaser. " ‘Cause I got a little information I'd like to pass your
way." He patted his chest as the liquor made its way down. His eyes
watered.

"Smoooooth," he wheezed. I waited. "That's why I thought you
might have something interesting going on."

"Why's that?"

"Guess who's been around looking for you?" he asked smugly.

"Frankie Ortega," I said.

"Goddammit, Leo."

"Just a wild guess."

Buddy was pissed. I'd ruined his surprise. He ordered another boilermaker. I
paid for it. He went through the same routine as he gulped it down. This time,
his nose started to run. He wiped it on his sleeve.

"He found you, huh?"

"Nope," I said. Buddy leaned close again.

"You're not into Tim for money, are you? I mean, Jesus Christ, Leo -
"

"Don't worry, Buddy. I'm not into Tim for money."

"Good." He breathed out heavily, and the air reeked of mothballs.
"We're gonna have to move on. Did I tell you that?"

"No. How come?"

"Mrs. Paultz is retiring. Wants to move down to Arizona to be closer to
her kids. She's selling the house. They'll tear the old place down for
sure."

"Sorry to hear that."

"I don't know what the hell we're gonna do, Leo. There's not many old
places - " He was about to lapse into maudlin. I didn't have it in me.

"Gotta go, Buddy. You take care now, okay?"

"Come on, Leo, stick around. Things are just starting. Nearly Normal
Norman will be in in a bit. The whole gang'll be here. Come on," he whine.

I swilled my Coke, fished out the cherry, ate it, and threw the stem back in
the glass. "Gotta go, Buddy."

"You'll be back." He'd changed again. His pouched face was
suddenly hard. He was beginning to slur.

"I don't think so, Buddy." He smiled and moved his head up and
down. His eyes failed to keep pace with the movement.

"I don't mean today. I just mean you'll be back." He pointed down
at his feet. "One of these nights when I've slid down - when I'm huggin'
the rail with my pants full of shit - I'll look over to the side and you'll be
there. Don't doubt it. You'll be there, Leo." He turned back to the bar. I
headed out.

Probably because I was so busy ruminating on the likelihood of Buddy's
prophecy coming true, I got sloppy. I have my own little security system for my
combination office-apartment. Years before, in a drunken rage, I'd tried to
kick the door in one night when I'd lost my keys. The door held fast, but
somewhere in the locking mechanism something had snapped. Since that night,
whenever the door is locked from the outside, the handle tilts violently to the
right. Locked from the inside, it stays straight up.

I was three steps inside my apartment before I snapped to the fact that I
wasn't alone. Great cumulus clouds of cigarette smoke swam in the sunlight that
angled in through the front windows. Frankie Ortega was leaning all the way
back in my white leather recliner, working on his second beer.

Frankie was a little guy. No more than five-six or so. I'd always thought he
looked like Cab Calloway. Thick, black processed hair combed straight back. A
bold, wide mouth accented by a pencil-thin mustache clinging precisely to the
outline of his upper lip. He was sporting a fawn-colored suit, a bright yellow
tie, and two-tone loafers, brown and white.

"Relax, Leo," he said. I relaxed. I was unarmed. In spite of the
fact that he must be pushing sixty by now, Frankie Ortega was not somebody I
had any desire to take on. Whatever he may have lacked in size, he more than
made up for in speed and ruthlessness. For the past thirty-five years he had
handled Tim Flood's problems without so much as wrinkling his suits.

"Make yourself at home, Frankie." When in doubt, try irony.

"Thanks, Leo. I knew you wouldn't mind." He smiled and pushed the
handle forward, bringin himself to an upright, seated position. He stood and
smoothed out his slacks. "Nice quiet place you've got here."

"You looking to sublease, Frankie?"

"Still the comedian, eh, Leo. You really ought to get over that, you
know. I told you before, there's no long-term future in it."

"Other than career counseling, did you have some other purpose for
stopping by to see me today, Frankie?"

"You know I been looking for you." It was a statement.

"I might have heard a rumor to that effect," I said.

"You know if I'm looking for a guy, I'm gonna find him, right?"

I didn't feel any great need to answer. His ego didn't need the boost.

He walked over and stood too close tome. He kept his hands in his pockets,
letting his cologne grab me instead.

"Tim needs to see you," he said evenly.

"So where is he?" I said, looking around the apartment. "I'm
in the book. W for Waterman or I for Investigations." He shook his head
sadly and started for the door.

"Tim don't get around so good anymore, Leo," he said as he passed.

"I'm kind of busy right now, Frankie. Tell Tim - "

"Dinner at seven at the house. We'll be expecting you."

He opened the door and stepped silently into the hallway. Before closing the
door, he looked me up and down. "You probably ought to clean up a bit,
Leo. That suit's a mess," he said shaking his head again. He was gone.
Only the smoke remained. I opened the windows.

In some perverse way, it was probably fitting that Tim Flood had ended up on
Capitol Hill. For nearly a century the Victorian mansion of the Hill had gazed
disapprovingly out over Lake Union like crotchety maiden aunts. The wealth of
the Klondike, the spoils of the sea, and the offspring of the founders had
competed cheek by jowl in a thirty-year frenzy of bourgeois building, each
hoping to appear more firmly settled and less nouveau riche than his neighbors.

This same neighborhood had, for many years, been a major bone of contention
between my parents. My mother had wanted to get in on the building program.
She'd envisioned an Edwardian mansion at the very zenith of the hill as the
type of home that befitted both my father's political status and her own
social-climbing fixation. The old man had disagreed.

He saw himself as a man of the people and had steadfastly refused to budge
from the ancestral digs on lower Queen Anne. As, one by one, my mother's
friends had abandoned the old neighborhood in favor of the Hill, she had become
increasingly strident in her demands. The old man was a rock. He wasn't going
anywhere. They'd carried the argument to their graves. Probably beyond.

I slid the Fiat to the cub atop the thick layer of sodden maple leaves that
blanketed Tenth Avenue, two blocks south of Tim Flood's house. As I locked the
car, I tried to remember the last time I'd been up here. A couple of years at
least. I turned my collar against the wet breeze and looked around.

At first glance the street appeared timeless. The maples and elms formed
towering Gothic arches above the street. The immense old houses seemed to have
been hewn directly from the landscape. A Northwest Norman Rockwell. A frozen
fantasy of the American dream.

The illusion was transitory. Even from here, nearly the epicenter of the
neighborhood, the steady gnawing away of the Hill's exclusivity was plain.

Broadway, the heartland of the leather geek, was pissing on the back steps.
Pill Hill, with its ever-expanding megamedical facilities, crept steadily in
from the south. To the west, trendy new condos rapidly devoured the modest
homes that used to litter the side of the hill. It wouldn't be long.

I slipped my hands into the pockets of my overcoat and meandered slowly up
the street, wondering how much a month it cost to heat one of these monsters. A
sure sign that I didn't belong here.

I still hadn't settled on a figure when I reached the gate. The house, like
most of its neighbors, was better than twenty rooms. Three stories of tapered
columns, gabled windows, and gingerbread flourishes covered in brown shingles.
A three-foot brick wall, into which an ornately wrought gate had been set,
separated the sidewalk from the small front yard. I opened the gate and walked
up the broad front steps to the double doors. I never got a chance to knock.

A young guy of about thirty opened the right-hand door as I reached for the
brass knocker. Samoan maybe, five-eleven but a solid two-twenty or so, with a
neck wider than his head. He looked funny in a suit. Suits weren't made for
that kind of bulk. Even the custom tailoring couldn't fully disguise the bulge
under his left arm. He stared dispassionately at me as I were something blown
onto the porch by the breeze. He made no move to invite me in. He stood with
one hand on the door and the other on the frame like Samson chained to the
temple.

"Leo Waterman to see Tim Flood," I said.

He moved his thick, spiked hair an inch or so, opened the door wider, and
stepped aside. He had a twin. Same spiked hair, same impassive face, same
bulging suit, leaning back against the inside wall, hidden by the frosted glass
of the doors. I stepped in and gazed from one to the other. Number one closed
the door. Number two closed ranks.

They waddled before me down the marble-covered hall that bisected the
residence. Their gait was remarkably splay-footed. It appeared that at any
moment each twin was likely to split down the middle and march away from his
other half straight into one of the mahogany-wainscoted walls.

We marched all the way to the end of the
hallway and on through the double French doors at the end of the passage. We
were in a small foyer between the main house and the giant solarium at the
back. They stepped back and ushered me into the stifling sunroom. It was at
least eighty-five degrees inside, as humid as New Orleans in August. The doors
closed behind me.

A dazzling array of tropical plants and shrubs, some pushing the thirty-foot
glass roof, dipped in the moist air. A greenhouse with furniture.

"Leo." A hoarse voice beckoned from the far end of the room.

I wandered over. Tim Flood, or what was left of him, was nearly lost amid
the cushions of the ancient wicker settee that fanned out behind his head like
a halo.

"Sit," he said, motioning toward a green wicker chair that had
been drawn up by his side. Sweat was beginning to form on my scalp, deodorant
failure was imminent, but Tim Flood, beneath the bright afghan, was wearing a
sweater. I sat.

He looked pretty good. Smaller than I remembered, beginning the same descent
back inside himself that I'd watched my father take, but holding up pretty
well. His hawk-like nose had become more prominent with advancing age and his
bony liver-spotted hands rested limply on the padded arms of the lounger like
bird's feet, but the eyes were as hard as they'd always been.

"Thanks for coming, Leo." His voice was husky enough to pull a
dogsled. "What can we get you to drink?"

"Bourbon rocks."

The words were hardly out of my mouth before Frankie Ortega appeared, drink
in hand. Back over his shoulder, through the massive ferns, I could see a
portable bar along the north wall.

Frankie had taken his own advice. He'd changed into a blue three-piece suit
highlighted by a blue-and-green-striped tie riding above a tight collar pin. He
hadn't broken a sweat. Tim spoke.

"If you don't' mind, Leo, we'll eat in here." Runnels of sweat
trickled down my back, soaking the elastic of my shorts. Serving food in this
room probably saved the cook a great deal of time. By the time he got the stuff
carted over to Tim, it was probably poached. I took a pull of my drink, trying
to will myself to stop sweating. No go.