Last Ditch (23 page)

"What
about it?"

She
took a deep
breath.

"That's
Judy Chen."

"Really?"

Judy
Chen owned
the International District. In my mind's eye I could see her picture in
the
newspaper, cutting ribbons and accepting awards. Over the past
thirty-five
years, she'd systematically purchased nearly all the property in what
had once
been known as Japtown. That's what they'd called the International
District
back before the war. Before they shipped their Japanese neighbors off
to desert
concentration camps and appropriated their hard-earned lives. Judy Chen
had her
finger in a lot of pot-stickers. If it came into Chinatown,
it went through Judy Chen and some of it ended up in her pocket. You
could say
she was the Asian version of my old man. Sort of like Szechwan,
half a dozen of the other.

"You
want
to hear what Judy Chen owns?"

I
picked up my
notebook. "Go for it."

She
ran it by
me. At great length. It took a full five minutes. Restaurants,
bakeries,
warehouses, laundries, produce companies, a beer distributorship,
insurance
offices, travel agents, video stores, two bars and, if I counted
correctly,
just over twenty buildings.

"Quite
the
Horatio Alger story, huh?" she said.

I
played along.
"Judy Chen is either a very astute businesswoman or very lucky ... or
both."

"Well,"
she began, "there was always that persistent rumor that Judy Chen had
friends in high places."

"Makes
sense," I said.

Usually
she
makes me work like-a galley slave for these tidbits, but today she came
right
out with it.

"They
always said she had your father in her pocket." "Who always
said?"

"Everybody.
The wags, Peerless Price. Everybody. It was always the talk that he was
her
rabbi." "Was it true?"

She
hesitated
for a long moment. "You really want to know? You know, kid, sometimes
it's
better to let bygones be bygones."

I
was losing my
sense of humor about that particular piece of advice. "Was it?" I
snapped. "Yes," she said. "You sure?"

"Absolutely
positive. I worked for the assessor back then. The word was that
whatever Judy
Chen wanted, Judy Chen got."

I
mulled it
over, remembering what LaFontaine said about somebody having a lot of
city pull
down on the docks. I didn't like it a bit. The idea that my father
could be
even indirectly connected to fourteen dead people was more than I was
willing
to consider. I almost liked the gay bar and the steam bath better than
this.
Almost.

She
sensed my
discomfort. "It was a long time ago, Leo. In those days it was pretty
much
standard operating procedure. It was just the way business was done.
Nobody
thought anything about it. Nowadays, it's the city that cuts itself in
on the
action. They just eliminated the middleman is all."

"Why
would
he do that for her?" I asked.

"There's
a
lot of money to be made on the docks," she said quickly. Too quickly.
Almost like it was a prepared statement.

"There's
a
lot of money to be made a lot of places," I countered. "Why there?
Why her?"

I
heard her
sigh again. Her discomfort was palpable.

"Hang
on
for a second," she said in a weary voice.

I
said I would.
I could hear her heels as she crossed the room and closed the door to
her
office and then walked back to the phone.

She
came out of
left field. "You remember . . .I'm sure . . . that your mother and I
...
we didn't . . ."

I
helped her
out "You didn't get along."

"No,"
she said. "We didn't. But Lord knows Bill . . . your father . . . was a
long way from perfect."

I
held the
phone tight to my ear and waited for her to work it out.

"She
had
this air ... as if the whole lot of us were beneath her station," she
said. "I was young and proud, and I had a big mouth." I could almost
hear her shrug. "Things got said. The kind of things that can't be
taken
back."

"What's
that got to do with Judy Chen?" I prodded. She thought it over for
quite a
while. "I guess what it's got to do with Judy Chen is that my
relationship
with your mother gives me pause to question my own motives here, Leo."

The
phone
company was right. You could hear a pin drop.

"They
always said ..." She stopped. "They who? Same 'they' as before?"
"Yes." "Yeah."

"They
always said . . . that they . . . your father and Judy Chen . . . had a
. . .
were a ... an item." "You mean . . . ?" "Uh-huh."
"When was this?"

"For
years
and years. Till the end," she added.

"Right
up
until he died?"

"Yeah."

She
tried to
lighten things up.

"You
know,
Leo, I don't think the Waterman men have the marriage gene," she said.
"Look at Edward. The way I hear it he and Joan didn't speak to one
another
in private for the last five years of his life. Pat never married. You
had that
cup-of-coffee marriage with Annette way back when . . . Your father and
mother
. . . well ..." She showed some restraint and let it hang.

We
both knew
their marriage bore little or no resemblance to the Partridge Family.
From
about the time I was seven, I couldn't remember a time when they'd
slept in the
same room or eaten together at the same table. Other than that, things
were
quite cheery around the house.

"Did
my
mother know?"

"Oh,
sure," she said. "She'd never admit it, of course. That wasn't her
way. But she knew. She had to."

I
was angry.
Not about my father and mother, either. What passed between them was
past. No,
I was angry that I hadn't known of any of this and angry that he hadn't

seen
fit to
tell me. And most of all I was angry about all the people who, over all
the
years, I'd offhandedly dismissed when they spoke of my father. Turned
out, they
might have known more about him than I did. Maybe Pat was right. Maybe
everybody was right.

I
thanked her.
Mercifully, Karen was every bit as uncomfortable as I was and made it
easy to
get off the phone. I could feel the blood under the skin of my face,
and my
head had begun to throb in earnest. I pushed myself to my feet and
headed for
the couch. Nap time.

"
At first
1 thought I was paralyzed. I awoke at rime-fifteen Friday morning in
exactly
the same position on the couch that I'd assumed fifteen hours earlier.
Sometime
during the night, Rebecca had stuffed a pillow under my head and
covered me
with the red plaid blanket we took to Husky football games. I was so
stiff I
could barely lever myself into the sitting position. My neck felt like
I'd been
hung. Arrrgh.

After
ten
minutes of massaging myself and groaning, I got to my feet and shuffled
into
the kitchen like I was walking on broken glass.

Rebecca
had
left a note on the table.

Since
you're
obviously well enough to be driving around, why don't you meet me at
the
Coastal at one. Lunch is on you. If you can't make it, leave a message
with
Tyanne. R.

She'd
also been
thoughtful enough to leave the morning paper propped open on the
counter so I
couldn't miss it. The three stooges stared out from the front page in
black and
white. This time, I was in the middle. The Larry Fine position, LEGACY
OF
VIOLENCE?

I
extracted the
sports page and threw the rest of the paper in the garbage can. I put
together
a cup of coffee and settled in at the table. The Sonics were off to a
great
start. Other than squandering a twenty-point lead to Dallas in the
final quarter on Thursday
night, they were undefeated and blowing opponents out by an average of
fifteen
points. The Seahawks were right where they always were—mediocre and
considering
a coaching change. As for me, other than the fact that my father may
have been
gay, or at least partially responsible for the deaths of fourteen
people, or
both, I was just peachy.

By
the time I'd
worked my way through three cups of coffee and the girls' basketball
scores, I
was beginning to feel human, so I ransacked the kitchen, came up with a
week-old
hockey-puck bagel and some cream cheese that was still reasonably
white. On the
theory that stale and toasted are somewhat akin, I toasted the bagel,
stirred
the viscous liquid back into the cream cheese, spread one upon the
other and
wolfed them down. Bon appetit.

FORTUNE
ENTERPRISES OCCUPIED a white two-story stucco building on South Lane
Street,
directly across from the International Children's Park. I rolled the
Fiat to
the curb right next to the blue dragon slide, locked up and started
across the
street. From the Lane Street side, trucks drove up a ramp to the
second-floor
loading docks. A red-and-white sign with an arrow said the offices were
down
around the comer on Fifth
Avenue South. I'm hell with directions.

Having
failed
so miserably at stealth, I decided to try the direct approach this
time. The
receptionist was a good-looking blonde woman with thin black eyebrows.
About
thirty, she wore a tight yellow blouse and black stretch pants. Behind
her
desk, the large open office area had been divided into about twenty
cubicles.
The maze hummed with activity. Voices chattered away in several
languages.

"Can
I
help you, sir?" she asked.

"I'd
like
to see Judy Chen," I said.

She
folded her
arms across her ample chest and narrowed her eyes. Her facial
expression
suggested that I'd just asked if I could use her underwear to make soup.

"Whatever
you're selling ..." she began.

I
pulled a
business card from my pocket and handed it over. She read it carefully
and then
checked the back side.

"You're
the guy ..." She looked up. "Down at the warehouse."

"Yup,"
I said. "I'm the one."

She
checked
both sides of the card again, and then motioned toward the three
folding chairs
along the front wall.

"If
you'll
have a seat for a moment, I'll see if I can't find someone to help you."

She
stepped out
from behind the desk, walked down the hall to a door marked PRIVATE and
knocked
tentatively. Someone must have answered, because she stuck her head
inside for
a moment and then stepped back against the wall. She motioned me
forward.

As
soon as I
stepped into the room, he got languidly to his feet. Must have been my
week for
tall Chinese guys. He was about six-three and thin. A little bit long
on hair
and short on chin. About a hundred eighty pounds in an immaculate blue
silk
suit and one of those collarless, nineties Nehru shirts, he held my
card
gingerly, at the edges, as one holds a squashed bug.

He
didn't waste
any time on introductions.

"Does
this
concern the incident at our warehouse the other night?" he asked.
"Our attorneys assure us . . ."

I
stack out my
hand. "Leo Waterman," I said.

He
didn't even
look at it, much less shake it. He kept flicking his black gravel eyes
from the
card to my face and back.

Unbidden,
I
took a seat in the red leather visitor's chair and tried to look
comfortable.
He stared at me for a long moment and then, with dramatized reluctance,
seated
himself behind his desk.

"I'm
looking for Judy Chen," I said.

He
cocked an
eyebrow at me. "So you said."

"I'll
say
it again if you like."

He
kept his
face as still as stone.

"My
mother
no longer takes an active part in the business."

"This
isn't business. It's personal."

"You
are
acquainted with my mother?"

"No,"
I said, "but my father was."

A
subtle
tightening around his jawline told me he knew exactly what I was
talking about.
So much for inscrutability.

"My
mother
does not see visitors."

"She'll
see me."

He
sat back in
the chair, rested his elbows on the padded arms and steepled his
fingers in
front of him.

"What
business do you have with my mother?"

"I
told
you. It's personal."

He
turned his
hands palms up.

"And
I
told you; my mother does not see visitors."

"Well
then, feel free to think of me as an old family friend, rather than as
a
visitor."

He
made a weak
attempt at a smile. "Well then . . . as you're an old friend ..." The
smile got bigger. "... perhaps you will do me the honor of allowing me
to
assist you."