Last Ditch (26 page)

"Because
you knew my father?"

"No,"
she said quickly.

"How
..." I began.

Her
face closed
like a leg trap. She shook her head. "You came for answers and now you
have them," she said.

Before
I could
ask another question, she got to her feet and walked over to the
elevator. I
followed along. She pushed the button and then turned back my way.

"Your
father will weather this storm like he weathered so many others. He
doesn't
require your assistance."

"I
think
maybe I'm the one who requires assistance," I said.

"Then
I
wish you luck."

The
door slid
open. The maid was standing in the car, once again drying her hands on
her
white apron.

"Consuelo
will show you to the door," Judy Chen said, before turning and walking
briskly back toward her basket of bulbs.

I
stepped into
the narrow elevator car and turned back toward Judy Chen. She'd stopped
walking
and stood on the flagstones, facing me again, her hands at her sides.
"Leo," she said.

Consuelo
leaned
forward and pushed the down button.

"Yes,"
I answered.

She
spoke
quickly as if reciting. "Just because someone gave you a dead mouse
doesn't mean you have to carry it around in your pocket for the rest of
your
life,"

As
I opened my
mouth, the door slid shut.

Rebecca
reached
across the table and speared three of my French fries. Her theory on
fried
foods was that they weren't fattening as long as she ate them from my
plate.

"And
she
admitted it?" she said, before stuffing her mouth.

"Not
exactly."

She
washed the
fries down with some iced tea.

"Tell
me
exactly what she said."

We
were sitting
in a red padded booth in the front window of the Coastal Kitchen, a
trendy
little restaurant on Fifteenth
Avenue East, just about at the center of
Capitol
Hill. She'd ordered a Cobb salad. When I'd asked Jennine for a burger
and
fries, Duvall had immediately gone into her Food Police routine,
enumerating,
in great detail, the suicidal caloric and fat content of such unclean
foodstuffs. Since then, in addition to inhaling her salad, she'd eaten
half my
burger and damn near all the fries. Arrrgh.

"Okay,"
I began. "First she told me that my old man hadn't killed Peerless
Price.
So I asked her how she knew that, and I asked if she'd killed old
Peerless
herself."

"And
she
said?"

"She
said
... no ... she hadn't offed Price and she 189 knew my father hadn't
killed him
either because it wasn't his style."

"Do
you
believe her?"

"I
don't
know. I'd like to, but, you know ... testimonials and a buck will get
you on
the bus."

Anytime
I hear
that So-and-so just couldn't have done such-and-such because that just
wasn't
his style, I recall how the neighbors of serial murderers like David
Berkowitz
and Jeffrey Dahmer always claim they were nice, quiet boys who kept to
themselves and were always polite.

She
gigged
another golden fry and waved it at me.

"What
reason would she have to lie?"

"None
that
I can think of."

"You
told
me the other day that only an idiot lies unless he has a reason."

She
had a
point, but I wasn't sure it mattered. Despite Judy Chen's testimonial,
things
looked worse now than they had when I started. Now I had a source who
said it
was common knowledge that Judy Chen's company was running illegals into
the
country back in sixty-nine. And, given a chance to flatly deny the
allegation,
Judy Chen had demurred. Color me with a cynical crayon, but I was
taking that
as a confirmation. Worse yet, lo and behold if this wasn't the same
Judy Chen
who turned out to be my old man's longtime business associate—and oh,
by the
way—mistress of thirty years or so. Not only that, but the whole matter
of
illegal aliens just happened to be one of the very issues upon which
Peerless
Price was regaling the city at the time of his death. I didn't like the
sound
of this at all.

Rebecca
liberated a couple of more fries and read my mind.

"You
think
Price was onto it, don't you?" she said.

"That's
pretty much the worst-case scenario."

No
doubt about
it. If Price was onto my old man's mistress and the dealings on the
docks, no
telling what might have happened. That scenario backed my old man into
the kind
of corner where all bets were off, and ending up in a bed of loam with
a bullet
in your brain was the rule rather than the exception. Judy Chen's
stylistic
assurances notwithstanding, people like my old man do not go gently
into that
good night. And even if he didn't have the stomach to pop Price
himself, he
sure as hell was acquainted with the kind of people who did.

She
reached
across the table and patted the back of my hand.

"You
okay
with all this?"

"It's
frustrating," I said. "I was hoping that I could finally put a face
on my father. Maybe squash all the feelings I have and all the stories
I've
heard into something recognizable. But the deeper I get into his life,
the more
he's got a quicksilver quality to turn. It's like digging in sand.
Every time I
turn a comer, I find out something about him that points in a whole new
direction, and none of it's anywhere I want to go."

She
wiped her
mouth and then reached for her purse.

"I
know
you don't want to hear this, sweetie, but maybe you ought to stop
turning
comers and digging holes."

Before
I could
respond, she gave me a devilish grin, slid out of the booth and said,
"Not
to mention mixing metaphors."

"Don't
be
a language maven. It's unbecoming."

I
got to my
feet and helped her on with her coat

"You
headed home?" she asked.

"I've
still gotta see this Bruce Dickinson character this afternoon." I
checked
my watch. One fifty-five.

"The
guy
who wrote the book about the Garden of Eden?"

"Yeah."

Something
in my
tone turned her face serious.

"You
know,
Leo, every time you mention this lead you've got to the bar, you sound
like
you're a whole lot more upset about the possibility of your father
hanging
around in a gay bar than you are about the prospect of his being
involved in a
tragedy."

"What
if
he was doing more than just hanging around?"

"You
just
found his mistress, for crimeny sake."

"What
if
he ..." I waffled a hand. ". . . you know."

"Swung
from both sides of the plate?"

"Bite
your
tongue."

She
pointed a
long finger my way.

"See,
I
told you."

She
may have
been right, but there was no way I was coming clean. In that moment, a
conversation I'd had with Norman
a couple of years back flashed across my mind. I'd come around the
corner of
First and Yesler one afternoon to find him standing on a fire hydrant
speaking
in tongues to a pack of German tourists. Later I'd asked him why he'd
acted
that way. He'd glowered down at me and said, "They treat you like
you're
retarded. I'd rather they thought I was crazy than stupid. There's more
respect
that way." Dude.

In
this case,
however, the truth was that both possibilities were disasters, both
career
enders and both more than enough motive to put Peerless Price in the
ground. I
hedged.

"I'm
not
fond of either of them," I said. "The only good news is that there's
no way the cops are going to get onto either scenario."

"Why's
that? They've got all your dad's stuff."

"That
crap
leads nowhere without Bermuda and Judy Chen,
and there's no way either of them is going to tell the cops a damn
thing."

"All
the
more reason to just let the whole thing die."

I
hate it when
she's right, so I ignored her. She slipped her purse over her left
shoulder.

"I'll
be
home about seven," she said.

As
she headed
for the door, I threw a twenty on the table and reached for my coat.

BRUCE
DICKINSON
WAS exactly where his wife said he'd be, in the writers' room on the
second
floor of the downtown library.

I'll
admit it.
When I called his home and got a woman who said she was his wife, I was
a bit
put off. I guess I'd subconsciously assumed that anyone who would
research and
write a book about Seattle's
gay community must necessarily be gay. Just shows to go ya.

As
if to make
my assumptions even more asinine, Bruce Dickinson was no more than a
biscuit
short of three hundred pounds. A ponytailed monster with military
tattoos and
forearms the size of my legs. He could have carried me around like a
purse,
were he so inclined, which, to my great relief, he apparently was not.

"Nixon
changed all that," he said. "Before Nixon, everything operated on
what might be called a gentleman's agreement. You slip the gentleman an
agreed-upon amount of cash, and the gentleman agrees to look the other
way."

"Which
is
what the authorities did for the Garden of Eden?"

"Right.
The club paid the cops to leave them alone. Nobody thought anything
about it.
It was like the cops' four-oh-one K plan. It was how they sent their
kids to
college or paid off that retirement lot over at Lake Chelan. Once it
became part of what might be called standard
operating procedure, it became part of the status quo, and as such,
worth
defending."

"So,"
I began. "Not only did the cops not bust places like the Garden of
Eden,
they didn't allow anybody else to mess around with them either."

"Exactly."

"And
Nixon
changed all that?"

"In
a
heartbeat. Government was suddenly suspect. The old depression-era 'the
government
is my friend' illusion was dead. All gentleman's agreements were off.
If the
cops were watching the criminals, people started to want to know who
was
watching the cops. Accountability became all the rage in the public
sector." He waved a big hand in my face. "Don't get me wrong. They
were still allowed to be incompetent, they just weren't allowed to be
corrupt."

I
must have
looked confused.

"It's
hard
for you to imagine the climate of the nineteen fifties concerning gays
and
lesbians. Words like 'repressive' don't cut it. It was worse than that.
The suicide
rate within the community was astronomical. The Garden was like a
beacon in the
night. All the big national impersonation acts came through every year.
People
could let their hair down."

"Literally,"
I added.

He
nodded.
"And figuratively as well. The movement was particularly giddy back
then." He stopped talking, as if he suddenly wasn't sure he believed
what
he was saying. "I know it sounds corny, but there was a great deal of
hope
back in the late sixties. For a while it seemed the yoke had been
lifted. Back
before it became apparent how long the haul was actually going to be, a
place
like the Garden of Eden was like an oasis."

"Hence
the
name," I said.

"Exactly.
Places like the Garden were where the first sense of a community was
formed. It
all started in places like the Garden and the Green Parrot and the
Palomar up
on Third. By the mid-seventies politicians were listening to the
leaders of the
gay community. By the mid-eighties, openly gay men and women were being
elected. Nowadays, the mayor and the chief of police march at the head
of the
Pride Parade every year. And yet, down at the bottom of it all, not as
much has
changed as you might think."

He
caught
himself lecturing and stopped.

I
figured . . .
what the hell ... we were having a little break in the action, maybe
I'd
assuage my curiosity, so I asked, "You know . . . when I started to
look
you up, I figured . . . you know . . . that anybody who'd write a book
about .
. . something like this . . . would be ... I mean, not necessarily, but
probably
would be . . ."

He
helped me
out. "Gay," he said.

"Yeah."

"I
used to
be," he said.

Before
I could
close my mouth, he asked, "What time frame were you interested in
again?"

"July
nineteen sixty-nine," I said.

"The
Garden was closed by July sixty-nine."

I
admit it; I
felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders.