Contract Killer Read online

  “Hey! C’mon,” I said.

  Scabby said, “Denson sort of looks like a dog eating manure. Did you ever notice that?”

  “Mr. Zen Darts!” Rodent Clone made a farting sound with his tongue and lower lip and dug at an itch on the inside of his thigh.

  The set was turned up to full volume to compete with the band, the singing, and the drunken shouting. The Sonics were off to a fast start — they had beaten both Philadelphia and Boston on the road, an amazing feat. In view of their dreadful finish the previous year, it was a miracle on the order of raising Lazarus from the dead. The television people knew this, of course, and tantalized us with upcoming highlights of the Sonics’ win, forcing us to watch people arguing with one another and shooting one another in an effort to be given star listing on the playbill and to remain center stage.

  The silver-haired anchorman told us about how there was fear we were going to get sucked into a war in the Middle East. Then his woman partner told us about a famous actress who had died in Hollywood and left her estate to a cat. The silver-haired man looked grim during the Middle East story. The woman tried to look amused by the actress story.

  “Come on, for Christ’s sake,” Willie said. He wanted to see Jack Sikma putting it to the aging Jabbar.

  “We’ll be right back with a story about a missing federal judge,” the woman said. “Highlights of the Sonics’ victory coming up.”

  “Which is all we give a damn about, lady,” muttered the mighty Captain Mikey. Odell was an accountant who always double-checked the score to make sure it was right. He hit Scabby for one of the Scab’s lives and giggled.

  “Nice guy,” Scanlan said. He stepped to the line and fired at the Captain’s number.

  Listening to this chatter, Willie and I waited our turns at the board and talked about his sister’s disappearance. “You can bet the cops’ll do their damnedest to find a federal judge,” Willie said bitterly. That morning Willie had gone back to the Montana Verde with the police so detectives could search her apartment. They called him back later in the day to say they had no leads but were still looking.

  There were advertisements for light beer, dog food, and mouth wash, after which the silver-haired man was back:

  “Federal Judge Moby Rappaport was reported missing today after he failed to return from a Justice Department meeting in San Francisco. The police say Rappaport was scheduled to return to Seattle yesterday afternoon. Judge Rappaport was to have ruled next week on a controversial suit filed by the Cowlitz Indians to be included among tribes enjoying treaty fishing rights. Here is Saundra Nordquist in Ilwaco, where residents were upset by the possibility of Cowlitz fishermen being awarded a court-ordered share of the salmon entering the Columbia River.”

  “What? Rappaport?” Prettybird’s head jerked. “What’s this?”

  “Missing yesterday. Just like Melinda,” I said.

  Beaner said, “Your turn, Dumbshit.”

  Willie took three shots that sailed way wide of Rodent Clone’s number, which wasn’t smart because R. C. was clearly in a slump. Willie’s third shot was so wild it clunked against the wall. That wasn’t the form that made him the dominant player of the Pig’s Alley.

  When he got back, it was clear Willie could hardly believe the news. “Two years of legal fees and the judge is missing. That’s a lot of wampum, Denson.”

  Another blond woman, younger and maybe not as pretty as the anchorwoman, was now on the television screen. She stood on the docks at Ilwaco — a fishing village at the mouth of the Columbia River. A hard wind pressed against her yellow rainslicker. “George, I have here William ‘Foxx’ Jensen, spokesman for the Northwest Sport Fishermen’s Association, which has been following this case closely.”

  “He owns a bar and motel in Ilwaco, the bastard,” Willie said.

  Foxx Jensen was a middle-aged man with a slight paunch, close-cropped hair, and bushy eyebrows. He stood in front of the camera wearing a green-and-red-checked wool shirt. There was an adoring dog by his side — a German shorthair. He looked solemn. “Of course, we’re all concerned about Judge Rappaport’s disappearance. As you know, he was about to give a decision in the Cowlitz Indian lawsuit, and we’re all anxious to bring this thing to a close.”

  The camera cut to the reporter, who peered earnestly from under the hood of the yellow rain-slicker. “Do you have any idea of how the judge was leaning on the Cowlitz case?” she asked.

  “Well,” Jensen said, “I don’t think there’s any question how the issue will eventually be decided. We have ample evidence that the Columbia River salmon run is overfished as it is. Restoring treaty fishing rights to a tribe that never had them in the first place is both illogical and contrary to common sense. I can’t imagine the courts seeing it any other way.” Jensen sounded reasonable. He was a reasonable man, his attitude said, not a greedy Redskin.

  Willie Prettybird said, “Bullshit. Where the hell’s Janine? Why doesn’t she have her brains and cute butt up there to put that asshole in his place?”

  “You have a woman lawyer?” I said.

  The reporter in Ilwaco said Janine Hallen, attorney for the Cowlitz plaintiffs in the case, was out of town and not available for comment.

  The silver-haired anchorman was back on the screen again, saying that Rappaport’s law clerk, Kim Hartwig, fresh out of Georgetown University Law School, was also reported missing, but the police did not know if the disappearances were related.

  “God, Denson, if something happened to Rappaport, we’ll draw Awdrey. Ain’t no way we can afford Awdrey. No way!”

  “Who’s Awdrey?”

  “Judge Louise Awdrey. Janine says all the lawyers call her John Wayne.”

  “John Wayne?”

  “On account she likes to blow Redskins off their ponies. Hates us. Thinks we’re worthless drunks.”

  “Oh, boy.”

  “We get Awdrey and Janine’ll have to build our case all over again, from scratch. Janine says you have to play the judge. You have to know what they like and don’t like; judges’re all different.”

  “Hah, the Natural Assholete takes the big banana!” Darryl Bean pulled his darts, the last of which was stuck in the double fourteen, my last life. I was out of the game.

  “Being a nice guy won’t save you, Beaner.” Captain Mikey stepped up and began throwing at the double-two, Bean’s life.

  The bartender said Willie had a phone call. While Willie talked on the phone, glancing in my direction a couple of times, I watched Dr. Ralph’s eleven o’clock version of more rain tomorrow and waited for the Sonics highlights. This was the longest-running show in Seattle. Just what the rotund Ralph was a doctor of was uncertain. He could have been a philosopher or chiropractor, for all the public knew. The implication was that he was a meteorologist and so had some kind of inside track on more rain.

  Ralph used his pointer on a satellite photograph provided by the National Weather Service. He told us all what we already knew: that those clouds over the Pacific were headed straight for us, as usual, and it was going to keep on raining. “There was a high of eighty-seven in French Lick, Indiana, today,” Dr. Ralph said. He looked naughty.

  Willie Prettybird returned from the phone looking shaken. “That was my neighbor,” he said.

  “Let me guess. The police came calling,” I said.

  “They were asking questions about me.”

  “They want to talk to you about Moby Rappaport, I’ll bet.”

  “We’re the last people, the absolute rock-bottom last people to suspect of anything stupid, Denson. It was going our way. There was no question, none, that we would have gotten treaty rights next week. How else could it have gone? How else? It was going our way, no question.”

  “You couldn’t possibly know that for sure.”

  “It was going our way. Besides, do we need to draw Awdrey? That’d be like peeing in the pemmican.”

  Ron Cardinal took Willie Prettybird’s last life. “Takes care of the Native American,” the Roden
t Clone smirked.

  Willie laughed. “Sure, sure. Another Redskin bites the dust.”

  “Way the world works,” said Rodent Clone.

  Willie and I were no longer killers. The remaining players paused momentarily to assess the board and decide how to draw blood without inspiring retaliation.

  “You never know how cops think,” I said. “That guy on the tube there, Jensen or whatever his name is, he thought Rappaport was leaning the other direction.”

  Willie scowled. “He’s full of it up to his eyebrows, too.”

  “That woman they were talking about on the tube, your lawyer. What’s her name?”

  “Janine.”

  “Yes, Janine. Does she do criminal work too?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean, it’s just possible that the cops are taking a good hard look at you and Rodney. A federal judge is missing. People are going to want to know what happened to him.”

  Willie turned angry. “Fuck Judge Rappaport. I want to know what happened to Melinda Prettybird.”

  The whole darts crew vowed to find another place to throw so they could continue playing Killer on Sunday afternoons.

  “We’ll find a place,” Captain Mikey said. Scabby said, “There’ll be a place.”

  When at last Stan said it was, irrevocably, time to close the doors, I rose with the rest, my suicide chair in hand.

  Stan said, “You didn’t have to nail your ass to the damned thing, Denson, it was yours all along.”

  “What?”

  Willie said, “Stan here passed the word early in the evening. We all decided it should be yours.”

  Stan laughed. “Dumb asshole.”

  I was pleased at their thoughtfulness. It was a wonderful gesture. “Thank you both,” I said. I held the chair up for them to admire. “Just the right size for my breakfast nook. I can sit there and contemplate broken yolks.”

  5 - THE DOIE

  None of us had recovered from our hangovers the next day before workmen began gutting the interior of the Pig’s Alley to make way for Le Cuisine de Pacifique. Melinda Prettybird had now been missing for almost two days, and Judge Moby Rappaport was missing as well. Willie repeatedly called a friend of Melinda’s in Scappose, Oregon, thinking she might be there. No answer. He tried again and again to call his brother, Rodney, in Astoria, Oregon. No answer.

  Willie Prettybird said he maybe understood how the salmon felt when the white man built a string of twenty-eight dams on the Columbia River, yes, twenty-eight, and in the process destroyed the largest salmon run in the world. There was nowhere else for them to go. For that matter, there was no place for us. Where were we going to rendezvous, Willie and me? Where were we going to throw darts and talk about the Sonics’ new look and about how hard it was to get laid?

  With Melinda Prettybird missing we forgot about the Sonics and getting laid. We needed a bar where we could meet during our investigation.

  We both assumed that we would find a new place together. That we might go our separate ways, find new partners for darts, was unthinkable. Willie knew all the weaknesses of my game. When I pressed and began to lift my left foot, he’d tell me to get it back on the floor. When I shot too rapidly, he’d tell me to slow down. He was quicker with numbers than I was. When the pressure was on I could depend on him to be there behind me, saying softly, “Trip fourteen, double sixteen,” or “trip seventeen, double top” — whatever strategy or the odds dictated — so that I could concentrate on the board. When I was down to outs, he’d say, “Zen darts, John. Take your time. Zen darts,” and I’d slip into my trance.

  Whenever Willie jerked his hand or let his elbow float, I’d let him know. Whenever he started making a little rolling motion with his body, I’d tell him to knock it off.

  I tried to call Mike Stark at home and at the history department at the University of Washington, but he was at neither place. There wasn’t a lot I could do about Melinda until I talked to Stark, so Willie and I decided to search for another bar with boards. We cruised up and down First and Second looking for a place without derelicts or affected worshipers of the buck.

  Late that afternoon we stepped into Juantar’s Doie Bar, a small place on Yesler Way directly across from Pioneer Place Park, where the chunk of human flesh had been found the night of Melinda’s disappearance. The man behind the bar had the grin of a mischievous imp. He had green eyes and curly blond hair, thin on top, and an equally curly beard. He was nervous. He was a pacer.

  “Ah, pigeons. Gentlemen, gentlemen, can I help you?” he said in a Southern drawl.

  Willie and I ordered beer and looked around, casing the Doie.

  The Southerner noticed this. “You’ll find folks here in the Doie’re comfortable with the smell of human sweat,” he said. “They’ve known the highs and lows of human experience. I’ve got alcoholic talkers, failed intellectuals, bicycle riders, readers of arcane science fiction, numerologists, scatologists, hang gliding enthusiasts, and cribbage players. There’re no snitches or narcs that I know of. Name’s Juantar Chauvin. The drawl’s Bayou.”

  Willie and I introduced ourselves, simultaneously spotting the Doie’s dart boards.

  “How is it you passed on pool tables and video games?” I asked.

  “Can’t stand ‘em,” Juantar said. “Dart boards are okay. If they made a racket, I wouldn’t have ‘em around.”

  Thus it was that Willie Prettybird and I found our place.

  “We’ll have to tell Scab and Rodent Clone.”

  “I agree,” Willie said. “Didn’t this used to be the Evergreen Bar?” he asked Juantar.

  “Used to be,” Juantar said. “There was a hotel here before that. I used to be a lawyer, but I got bored with all those details. Wanted to have me some fun.” Juantar grinned. “I bought this place sight unseen from a trade magazine.”

  Willie said, “There was a hotel here before that.”

  “Built directly over a Chinese whorehouse that used to operate out of the basement. Let me show you something.” Juantar retrieved a couple of brass tokens the size of silver dollars from a bowl up behind the bar. They were from “The China Doll,” a Wild West brothel in Dodge City. Juantar showed Willie and me one of the tokens. The prices listed on the tokens were the source of the name of Juantar’s Doie Bar:

  10 CENTS LOOKIE / 25 CENTS FEELIE / 50 CENTS DOIE

  “You get what you pay for. Praise Jesus!” Juantar said. He rubbed one of the tokens with his thumb. “See here, doie. You live once. If you don’t get a little doie, why bother? You rub it with your thumb and it’ll bring you luck and much doie. See here.” He rubbed it with his thumb. He reached up behind the bar and took two more tokens from another bowl. They were duplicates of the China Doll tokens, only on the back they said, “Juantar’s Dole Bar, Seattle, WA.” He gave each of us a token. “Now if you ever get in a jam and need a little luck, why then you just rub your token with your thumb. If you don’t want to lose it, you can drill a hole in it if you want and hang it on your keychain.”

  I slipped my token into my pocket. I’ve never been particularly superstitious, but the truth is the token was comforting for some curious reason. I had it in my pocket if I needed it.

  It was then that I noticed the cardboard silhouettes behind the bar, labeled “folk dancers.”

  “Those bullet holes?” I asked.

  “Yup,” Juantar said. “I change the label every once in a while to give my customers something to talk about. There’s a bunch of folk dancers hoppin’ around at the Seattle Center this week.” Juantar looked proudly at his silhouettes.

  “A national convention, according to the paper,” Willie said.

  “I drive out to a gravel pit and practice with my pistol on weekends. I call my silhouettes liberals, feminists, Republicans, Protestants, or vegetarians. Whatever. I especially like conventions of people who walk around with plastic name tags on their lapels.” Juantar grinned. “I find it amusing when folks tighten their lips.”


  Juantar Chauvin might have been superstitious about rubbing his doie token, but judging from his cynical use of Christian exclamations and exhortations, he didn’t have a religious bone in his body. That afternoon he interrupted the Doie’s reggae to play tapes of evangelical preachers. “This is for the amusement of the house,” Juantar said in his Bayou drawl. “We listen to old Jim Bakker and maybe the rain’ll go away. Praise the Lord!”

  A man in a business suit or in a blazer and neat tie was a secret object of disdain in the Doie, as was the woman on the make for a man with a bottomless wallet. Juantar said the chic set understood this and avoided the bar.

  Willie and I found the regulars at the Doie to be congenially eccentric; they were amused by the dramatic histrionics of evangelist preachers and Juantar’s outrageous commentary on the mentality of the herd in all its human forms. We fit right in, as comfortable as we had been in the Pig’s Alley.

  Willie and I stayed until closing that first night.

  We were talking about Melinda Prettybird and playing a dart game called Fifty-five Fives, when Juantar came over to tell us that October was a month of anticipation at the Doie.

  “Halloween’s Frighten Your Neighbor night,” he said. “I talk it up all month long. Y’all’ll find that out. The Doie sits right square over the Seattle underground, do you know that? Do you? There’re spookies and boogies down there, ghosts, dead men in chains, virgins who cry by night — right out of old Edgar Allan himself. You can’t miss it! You can’t!”

  “Sounds like real fun,” Willie said.

  Juantar said, “Oh, yes, Willie, we’ll all have fun. Everybody’ll have a good time on Halloween. It’s Frighten Your Neighbor night at the Dole.” Juantar squirmed with anticipation.

  6 - STARK’S STORY

  The next morning — posing as a magazine salesman — I called Professor Michael Stark at home. He was there, but wasn’t interested in magazines. It’s always a mistake to warn someone by telephone if you suspect they won’t want to talk to you, so I drove unannounced to Michael Stark’s house, a restored 1940s bungalow at the edge of the U-District. The house had a quiet, contemplative look about it, nestled there under large elms. The back yard opened into a park that sloped down into a ravine. I could see joggers in colorful outfits on a trail far below.