Contract Killer Page 5

  The regulars must have been amused by the article. A few weeks later I noticed that red bandanas had become fashionable at the bench-side powwows. Even better was when I learned that Willie Prettybird was among the list of storytellers. Willie said he was going to tell a Coyote story told to him by his grandmother.

  “Well, hell, Willie,” I said. “You’re going to have to wear a red bandana. Dress for the occasion.”

  Willie laughed. “I’m way ahead of you on that one. They had ‘em on sale over at Sears. Just the deal.”

  Juantar got all excited when he heard about Willie’s red bandana. “An Indian god!” he exclaimed. He wiggled and shook and did a little dance. “Oh, Willie, you must wear your bandana to the Doie on Halloween. You must! You must! An Indian god! The women will go for that, Willie, better than a halfback for the Seahawks. Ghosts of hookers past will come up from the underground, and we’ll sport and gambol like satyrs. You’ll get all the porking you can handle, Willie, wait and see.”

  8 - UNDERGROUND

  It was Juantar Chauvin’s opinion that the chunk of human flesh found behind the pergola was a sign the spookies were restless in the underground. “They’re gonna dance with us,” he said. “Gonna drink human blood.” The streets surrounding the diminutive park were part of a fascinating and mostly forgotten underground city that was one of those curious accidents of history. In fact, the Chinese brothel that had once existed in the basement of the building where Juantar established the Doie was part of the underground. The reason for the existence of the labyrinth of subterranean sidewalks and rooms had to do with sewage. If Mariner batters in the nearby Kingdome had had a hard time adjusting to the curve ball, that wasn’t anything compared to the anguish suffered by the city’s founding fathers in accommodating the flush toilet.

  The problem began when Seattle’s founding fathers chose to settle on a low peninsula that extended into a tidal mud flat. The nature of their poor choice wasn’t known until the flush toilet found its way west in the 1880s. Like everybody else, Seattle’s residents embraced the toilet with the same enthusiasm, it is said, that Californians now reserve for the hot tub. They also learned, in time, that effluents allowed to drain slowly, slowly into Puget Sound were very apt to return when the tide was high, with disconcerting results.

  The residents responded with the ingenuity of the Seahawks adjusting their defense. They bolted their handsome porcelain toilets to the tops of elevated wooden thrones, so as to put distance between their bottoms and undesirable geysers. When one felt the urge, one climbed a short ladder. The newspapers helped out by publishing tables of the offending tides.

  Eventually it was clear that this couldn’t continue. Seattle had become a boom town, thanks to loggers, miners, and hookers. The city fathers settled upon a curious solution to their dilemma. They built stone walls at the curbs of the streets, reaching to the second floors of the buildings. They filled the areas between the walls with garbage, dead horses — anything that would take up space — and paved them over. The result was elevated streets. The merchants then put steel beams from the second floors of their establishments to the curbs of the elevated streets. This was then bricked over, and they had elevated sidewalks to match the elevated streets.

  The toilets were moved to the second floor — which was now the first floor and ground level of Seattle. The city had effectively been jacked up one level. The toilets flushed just fine.

  The merchants saw no good reason to close down the original sidewalks and used the original ground floors of their buildings as subterranean establishments — in the process creating an underground city. There were sidewalks under sidewalks, shops under shops. By the turn of the century the underground metropolis had become the center of vice in its various forms, but it was eventually boarded up and forgotten. Rats took over the maze of forgotten corridors, rooms, sidewalks, and vaults that surrounded Pioneer Place Park.

  Aboveground things were pretty much the way they had been before the arrival of the toilet. The test always was how to survive the weather. Gray skies are the norm in Seattle for almost nine months out of the year. The residents sometimes have to endure rain for weeks without a break — a cold mist that drifts lazily in from Puget Sound.

  A consequence of all this, the shrinks say, is a high suicide rate, rather like that suffered by the solemn Swedes. It’s a rare day in Seattle when you can go for a walk in the sun between October and June. If you’re single you can stay home and let your brain dissolve in front of the tube, which is rather like injecting yourself with cancer. If you’re a private investigator, you hope for an interesting case to keep you busy.

  On the fourth day of Melinda Prettybird’s disappearance, I received prospects of a second, more tranquil, and better-paying case. This one came in the form of a packet from the fancy Hillendale’s department store in New York.

  I opened the Hillendale’s envelope first, wondering just what manner of New York problem had found its way to Seattle. I certainly wasn’t a potential customer. Had one of Hillendale’s employees run off with the payroll? Was Mr. Hillendale’s daughter missing? Was there a Mr. Hillendale around these days? I didn’t know.

  There was a Hillendale’s Christmas catalog inside, and a letter from a man named Roger Swanberg:

  Dear Mr. Denson,

  As you may know, we at Hillendale’s reserve space in our catalog every year for a select offering of gourmet cuisine. We offer caviar from the Caspian sea, truffles, whole goose foie gras, and smoked salmon — all from Petrossian’s of Paris. Petrossian’s smoked salmon is the moist, translucent variety from Norway — found on Manhattan’s most discriminating tables. We have, however, received inquiries asking whether we might not also offer the distinctive variety smoked by Native Americans.

  Hillendale’s is now negotiating with SalPaclnc, a company owned by a Quinault Indian in Washington State, for the purchase of smoked salmon. However, owing to botulism poisoning from canned salmon in Alaska a few years ago, our insurance holder, Rozak and Stone, New York, requires a modest investigation of the Sal-Paclnc facilities. Your name was recommended to us by the Seattle Chamber of Commerce.

  We would like to hire you, Mr. Denson — at your usual rates — to accompany our buyer, Augustus Poorman, on a brief visit to the cannery on the Quinault Indian Reservation. This is located on the Pacific Coast of the Olympic Peninsula, as we understand it. You would be required to write an independent report for Rozak and Stone. You might want to look at page thirty-one of our catalog. If you are available for the assignment, please phone us soonest. Mr. Poorman will return your call for an appointment.

  Swanberg added a New York telephone number. I turned to the gourmet food page. There it was, Item 92, and I had to admit that the photograph showing the Norwegian smoked salmon decked out on a silver platter made it look tempting. The copy said the smoked salmon aficionado could buy two-and-three-quarter pounds for a mere seventy bucks, plus another twenty-five for the special delivery fee. This was to insure freshness. That made me smile, but I had to admit the salmon was cheaper than their one-kilo tin of Beluga caviar at seven hundred bucks plus the twenty-five-dollar special delivery fee. I also had to snicker at the blurb’s boast that the salmon were “line-caught.” That was ridiculous. There was no difference between a salmon caught on a line and a salmon caught in a net.

  I couldn’t imagine any reason why I shouldn’t lend a hand to the good folks at Hillendale’s and check out the fish — it seemed like honest enough work. What did I care if they made a few thousand percent profit? At my usual rates? No haggling? Well, I didn’t see why I shouldn’t cash in too. I called the New York number.

  “Doris Baldwin,” a woman answered.

  “My name is John Denson, I’m a private investigator in Seattle, Washington. I’ve received a letter from a Roger Swanberg. Do you have a Roger Swanberg in your firm?”

  The woman laughed. “Yes, sir, we do, but I’m not sure you want to be talking to me.”

  “Wo
uld you please tell Mr. Swanberg that his Augustus Poorman should call me at his convenience?”

  “Well, I guess I could,” Ms. Baldwin said.

  She sounded like she’d never heard of Poorman. “Why is it that I shouldn’t be talking to you?” I asked.

  “I work in public relations. Our buyers work in another department.”

  That was strange. I looked at my letter again. Swanberg’s secretary had fouled up. The long-distance call was costing me money. “You’ll get word to Mr. Swanberg? No problem or anything?”

  “Sure,” she said. “I’ll give him the message.”

  9 – SIRENS

  We were well into a doubles match with a pair of elderly hippies from Sedro Wooley when the sirens began to wail. Willie was on the line facing a sixty-two; sirens outside the Doie were bothersome to Willie because of the warriors sitting in the shelter of the pergola across the street. Melinda Prettybird had now been missing four days.

  “I hope one of those guys out there hasn’t fucked-up,” he said. “I don’t need that on top of everything else.” Willie gave the triple-ten a good stare. He moved his elbow under his hand and leaned forward just a tad.

  I shut up so he could concentrate on his darts.

  Willie turned his head. Another siren. A solo. Willie Prettybird hit a single ten, leaving him fifty-two. He scrunched his face and considered the board.

  “Go for a fat twenty,” I said. “If it comes to me, I’d rather face a thirty-two.” If Willie shot a twelve, he’d have an out dart — a forty or a thirty-six — even if he hit the trip. If he shot for a twenty to leave a thirty-two, he risked busting on the trip. I liked the thirty-two, a sweet double-sixteen.

  Willie didn’t bust. He hit his single twenty and followed it with a clean double-sixteen to win the game and earn us a pitcher of Oly. Our opponents had to take a load of furniture to Tacoma in a U-Haul, so we had a chance to talk. Since the police had Mike Stark covered with a twenty-four-hour surveillance, we decided to concentrate on the possibility that Melinda’s disappearance had to do with the Cowlitz fishing lawsuit.

  I started to say something, then stopped. The sirens had returned.

  Willie couldn’t ignore the sirens anymore. He walked to the window to see what the fuss was about. He motioned for me to join him. I did, accompanied by Juantar Chauvin and the whole crowd at the Doie. “Praise Jesus!” Juantar said. “What’s going on?”

  Across the street Pioneer Place Park was swarming with Seattle policemen. Ten or twelve squad cars surrounded the park, blue lights flashing. Nobody had to be told this was heavy-duty action.

  Willie Prettybird ran outside and tried to get across the street, but it was impossible. He returned, shaken, unable to take his eyes off the pergola.

  “It’ll be on the tube, Willie,” I said. “All truth that matters appears on television, you know that.”

  “Poor bastards,” he said.

  “There’s nothing you can do, Willie,” I said.

  There were probably just as many Indian dart throwers in Seattle as there were cowboys in Brooklyn; nevertheless Willie Prettybird was an ace. His stroke was lovely — all forearm, no body, the same every time. A fluid, smooth stroke. This skill in the hands of an Indian, of course, gave Juantar Chauvin an opportunity to exercise his overactive imagination.

  Juantar wondered aloud if Willie’s ancestors had not perfected that stroke throwing tomahawks at white men. “You should scalp somebody here in the Doie, Willie. We’d all like to see how it’s done. We really would. Sure we would. Maybe you could use Denson’s scalp. You wouldn’t care, would you, Denson? A little baldness at the temple there, make you look distinguished.”

  “I think I’ll pass, Juantar,” I said.

  “I got scalped by my mother’s genes,” he said. “Look’t here.” He leaned over and ran the palm of his hand over his balding forehead.

  Juantar really got worked up a half-hour later when one of his customers said another hunk of human flesh had been found across the street. This one was frozen. Juantar paced the floor, giggling, making odd faces, acting goony, loose. “Praise Jesus, Willie, I was only kidding about the tomahawks. Really I was. You have to believe me.” Juantar happily surveyed the Doie. “Everybody’s all worked up. Look at ‘em drink. Look at ‘em. Makes ‘em thirsty talking about all that blood.” He swept his hand from one horizon of the Doie to the other in the manner of a rancher tracing the vista of his spread. “I love it,” he said.

  “You’d be fun to scalp, Juantar,” Willie said.

  Juantar ignored him. “A chunk of human flesh, waiting there for some dog to carry it off. Isn’t it wonderful? At the bar they’re saying the climate does it. Folks’ve got mildew on the brain.”

  Willie Prettybird wasn’t as enthusiastic as Juantar. He looked at the pergola across the street.

  Juantar said, “I thought you people just took scalps, Willie. I didn’t hear anything about butchering people. Praise the Lord!”

  Willie Prettybird was in no mood to joke. “Nobody mentioned the sex of that hunk of flesh they found across the street, did they?”

  “Oh, come on, Willie,” I said. The truth was, when a man’s sister was threatened and then turns up missing, his mind works overtime. Willie Prettybird didn’t like playing darts with his sister out there depending on him.

  Willie sighed. “If Mike Stark isn’t involved in this thing, then it probably has to do with this fishing mess, wouldn’t you say?”

  “There’s a chance of it,” I said.

  “There’s not a lot we can do about Stark without something concrete to go on.” Willie folded his flights and tucked his darts away in a small leather folder.

  “I didn’t see anything. The cops haven’t seen anything.”

  “Then maybe we should start looking into this salmon-fishing business just in case.” “That’s what I’d do if it was my sister.”

  “I think you should talk to my lawyer, Janine Hallen. She really knows the ins and outs of this business. I can’t talk about it without getting pissed off.”

  “Sure, I’ll talk to Janine,” I said.

  “I’ll call her in the morning. How about I have her drop by your place, ten o’clock, say. I swore I’d never blow my money on a lawyer unless I know for a fact he’s one smart son of a bitch. If you want to have a good basketball team, you recruit blacks. If you want a smart lawyer, you get yourself someone Jewish.”

  “Is Hallen Jewish?”

  “No,” Willie said. “And she ain’t even a he. But I bet you figured that out by her first name, didn’t you, sleuth. She’s a member of Mensa. Do you know what you have to have to be a member of Mensa?”

  I thought I knew, but Willie would have been disappointed if he didn’t get to tell me about it. “Never heard of it.”

  “You’re going to go far in life, Denson, really far. A measured I.Q. above the ninety-eighth percentile, that’s what you have to have. Janine Hallen doesn’t have to bluff anybody when it comes to brains. Remember, ten o’clock. She’s always on time. She has an orderly mind.”

  “No wallowing in the fart sack, I promise. I’ll be caffeined up and ready to go.”

  10 – SALMON

  I can’t say the alarm didn’t go off because it did, with an infuriating weeep! weeep! weeep! programmed into it by some sadistic Japanese engineer. I reached over with the disdain of a karate master and whacked the damned thing silent. Who said I couldn’t take something out if I wanted? I didn’t feel like getting up; it was as warm as pond water at two o’clock under my electric blanket, when all of a sudden Winston began putting on a hell of an uproar outside my door.

  Winston was a stuffed English pit bull who would continue to bark until his tape ran out or I answered the door. Winston had five taped barks of varying degrees of outlandishness that I changed whenever I got bored with a particular growl; I’d taped his current warning from a Doberman attack dog in the Army kennels at Fort Lewis. Lucifer’s pooch or Satan’s doggie could not have sound
ed meaner.

  I grinned like a hog at supper, wondering who was at the door, and pulled on my yellow boxer shorts with the smoking six-shooter printed on the front.

  Outside, from a speaker above the door, a proper English friend of mine was saying, beneath Winston’s uproar: “Please check your nose for visible boogers. Master Denson will be with you shortly.”

  I remembered my appointment with Willie Prettybird’s lawyer when I opened the door and saw a woman standing there with a briefcase in her hand. She was wearing a proper blue skirt and one of those imitation men’s jackets worn by professional women and subscribers to Cosmo. She was a natural blond, a trifle shy, with pale blue eyes. She looked a bit like the actress Barbara Eden, who once played a genie on a television program. When I was a kid, I used to groan over the very mention of Barbara Eden.

  The blond lady said, “Mr. Denson?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  “You should shampoo your dog, Mr. Denson; it would make his coat shine. My name is Janine Hallen, Willie Prettybird’s attorney.” She either had good peripheral vision or great self-control, because she appeared not to notice the six-shooter on my underwear.

  “I’d like to take Winston for a walk, but he’s too heavy to carry,” I said. “Did Willie tell you about him?”

  “I’d been warned.”

  “Well, won’t you come in,” I said, and pulled on a pair of jeans.

  Janine Hallen ignored me as I dressed. She walked around the walls examining the memorabilia I had taped, nailed, and tied to the walls — a poster here, a photo of a laughing woman there, pennants of Dutch and Spanish soccer teams.

  “I’ve been told you’re an accomplished detective, Mr. Denson.”

  “Hell, nobody better,” I said. “Sleuth is my first name.”