“
Uh-huh.”
“
And Blue Eyes, you have to
understand I’ll be taking us back a ways to when being correct
politically had to do with how you cast your ballot and not how you
spoke.”
“
I’m with you.”
I sighed.
“
Kind of funny that it’s June,
because what I’m about to tell you happened during one week in
June, back in 1950. Telephones then weren’t like they are now, with
all their beeps, hums, and tunes. Not hardly. No, most of them had
a bell sound that was harsh and shrill. A call late at night, for
instance—well, it was like a fireman’s summons.”
“
Uh-huh,” she said, clicking on the
mic. “I’m all set.”
I wasn’t sure I was. But what the
heck.
Seattle, Washington
Wednesday evening, June 7, 1950
M
y widowed landlady was an
ex-fan dancer who wriggled and shimmied with the best of them. An
exceptional talent, she always told me. Just past fifty, she was
still a good-looking woman with a lithe pair of legs and most of
her figure holding up. She was usually amiable and often on the
flirtatious side. However, she regularly battled insomnia, and when
she finally did drop off, there was blue hell to pay if she was
yanked from slumberland. So at 11:30 p.m., when the walls began
banging and the floors started thumping at my end of the
boardinghouse, I sprang out of bed and pulled on my pants.
When the thumping reached my door, I opened it.
Mrs. Berger stood there in a reddish-brown blanket looking like a
frazzle-haired Geronimo at war council.
“
Gunnar, if I don’t get my sleep,
what do I lose?” she asked, in a tone suggesting I’d better know
the right answer.
“
You lose your joy in life, Mrs.
Berger.”
“
And when I lose my joy in life,
what do those around me lose?” She was trembling, but not from
cold.
“
They also lose their
joy.”
I’d passed her test. A note with a hand
attached to it poked out of the blanket.
“
Cops want you,” she
growled.
I watched as the blanket-swathed form flounced
down the hallway with just a hint of its onetime shimmy. I looked
at the address scratched in pencil. Her handwriting was barely
legible under normal conditions. What I saw resembled Sanskrit.
Fortunately I’d grown up deciphering my grandfather’s
scrawl.
A light shimmered off the hardwood below the
door across the hall. Mrs. Berger’s thumping had awakened Walter
Pangborn. His door opened.
“
I couldn’t help but overhear,”
Walter whispered. “Mind if I accompany you?”
“
Come on.”
My Longines said 11:35 when I got under the
wheel of my car. I was the original owner of a ’39 Chevy Coupe that
had waited for me up on blocks till I returned from the war. The
Chevy turned over as Walter hopped in next to me. He covered the
right side of his face with a slouch hat with the practiced ease of
an actor donning a familiar costume. Every piece of his outer
ensemble was the color of a Hershey bar.
We headed for Ballard Avenue. Fifteenth Avenue
and Market Street had robbed it of its commercial status during the
Depression and then the war. Ballard Avenue had become a depressed
neighborhood of thrift shops, taverns, cheap hotels and vacancies.
It took us five minutes to get there.
A familiar white Lincoln-Zephyr approached as
we neared our destination. The driver, clearly illuminated in the
light of a street lamp, smiled and waved. Either she took me for a
cop or recognized Walter. She was a local madam known as “Big Red,”
cheeks rosy with her usual rainbow rouge and decked out in a
flamboyant, low-cut dress of the same color. Ballard was Seattle’s
Brooklyn, and Ballard Avenue was its tenderloin
district.
I parked my Chevy thirty feet from a prowl car
and an ambulance. Beams of light quivered in a passageway between
two buildings. A small huddle of men examined a lumpy pile on the
ground. Some distance beyond them, more flashlights bobbed and
swayed as a search party spread out.
One of the uniformed cops spotted us and tapped
the arm of a man lighting a cigarette. Detective Sergeant Frank
Milland flagged me over with the first two fingers of his left
hand. I approached and was met by expressions ranging from hostile
to indifferent. Walter followed but held back a ways.
“
Nice of you to join our little
cotillion,” Milland said, looking at and past me, “but who invited
the freak show?”
“
I invited him. And don’t call him a
freak.”
Milland made an animal noise of acceptance.
“Just as long as he keeps his distance. The stiff had your card.
Take a look-see and tell us who we’re looking at.”
I stepped into the circle of men hovered over
the body. During the war, I’d seen more than my share of the
dead—enough to become inured and detached. But one of the things
that continued to jangle my nerves was seeing the corpse of someone
I’d visited with just the day before.
This
was a nerve-jangler.
In combat, bodies are strewn about like damaged
puppets with their strings cut. Sometimes a face looks at peace
with its surroundings. The face on the body at my feet gave me a
gut-tightening twinge. The strings had been cut, but the face
didn’t look at all peaceful.
“
What’s the verdict, Gunnar? Anyone
you know?” Milland demanded.
“
Yeah. But we’d met only once. Last
night.” I glanced at my Longines. It said 12:01. “Well, it’s
Thursday now, so make that
Tuesday
night when I met
her.”
Blood had run down the wall of the building,
marking the trail the body had made from its standing position to
the pavement where it initially landed. A path of blood led farther
into the alley where the body now lay. I took two cloves from my
shirt pocket and slipped them in my mouth, sawing them in half with
my teeth. I could see Walter flipping up the collar of his overcoat
as he moved in closer, looking like a homogenized version of the
Shadow and Phantom of the Opera.
Milland exhaled smoke and said, “So, you say
you met this gal on Tuesday night. Tell us what else you
know.”
I had a fair idea as to
when
to begin.
My tongue played with pieces of clove as my mind struggled with the
who, what and why particulars that didn’t make a whole lot of sense
in the here and now.
“
I can’t help but notice you’re a
bit jittery. Are you in some kind of trouble?” I’d
asked.
“
Well, it’s certainly none of
your
business, buster,” the slim brunette had said
sharply.
That first little tête-à-tête of ours took
place in the Ballard Theatre after the second feature had ended.
But I’d first spotted this jittery one earlier in the lobby. Since
the theater was just down the street from my office, I’d arrived
during the middle of a color cartoon, well before the first feature
began. So I’d waltzed back to the lobby for some popcorn—the extra
buttery kind.
While I nibbled on a few kernels and waited for
my change, I noticed Miss Jittery. She entered the movie house
throwing looks over her shoulder and ignoring the pimply-faced
usher who tore her ticket and gave her an appreciative once-over.
If lust were a high note that kid would have shattered
crystal.
I sympathized with the usher’s appraisal. The
girl
was
a looker, nicely wrapped in an olive green outfit
made from tissue faille from no rack I’d seen lately. It was
tailored to show every bump, dip, and half-moon to advantage. She
stood about five-foot-four, not counting her cloche or her platform
sandals with puff pastry nap that made them more art than
footwear.
I finished eyeballing the girl and collected my
change. As I started back toward the auditorium, I noticed her
parallel with me but headed for the ladies’ room. Before she ducked
out of sight she turned around and scanned the lobby like a deer
reconnoitering a salt lick. Our eyes met long enough for me to feel
weighed in some balance and found harmless. I shrugged, popped a
few more kernels in my mouth and went back to my seat.
I’d come to the movies to assuage a snubbed
psyche. I’d rushed to my office to meet a client at the end of the
day. He’d seemed iffy on the phone in the morning and rather loath
to discuss fears of his wife’s infidelity, so I wasn’t exactly
stunned when he was a no-show. But I didn’t like being stood up any
more than the next guy, so the movies it was.
I sat on the right, five rows from the front.
Since it was a Tuesday night, and the crowd was small, I had a
section all to myself. So I couldn’t help but notice a few minutes
later when the skittish brunette from the lobby plopped into my row
just two seats away. We exchanged a quick glance. Even in dim light
she had a face that caused double takes. I did one. She
didn’t.
She crossed a stunning pair of legs and started
twitching her raised foot in a fascinating rhythm that distracted
me through
Ticket to Tomahawk
. When not watching Anne
Baxter, I stole peripheral glimpses at her face, toe, and calf.
Miss Jittery didn’t look at me once that I could tell, though every
few minutes she glanced back up the aisle as if expecting an
unwelcome guest.
After the first movie ended, she went back to
the lobby. I thought I’d seen the last of her. But just as Howard
Duff came on the screen, the girl dropped noisily into her seat
again. She continued to toss glances up the aisle, and my attention
was now divided between the fidgety brunette and Ida
Lupino.
As
Woman in Hiding
ended, she stood up
with the applause and looked up the aisle again. She seemed more at
ease than when she’d sat down.
I stood and asked, “Did your assassin stand you
up?” I was smiling a non-wolfish smile as her head snapped back
toward me.
She half whispered, “
Excuse
me?”
It was then that I made my remark about her
being jittery and she told me to mind my own business.
I put my hands up in surrender and pretended to
be duly reprimanded. My role as Guardian of Womanhood had ended for
the day. It was just as well. I was bushed.
“
Suit yourself,” I said as I inched
toward her. “But do you mind?”
She hadn’t moved from her spot and was blocking
my way out, so I indicated for her to step aside.
She backed out of my way and stepped on the
toes of a somber-looking dowager waddling up the aisle.
“
Oh! I’m so sorry,” she said to the
woman as I slipped by unscathed.
I’d parked my Chevy near where Market Street
meets Leary Avenue and was opening the door when I heard the
clacking of heels on the sidewalk behind me. I turned to see the
girl from the movie house approaching. She looked a little
sheepish.
“
Say, mister, please wait up a
moment.”
So, it was
please
now. And I’d gone from
buster
to
mister
. In the glare of the streetlight I
gave her closer scrutiny. She looked to be in her early twenties
and had a heart-shaped face and the high cheekbones that made Suzy
Parker model of the decade. She nuzzled me with those lovely almond
eyes some Scandinavians have—the epicanthic fold, they call it—one
of the features Laplanders and Orientals have in common. Her mouth,
free now of the strain of censure, was soft and childlike. Her lips
had a cute, pouting quality that she used to full
advantage.
“
I want to apologize for being rude
back there,” she said.
“
No problem. I’m in the habit of
being a little nosy and have grown used to rudeness. Comes with the
job.”
Her head jerked slightly, and I might have
dismissed it as a nervous twitch had her voice not risen an octave.
“Are you a
policeman
?”
I quirked an eyebrow and smiled as I shook my
head. “No. I’m a private detective. I work out of an office here in
Ballard.”
“
Oh.” She was relieved.
“
My name’s Gunnar Nilson.” I
extended my hand but intentionally did not move toward her. She
took the two steps needed to reach me and gave my paw a gentle
squeeze.
“
Christine Johanson. Happy to make
your acquaintance.” She said it with a sugarplum voice and a
fondant smile that put me in the mood for bonbons. Up close, her
eau de cologne
was a faint mix of sandalwood and cigarettes.
“You were right, back there at the movie house.”
“
Oh
?”
“
I do think I might be in some kind
of trouble,” she said demurely.
“
What seems to be the
problem?”
“
A man is following me—at least I
think he is.” As she spoke she gave a quick glance from left to
right as if her words might conjure him up. I looked with her, but
nothing was out of the ordinary—just moviegoers blending in with
the few pedestrians about.
“
Is this guy a masher?” I
asked.
I was abruptly taken from my story by Kirsti.
“What’s a
masher
?” she asked with a puzzled look in her
eyes. “I mean, I know what a potato masher is, but you must mean
something else here, right?”