Last Ditch Read online

"Until about six weeks ago, when one of my ..." I groped for a word. "... contacts told me that somebody had a contract out on my life."

  "And you believed this person?"

  "Absolutely."

  FRANKIE ORTIZ SITTING at my backyard patio table drinking iced cappuccino with Rebecca was the equivalent of Charlie Manson sipping tea in the Rose Garden with Hillary Clinton. Frankie was a little guy. No more than five-six or so. I'd always thought he looked like the old-time bandleader Cab Calloway. Thick, processed hair combed straight back. A bold, wide mouth accented by a pencil-thin mustache which clung precisely to the outline of his prominent upper lip. He had a penchant for lightcolored suits and two-tone shoes. Frankie worked for Tim Flood.

  Tim Flood and my father had started out together working for Dave Beck and the Teamsters. At the time, their official title had been "labor organizers." Revisionist history now labeled them as thugs, but neither of them minded. My father had parlayed his local notoriety into eleven terms on the Seattle City Council. He'd run for mayor four times, suffering a narrow defeat on each occasion. Tim Rood had gone on to become Seattle's homegrown version of organized crime. Tim Flood had his fingers in every pie. My old man had his relatives in every city and county department. The way I figured it, six of one, half a dozen of the other.

  Rebecca was beaming. "Oh, Leo . . . Mr. Ortiz tells the most outrageous stories," she said.' "I can't believe it."

  "I'll bet," I said.

  I figured Frankie was probably skipping the one about how he'd shot Sal Abbruzio in the spine for skimming the numbers take. And you sure wouldn't want to tell the one about cutting off Nicky Knight's fingers in the back booth at Vito's. Especially not the part about Big Hazel freshening their drinks between fingers. Not before dark anyway.

  "Frankie," I said, and offered my hand. He took it

  I dragged a chair over next to Rebecca and put a hand on her knee. She crossed her legs and gave my hand a pat.

  Frankie took a sip of his cappuccino. "You know, the kid's gonna graduate this June," he said. "June eighth."

  The kid was Tim's granddaughter Caroline Nobel. A few years back, I'd gotten her out of a nasty situation involving some dangerous tree huggers who thought they could save the planet by blowing things up.

  "Gonna be a schoolteacher," he said.

  "Great."

  "I think it's what's keepin' the old man alive. He ain't been outta the house in years, but he says we're goin' to the ceremony. His doctors are shittin' bricks. Say it'll kill him."

  "How is the old man? He still lucid?"

  Frankie smiled. "Depends on who he's talkin to. Caroline comes around, they have a hell of a time, laughin' and carryin' on. His doctors try to talk to him, all of a sudden he thinks he's friggin' Cleopatra."

  Another four minutes of mindless small talk and Rebecca finally picked up the vibe. Frankie was old school. Nothing personal, but Frankie Ortiz didn't do business in front of women. She shot me a pitying look and got to her feet "If you gentlemen will excuse me, I best go inside before I get the vapors."

  Frankie rose and shook her hand in thanks. He stayed on his feet until she closed the French doors behind her and then sat back down.

  "Nice girl, Leo. You're a lucky guy."

  "Thanks, Frankie. You just stop by to shoot the breeze, or did you have something a little more substantial you wanted to discuss?"

  I think he was surprised at how polite I was. Usually he likes to dance around a bit, at which point I usually get impatient and impolite, and then the whole thing goes to shit Today he got right to it.

  "Got a call from a guy we know in Vegas," he said. "A macher." He said it right, with the back-of-the-throat noise. "You know what a macher is, Leo?"

  A macher was a maker. A big shot A guy who could make things happen. I knew the breed well. My old man had been a macher.

  "Yeah, I know what it means," I said.

  "So the guy says to me, he says, 'Hey Frankie, didn't you tell me about some private dickhead guy named Waterson or something who helped you and Tim out that one time wid the kid?' "

  Frankie looked up at me to see if I was paying attention. I was.

  "So I says to him, 'Yeah, that's right, why?' And he says, there's a couple of dweezels been losing big lately out at the south end of the strip, tellin' the workin' girls the dough they're pissin' away is no problem 'cause there's more where that came from. Say they're headed up north to pop a Seattle private dick named Waterville or some such shit. My friend says he thought maybe we'd like to know. From what he hears, these bozos been tellin the honeys that they crewed for this same party a while back. He asks me if we know anything about what's goin' on." Frankie made a face. "And I ask him, 'Hey . . . what the fuck are you callin' us for? The friggin' newspaper knows more about the shit goin' on around here these days than Tim and I do;, we're strictly legit Only staff Tim's got anymore are the nurses in charge of wiping his wrinkled ass, for Christ sake. We're not exactly still in business, if you know what I'm talkin about' "He sounded almost wistful. Almost.

  "You trust this Vegas guy?" I asked.

  He tilted his head and pursed his lips. "I don't trust anybody, Leo," he said. "But I was you, I'd watch my ass."

  "AND THAT, OF course, explains why you were wearing a bulletproof vest," Paula Stillman prodded. It was a smart move. Most citizens don't jog in a Kevlar vest or carry a nine-millimeter automatic, with two extra clips taped to their chests. Tends to chafe. Stillman knew she could count on the defense to bring it up, so she did it herself. Hennessey would sure as hell try to show that my state of paranoia was somehow responsible for the gunplay rather than the two professional shooters the judge had hired to put me out of my misery.

  * * *

  ABOUT TWO MINUTES after Frankie said his good-byes, I'd called the cops. Balderama and Wales had sympathized and offered twenty-four-hour police protection, but I knew what that meant Two weeks down the road, they'd need the manpower for something else, offer us the services of a retired school crossing guard, and we'd be right back where we started. Rebecca and I talked it over and decided that we weren't going to let anybody bring our lives to a grinding halt. The way we figured it, if we stopped our lives, the judge won. The way I figured it if I let scumbags like the judge run me around, I might as well find a new line of work. Like selling Amway maybe.

  I settled for the loan of a Kevlar vest and took what I considered to be prudent steps to protect us. We had a first-class alarm system installed in the house. Rebecca and I now locked our cars in the garage every night, instead of leaving them strewn about the driveway. She was car-pooling to work with Judy Benet. I made it a point to meet new clients in busy public places in broad daylight. We consoled ourselves by telling each other that these precautions were appropriate for the late nineties and what's more, long overdue. Neither of us believed it for a minute, but for some reason, neither of us was willing to abandon the illusion, either. Go figure.

  While I normally only carried a weapon when it seemed likely I might need one, these days I didn't go to the John without considering the question of how many rounds I was carrying. The judge's trial began in a couple of weeks. I figured that once I testified, the threat was over. At least I hoped so. Despite our best efforts, the strain was wearing us down. Without consciously willing it so, lately, more often than not we found ourselves staying at home, watching the boob tube in darkened rooms. I spent the nights lying awake listening to Rebecca toss and turn and trying to remember what programs we'd watched.

  My sleep patterns had been a mess ever since Frankie's little visit. I'd taken to dawn runs around Greenlake as a way to work off some of the stress. I hated running, but what the hell, I was up.

  It's a little under three miles around the lake. When I was a kid, I'd run around and around until I lost interest. Back then, it was more of a swamp than a lake. These days, they pump it full of reservoir water to keep it pretty, and if I manage to jog around it once without pulling a muscle or projectile vomit
ing it makes my whole day.

  I always start and end at the south end of the lake by the Mussert Shell House. It's a dark little glen with an attached parking lot and the only part of the lake that doesn't directly front a city street. I figured if I started and ended there, I could make all the noise I wanted and not bother anybody. After all, wouldn't want the sound of my puking and wheezing to keep anybody up. It never occurred to me that it was also an excellent choice for a kill zone.

  I was walking in circles out at the end of a twenty-foot floating dock that juts out into the lake, trying to catch my breath and spitting into the water, when he walked by on the path, giving me a curt nod of the head before disappearing behind the Shell House.

  He should have gone shopping at Eddie Bauer first. Or maybe REI. Gotten himself a nice earth-tone Gor-Tex shell, some chinos, a pair of waterproof wafflestompers and a FREE TIBET button. If he'd blended in better, he and his partner would have ended up back in Vegas with the hookers, and I, in all probability, would have ended up dead. As it was, he stuck out like a barnacle in a béarnaise sauce.

  About forty years old and twenty pounds overweight, he'd greased his hair into an old-fashioned pompadour with a sharp part on my side. Bob's Big Boy. Not only was he wearing the last leisure suit in America, but the poster boy for polyester was also carrying a four-foot floral arrangement wrapped in newspaper. Flowers for his girlfriend. Long-stemmed. Real long. At five-fifteen on a Tuesday morning. Every hair on my body suddenly stood on end.

  The fact that they were here at this time of the morning meant they'd been casing me for a couple of days and knew my habits. The fact that I hadn't spotted them meant I was getting old and sloppy.

  I reached behind me and tried to bring the automatic out from under the back of the vest, but I was sweaty and everything was stuck to me. Before I got my hand to the gun, he came roaring back around the corner of the building, sprinting down the asphalt ramp toward the landward end of the dock, spewing flowers in his wake. A pair of blue steel nostrils the size of my fists now protruded from the front of the flapping newspaper. He was no more than twenty-five feet from me when he let fly with the sawed-off shotgun, emptying both barrels. Double ought buck shells contain what amounts to four thirty-two-caliber projectiles, coming at something like a thousand miles an hour. Three of them hit me directly in the Kevlar vest. The fourth, although I didn't know it until later, entered the soft flesh of my left arm just above the elbow. At the time, I was too busy to notice. The last image I had was of Mm, still in full stride, cracking the gun and reaching into his pocket for more shells.

  The impact blew me completely off the end of the dock, sending me down into the dark water, where my primal urge to breach and breathe was instantly overcome by the certainty that if I so much as poked my head above the surface, he'd blow it clean off.

  I groped around in front of me in the murky water and found one of the concrete-filled drums which had been sunk in the lake to hold the dock in place. The ribbed metal was cold and slick with algae. I wrapped both arms around the barrel and pulled myself to the bottom of the lake. The water was about six feet deep and teeth-chattering cold. I'd been out of breath from running, and whatever air I had in my lungs had been driven out by the impact of the slugs. I'd only been down about ten seconds, but shotgun or no shotgun, I had to breathe.

  With the last of my strength, I pulled myself past the submerged barrel, pushed hard off its surface with my feet and came up under the dock. I held my nose and mouth with my hand, forcing myself not to sputter or gasp. I eased my lungs full and looked up. Through the cracks between the boards, I could see the outline of his feet silhouetted against the gray morning sky. He had no reason to be careful; he'd seen the slugs hit me full in the chest. He was standing out at the end, waiting for me to float up so he could pump another load into me.

  As I moved his way, I pulled the nine-millimeter from the small of my back and thumbed off the safety. I moved slowly, walking on the bottom, making sure I didn't create ripples. I got right between his feet, put the muzzle of the gun tight against the treated boards, checked the angle to make sure it was perpendicular and pulled the trigger three times. He hit the deck like he'd been dropped out of a helicopter.

  I swallowed some more air, dipped my head under the water and pulled myself out from under the dock. He lay with his face no more than a foot from mine, rocking in agony and moaning, his eyes screwed shut, both hands clutching his groin. I was so close that when I shot him in the forehead, I saw hair fly from the back of his head.

  I didn't have time to dwell on it. The sound of squealing tires jerked my head toward the parking lot. His partner had probably been watching my car, in case I changed my morning routine. The sound of two weapons had brought him running.

  I heard him shout. "Lamar, you okay?" He waited a minute and then tried again. "Lamar, come on, answer me, boy."

  I stood shivering in the chin-deep water using the now-departed Lamar as a shield. The partner poked his head around the corner of the building and then quickly pulled it back. He was blond and younger.

  "Lamar, can you hear me?" he shouted.

  I reached under the front of the vest and tore off one of the extra clips which I'd taped to my chest. I put it on the dock next to Lamar's nose. A small stream of blood rolled down the side of the dock and into the water beside me. In the distance, a siren was winding our way. Somebody had called the cops. I mouthed a silent prayer.

  I'll give the kid credit for loyalty or maybe some sort of overdeveloped sense of male bonding. Even with an approaching siren whooping in his ears, he wasn't about to leave his buddy. He came out from the building in a combat stance. Moving quickly, waving a square black Uzi from side to side, spinning as he searched for a target.

  He spotted the body. "Oh, shit, Lamar," he cried.

  He never saw me. When he looked to the right, I bobbed up out of the water, steadied both hands on the edge of the dock and shot him in the chest He staggered backward and then sat down on the pavement with his legs spread out before him like a child at play. The Uzi slipped from his fingers, ratcheting off several rounds as it hit the pavement and then suddenly everything went quiet. I was still standing in the water, shaking uncontrollably when the cops arrived and pried the automatic from my stiff fingers.

  STILLMAN AGAIN SPOKE directly to Judge Downs. "Your Honor, please let the record show that Mr. Waterman's assailants have since been positively identified as Lamar B. Highsmith of Winnemucca, Nevada, and Johnny Dale Smits Jr. Of Hayden Lake, Idaho. Mr. Highsmith was pronounced dead at the scene, the victim of multiple gunshot wounds. Mr. Smits will be appearing as a witness for the prosecution later in these proceedings." "So noted," she said.

  They said I missed his heart by an inch, but if I were to judge, I'd say I must have nicked it. Faced with the death penalty for aggravated murder, Johnny Dale Smits rolled over like a trained seal. Once he started talking, they couldn't shut him up. In return for life without possibility of parole, he confessed to everything but the Lindbergh kidnapping. The grand jury had been particularly interested in the part of his story about how the judge had insisted that Felicia Mendoza must not be shot, how he wanted what he called "that little greaser" to suffer big-time before she died. I heard that one of the grand jurors fainted during Smits' vivid depiction of the crime, and that a veteran court stenographer had to be excused.

  A week later, a scant forty-five minutes after Judge Downs issued her final instructions, the jury delivered a verdict of aggravated murder in the first degree, with a recommendation for the death penalty.

  On my way down the courthouse steps after the verdict, Rebecca clung to my good arm with both hands. About halfway down, Tracy Tanaka of KOMO TV-9 shoved a microphone in front of my face. "How do you feel about the verdict, Mr. Waterman?" she asked.

  I answered without thinking. "I feel lighter," I said. "Much lighter."

  Tracy made a disgusted face and sprinted up the steps toward Dan Hennessey. Rebecca h
ugged my arm tighter.

  Chapter 2

  First I tried the zoo, but Terry, the bartender, said they hadn't been in for the better part of a week. "End of the month," he explained with a wink. "This time of year, they probably gone to the beach."

  Terry's phrase "gone to the beach" was absolute testimony to the flexibility of language. In polite society, the notion of having gone to the beach conjures the heady aroma of tanning unguents and salt air, the images of colorful umbrellas and graceful children cavorting o'er sparkling sand. In this case, however, the phrase "gone to the beach" meant the Boys, having swilled the last of their monthly stipends, were temporarily broke and sleeping down on the waterfront in Myrtle Edwards Park. A monthly pilgrimage which provided not only a scenic marine-environ suitable to the season, but front-row panhandling access to the swarms of cash-heavy tourists who strolled the area during the daylight hours.

  Harold Green, Ralph Batista and George Paris had once been local people of some repute. They were the remnants of another age, the last mortal remains of my old man's grass-roots political machine and my most tangible connection to a famous father who, to me, had become little more than the collection of tall tales which his life had engendered.

  Whenever I can, I like to find them a little work. Relatively sober, they make great surveillance operatives. They can hang around a building forever and nobody notices them. They're invisible. Mr. and Ms. Clean White America have systematically trained their optic nerves to exclude the poor and the homeless. So untidy, you know.

  I used to wonder about this selective vision. At first, I went along with the traditional wisdom which said that the sight of society's dregs simply hit too close to home, for most people. That the destitute merely provided a grim and unwanted reminder of the tenuous nature of our own purchase on middle-class life. "There but for fortune go I" and all that. Lately, I think maybe it goes a bit deeper.