The Woman Who Married a Bear (9 page)

As a private investigator I'm pretty much doomed to hunting by industry: checking records, going through files, interviewing every witness, putting myself in position for the information to come to me. But sometimes I like to fantasize about stealth, to try and understand the thoughts of my prey by smelling the air that he breathes and feeling the ground that he walks on. It's a fantasy, like I say, and it's impossible to maintain when I'm drunk. When I'm drunk my senses are blurred by vanity and pity. The perfume of the beautiful blonde.

There in the cabin we drank out of the Jack Daniel's bottle until we went to sleep. Edward reached for the bottle and toasted the air. He said his teachers at the boarding school really wanted him to be a drunk. He didn't know why but he knew it was true. He said it wasn't fair getting thrown out for doing what they wanted.

After I left college I wanted to learn something. I thought if I just filled my head with facts about music and sacred art, all the scary stuff I suspected about myself would be squeezed out, and my head and heart would lighten. Of course it didn't work, and I knew it wasn't working all the time I stood by the side of a road in north Africa with my thumb out, reed flutes and books by Henry Miller in my pack. I just ended up with more embarrassing stuff to cart around.

Edward went to college in Kansas and then went back to his village to try and live a life his grandfather would understand. He ended up on the North Slope, working in the kitchen making doughnuts for the work crews and drinking bourbon in the corner of the pantry. He didn't get in trouble. His white bosses said it was just his disease. I heard a rumor he was turning it around and giving his disease back. I had heard he was sober.

Fuck it.

T
here were six people in the downstairs section of the bar. I read the paper and had several more cups of coffee. It was about 5:30. Soon the predinner crowd would be ambling in: healthy young professionals, looking good in their wool slacks and fleece jackets. It was a good bar for finding defense attorneys.

I compromised between my dream state and stealth and ordered another bourbon … but in my coffee. Soon I would go back to just bourbon because it would be too late for coffee.

Sy Brown made his entrance, in a raw silk sports jacket with narrow lapels and a thin red tie. He stood framed by the lintel and the doorjamb, scanning the crowd. He studied each person in the bar, and he tugged on his walrus mustache. His dark eyes paused at the woman in the blue blazer and white satin blouse, then they drifted to me. Our eyes met, then he went back to the woman. He studied her as he walked toward my table. He didn't take his eyes off her as he sat down across from me. She hunted in her purse for a lighter. She wore a pearl necklace and had a pleasing shadow between her breasts.

“You need permission from me to talk to my client, Younger.”

“You did such a great job for him. He just raved.”

“I bet.”

“Would you have given me permission?”

“No.”

“So buy me a drink and tell me why you had De De Robbins whacked.”

“Not funny, Younger. I've been through this shit.”

He twisted around in his chair and looked at me for the first time in our conversation. “Christ, why don't you get something to wear. You always look so damn raggedy.”

He sat up straight and brushed off the shoulders of his jacket as if my clothes were giving off airborne spores. Then he raised his left hand and, unbelievably, snapped his fingers for the waitress. Then he sat back.

“De De Robbins drowned herself. Why in the hell would I want her dead? She was the only one who saw the fight on the beach. She
was
my self-defense case.”

“How about the Victor kids out on the boat?”

“They were down below at the time. They never heard or saw a thing until the next day when they found out that Louis was missing.”

“What about Walt Robbins?”

“De De Robbins told the grand jury they had dinner, and then the old man had a few drinks. He went below to sleep and didn't come to until the morning.”

“What do you know about Louis and Walt's relationship? Did they get along?”

“Christ, you're really boring. Haven't you thought of going to law school instead of fooling around with this sleuthing business? Don't you ever think of your father?”

“Constantly. Tell me about Louis.”

“Okay. He was an Alaskan stereotype—strong, proud Tlingit man, good with a gun, good finding the game. When we were looking at a self-defense claim we did a thorough check on him. He wasn't a fighter. It's like that with a lot of big guys, you know, big enough not to have to fight. There was only one case he was involved in up in Stellar. It was an alcohol-related something or another. Maybe a domestic assault, maybe a sex thing, but we had a hard time getting our hands on any of the records because they were sealed by the court to protect their confidentiality. There was some scuttlebutt that it had to do with Robbins and his relationship with Emma Victor.”

“So his best friend sleeps with his wife and he beats her up for it. Was there ever a criminal case?”

“I didn't say that he beat his wife. But anyway he skated: counseling, alcohol program, and a year's probation. Nothing that half the guys up there haven't been through. Louis quit drinking after that. He'd been dry for the last ten years. People said that he was a perfect gentleman, never a harsh word. No incidents.

“Of course, none of that helped us to make our case. Here we had a man who, by all accounts, had led a good life with only one minor transgression, and he had made serious amends for that.”

“Serious?”

“He quit drinking. You know anybody who's quit drinking lately?”

The waitress brought us one bourbon and water and one imported beer and a fake Waterford glass. Sy tilted the glass and poured the beer gently.

“What about Walt Robbins?”

“He was supposed to be like an uncle to the kids. They had some falling out, I guess.”

“What did they do up in Stellar?”

“I guess Louis liked the tundra in the summer. The family had a fish camp, and I heard he had a love interest.”

“Walt Robbins and Mrs. Victor?”

“Pay attention, Younger. It was Louis had a squeeze. That's what I heard.”

“How'd Robbins react to all this?”

“Christ, you're not going to run the ‘jealous lover murders the husband' routine, are you? There's nothing to tie him to it. His daughter places him down below, asleep in his berth all night.”

“And she is dead.”

“Fuck, Younger, grow up. If she had anything to say, don't you think she would have told it to the D.A. or the grand jury?”

“You ever turn your father in for murder, Sy?”

“No. Listen, why is your sister still teaching in New Haven? She's a great lawyer. She could be making some serious money.”

“No doubt. How did Alvin Hawkes get a job with Louis?”

“He's a distant relative of someone's. I think he might even have been related to Robbins. How's that help your theory?”

“I read Hawkes's record. Clean except for those couple of drug things. Did anyone suspect that he had mental problems in his past?”

“Hell, the state still doesn't think he's got any problems. But he had no record of problems before. His mom said he was ‘troubled.' Isn't that what all the relatives tell reporters after someone's gone to jail? You saw him. What do you think, is he faking it?”

“Everybody's faking it, Sy. How come you didn't get him off? Wasn't there enough around to at least stir up a little reasonable doubt?”

“Hey, listen, Younger, these were bad facts. I've got a fruitcake who just fed his boss to the bears, for Christsakes! What do you think, your big-shot sister could have worked with those facts?”

“Don't be so defensive, man. So Hawkes's family thinks they'll give their troubled boy the fresh-air treatment, and a job in Alaska is all that he needs to make a man out of him. He draws a real man for a boss, flips out, and he
thinks
he killed him. He goes to jail and the day before the trial the only witness who can help him at all gets whacked.”

“Commits suicide.”

“What else you know about De De Robbins?”

“Not much but I'll show you what I got.”

“If she killed herself, why was she trying so hard to climb up out of the water?”

“I don't know what was going through her mind. Maybe the water was colder than she expected. Maybe she changed her mind.”

“Why didn't she swim over to the ladder on the dock?”

“Don't start in on this … please. The experts say that lots of suicides do unpredictable stuff. It's reflexive. Only some part of them wants to rescue themselves.”

“The subconscious cavalry.”

“I heard that someone got shot in Sitka last night.”

“Yeah.”

“I heard it was your roommate. Why in the hell aren't you working on that case instead of digging up dead college girls?”

“Pay's better. Listen, I want pictures from De De's autopsy, and I need a list of phone numbers and any travel records you've got. I'm going up to Stellar tomorrow. You going to be in early?”

“You going to see your old sweetie up there? She was a very nice-looking lady. I don't know why you had to treat her like such a piece of shit.”

“I know you're just trying to spare my feelings but you don't have to refer to her in the past tense around me, Sy. I want anything you've got on the Victors or on Walt or De De Robbins. And I'll be by early tomorrow.”

“Whatever. I might not be in until late.”

“Then your office will be a mess when you do get in.”

He spread his hands out and shrugged his shoulders. The woman with the blue blazer was drumming her fingers on the bar and studying the casing on the Taiwanese oak bar clock. Sy pushed away from our table.

“See ya.”

He walked over to the woman and as I was on my way to the door I heard him ask her if he hadn't seen her in one of the local theater productions, telling her she was terrific before she could answer.

I had a cheap room upstairs. Cheap because it faced the street and the bathroom was down the hall. The carpets smelled like mildew and cigarette smoke. No phone, no TV, but lots of cute fake antiques and a sink that didn't work just like it didn't work during the days of '98.

I walked up the stairs. In the shadows of the first landing a young couple was sitting on a rickety love seat staring deeply into each other's eyes. As I padded up to the third floor I heard the woman saying urgently, “And I don't want to complicate your life either, but I'm so …”

As I rounded the third landing I took out the key to my room, checked the number, and turned left. Then I heard the unmistakable metallic click of the hammer being pulled back on a large-caliber handgun. I saw a shadow in a doorway move and I felt a pipe nudging my skull.

I turned around slowly and saw Emanuel Marco smiling at me from behind a Smith & Wesson .44 magnum. His greasy black hair framed his face, and he smiled like a stray dog with a burr in his mouth.

“Nice gun, Manny, but I think you've been watching too much TV.”

“Hey, Cecil, I forgot to mention that I took the guy up on his offer.”

I took a step toward him, slowly. “There have been several mistakes made here, Emanuel. First, why would somebody trust you to do a contract murder, because they must know that I'll give you ten thousand dollars to tell me who hired you. You know I can get it from my sister.”

I took another small step.

“Nice try, man, but I don't even know who it is. I just talked to the guy on the phone, and picked up half the money in a garbage can. I get half after. Anyway, anyone who pays to have you killed would pay to have
me
killed if I screwed them over. And besides,
he
offered me ten thousand.”

Now his back was against the wall. The gun was at my throat.

“Good negotiating. You think they're really going to give you the rest? What are you going to do when they stiff you, go to the Better Business Bureau?”

I took another step forward and now I was too close for him to point the gun at my throat. He had to point it at my chest.

He'd watched enough TV to know that if he fired that cannon off in the hall he would have a hard time sliding out of the hotel on little cat feet. He had one chipped tooth in front, and as he looked at me from behind the gun he poked his tongue through the gap in a nervous twitch. Emanuel had a lot invested in his identity as a small-time criminal, and I knew he was a little nervous about his new role as a killer.

“Back the fuck up, man!” He jabbed me in the chest.

I took one more step forward and I was close enough to smell peppermint schnapps on his breath. The .44 was pointed at my stomach.

“The second mistake, Emanuel, is that you're a fuck-up and wouldn't know how to kill somebody if they were in an iron lung.”