The Bum's Rush (16 page)

She slipped the key in the lock but didn't pull the gate open. Instead she looked past me, back up the path toward the house.

"Somebody needs to look into it," she said.

"You mean Lukkas Terry?"

"Yeah."

"You knew him?"

She shook her head. "Nobody knew him. He was too
weird to know." Before I could speak, she went on. "I mean, like, you
know, everybody, all the girls anyway, tried to put the moves on him,
but he was just too weird. But " She pulled open the gate. "You want to
know about Lukkas, you find his little girlfriend."

"He had a girlfriend?"

"Ditziest honey in America," she said with a laugh.
"After years of every light hook in the music scene trying to get in
his pants, he finds this little piece from Utah on his own." She shook
her head. "Beth Goza is her name."

"You got any idea how I might find her?" "She used
to come over here once in a while. I took her home one night when
Lukkas had locked himself in the studio and wouldn't come out. She
lives on one of those streets that run between Pike and Pine up on the
hill. I always get them mixed up. Got these big white rocks out front
so you won't park there. That's all I remember." I figured that was all
I'd need.

I started down at the freeway and worked my way up
the hill, slaloming back and forth between Pike and Pine streets, among
the pubs, tattoo parlors, vintage clothing stores and omnipresent
espresso bars that defined the neighborhood as generic Generation X.

Reenee's memory had been good. About six blocks up,
I turned onto Boylston, and there they were. A dozen good size stones,
once painted white, haphazardly filling the muddy area between the
apartment building and the street, denying this hallowed space to all
but monster trucks.

The building was a throwback to a less pretentious
age of traveling salesmen, of single nights in shirtsleeve rooming
houses with bathrooms just down the hall. The windows on the ground
floor were covered with square black wrought-iron bars. Brown
composition shingles covered the outside in what, before slippage, had
been some sort of weave pattern, its geometric unity now eroded into a
series of senseless waves that frittered aimlessly about the building.

I slipped around the corner and parked in front of
the Mercedes dealership. For some reason, the sight of me and the Fiat
didn't give either of the car salesmen the urge to so much as twitch. 

I stood on the blue AstroTurf in the covered
vestibule and tried to make sense of the door security system.
Somewhere in the distant past the rain had blown in, smearing the ink
on the resident list, rusting and running the cheap metal of the frame,
creating a mushy mosaic where the names should have been. I began
pushing buttons. I didn't answer the garbled voices screeching from the
ruined speaker; I just kept pushing buttons until the woman appeared.

She looked like an anorexic member of the Munster
family. Five foot four, maybe eighty pounds, in a tight print dress and
knee-high black boots. The skin between the boots and the dress had
surely never seen the sun. Her black hair suggested a recent dose of
high voltage. She banged open the door. The blast of hot air smelled
like a giant cat box.

"What the hell is the matter with you?" she demanded.

"I'm looking for Beth Goza."

"Then why don't you just push her button, man?"

I tapped the filthy glass next to the buttons.
"What, you can read this crap? Am I missing something here? What are
these, ancient runes or something?''

"That's shit, is what it is, buddy. It's broken
shit like everything else around here. Once it breaks, it stays broke.
You can call 'em till your ass falls off, and they won't come out and
fix it."

I spent a few minutes and scored a few points by
sympathizing about the plight of helpless tenants caught in the grip of
pitiless slumlords. Finally she said, "This time of day, Beth's always
down at that books-and-coffee joint on the corner." When I looked
blank, she went on. "You know, the one over on Pine. I see her every
day when I drive to work. Hell, most times she's still there when I come home."

She didn't stick around for thanks. As she motored
back up the narrow stairs, I concluded that she had, as she'd so
colorfully suggested, dialed for repairs till her ass had fallen off. I
smiled as I turned, the image of her sliding out of chairs onto the
floor significantly brightening my little morning. What can I say? I'm
a man of simple pleasures.

I stuffed my hands in my pants pockets as I rounded
the corner onto Pine Street and headed downhill. She meant the Bauhaus,
four blocks in front of me, one of those books and-coffee bars that
have puffed up like hives all over the city in the last five years.
Watering holes for the thousands of melancholic intellectuals who need
some place to get their backpacks in out of the rain, get wired to the
ears on designer coffee, and discuss how the retro values of
postindustrial America no longer hold meaning. Staring at a lifetime of
diminished expectations and menial employment, they've opted to Free
Tibet.

The place was just like I remembered. It had a
vaguely East European quality. Sedition City. This week only. Forty
percent off purges. On my left a guy with a long, unkempt beard
muttered as he scribbled on a yellow legal pad. He looked as if he
might at any second jump to his feet and begin an impassioned
denunciation of capitalism and the running-dog lackeys of the
imperialist state.

Maybe a dozen people were scattered about the
tables. My finely honed skills of deduction and detection told me that
if I discounted the anarchist, the four gay couples, and the two
African-Americans, Beth Goza was probably the willowy one with the
cranberry-colored hair over by the books.

She was reading a trade paperback copy of Men Are
from Mars, Women Are from Venus. She didn't look up as I stood next to
the table.

"Are you Beth Goza?" I asked.

She looked up from the book. She had a pair of nearly yellow eyes that seemed to glow without pretense.

"Yes," she said.

"Could I have a few words with you?''

I pulled out a chair and sat down. Except for the
ten or fifteen eyebrow rings, the pierced nose, and the four pounds of
metal she carried in each ear, she looked a lot like an occidental
version of a Japanese dancer, bright red lipstick offsetting perfectly
white skin, eyebrows drawn perfectly in place. She wore black tights, a
short black leather jacket decorated with enough chain to pull a
propane truck, and a short plaid skirt. Industrie-leather Catholic
school.

"I don't know you," she said. Quick, this one.

I fished a business card out of my pocket. She held
the card with two hands, running her eyes slowly over the surface
rather than just reading the words. "What are you investigating?" she
asked.

"Lukkas Terry," I said without hesitation.

I wouldn't have thought it possible that one who
had so perfectly achieved the Seattle never-seen-the-sun,
dead-foracoupleof-weeks skin pallor could actually blanch, but she did.

Without a word, she pocketed my card and hustled
for the door. I followed along, watching the yellow soles of her new
Doc Martens.

"Go away," she said over her shoulder. Her legs were a bit shorter than mine, so I had no trouble keeping up.

"This is dumb," I said as we cleared the door
frame. "I'm not here to make any trouble for you, but I'm not going
away either. I'm yours morning, noon, and night until we have a little talk." She lengthened her stride.
"I know it was you who called the cops. You're the one who found him, I
know you did," I said.

She turned and poked me in the chest. "You know nothing. Now, get away from me."

Again I found myself staring at her back as we
hurried up Pine Street. Beth had not done nearly as much dialing as the
other one and was symmetrically the better for not having done so. I
tagged along for another half a block, where she again turned to face
me. She put her hands on her hips and faced me like an impatient
parent. "What is it with you, Mr.--"

"Waterman," I said with a Bondian air. "Leo Waterman."

She favored me with a sneer. ' Take a hint, detecto boy. Buzz off. It's almost over. Just leave it alone. Okay?"

I made eye contact and held it. "Listen to me,
Beth. You seem like a nice kid." Her eyes flickered. Been there. Heard
that. "Let me finish," I said. "If, when you tell me to leave it alone,
if by it you mean this whole deal of Lukkas's estate being divvied up
between Sub-Rosa Records and Gregory Conover, well then, honey, you
better make other plans."

She started to speak, but I waved her off. " 'Cause
that little scenario is over." She held my gaze now. "A lawyer friend
of mine is going to throw a jumbo monkey wrench into that little
arrangement first thing tomorrow morning. It's a done deal. I'm telling
you the truth here."

She bared her teeth and leaned forward. I made sure
I was on the balls of my feet. I thought she was going to go for my
face, but instead she regained her composure.

"You're contemptible. You know that? You're just trying to scare me. I won't let you frighten me," she said.

"Your lawyer friend has no connection to Lukkas Terry. None. N-O-N-E," she spelled it. Correctly, too. "You're sooo full of it."

"Yeah, but my lawyer friend represents someone who is connected to Lukkas."

"Like who?"

I shouldn't have. I should have told her it was confidential and let it go at that. Instead, I showed off.

"Like Lukkas's mother," I said.

Her eyes narrowed. "You're a bad man, Mr. Waterman."

She could have said nearly anything else. She could
have questioned the viability of my genetic material, the bona fides of
my parentage, the nobility of my appointage, or the quality of my
tumescence. Anything would have pissed me off less.

"I am not," I shot back.

"Are too."

"Am not."

"I can see it in your aura."

"I don't have an aura."

"Do too."

"Do not."

If necessary, I was prepared to carry on at this for another couple of weeks. I didn't care. Whatever it took.

"You leave me alone," she said.

"No."

She shifted her weight to her right foot. "I can't believe it. You're sooo lower vibrational."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"The fact that you don't know proves it."

She leaned back against a shop front and brushed at
her skirt. Something about the way she patted herself clean slipped an
odd gear somewhere in the mess of my
mind. "So help me out," I said. "You need way more help than I can give
you." "Mighty oaks from tiny acorns grow."

"What's that supposed to mean?" as

"The fact that you don't know proves it."

"Grow up," she said.

"My immaturity keeps me young."

Traffic on Pine had picked up. The hissing sound of
bus brakes approached from the east. Without warning, she pulled the
jacket tight about her middle and took off up Pine Street like a
greyhound. She caught me flatfooted. Cursing silently, I trotted along
half a block back. She was in good shape. Even encumbered by the little
skirt, her long legs ate up the uphill ground. I concentrated on
finding my rhythm and moving my arms. Two blocks up she cut off
slantwise across the street. Afraid I was going to lose her, I picked
up my pace and tried to close some of the distance. J No need.

The girl was still running smoothly when she
unexpectedly went to the ground in the doorway of the Mars Cleaners.
She threw her back into the right rear corner and slid to the pavement.
The studs on the jacket screeched down the tiles like fingernails
across a blackboard. I stopped running. The street was deserted. I
approached her slowly as I traversed Pine Street.

Her mouth was open, but she was only slightly winded. She held her sides with both hands and looked me in the eye.

"I didn't think you could keep up."

"You were right," I wheezed.

"Lukkas said he'd seen her," she said.

"His mother?"

"Right at the end. Right before he--'' She mustered
her reserves. "One night coming out of the Moore. The first night there
was ever really a band. He swore he saw his mother in the crowd there
in the alley when they were getting him into the limo. He swore. And I
didn't believe him," she said with a shake of her head. "I didn't
believe him."

"Why not?"

"Because he was already so freaked out. You know,
about having to play in public. Lukkas never wanted to play in public.
He wanted to make studio music. But Greg kept at him, you know, this
was the nineties. That there had to be a band, like, that people could
see. That they had to do videos and stuff. Lukkas was blown away. That
night, the night he said he saw his mom, the night the band played its
only gig, he musta puked about twenty times before they went on. It
was--"

She sat there slowly shaking her head. I stood in
the doorway and watched as she worked her way through it. Watched until
a hand on my shoulder spun me around.

A kid. Maybe twenty. Long blond hair in dreadlocks.
Scuffed leather bag over one shoulder. Nice knit cap, red, yellow, and
green, pulled rakishly over one eye. "I don't know what's goin' on
here, man. But this don't look good to me. Maybe you ought to--"

I cut him off. "Everything's cool here, kid. Thanks for being concerned. We need more concerned citizens."

He dug his fingers into my shoulder. "I think you better --"

I grabbed the thumb with one hand, the forearm with
the other, and commenced introductions. He went to one knee. I relaxed
a little.

"You need to go away now, kid."

When I let go, he backed down the length of the
block, mumbling, "Hey, fuck you, man," bobbing his head, assuming
combat stances. A Mighty Morphine Power Ranger. Way too much time spent
playing Mortal Kombat, I suspected. We silently watched his exit.