the smoke blew directly into my face.
I would have moved down the bar, but by now the troops from the
Marguerite had arrived and the place had filled back up. There was nowhere to go.
About that time my seatmate’s companion, still standing between us, began shooting off his mouth. As soon as he started chipping his teeth, I knew he was smashed.
“I tell you, Mimi, when I was here in ”80 you could see the Space Needle from right here. From right here where I’m standing, I swear to God. Where the hell do these goddamned developers get off putting up buildings like that god-awful pile of shit that ruins the view for everybody else?“
Gesturing with his drink, a Jack Daniel’s and water, he pointed toward Belltown Terrace, my building. As he did so, the better part of his drink slopped out of the glass and ran down my trousers. He set his glass on the bar and grabbed a damp napkin, using it to mop halfheartedly at the wet trail running down my leg.
“Sorry about that, old buddy,” he said. “Didn’t mean to spill all over you.”
“That’s all right,” I answered, gritting my teeth.
“But did you ever see such an ugly building? I mean, I come here all the way from Abilene. When I’m in Seattle, I want to be able to see the Space Needle. That’s why we came here to have a drink, isn’t it, Mimi. I told her I knew a place where we could have a drink and see the Space Needle all at the same time. Isn’t that right?”
Mimi nodded. “That’s right, Buster. That’s what you said.”
Buster straightened up and tossed the napkin on the counter. “Hey, barmaid. Fix this gentleman a drink, would you? I spilled my drink on his leg, The least I can do is buy him one. What’re you having, fella?”
“MacNaughton’s and water,” I said.
He made a face. “That slop?” he demanded, shaking his head. “If you’re going to drink Canadian, how about something decent, something with some class like Crown Royal or VO?”
“I happen to like MacNaughton’s,” I said, trying to stay reasonably civil.
Buster clicked his tongue. “No accounting for taste,” he said. He turned to the lady behind the bar. “MacNaughton’s for him and another Jack Daniel’s for me. What about you, Mimi? You ready for another one?”
“Why not?”
Why not indeed? Buster paid for the drinks with a fifty and pocketed every last dime of the change. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s an obnoxious, overbearing, tightfisted drunk. When he had tucked his bulging wallet safely away, he turned back to me.
“Tell me, what do you think about that building?” he asked.
He could have pointed to any other building in Seattle and it wouldn’t have mattered, but I happen to own a sizable chunk of Belltown Terrace at Second and Broad. Hoping to dodge some of Mimi’s cigarette smoke, I had stood up. Now one of Buster’s shoes came down hard on my toe.
“I like it,” I said firmly, moving my foot away.
He stared at me in shocked disbelief. “You’ve got to be kidding! You actually like that place?” Buster’s voice was rising in volume, and he was beginning to sway dangerously like a giant sequoia about to bite the dust. People turned curiously in our direction. “It’s got no class. I mean architecturally speaking, it’s a bunch of crap.”
Carefully I set my drink on the bar. “I like it well enough to own one fifth of it,” I said.
Most of the time I know better than to argue with a drunk, but by then I’d had several myself.
“Bullshit! You don’t mean you actually own part of that god-awful piece of junk?”
“Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it,” I returned.
The bartender came back down to where we were. With one clean sweep she cleared all the glasses off the counter in front of us. It was a precautionary measure. A wise precautionary measure.
“Like hell you own it!” He turned toward me while still pointing a drunken finger in the bartender’s face. “If you own that building, I suppose the little lady here owns this joint, too, right?”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” she replied briskly.
He gazed at her Wearily for a moment.
“Hey, wait a minute. You took my drink. I wasn’t finished with it.”
“You’re finished with it all right,” she said. “Cut off. Eighty-sixed.” She turned and called over her shoulder, “Hey, Bob, call this gentleman a cab, would you? We’ll pay.”
The maitre d“, a burly young man who looked to be in his thirties, popped his head around the doorjamb. ”Sure thing, Mom,“ he said.
Mom? Had he said, “Mom”? I glanced at the bartender in admiration. If that was true, she must have had him when she was twelve.
Moments later, the maitre d“ and two waiters showed up again to escort the protesting Mimi and Buster out of the place. The bar patrons got quiet long enough to watch the excitement, but the volume went back up as soon as the elevator door closed behind them.
“Sorry about that,” the bartender said, setting another drink in front of me. “This one’s on the house.” She stood there waiting while I took the first sip. “What’s your name?” she asked.
“Beaumont,” I said. “J. P. Beaumont. What’s yours?”
“Darlene,” she answered. “Is it true what you told him, that you own part of that building?”
“That’s right,” I said. “What about you? Does this joint belong to you?”
“You’d better believe it,” she said with a grin.
First liar doesn’t stand a chance.
CHAPTER 9
Most people despise alarm clocks with abiding passions. I don’t have to-I have a telephone. I also have a collection of early-bird friends who think that as long as they’re up, everyone else should be, too.
The phone beside my bed jangled me awake, and I groped for it blindly.
“He did it again!” Peters announced when I finally fumbled the receiver to my ear. “That big bozo did it again.”
People who’ve been up for hours always expect me to come up to speed instantly. “Who did what?” I mumbled.
“Your old friend Maxwell Cole. He’s running off at the pen again or the word processor or whatever they use these days.”
Maxwell Cole is no friend of mine. Never as been. We met in college when we had the misfortune of being in the same fraternity at the University of Washington. He’s been a thorn in my side ever since. Currently, he’s a thrice weekly columnist for the local morning paper, the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
Because of our respective jobs, we frequently stumble into each other. When that happens, you can count on the two of us being on opposite sides of any given issue.
His crime column, “City Beat,” burns me up every time I read it, so I don’t read it. At least I try not to, but there are some people, like Peters for instance, who feel compelled to bring it to my attention anyway. I’ve learned to put up with it the same way I used to choke down my mother’s occasional doses of castor oil when I was a kid.
I propped a pillow up behind me and peered at the clock. Seven-thirty. Plenty of time.
“What is it now?” I asked.
“The headline says, ”Murder Moves Uptown.“ ”
I was gradually coming to my senses. “Sounds catchy,” I said. “Maybe somebody should set it to music.”
“You won’t think it’s so funny when you hear what it’s about,” Peters growled. “How does Dr. Frederick Nielsen grab you?”
“Not by name! He didn’t put the name in there, did he?”
“He sure as hell did. Want me to read it to you?”
“That asshole! That goddamned stupid son of a bitch!”
