to me like we'd be better off tangling with a hibernating grizzly.'
In the end, Manny's cooler head prevailed. I made arrangements to meet them back at Camera Craft at three.
'I suppose you're off on your hot date,' Kramer noted sarcastically as I turned to make my way back home. I studied him for a long moment, wondering if I had been that ambitious in my youth, that ambitious and that obnoxious.
'Not hot,' I corrected. 'As a matter of fact, I'm taking two little girls to Bumbershoot. Care to join us?' Turning on my heel, I headed up the street just as the first real raindrops in more than a month began to fall on downtown Seattle.
It wasn't one of the Northwest's customary dry drizzles that you can walk for blocks in and not get wet. Instead of a light, gentle mist, this was a sidewalk-pounding, clothes-soaking downpour. I was completely drenched by the time I'd walked the six long blocks between Camera Craft and Belltown Terrace.
Annie, the building's concierge, was on duty in the lobby. She opened the door to let me in before I managed to get my key in the lock. Rivulets of water coursed down my face and dripped into my eyes. Looking for something dry, I wiped my forehead with the underside of my jacket sleeve.
'You're all wet,' Annie observed unnecessarily.
I nodded, matching inanity for inanity. 'It's raining out,' I said.
'You're not really taking Heather and Tracie Bumbershooting in this weather, are you?'
I've long since learned that living in a high rise gives you about as much privacy as living in a small town. Which is to say, none. Everybody's business is everybody else's business.
'Who told you that?' I asked.
Annie laughed. 'The girls did. They were down here just a few minutes ago looking up the street to see if you were coming. As far as I'm concerned, it's a rotten day for Bumbershooting.'
'At least it won't be crowded,' I replied.
She held the elevator door until I got on. 'It won't be crowded because most people have sense enough to come in out of the rain.' The door closed before I could manage to think of one more cliche and heave it in her direction.
While I was waiting for the girls to show up at the apartment, I reluctantly took Annie's hint and went searching for an umbrella to take along. Although the word 'bumbershoot' means umbrella, it's usually not necessary to carry one the last weekend in August, even in Seattle. I scrounged around in the back reaches of my coat closet and resurrected a broken-ribbed relic that would have to suffice.
At exactly ten-thirty, the girls rang the bell. Mrs. Edwards had seen to it that they were properly dressed in matching yellow slickers that covered them from head to toe. When we stepped out onto the street and I cracked open the ancient umbrella, they both burst into giggles.
'Where'd you get that thing, Unca Beau?' Heather asked, pointing. 'It's broken.'
She was right. The umbrella, broken and not exactly waterproof either, was more a philosophical statement than it was protection from the weather. The plastic had torn loose from one of the ribs, and the resulting fold of material dripped a steady stream of water that ran down the back of my hand and up my sleeve.
'It'll be fine,' I told the girls. 'Let's get going.'
The main gate to Seattle Center is only about three blocks from Belltown Terrace. The site of Seattle's 1962 World's Fair, it contains the Emerald City's signature landmark, the Space Needle, as well as eighteen or so acres of park that include exhibition halls, amusement rides, live theaters, a sports arena, an athletic field, fountains, and a building full of shops and fast-food vendors. On any given Labor Day weekend some 250,000 to 300,000 people find their way through the center to see live music and theater performances, hands-on exhibits, arts and crafts demonstrations, jugglers, magicians, and almost anything else you want to name. It's called Bumbershoot.
I've been there when that last bash of summer has been so crowded that it was all but impossible to move. You inched along, carried forward by the crowd, going whatever direction it was moving at the moment. But on this rainy, dreary Friday morning, that was certainly not the case. The place was almost deserted.
The Bumbershoot workers were delighted to see anybody who might be a potential customer. The girls raced ahead of me collecting a batch of goodies-free balloons and two totally unnecessary sun visors.
They darted past a jazz band playing halfheartedly on the steps of the semi-empty Flag Pavilion. I caught up with them just as they reached the edge of the International Fountain and before they could scramble over the low wall.
The fountain is a huge deep basin some two hundred feet across. The bottom is bordered with a matting of rough white rocks while the heart of the fountain is a slightly convex concrete mound studded with pipes and lights. A varied water show, programmed in concert with classical music, erupts periodically from the pipes. Despite the clearly posted DANGER signs, the interior of the fountain is regarded as a children's free-for-all playground on hot summer days.
'Can't we go in, please?' Heather begged. 'Just for a little while. We won't get very wet.'
'No way,' I told her. 'Mrs. Edwards would have a fit.' Only a promise of immediate food kept them out of the fountain.
The area around the fountain was lined with wooden outdoor food booths. Every year crafts people, musicians, and food vendors bring samples of their ware to Bumbershoot in a gigantic outdoor festival. The food, with its wide variety of tastes and tantalizing aromas, is easily the most popular part of the weekend, and it's usually the most crowded. But not today. There were no lines, no jostling crowds. We were the only customers at a Mexican food place where the girls ordered bean burritos. I paused next door at a Thai booth for some beef sate with peanut sauce.
After lunch we sauntered through the arts and crafts display in the Exhibition Hall and on into the children's area in the Center House. While the girls listened to stories, touched the animals in the petting zoo, and posed briefly for a quick charcoal portrait, I watched from the sidelines with a cup of coffee in hand.
I watched, but my mind was elsewhere, restlessly sifting through the tangled web that led from Logan Tyree to Jimmy Rising. I kept one eye on the girls and the other on my watch, waiting for enough time to pass so I could go back to Camera Craft and see if Kath Naguchi's pictures held any answers to the questions circling in my mind.
At two-fifteen, when I announced it was time to leave, there was no argument. The girls were tired and more than ready to go back home. It was still sprinkling intermittently when we reached the main gate.
A ticket taker offered to stamp our hands. 'That way you can get back in if you want to,' he said.
Fat chance, I thought. I started to say no, but Heather pitched such a screaming fit that I gave in and we all three had our hands stamped.
On Denny Way Tracie walked briskly along beside me, chattering about all she had seen and done. Heather, tired and whiny, trailed along behind. Finally, despite my aching shoulder, I picked her up and carried her the last block and a half. She was sound asleep when I packed her into their apartment and deposited her on the couch.
Mrs. Edwards shook her head. 'Looks like you wore her out.'
'It works both ways,' I told her, rubbing my shoulder while the difference in pressure again made me aware of the tender spot in my heel, the one my doctor jokingly refers to as my middle-aged bone spur.
'Thank you for taking us, Uncle Beau,' Tracie said, as I bent down to give her a good-bye hug.
'You're welcome,' I said.
I went upstairs and made myself a small pot of coffee. There was just time enough to gulp down one quick cup and to swallow one of my bone spur anti-inflammatories before I had to go meet Manny Davis and Paul Kramer.
Usually, I would have walked that far, but the hours in Bumbershoot had done their worst and my heel hurt more than it had for weeks. I opted for taking the Porsche, parking it at a meter across the street.
With a name like Kath Naguchi, I suppose I expected Jim Hadley's slugabed film editor to be a petite, dark- haired Asian. Wrong. When the owner of Camera Craft led us upstairs into the small, dimly lit editing room with its thick pall of cigarette smoke, Kath Naguchi turned out to be a behemoth of a woman, as tall as she was wide, with short, bright red hair, thick glasses, and the sickly-white skin of someone who shuns the light of day.
'These are the guys I was telling you about, Kath,' Jim Hadley said without physically venturing any farther into the room than was absolutely necessary.
