Red House Blues (21 page)

Fir Street vanished into a fog bank that
hugged the top of the hill like a gray wool watch cap. Suzan
nuzzled into the concealing mist, satisfied that if she couldn’t
see where she was going at least she would be concealed on the way.
Social interaction had lost its charm for one night.

As far as she knew Marla didn’t know for
certain where Linda’s place was but she wasn’t willing to bet her
life on it. The woman seemed to know more than was comfortable.
Suzan wasn’t a great believer in coincidence so a few unpleasant
suspicions were beginning to solidify in the back of her mind.

That scene at the house had all the earmarks
of having been staged for her benefit. To shake her up? Scare her
off? Marla and Ferlin worked out their parts in advance, that much
was clear. All that business of the gun and hints of illegal
transactions . . . a bit over the top. A script straight out of The
Sopranos. Surely there was no harm in letting them think they
succeeded, for now. They were good actors but she’d played a few
notable roles herself when necessary.

She walked south on the dark side of the
street toward the Paladian Shopping Center, placing one tentative
foot ahead of the other, moving steadily through fog the constancy
of roux toward a dim glow she hoped was a twenty-four hour laundry
or coffee shop. On the other side, street lamps punctuated the
night with amber halos, the fog swallowing their illumination
before it reached pavement. How silent, how empty the street was,
as if she were walking through a forest, not the core of a major
city. Mist weaseled down her neck, beaded her lashes. One white car
crawled by going the other way like a ghost, leaving a smudge of
red tail light in its wake.

Down the hill, the King Street train station
would be open. It was always open, dispensing acidic fake coffee to
early commuters. But that could be risky. Marla would be catching
the train back to Portland in the morning. If Suzan fell asleep on
a bench . . . no, that would not be good. Then again perhaps Marla
wouldn’t head out of town until she was sure Suzan had turned
tail.

Paranoia. Or common sense? Suppose Marla had
hooked up with her at the Sea Turtle Hostel knowing in advance she
was coming to Seattle, who she was and what she wanted. How would
that be possible? Why would anyone care? What threat did she
represent to Marla and Ferlin that they had gone to such
trouble?

Suzan felt a sick dread. It came down to
Claire. She was the only one who knew her plans before she left
Bellingham. In fact Claire had been the one to urge her to go to
Seattle. No. She didn’t want to believe Claire was involved with
these people, couldn’t believe that and be sane. Yet it was
certainly possible Claire had inadvertently passed along her
itinerary to the wrong person.

Claire had gotten the information on the Sea
Turtle Hostel from the internet. What if she talked to or e-mailed
someone at the hostel and let something slip? Something that rang
somebody’s bell. What if Cliff, the deskman, heard something he
passed on to his pal Marla?

That didn’t work. That scenario relied on
coincidence and Suzan was sick to death of coincidences. And it
didn’t explain how they knew she was connected to Sean. Pike is a
pretty common name.

What were the chances that Claire happened
upon the one hostel connected with Sean and his pals? There were
plenty of hostels, B & Bs, and cheap hotels in Seattle, any of
which Claire could have settled upon. So, if Sean and his friends
had some link to the hostel that meant . . . it meant that her
landing at the Sea Turtle was no accident. She had been
deliberately sent to the Sea Turtle.

She had to talk to Claire. First thing in
the morning she would email . . . Tony! God! Suddenly it was so
clear. Who would want to hurt her? Who had probably known all along
where his best friend had run off to? Suzan didn’t like the
direction her thoughts were taking her. She and Tony used to be
friends. How could he have manipulated her into this situation?
Surely Claire didn’t know or she never would have cooperated, never
would have allowed Suzan to leave Bellingham.

Technically it was already morning, though
ground fog sealed itself over her like a coffin lid as she trudged
slowly toward the end of block. She was walking blind but felt she
had to keep moving to stay warm. She could think as she walked. She
needed to think.

The intersection at Jackson emerged from the
mist as a smudge of airbrushed neon. Six blocks to the right was
the International District but Suzan was too tired and cold to go
that way. It was doubtful any of the Chinese restaurants were open
at two a. m. anyhow. What she hoped to find was a convenience
store, someplace with hot drinks and microwave sandwiches. She was
fairly sure there was a gas station on Martin Luther King Street.
Something with a restroom would be great. She started off in that
direction. Just before she reached the crosswalk she thought she
saw the form of a man, hunched beside the bus shelter. On closer
inspection it transformed out of the mist into a newspaper box.
Still jumpy from that episode at the house. She felt as if she were
the last living person on earth wandering through a silent city on
an island in a sea of fog. Made to order for doing your head
in.

Across the street, Starbucks was closed and
dark except for its glowing green mermaid logo. It wouldn’t open
before five for commuters, hours away. Too late to do her any good.
Marla or no Marla, the smart thing would be to get herself to the
train station.

She was nearly to the flower shop on the
corner of Jackson and Twenty-third when she stopped to shift her
purse to her other shoulder. She hadn’t the first clue where to go
from there. There was really nowhere to go. No obvious direction
she could take. Two o’clock in the morning in a strange city
shrouded in fog, running away from ... from what? A tattooed woman
and a beat up old hippie? At two a.m. everything looks worse than
it is, every headache is a stroke, every worry is the end of the
world. Give yourself time, Suzan, she told herself. Let the sun
come up before doing anything crazy.

But what am I doing this for in the first
place? For the love of a man I swore to love until death parted us?
A man I can barely remember? No, a man I never knew in the first
place. It’s true. Who was this other Sean who lived in this far
city, in a crash-pad dump of a house, who shot up all day and
played in a Punk band all night? No one I had ever met and no one I
could ever have loved. And where did this stranger get his money?
Steal it? Deal drugs? How would I know what a person like that
would do? He couldn’t have supported his habit on one-dollar cover
charges in some cheap hole-in-the-wall tavern.

And had she known where he had fled would
she have come to rescue him, save him from himself, haul him out of
the mire? Did she really think she could have descended into this
underworld and dragged him back from the precipice? It was a
question that had no answer.

There on the sidewalk at two in the morning,
soaked to the skin, Suzan realized for the first time that she
didn’t love her husband. Her dead husband. Not any more. Tony
Gabriola had been right, though not in the way he thought. The boy
she had fallen in love with in high school died years before he
left her. Since then she had been in love with a fantasy, a man who
didn’t exist, might never have existed. And she realized that she
didn’t care anymore what led to Sean’s death - that stranger with
her husband’s name - whether an accident, or a drug deal gone bad,
it didn’t concern her. Marla and her little friends could keep
their dangerous secrets. They had nothing to do with her. She would
go home, just go home and leave the whole ugly thing behind her in
the fog. Suzan would never know what happened to Sean.

It wasn’t a matter of running away or giving
up. It was a realization that things had changed. She had changed.
At first light Suzan would go back to Linda’s, pack, then catch the
next northbound train for Bellingham.

She looked around, trying to work out where
she was in relation to King Street train station. It occurred to
her she might have come a block too far to cut directly down the
hill. It was then the bus hit her - or what felt like a bus -
something big, solid - rushing out of the fog, throwing her
sideways into the vacant lot next to the flower shop. She felt
herself crash through a razor wire snarl of blackberry brambles,
then something solid like a chunk of concrete collided with her
face.

Chapter 20

May 1, 1993

Kiki had run from the Comet
before Marla could catch her
. Have to find
her,
she thought.
She can’t do this to me, leave like this, take Alexis on the
tour as if she hadn’t heard a thing I said. How could she think she
could do this? Make a total fool of me. As if she had no idea what
she was doing, how she’d teased me, used me. She turns her back and
runs into the night, without a thought.

But she guessed where Kiki was headed. She’d
run to Alexis. Run to the loving arms of that devious bitch. Pour
out in detail every painful, embarrassing, wrenching thing she’d
said to Kiki. And Alexis would laugh. Of course she would. She’d be
overjoyed that Marla had finally made herself look like a lovesick
idiot in front of the whole tavern. Now everyone knew what she felt
for Kiki - how she wanted her - if they hadn’t already guessed long
before - and they also knew how that love had been thrown back in
her face like a dirty rag.

If only she could take back the words.
Explain that it was okay, things could go back the way they were.
She had been upset. How could she not be when Kiki told her she was
going to ask Alexis to go on the tour with her? The Grid’s first
big tour and she wanted Alexis with her, not Marla.

How could she not know how
I felt?
There for her, up front every time
she performed - there from the first when no one had even heard of
her, when she came from back east all excited about what she’d
heard of Seattle’s music scene - when she was just another skinny
chick with a big voice and a folder full of scribbled
lyrics.
But I was the one who saw how
different she was from the all the rest, saw how great she could
be.
It wasn’t Alexis who introduced her to
the guys who became her band, who arranged the first gigs for The
Grid and talked Sam Allenbaum into helping them cut a demo.
It wasn’t Alexis, it was me. Me, the one she
wouldn’t take on tour.

Marla wiped her eyes with the back of her
hand and unlocked her borrowed car, a car “borrowed” from a guy so
drunk he’d never remember where he parked it. She’d re-park it
close to the Comet, she thought, when she was done with it. Anyway
she heard Cliff say he was going to send him home in a cab. No
harm, no foul. But tonight she needed a car to catch Kiki before
she got to Alexis. If she could only talk to her quietly, without
the band and all the confusion she was sure Kiki would see how
important it was that she be included - that she was invaluable to
the band if not to her personally. She had to see reason.

Marla drove slowly south toward the Central
District, scanning the sidewalks on either side of the street. Kiki
couldn’t have gotten too far on foot and she didn’t have a car. Bus
service was pathetic after midnight so she’d have to have been
unbelievably lucky to catch one going in the right direction. Would
she have hailed a cab? Possibly but not likely. Kiki was careful
with money, especially since she needed all she could get to launch
the tour. She wouldn’t make anything on it or the c.d. for a while,
even supposing a big success. Small startup Punk bands didn’t make
much above expenses, if that.

Marla prayed Kiki just decided to walk off
her temper, as she had done on those other rare occasions she lost
it. Kiki wasn’t one for losing control but when she did - no matter
how mad she got - she liked to cool off on her own. Marla figured
Kiki would take her time walking the mile to Fir Street, enjoying
the unseasonably warm spring night. Marla rolled down the window so
she could hear the street sounds - so she could call out to Kiki
when she spotted her.

Did I pass her already?
Where in hell is she? You’d think I’d see her if she was up ahead.
Or would I? Could she have turned down the hill at Alder - or maybe
at Spruce? This is a waste of time - Kiki could be anywhere. I’ll
have to cut her off at Fir before she reaches the
house
.

Then as she slowed to take a right on Spruce
a shadow bolted across the street from the left straight for the
front of the car, someone running flat out. Marla stood on the
brake pedal, sliding to a slewed stop half way onto the
sidewalk.

“Help me, oh God, help me,” screamed the
woman, slamming her hand on the hood of the car - her shirt
shredded, her eyes huge in the headlights. It was Kiki.

Marla unlocked the passenger from the
console.

“Get in the car!” she yelled out the
window.

Stunned, Kiki stood in the halo of
headlights.

“Marla?”

“Get in the car, Kiki!”

Staggering to the other side, she opened the
door and fell into the car as if she were climbing onto a life
raft.

“
God, Marla, how ...” she
started to say, the words collapsing. “I don’t know where he came
from,” she sobbed. “He grabbed me. I was walking and I didn’t see
anything and then there he was.”

“You idiot! What the hell did you think
would happen? Are you out of your mind running off like that?”

“I think he hurt me, Marla. I think I need
to go to the hospital.”

“You’re lucky he didn’t kill you. You
deserve it, you heartless brain-dead bitch! How could you run off
like that. From me, for chrissakes! You owe me better than that,
Kiki.” Marla put the car in gear and pulled back onto the street,
not sparing a glance for the woman hunched and whimpering in the
passenger seat.