Tinseltown Riff (9 page)

Which was why, first chance he got, he examined the contents of the attaché case real close. He first made double sure he had the key item: the purple memory stick shaped like a thick piece of chewing gum with the word Sony on it and XC 2TB. He'd heard Walt mention about a file transfer which meant the thing was some kind of memory card. A record that proved some phony company was cooking the books, under investigation by the Feds like the little guy said. Then there was the little guy's tri-fold wallet and his smartphone. At the time Deke wasn't sure why he swiped them but now it was starting to hit him. The plastic window showed his name was Elton Frick. The driver's license, CPA and other plastic cards showed he had a lot of connections, and so did the numbers on his speed-dial. In some way, possession of this stuff gave Deke an edge. A bargaining chip, maybe. Especially if Frick survived and was found crawling around miles-long 500-foot-deep Lake McDonald and didn't fall in. Or managed to crawl back up to the cabin to wait it out. In any case, Frick would be too spooked to finger him; and Deke had the wallet and all in case Walt or the Outfit tried to stiff him. Or in case Deke wanted to stick it to the Outfit after not only tracking Frick down and recovering this incriminating stuff, but also maybe tracking down the whole scam from start to finish.

What he'd lost in the bargain was the fun he'd always had. This new feeling-his-age crap sure as hell was getting him down. But, still and all, the chance of being on top of the game instead of winding up on the skids like guys everywhere was one hell of a sight better.  

And so he eased back and let the sights come and go as the train rolled on: the gray sheen of the water approaching the Dalles and the Wishram station stop; the gouges of beige and deep chocolate brown across the way as if some giant had chipped out hunks of basalt. Pretty soon, the Columbia opened wide, the foothills of the Cascades glowed green, covered with thick Douglas fir and stands of skinny poplar. In the distance, the silvery Bridge of the Gods spanned over the Columbia so hikers could scamper across  the Pacific Trail into Oregon.

But the sight of a bridge with no railings got Deke to feeling testy again. Losing a step, sure, but still as cocky as they come. Still the same rambler who, up till lately, hung loose around Cold Creek till Walt beeped him back down to Sin City or wherever.                                  

Snapping out of it again, he noticed the seat next to him was empty. The lean woman might've said, “Nice talking to you.” He couldn't really say.

Trudging back to his berth, he noticed the paper and pulp mills cropping up outside his narrow window, then the rows of tract houses followed by ones with second-story wooden balconies. In short order, traffic lights popped out along with eighteen-wheel rigs, rectangular high-rises and the green 5-South-to-Portland sign. The commercial craft and pleasure boats that clogged the Willamette came into view and clinched the deal. Deke was going to have to get himself set.

Less than twenty minutes later, he emerged from the cozy Portland train station and hailed a cab. While hanging onto the attaché case and making sure Frick's billfold and smartphone were still secure in his travel bag, little spasms continued circling around his lower back. At this point he longed to meet up with Walt and have it out then and there. Smack up against something hard instead of more of this dos-a-dos.

 

Still antsy, he hopped a MAX downtown to Pioneer Square. The mix of fruity people on the glass-paneled light-rail system got to him immediately. It was Saturday, everybody's day off. But did deadbeats in whacked-out T-shirts and sandals have to keep piling on, stop after stop? A few, okay, but there were bunches of them carrying green and white placards all starting with the word
Save
: “Save the Trees ... Save the Streams ... Save the Trails ...”

He tried the breathing thing again and waited for the deadbeats to scramble off before he exited at the Square. Echoing his impatience, the MAX trundled on away from him, headed due west like some jangled kiddie trolley.

Almost instantly, sunshine streamed down as the sky switched from gray to deep blue. An old lady yelled at the metal ticket machine, punching the rows of buttons, begging a senior all-day rail pass to drop in the slot. The ticket machine ignored her.  

Moving away from the tracks, Deke tried to get his bearings. A file of brick steps led down to a piazza of pavers flanked by tall concrete shafts. Down below, a milling crowd suddenly looked up at a copper forecaster in the opposite corner that seemed to be going beserk: tolling bells, then whistling as pieces of jagged metal shot out from all directions. The tree huggers with the
Save
placards chanted the predictions: “Temperature, seventy-five ... humidity, forty-seven percent ...  clear and sunny!”

Next, a pear-shaped bearded guy braced himself against the forecasting machine and jerked a floppy bible out of his knapsack. “You're all fornicators!” he yelled down at the top of his lungs. Some of the crowd jeered. Most of the people turned away and went back to what they were doing: yammering, messing around, working on their sun tans and the like.

“You better change your ways and I don't mean perhaps,” the guy went on, pitching his raspy voice a notch higher. “I am warning you. Today is the day. Jesus ain't gonna wait much longer. You got a chance. It counts most on a bright sunny day when it seems you can get away with anything. But you can't. The dark angel's gonna snare you and cut you down.”

In a way, Deke was glad he'd stuck around for a second, glad for the reminder.  Nothing was going to snare him and cut him down no matter what he was about to run into.

 
 
 

Chapter Nine

 

 

Deke finally came upon the rust-colored Roman frontage of the Hotel Vintage Plaza. He was late. Walt was bound to be in even a worse mood. But no matter. The sooner Deke got it over with, the sooner he'd be able to get a bead on where in hell this was all headed and get the drop on them all.

 

“You know what I think?” said Walt, leaning back on the wine-colored sofa. “I think you done it on purpose. Gave him so much slack he was bound to reach the empty log cabins so's you could have yourself a good ol' time. Serves you right about your damn back.”

Deke could've kept up the lie about the loose terrain. But he was more than sick and tired of Walt's badgering. So he cut him off with, “How do I finish it, Walt?  What's the damn tie-in?”

“With what?”

“Don't hand me that. What's the tie-in with the bookkeeper outta the picture?”

“Out of the picture is he?”

“Right. With him spooked and you got the goods.”

“Outta the picture and spooked. Is that what I'm supposed to believe?”

Walt pulled on his red suspenders and leaned forward. He shook his full head of white hair and then leaned back hard, just missing the bottom of the gilt frame rimming   the dumb painting of tiny birds perched on dainty wine glasses. He folded his thick arms and shook his head a second time as if Deke was still that lanky fool kid down in the Glades.

“Somebody put a trace on him, did you know that? Like he's some kinda missing person. How come? I'll tell you how come. Fallout and spillage is how I read it. And if so, if that's how it plays out, it ain't gonna be just some twisted back you got comin'. Handwriting will be on the wall and you're gettin' a little long in the tooth to hightail yourself out of it. So, you gonna talk to me while we still got time?”

“Don't push it, Walt.”

“Oh, yeah? Since when? Since when ain't there a question mark after every damn thing you done?”

That did it. Deke tossed the attaché case at the wood-paneling right next to Walt's  head.

Catching it just in time, Walt scrunched up his bushy brow. He set the case down on the coffee table between them and flipped the latches. Reaching inside, he grabbed a ledger and waved it around. “Okay, we'll drop it for now. But it ain't finished, not by a long shot. You hear? Not till mister bookkeeper is salted away. Now where were we?”

“A tie-in. You want me to run this down all the way, you got to at least give me a tie-in.”

“Why?”

“So I know what the hell I'm doing.”

Walt thought about it long and hard. “Okay, I can give you this much. A point man for the Outfit set up some entertainment company here doing whatever the hell they do up and down the coast.”

Leaning over opposite Walt on the matching vevety sofa, Deke took a few sips of black coffee and set the cup on the burgundy side table. “So?”

“ So, he overreached himself, his cover got blown and he had to split.”

“How come?”

Again Walt gave Deke a look and held back a while. Finally he said, “Since when are you interested in whys and wherefores?  What is goin' on here?”

“Since when do I have to track something down that's not a one-shot?  So why did the point man take off? How did his cover get blown?”

“‘Cause he still had to file a 10K with the S.E.C., that's how come. Have an audit and such.”

“So?”

“So,” said Walt, “the CPA spots a red flag, downloads the data and says he's gonna expose the point man and every goddanm thing else he's in cahoots with. Are we clear now?  Are we through?”

“Spots what red flag?”

“The goddamn dummy operation. Humongous expenses, no payroll checks and a high volume of money comin' into a company going bust.”

“So where
was
the money coming from?”

“That's it, Deacon. It's bad enough worrying about the spillage after one of your  one-shots. But I sure as hell ain't gonna add to what you're capable of if you start figuring and putting your nose in too.”

With that, Walt tossed the ledger back in the case, set the case by his side on the cushion, poured himself another tumbler of dark ale and drained it dry.

As the pain from the strained ligaments in Deke's lower back started in again, Deke gulped down some more black coffee and said, “You're telling me one blown dummy operation's bled into another. Leaking maybe all the way down the coast ‘cause the point man dropped the ball twice.  And this time it's liable to all come apart.”

Leaning forward once more, Walt spelled it out as if he was talking to a flunky who was this close to getting sacked.

“Look, I don't know what's come over you, but you'd best get with the program. What's really goin' down is none of your friggin' business. It's the Outfit's business. What're they payin' me for? What they're always payin' me for. For damage control, to find somethin'—guys who've been stiffing them, goods, information--whatever. So I don't worry my head none about no big picture. I don't worry about nothin' long as there's no screw-ups on this end that gets them down on my ass. Which brings us back to square one. Is there a screw-up I don't know about?  Is this CPA really spooked, it's only you with a twisted back, and we can just goddamn get on with it?”

Still fighting off the twitching pain, Deke stretched out his long legs. The gold antique clock in the corner announced it was one-thirty. The dark wood paneling and the plump winy-red chairs made him feel he was caught inside some tycoon's bedchamber. But he kept cooling it down, kept playing the game. “I told you, Walt. No worries.”

“And I told you, since when?” said Walt, his raspy twang really getting on Deke's nerves. “It don't figure it was nice and tidy and I can just cross it off the list. It brings to mind the time you rode the clutch on your old man's Jeep, stripped the gears and blew the head gasket ramroddin' it to hell and gone. And then, when your ol' man called you out on it, you shrugged him off. Then got in trouble with some backwoods slut. And shrugged that off too.”   

“Can we just get on with it?”

“Fine. Since you're so all-fired anxious for the bottom line, here it is.”

Walt reached over to the side table and took a long pull on another tumbler of dark ale. “I have had it, the Outfit's had it, you've had it. Even if the bookkeeper's on ice and you do good on this last leg. On this end, it's strictly electronic surveillance from now on. Legit corporations still on their feet who want to make sure of who, if anybody, they're hirin'. Background checks, deleted e-mails pulled from hard drives; scourin' databases and the like. Get me a team of hackers, changing the name to Great Western Risk Management. Nothin' anybody can connect me with. Nothin'.”

“Well now,” said Deke, realizing he might have known.

“Look, at the moment I need a tracker to wrap this up. I can't use no ex cops or P.I.'s ‘cause anybody in on this botched operation can spot one a mile away. Bottom line, we need the skinny on what's going on with the leak in the pipeline. First stop, Salinas and something to do with farm workers and a clunker. And if anybody knows about crops, pickers and clunkers it's you. But with you damn near useless ‘cause of your back, maybe you'd rather pack it in right here and now.”

Walt reached over for a handful of mixed nuts, washed them down with the rest of the ale and slammed the bottle down on the side table so hard the vase full of gladiolas jumped to the side.

“So what's it gonna be, Deacon? If it's yes, you ain't gettin' nothin' but expenses till everything—and I am mean every thing—is goddamn swept clean. No holes in the flow, no more fallout and no questions about what this is all about.”

Just then, the waitress with the clown-like face came scurrying in, swept away the bottles, cup and silver pot, set them on a tray and promised to replace them with more of the same. Halting in mid-sentence, she stood still with a frozen grin like some windup toy whose batteries were shot. She came back to life the second Walt tossed a few bills on her tray.