Trouble in Rooster Paradise (5 page)

I dreamt about Christine Johanson just before
sunrise on Thursday. We were waltzing in the lobby of the Ballard
Theatre. Christine began to cough violently, so Mrs. Berger cut in.
She wore high heels and a sequined G-string. She wanted to tango.
Thankfully, I woke up. I always woke up when Mrs. Berger came to me
in my dreams. I dreaded the night I didn’t.

It was the eighth of June. I remember, because
as I dressed that morning, I was thinking that my grandmother
Agnette would have been another year older had she lived. So, by
breakfast Thursday morning, Christine had become a cerebral
footnote. By mid-morning she would have completely faded from
caring memory had a telephone call not revived my
concern.

My office was on the second floor of the
two-story Hanstad Building. The owner was Dag Erickson, a local
attorney I met the same month I hung up my sleuth shingle. We soon
formed a working relationship that teetered on
symbiotic.

Miss Olga Peterson came out of the Hanstad
Building as I tried to enter. Miss Peterson was a spinster in her
mid-fifties, and her “spinning” consisted of running a flower and
knickknack shop when not playing mahjong, or reading romance novels
and pulp magazines.

The envelopes in Miss Peterson’s plump hand
signaled she’d missed the mailman and was headed for the mailbox
out by the curb.

“
Mr. Vance,” Miss Peterson said, as
I sidestepped her rotundity. I was “Philo Vance” to her, and I’d
stopped correcting her the first day we met. “I see that you’ve
made a purchase, Mr. Vance.”

I smiled and hugged my parcel close to my
chest. Miss Peterson generously dosed herself with over-spiced
perfume that caused my eyes to water and put my gag reflex to the
proof.

She fanned her pudgy face with the envelopes
and nodded at my parcel. “Shall I hazard a guess that your package
has something to do with a case?” she asked. Hope was in her
eyes.

I shook my head.

For a guy who made his living poking at
underbellies, I never liked prying jabs at my own.

“
Cold medicine,” I said, and coughed
to make the lie credible.

She looked disappointed. “My stars, but Mr.
Vance, for a strapping young fellow you
are
a sickly one. It
seems every time we meet you’ve come from the pharmacy with
something remedial.”

I made a mental note to come up with a better
line.

“
You’re not one of those
malaria-stricken veterans, are you? Some exotic disease from the
Orient, perhaps?”

“
No, Miss Peterson. I was in
Europe.”

She briefly pondered Anglo-Saxon and Celtic
ailments and was working her way to the Franks, when her face
untwisted and brightened.

“
We’ve missed Mr. Pangborn at our
mahjong club. I trust he is well.”

“
Walter? All goes swimmingly. His is
a rich and varied life.”

“
I must say, he’s a most remarkable
man. Most remarkable. Why, his everyday talk is simply bedizened
with engaging insights that—”

“
Are quite lost on the minds of
lesser souls?” I asked, completing the familiar praise.

“
Why …
yes
. Just so. You
must please tell him that Olga misses those little crumbs of
knowledge he lets fall as we stack our tiles. He’s such a
delightful east wind player. Why, sometimes that man’s
perceptiveness leaves me in an attentive state—”

“
Bordering on the supernatural?” I
said. “Uh-huh. Walter’s been known to have that effect on
some
. I think it’s part of his game strategy.”

“
Really
? Oh … why,
yes
. Just so.”

She gave my arm a squeeze. “Please be sure and
give him a fresh greeting from Olga.”

“
No problem.”

I entered the building.

“
Why, a body would think you had the
plague,” Miss Peterson called after me. “My stars. It’s not natural
for a vibrant young man to be medicating so often. It’s just not
natural.”

“
No, Miss Peterson.”

I tromped up the stairs. Behind and below I
heard the thud and clap of her orthopedic shoes hitting the lobby
floor on her return from the mailbox.

“
Black strap molasses, Mr. Vance,”
she called up after me. “Remember to take two tablespoons every
night. Do you hear?”

“
Yes, Miss Peterson. Molasses. Every
night,” I shouted back.

My office adjoined Dag Erickson’s. Dag had his
suite enlarged during the war, reducing the remaining space I
rented to two oversized pigeonholes he’d initially used for
storage.

I snatched the morning mail from the slot and
had my key in the lock when an attractive young woman stepped out
of Dag’s door. She’d doubtless seen me as I passed in front of the
frosted glass. Miss Cissy Paget came with the
pigeonholes.

What I mean is my rent included an additional
telephone in Dag’s office and Cissy as my answering service. Her
filing skills were a negotiable extra. Her asking price for typing
was out of my reach.

Cissy’s heels clicked softly against the
linoleum as each foot took its turn on an imaginary tightrope,
causing her willowy figure to oscillate from midriff to toes. Hers
was a gait a fashion model would envy, but knowing Cissy, she’d
probably walked that way since she began to toddle.

A faint scent of violets came along with
her.

“
Any calls, Sweet Knees?” I said.
I’d been gone only an hour.

“
Just one,” she replied, thrusting a
small slip of yellow paper at me. “It came about fifteen minutes
ago.”

The note read, “Call Rikard Lundeen.” I figured
it meant a job, but it made me as ambivalent as a toothache victim
facing a dentist’s drill.

Cissy parked one hand on her hip and with the
other removed a pair of round-lensed glasses that could have been
stolen off of Winston Churchill or Mahatma Gandhi.

“
Your caller sounded old,
distinguished, and authoritative. He said it was important, but he
didn’t leave a number. He said you’d have it. Is he
the
Rikard Lundeen?”

“
The very same,” I replied, not
telling her I was maybe one of five people who had special access
to him on a very private telephone line.

She whistled softly. “Consorting with Seattle’s
upper crust now, are we?”

I smiled. “I helped him out with a family
matter.”

“
Family matter
. That’s a
rather droll euphemism, isn’t it? It’s right up there with
matters to attend to
.”

I smiled. Ambivalence or not, I didn’t want to
jeopardize that special access, so I changed the
subject.

“
Curt Sykes and his orchestra will
be at the Trianon,” I said.

“
And
?”

“
Feel like dinner and dancing this
Saturday night?”

“
The Trianon, huh?”

I nodded.

“
So, tough guy, you feel up to
skipping and shuffling with me at Seattle’s finest
ballroom?”

“
I’m sure.”

“
Do you think those gumshoes can
take the strain?”

“
Feet of steel, Miss Paget. Feet of
steel.”

She closed her eyes and put her fingertips to
her eyebrows. “I’m getting a vision. I’m seeing you in a truck. You
have a sheepish, desperate look on your face. You’re hauling a load
of typing that needs to be done.”

“
Cynical you. How do you know it’s
not your enchanting company I’m after?”

“
Are you sure it’s my company you’re
enchanted with?”

“
Am I that transparent?”

“
Like a display window at the Bon
Marché.”

Cissy was a brown-haired, narrow-lipped package
of sweet-and-sour candy. She had those innocent chestnut eyes that
crinkled when she beamed a smile that said the two of you were
pulling a fast one on humanity. She’d been engaged in the fall of
’44, and her fiancé was killed six months before V-J Day. When I
met her she was in her early twenties and convinced the whole world
had gone loony—which of course it had. She was amusing company if
you liked pert and brassy, annoying if you didn’t. She related to
me with a fun-loving air. Slide this banister with me, tough guy.
Lose the umbrella, Gunnar, can’t you see it’s raining? But like
most of us walking wounded, she was assuaging pain. She failed
miserably in trying to hide her empathy. She helped support her
widowed mother with whom she lived in Magnolia. At a showing of
Bambi,
she led fellow patrons in a bawling jag. And more
than once I caught her sniffling over some tragedy in the
newspaper.

Cissy and I were buddies, but I was in no way
immune to her feminine charms. I watched her taut rump slightly
seesaw as she walked back to her workstation.

“
Shouldn’t you be examining your
mail
, Gunnar?” she asked without having to look
back.

“
You
are
a mind
reader.”

She shot me a glance before she went through
the door. “In studying the orangutan’s mating habits, I’ve learned
telepathy is not a requirement.”

I entered the inner pigeonhole before reading
my mail. I stuffed my parcel in my desk drawer next to a paperback
copy of Damon Runyon’s
Take It Easy
. It was one of those
specially printed for men in the armed forces during the war. It
had helped me fend off many a boring moment. I kept it for reasons
I still can’t explain. An abandoned half-eaten éclair sat next to
it. Its carapace was flaky but it still tasted okay.

Dag’s remodeling project left me with a window.
I raised it and took in my minuscule view of Market Street. It was
the beginning of June, and mild out. Rain had pelted the city
during the night, so the filtered air smelled fresh as garments
dried on a clothesline. Only a couple of small clouds hung around
the edges of an azure sky. The Italianate storefronts had the tint
of a faded postcard—which reminded me I had two letters to
read.

I chewed on my éclair as I opened the top
letter. It was from the American Legion. They wanted me to join up.
I sailed their letter and the last scrap of éclair into what my old
partner used to call the “spilth receptacle.”

The second item was a “Glad you ain’t here,”
card from Honolulu, sent by an army buddy named Leahy. A color
cartoon was on the front showing a goofy-looking tourist gyrating
with three brown hula cuties. On the inside he’d written, “This
beats huggin’ trees in the Hurtgen any day.”

The krauts taught us to be tree huggers in the
Hurtgen Forest. Normally you’d kiss the earth when shelled. But in
the Hurtgen, the krauts used shells with fuses set to blow in the
treetops, showering the ground with hot steel and wood slivers.
Being one with a tree lowered your odds in the old shrapnel
lottery.

I stood Leahy’s belated piece of gallows humor
on the corner of my desk just above the spilth receptacle. I
decided it could stay for awhile.

The mail was read, and there were no customers
to delay the telephone call I had to make.

Rikard Lundeen was friendly, but our
conversation was predictably brief. He insisted that we talk face
to face. I agreed to meet him downtown for lunch.

“
Surprised at my choice of a
bistro?” Rikard Lundeen asked, with a mock grin that caused his
thin mustache to ripple.

“
Should I be?” I said, after
swallowing. “It’s got ambiance, atmosphere, and a house specialty
that makes it a subterranean paradise. Who am I to knock an
institution?”

His grin remained.

Rikard Lundeen could easily have passed for
under sixty instead of almost seventy, and he had those doted-on
looks that money hires. But it was more than that. He was one of
those incredibly lucky survivors of the genetic lottery. He’d
inherited an amazingly lean physique that he aided and abetted with
exercise and regular visits from a masseuse. His nails were
precisely manicured and his full head of gray hair was carefully
groomed and slicked straight back like those dandies you used to
see on the covers of
The Saturday Evening Post
.

The lunch menu was easy. You either had
the-gentleman-will-take-a-chance hash or the house specialty:
corned beef and cabbage. We ordered the specialty. He picked at
his. I wolfed mine down.

“
I thought about having you as my
guest at my club, but I wasn’t sure you’d be comfortable doing
business there. I thought you’d feel out of place.”

He knew that I knew I’d never see the inside of
his club. Not as his guest anyway. I kept chewing.

“
Besides, I decided I wanted the
privacy this place provides me. I’ve eaten here at the Moonglow off
and on for years. Getting among the people clears the mind. Mixing
with the ordinary man renews the senses.”

And it reassured him who was still on top, I
thought but of course didn’t voice. The ordinary man is an effusive
back-slapper. Lundeen was calculatingly reserved and congenial only
when it suited him. The ordinary man dreams big but is tormented by
bugaboos. Lundeen bankrolled and profited from the dream factories
and torture chambers. The ordinary man defies the luck of the draw
at every turn and his entire life is an uphill battle. Rikard
Lundeen was a hardboiled pragmatist who printed and sold the
lottery tickets others had to buy and he lived on top of the hill
they never scaled.