Clarence looked at the box. “Krispy Kreme donuts?”
He said it like they were bad. “You Christians got something against donuts?”
“Per capita, Christians eat more donuts than anybody. You should come to our men’s meetings.”
“How much are the donuts?”
“Voluntary donations. For you, free.”
“Do you have to stay for the Bible study, or can you just pick up the donuts and leave?”
“You have to stay ten minutes for each donut you eat. That’ll keep you there for the whole hour.”
I opened the box and handed it to him. “I have a buddy who writes murder mysteries, and he’s always calling me for advice. This guy mentions Krispy Kreme in his books, like three times on a single page, hoping somebody who works with the company will give him a gift certificate or a year’s supply or something.”
“That doesn’t sound professional.”
“Yeah, people can be so pathetic. Pass me a Krispy Kreme, will you?”
Clarence reached for the glazed raspberry.
“No, give me the New York cheesecake. No, that’s a chocolate iced glazed cruller, Mulch’s favorite. Pass it over to him, would you? Sorry, that’s key lime pie.” He closed the box and dropped it on my lap.
I pointed at the house. “Look, Suda’s moving. Light went on in the front room.”
I saw blinds open slightly and a face peeking out the bay window, looking the other direction, straight out, then at us.
“Don’t move,” I said. “Stay exactly where you are.”
Ten minutes later it was boredom as usual. Hopes rise and fall on stakeouts.
“So, tell me about your world,” I said. “Berkley’s concerned about subscribers?”
“Revenues are down. Too many competing news sources—TV, radio, the Internet.”
“Plus people finally realizing the Tribune’s garbage.”
“You say you don’t read the paper, so you don’t know what you’re criticizing, do you?”
“You walk the beat with our street cops? Didn’t think so. You don’t know who you’re criticizing.”
“Where I come from ‘beat cop’ has another meaning. When you’ve been beaten just for being black, you don’t overflow with trust.”
“Don’t judge us all by the bad ones.”
“My point exactly,” Clarence said. “And if you think you could write better than what you read in the Trib, submit me a column. If it’s good enough, I’ll see that it’s printed.”
“No kidding?”
“No kidding. Tell your own story. First person, detective talking to the people about investigating murders. Go for it. Turn it in when you’re ready.”
“I will.”
“Pardon me if I don’t hold my breath. Anyway, tell me about this police morale problem.”
“You think I’m going to say something you can use against us?”
“Off the record.”
“Morale? Well, there’s the budget cuts, not to mention all the bad publicity the Trib’s given us.”
“The Trib didn’t shoot an unarmed law-abiding citizen.”
“That was one in a million, okay? People don’t appreciate cops. Truth is, we risk our lives every day for whiners and gripers. And cops are getting laid off. Guys come to work, check for blood on their office doorposts, and hope the angel of death passes them over.”
“Sounds like you’ve been reading the Bible.”
“Just a figure of speech.” I hesitated, not knowing how to say it. “Listen, I know there are racist cops. And I know what they did to your daddy. I want you to know I’d have been proud to have him as my father.”
“You would’ve gotten funny looks if he were your father. Still, I appreciate what you’re saying. Daddy really enjoyed the time he spent with you. He liked you. I never thought I’d tell you this, but Geneva says I should …”
“What?”
“Before he died, Daddy asked me to keep an eye on you.”
“Why?”
“Well, since you asked … he wanted you to know Jesus.”
“He said that?”
Kim Suda’s front door opened. She walked briskly to her car, got in, and pulled out of the driveway. We ducked low, though she probably wouldn’t have seen us anyway since I’d parked past her place behind another car.
I waited until she turned right off Patty Court onto Woodard, then started the car and followed her to the next turn, right again on 78th, then left on Jackson. Eventually we were on Stark. I had to stay way behind her because of the light traffic. She drove Stark to 162nd, turned right, and took a quick left into the parking lot of a 7-Eleven. I pulled into a real estate building lot across the street. I turned off my lights and backed around so I had a clear view of the store Suda entered. I grabbed my binoculars from under the front seat.
“There’s a small pair in the glove box,” I said to Clarence. “Just toss the pizza to Mulch.”
He handed the pizza back, where an invisible entity dismembered it. Clarence held up his binoculars. “We’re going to watch what she buys? Seems a little … intrusive.”
“That’s surveillance,” I said.
She’d veered left and gone to the far end of the store by a glass cooler filled with milk. She slowed down near a man whose back was to us. He was flipping through a magazine. I got out of the car and found the best place in the shadows, which put me right next to a rhododendron bush. I had to keep moving to keep her in view, but fortunately the front of the store was glass.
Suda turned up an aisle where she appeared to be looking at medications. Sominex? I could see her face once in a while, but a slight move one way or the other obscured her. I saw her face and realized her lips were moving.
“She’s talking,” I said to Clarence, who’d exited the car and was now mostly behind the rhody, eclipsing the moon and looking over my shoulder.
“Talking to herself?”
“No, to that guy in the black coat standing a couple of feet from her on the other side of the aisle. See him?”
“Why don’t they stand closer if they’re talking?”
“Because they don’t want to look like they’re talking. Suda and this guy didn’t come together, and they won’t leave together.”
They talked for five minutes. I could see only the guy’s back. He was wearing a navy blue stocking cap. I looked away only to take an occasional glance at Mulch, who was exploring the inside of the car without supervision. I could see Suda’s lips moving periodically. I wished I’d studied lipreading. The man handed her something.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“A brown envelope.”
“Evidence? A payoff? Bet it’s not a birthday card.”
Suda stepped to the cooler, opened the door, and grabbed a bottled water. Walking up a different aisle, away from the guy she’d been talking to, she made her purchase, got in her car, and headed back onto Stark.
“Why aren’t we following her?” Clarence asked.
“Because we know who she is and where she lives.”
The man continued to gaze at his magazine. A minute after Suda pulled away, he took it to the front desk. Paid cash. With his stocking cap pulled down and various things blocking my view, it was hard to get a good look at his face. But just as he pointed his remote to unlock his car, he looked up. The streetlight caught his face.
“I don’t believe it,” I said.
“It looks like …”
We both slunk back to the car. I turned the key, but kept the lights off. “Stay low.”
After he was a hundred feet down the road, I followed. No traffic, either to fight or cover me. He went all the way down to Foster, turned left, then turned right exactly where I knew he would. Still a hundred feet back, I saw him slow down, turn into a driveway, and stop. I couldn’t see it, but I knew he was punching a code and a gate was swinging open.
We sat there, car idling.
“Was it really him?” Clarence asked.
&nb
sp; “Yeah. If I had the slightest doubt, I don’t now because that’s his driveway he just went up, security entrance and all. I don’t know what it means, but we just found a gold nugget in the rocks and mud. Kim Suda had a clandestine meeting and a handoff at 3:15 a.m.… with Edward Lennox, chief of police!”
20
“There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.”
SHERLOCK HOLMES, THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 4, 10:00 A.M.
I DIED IN 2003, when Sharon died. I went on breathing, but it was a technicality.
Since then I’ve felt alive only at key points in an investigation when the adrenaline flows, or in isolated moments with close friends, like Mulch or Jake.
These thoughts came over me at 10:00 a.m., which is late to sleep in, unless you’ve gone to bed at 5:00 a.m. I sat up in my bed, sipping French roast and feeling Mulch’s hot breath on my toes. He seemed to have a stomachache; he’d been emitting fumes reminiscent of a paper mill.
My old brownstone is a sanctuary from human beings, which is why I usually don’t answer the door and seldom answer the phone. When Sharon was around, I enjoyed people more.
She was kind, but honest. Once she told me, “You dance like a guy tilting a pinball machine. Relax.” So I learned to relax, becoming suave and debonair. At least I stopped tilting her.
We danced the jitterbug. The slow jitterbug, not the fast one. Neither of us ever wanted it to end.
But it did.
The coffee was cold now. Not much reason to get out of bed. But even less to stay there.
As I drove to downtown Portland, I phoned Officer Paul Anderson, calling in the hours he and Griffin owed me for flushing their holdup man out of his apartment. Tomorrow was Kim Suda’s day off. Could one of them follow her to lunch, to her martial arts class, to anywhere and everywhere? Maybe take pictures?
I walked into Grayson’s Fine Pens, a store for fountain pen connoisseurs. I’d never been in such a store and didn’t know they existed until seeing it on a website. The fountain pen specialist had a contemplative look on an expansive face, with cheeks so fleshy they could use support. There were two sets of shoulders, his and the suit’s. His tie had been loosened, and his white dress shirt was a mass of wrinkles.
“Rupert Bolin at your service,” he said.
When he leaned over, a ridge of white flesh emerged above his low-slung belt. I thought of taking his picture and posting it on my refrigerator as a warning. Relatively speaking, I’m still a fine specimen. Rupert was about nine hundred Krispy Kremes ahead of me.
I showed him a half dozen of the professor’s fountain pens. He looked them over, called them by name, nodded appreciatively at two of them, and dismissed the other four as pens for lowlifes. He spoke rapturously of the joy of fountain pens. Here I’d wasted my life bringing killers to justice when I could have been a pen collector.
“What do people do with fountain pens?” I asked.
He looked at me as if I’d asked, “What do people do with a porterhouse steak?”
“Humor me,” I said. “Pretend I know nothing about fountain pens.”
He sighed, looking upward. I followed his gaze. Ceiling tiles.
“Where do I begin? A fountain pen is a fine instrument in the hands of a master artist. Artisans use fountain pens for special occasions. For important documents. For poetry and love letters. And sketch art, the type you might frame.”
I nodded earnestly.
“It’s a hobby you should consider. We had our first Portland fountain pen show in 2004, at the Embassy Suites. It was a big success. You must have heard about it.”
“I’m sure I must have. Was it on ESPN?”
“It was thrilling.”
“I can only imagine. Who wants to watch the Packers play the Bears when you can go to a fountain pen show?”
“My sentiments exactly. We have a strong presence on the Internet, you know.”
“Do we?”
“There are over fifty websites of fountain pen dealers, hobbyists, and enthusiasts.”
“Fifty? I wouldn’t have thought there’d be more than thirty-five.”
“You’ve no doubt visited the sites.”
“No doubt.” I’d visited one. “I found you on Bill’s Fountain Pen website.”
He beamed.
“Look,” I said, “I adore fountain pens, but I’m having a hard time explaining my devotion to … the uninitiated. Novices. You know what I’m saying?”
He nodded sympathetically. “In an age of e-mails and BICs—” he nearly spat the word—“and cookie-cutter mass production, fountain pens are elegant. They tie us to the past. They are handheld history. In an age of encroaching illiteracy, they make us more cultured, more refined, more literary.”
“More literary?”
“They make us better wordsmiths. They stimulate thought and reflection. They are tools of articulation and civility.”
“Okeydokey,” I said. “And … how does that all work?”
“When you put the nib of the pen in the ink, you can write perhaps eight words. Maybe a short sentence. Then you have to dip the pen again.”
“Seems inconvenient.”
He looked like I’d called his mother a name. “The best things in life take time. A love letter takes time. People are so used to keyboards and e-mails that they’ve lost the love of thoughtful language. They don’t stop to think. They just spew out words. No wonder the writing is so thoughtless, so careless, so urbane, so …”
“Quick?”
“Quick is not always good.”
I thought of a few instances when it isn’t and nodded.
He insisted that I drop my business card in the drawing for a set of three fancy fountain pens on display. The sign said the set was worth two hundred dollars, which was about $198 more than I would have paid for it. He also insisted that I sign up for his monthly fountain pen newsletter. I pulled out my BIC pen, saw his shocked stare, assured him I’d found it on the sidewalk, then took the green Paradise fountain pen he handed me and started to write the address of Clarence Abernathy. But I wasn’t sure on the house number, so I wrote my address instead.
For a change of pace, I met my cronies at Powell’s City of Books. Occupying a whole city block, with over a million new and used books, it’s a book lover’s paradise. They display a framed article from the Washington Post calling it “the best bookstore in the world.” Powell’s probably thinks the Washington Post is the best newspaper in the world, but that’s another issue. I don’t go to Powell’s for the politics.
I came an hour early to find a space at the world’s largest bookstore, with the world’s smallest parking garage. Six thousand in-store customers a day, and they have forty lousy spaces. I wedged into an imaginary space, and when an attendant scowled, I showed him my badge and he backed away so I wouldn’t smell the marijuana.
No matter what you believe, you can find a section in Powell’s to make you feel better about it and another section to make you question it or get mad at somebody. I go there when I want to feel literary and absorb wisdom. Looking at the bestseller tables near the entrance, I wonder about the wisdom part. But I love that old-book smell, and they’ve got the great detective novels buried amidst the not-so-great.
I entered at Tenth and Burnside determined to book my way to World Cup Coffee and Tea, passing by new arrivals, literature, classics, and reference works to get to sci-fi, thrillers, and mysteries. With seven thousand mysteries to sort through, there’s lots of rocks and mud but plenty of gold awaiting discovery. Everybody’s a detective at Powell’s. Right when I got to the section I wanted, I had to stop. One minute of Powell’s time is one hour of real time.
I put on imaginary blinders to beeline to Clarence and Jake at the World Cup, by the humor and audio books, where some come for free Wi-Fi and I come for the walnut sticky buns and chocolate croissants. They trust you with five books, so I’ve spent lots of time here with Ross Macdonald and Raymond Chan
dler—no relation—occasionally getting goo on their pages. That’s part of the character of used books.
Joining Clarence and Jake in the cafe, I chose a grilled chicken and Gouda cheese sandwich, while Clarence took the egg salad and Jake a corn and black bean salad with chicken tortilla soup.
Two minutes after ordering we were talking about issues raised in Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian and Lewis’s Mere Christianity. Though I didn’t bring the books, it took Jake and Clarence only five minutes to find both on the shelves while I worked over my sandwich.
“God’s existence is wishful thinking,” I said after ten minutes of discussion. “It makes people feel better to think there’s a supreme being.”
“For me it was the opposite,” Jake said. “The last thing I wanted was to believe in God. It required changes I didn’t want to make. God has a way of interfering with your life. Big time. It was only later that I realized the changes were in my best interest.”
“So,” Clarence said, “your wishful thinking wasn’t that God existed, but that He didn’t?”
“Exactly. That’s what C. S. Lewis experienced. Ultimately, he bowed to the God he desperately didn’t want to believe in. When he became a theist, before he became a Christian, he called himself the most reluctant convert in all of England. Lewis went from atheism to agnosticism to belief in God. Later he came to believe in Christ. And that’s when he really found joy.”
I’d left room for a walnut sticky bun with extra butter. (I may die a few years sooner, but I’ll die happy.)
“But what if I don’t want to become a Christian?”
“Isn’t that where the wishful thinking comes in?” Jake asked. “Shouldn’t you just want to believe whatever’s true? I mean, if Jesus isn’t who He claimed to be, then don’t believe in Him. If He is, then do. It’s not about what you want to believe, but what’s really true.”
“You don’t want to believe the murderer’s a detective,” Clarence said. “But you do believe it, right?”
“I go where the evidence leads.”