Chapter Two

That night, Garcia helped with serving dinner for the homeless men who took shelter at the Good Shepard. It's exhausting work for the volunteers and shamelessly low-paid staff. Many of the homeless, debilitated by drugs, alcohol, mental illness, and existing in a harsh environment, don't function well in such simple living situations as eating at tables or sleeping in beds. Even if the beds are little more than old army mattresses covered with wool blankets on even older army cots.

Nearly all the staff had come to the Mission as clients at one time or another; the work rehabilitated them and kept them off the street. In the past, Sarah worked every day of the week, putting in 12 hour days, sometimes more. Then, with a husband and looming motherhood, she began to cut back, albeit reluctantly. "I'm a control freak, I guess," she liked to say.

But Garcia would have none of it. "I married you for sex," he teased. "And lots of it. Any time, any place, any way. If you're going to be too tired to service me, I'll just have to go someplace else." He joked about her not being around much but he felt serious about it too. A person doesn't get married to spend their life alone.

"Oh, what's the matter," she teased back, talking in baby-talk. "Poor little Dicky need lots of attention?" she punned. The next day, Sarah elevated James, a staff member with a propensity for wearing Stetson hats and cowboy boots, to the position of associate director. James got a small salary increase, which meant Sarah made up the difference by taking a pay cut. The pay-off came in having less hours to work and every other weekend off. "It's the best I can do for now," she explained to her impatient husband.

Then, in her eighth month with Sally, Sarah cut back some more. The staff encouraged her. She divvied up the hours between the volunteers and regulars, paying the latter a little more. They all protested they didn't need the money; it wasn't much anyway. What they wanted to see was Sarah taking it easy. After Sally's birth, they all ended up helping with child care. "This kid is going to have the largest extended family Seattle has ever seen," Sarah bragged.

With Sally bedded down between them, Seattle's only former University professor-journalist shared his day with his wife. Her initial impression of Charles Llewellyn Colt II, based on Garcia's description was, "Sounds like some of the men here."

"He would be if he didn't own half of Washington. One moment I think he's crazy, the next he's as normal as you or me, and then he's crying like a baby. I think the guy must be wacko. It's no wonder every board he sat on put him out to pasture."

"So why are you doing his laundry?"

Defensibly, Garcia replied, "I'm not doing his laundry. There's a story in this. I can play up the historical angle about, "The Plant That Never Was." You know, the hard work of finding it, how Mauldaur died, only for the thing to die out in captivity. It's kind of like an endangered species disappearing from the wild, only in reverse."

"I'm doubtful it would sell if the Reporter wasn't committed to publishing anything remotely investigative by you."

Garcia felt his ego being trampled. "This is an honest piece," he protested. Garcia didn't want to fully admit it yet, in case Colt turned out to be a nut, but the orchid story had intrigued him.

"Yes, dear, it is. But somehow lacking the depth of your expose on graft in the highway department or the contractor pay-offs and cost over-runs with the new sports stadium." From the way Sarah lay quietly in bed, Garcia knew she was thinking. "There's something else that bothers me."

"I know what you mean," he butted in. "How could the person everybody in Seattle thinks is a penny-pinching skinflint spend millions to find some flower because he thinks it's pretty? For God's sake; he still drives a '66 Buick! Even my car isn't that old."

"Very funny, Garcia, but that isn't it."

"What, then?"

"What, exactly, does OSS stand for?"

"Office of Strategic Services."

"But what does it stand for? What is it?"

"It isn't around anymore. It became the CIA"

"Really?" she said, her tone of voice loaded with significance.

"What do you mean, 'Really?'"

"What kind of connection do you suppose there could be between some guy in the drug manufacturing business and the CIA?"

"It wasn't the CIA back then. The OSS was in the business of winning World War Two, not making drugs. All that comes later with Watergate, Ollie-by-Golly, and the general eroding of the public's confidence in 20th century federal government."

"Who are you," Sarah chided, "the William Safire of the far left?"

"Sorry for the editorializing."

Sarah lay quietly for a moment, stroking Garcia's thigh in an absentminded way. "What I meant was, how do you know that this OSS group wasn't into doing dirty tricks?"

"Movies. TV."

"That's a great source, Garcia. I wouldn't quote it in any story you write," was Sarah's derisive reply.

"O.K. You're right; I don't know. Maybe they were looking for something like LSD to put in the Japanese drinking water on Iwo Jima." He thought about it for a moment before saying, "Somebody I knew in college was really interested in this stuff. I have faint memories of him telling stories about the OSS toppling the legitimate government in Iran; it's no coincidence there was a conference in Teheran between the Big Four."

"Iran?"

"Yeah. Even then our government was willing to wage war for oil."

Getting back on track, Sarah asked, "What about all his relatives who died of drug overdoses? Isn't that weird?"

"I thought about that too but I couldn't find anything on what drug it was. It does seem kind of an odd way to die for that era. I suppose every era has its drug, but none of the literature of the time really reflects such usage."

"What do you mean?"

"For instance, Fitzgerald and Hemingway, after the first war to end all wars," he stopped to absorb an anticipated kick from Sarah under the covers, "wrote about their generation sinking into dissipation from drink and absinth. After double-u double-u two, people either died of McCarthy hysteria or of Eisenhower boredom in the 50s. Except for a mention now and then in the avant-garde about heroin, post-war literature is bereft of drug use. Until the 60s and Dr. Tim, it was a white bread world of Father Knows Best and Leave it To Beaver. You know, everybody's favorite television shows these days."

"You're editorializing again," she warned.

"I can't help it. That's what I'm paid to do."

"Garcia?"

"Hmm?"

Sarah's voice began to drift off into sleep. "If he worked for the CIA until 1947, why did Colt tell you he was plant hunting in Malaysia on his own?"

"Bless your little heart, sweetie, I don't know. That's a question worth following up on." But she had fallen asleep and Garcia wasn't far behind her.

He had dreams that night of beating trails through jungles of orchids. Large, prune-faced fruits dangled like Medusa's snakes from the plants.

The following day, Garcia woke up at six, got out of bed gingerly so Sarah and the baby wouldn't wake, and in the morning darkness donned his bicycling clothes. He walked down two flights of stairs to the main floor of the Good Shepard, keeping to the wall and avoiding the squeaky boards. The sounds of men snoring from different quarters wafted through the stale air and reverberated softly against the old brick of the building. Unconsciously, Garcia identified familiar voices in the cacophony of sleeping people.

Guided by night-lights, he passed though the large dining hall with its long rectangular tables and folding chairs stacked up against the north wall. He walked through the industrial-sized kitchen, its stainless steel sinks and counters reflecting the scant light given off by 1 watt bulbs, and stepped out into the alley behind the Mission. Triple-chained to an eight inch diameter bolt cemented into the building, the back porch railing, and a 100 year old pulverized manhole cover was Garcia's bike. He removed the chains, locked them back to their anchors, mounted the two-wheeler and rode off into the gloom.

Yesterday's rain had gone away and faint traces of stars shone in the dark. Along with streetlights and the glow of neon, they reflected in puddles made by potholes and in the little streams of water that collected in parallel grooves worn into the roadway. Garcia pedaled south, under the Alaskan Way Viaduct, along the deserted truck route that lead to Seattle's waterfront docks. Yesterday, after meeting Colt, he had arranged a rendezvous with a man in West Seattle who promised some information on another story Garcia had in the works. "This better not be a wild goose chase," Garcia had warned the man. "I've had enough of mysteries for today."

"It's not," the voice assured him.

Garcia rode across the low bridge over the Duwamish River, pedaling briskly toward off the chill. Street lamps illuminated his way so Garcia never bothered riding with a light. He knew this route well, biking it several times a week in the mornings before going to work. He ran the light at West Marginal Way, weaving through traffic stalled by a jack-knifed semi, avoided the construction project where the Port of Seattle was expanding their container ship facility, and picked up the Alki bike trail.

Alki, with the only sandy beach for miles around, is the place the first settlers of Seattle chose to make their homes. Alki also had the only flat ground close to the water. The present site of downtown consists of hills that even Romulus and Remus would have passed up. The city fathers built a log cabin on the beach and waited for prosperity, which even in 1851 was always just around the corner. They liked the heavy forests around here, seeing board feet and dollar signs. All went well until the first storm of the season knocked their log cabin down and the tide took it away. The founders moved across the Duwamish River, made their own flat ground by washing the hills down into Elliot Bay, and left Alki behind, undeveloped for nearly 50 years until first a trolley, than a bridge, linked Alki with the rest of the city.

Richard Garcia paused for a moment, letting his bicycle lean up against the waist-high cyclone fence the city had built to keep people from jumping off the seawall into the bay. Commuters, on their way downtown to work, whizzed by in a constant stream. A brilliant dot of light had appeared on the eastern horizon where he knew the Cascade Mountains to be. Second by second it expanded like an opening door until he could imagine the soundtrack from 2001: A Space Odyssey ringing in his ears.

"Kind of pretty, isn't it?" a soothing voice said from behind him. The voice held the hint of a younger man trying to sound older but lacked the deep huskiness that age truly brings to a man's vocalization.

Garcia nodded and watched as the dark autumn sky turned to deep purple, the stars winking out one by one. The emerging sun cast blinding light on the headstone high-rises of downtown, reflecting off a dozen buildings made of glass, bouncing back and forth between them in a frenzy of photon ping-pong. He could barely see the squat brick building of the Good Shepard Mission.

"Come out here often?" said the voice again.

Slightly annoyed at the early morning tourist question, Garcia turned slowly thinking of something deprecating to say.

"Sure is nice," said the stranger. The new sun illuminated a face set off by a huge nose. Under the proboscis a handsome handlebar mustache drooped over and tried to conceal a mouth of protruding lips. The man's ears stuck out at right angles from his head and gave the illusion of a barn with its doors open. He wore Pacific Northwest garb: Eddie Bauer this and Eddie Bauer that.

"Unless you're the person I'm waiting for, please go away and leave me alone."

The stranger assumed a posture of hurtful indignation. "Don't be in such a hurry to condemn a man, Mr. Garcia," he said. "I may have something you can use."

"Then, you are you the person who called my office yesterday?"

"The same."

"Do you have a name? Or should I call you Deep Throat?"

The stranger ignored the comment. "I hear you're working on a story about drugs and prostitution in our high schools."

"So?"

"It's sad isn't it? Dope is one thing, but hard drugs? And sex? Where will it all end? Whatever happened to family values?"

"I don't know, Buddy. I'm only paid to ask the questions, not provide the answers."

"Maybe I know something that'll help," the man prompted.

It sounded like he was being hit up for cash. "I don't pay for information." That wasn't necessarily true, but the stranger didn't need to know it. "If you got something, spill it. If you're going to be coy, get out of the way and let me finish my ride in peace."

The man's nostrils flared and in the streetlight Garcia noticed his eyes. They were lacking color, the eyes of an albino. "Nobody said anything about being paid." The lips pouted and almost met the nose. "You can sure be insulting. If you're not interested. . ." and he left the rest hanging.

Mechanically, Garcia responded, "O.K. I'm all ears," and automatically he began to search for something to write with.

The man reached in under his jacket and pulled out a manila envelope. "Here," he said as he shoved it at Garcia's face.

Garcia took the envelope and opened it. "This it?" He pulled out a few sheets of paper and a stack of photographs and looked at them without really seeing.

"Read it. You'll see."

"What are you? Some kind of commercial?"

The edges of the mustache arched up in a smile. He turned to go.

"What's your name, Buddy? I can't use this unless I know my source."

"Like you said, call me Deep Throat, he sang over his shoulder. He scooted across the street and got into a maroon light duty pick-up. He fired up the engine and pulled away from the curb.

"Very funny," Garcia shouted after him. He rushed to the street to record the truck's license plate but it was covered by a piece of cardboard. All Garcia could read was a reflective bumper sticker: "Yes on No." He grumbled to himself the entire ride home. Deep Throat and crazy old millionaires. "It's a wide, weird, wonderful world," he muttered to himself.

Garcia's job at the Good Shepard every morning, 8 to 10, was to help serve breakfast on the second shift. Being a former university professor of literature, and full time wise guy, Garcia had also taken it upon himself to continually remind Sarah and the staff that there was another, more proper, way to spell "Shepard." Nobody was more tired than Sarah in reminding Garcia that there may be another way to spell the word, but that wasn't how her former husband had done it. So, in turn, everyone would tease Garcia about his bald head and his lack of Spanish-speaking skills. He didn't seem to mind.

This morning, due to his conversation by the water, Garcia was late for breakfast. He sidled up behind Sarah, serving eggs and toast with the rest of the crew, put his arm around her waist and buried his face in her hair. "Mmmm. Good enough to eat," he said like a man in love. "This on the menu?"

"You're late, Baldy," she snapped. "It's after nine. Grab this spoon and get to work!"

"Heil, mine Capitán!" he responded, clicking his heels and saluting.

Sarah smiled, letting her ire dampen, and let amazement creep into her voice. "I can't mix a metaphor around here but you can mix German with Spanish." She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and said, "Gotta go, lover."

"Before you do, tell me what 'Yes on No' means."

"You're the investigative journalist around here. Investigate."

"But you're the activist in the family and you read all the bumper stickers."

"Aren't you working on a story about drugs in school?"

"Seems like everybody knows about it."

"Well, 'Yes on No' is a bond issue on the ballot next week to raise money to keep the, 'Just Say No to Drugs' program going. They have an office on 4th in the Blackwell Building."

"Ah; I knew that!"

"Sure you did, Sugar. Now, I really have to go."

"Go? Go where? I just got here."

"Go! You know."

"Oh! Of course. You have to go. How's our daughter?"

"Sleeping. And don't, I repeat, don't, go upstairs and wake her!"

Garcia saluted again. The men in line waited patiently while the two bantered. The regulars at the Mission knew Sarah and they appreciated her; she was their advocate with the City. They humored Garcia only because Sarah liked him and because he sometimes paid them for information and odd jobs. The staff at the Good Shepard had come to accept Garcia. At first they hadn't trusted him, being from L.A. and all.

When the last man had been fed and turned out onto the downtown streets to find work or panhandle, Garcia left the Mission and walked to his office at the Seattle Reporter. Seattle has two dailies; a morning paper which comes out at six AM and an afternoon that hits the streets at ten. Neither would make a journalist with any credentials sit up and take notice but that doesn't bother anyone too much. The Reporter wouldn't contribute anything to Pulitzer bestowing a prize on the Pacific Northwest either, but it serves as a weekly alternative to arts and entertainment news.

After moving up from Los Angeles right after the Gulf War, and with a newly formed reputation for solving problems, Garcia had been hired as Seattle's Woodward and Bernstein to beef up the Reporter's image. His current assignment, supposedly a close-kept secret, dealt with identifying the source of drugs supplied to local high school students. Shades of Tom Cruise, in a one-two punch that had everybody in town howling at the city administration, the pushers appeared to be supplying prostitutes to students as well. So far, Garcia had been disturbed to learn that someone in the school district was involved. But who?

He brought in the manila envelope the ugly man had given him, mumbled greetings to the office staff, and strode into the walled-off cubicle of the Reporter editor and publisher, Jane Manning. On the phone, she waved Garcia into the big easy chair by the only window in the office and shouted, "If you deadbeats don't pay your bill before we go to press, I'll pull your ad and leave the space blank." Garcia could hear another angry voice resonate through the receiver pushed tightly against Jane's head. "I don't care what it looks like," she replied, rising from her chair and poking the air with a finger to emphasize her point. "How about if I include a message that says you guys don't pay your bills?" With that, she slammed the receiver on the hook, stuck her tongue out at it, took a deep breath, smiled, and directed her attention to Garcia.

"Gee, Boss. I hope you never get angry with me."

Jane pulled at her pony-tailed brown hair and plopped down back into her chair. Slim, trim, and with a face that made men look twice, Jane Manning also favored tight fitting skirts and button-down shirts with open collars. Jane had a conservative streak in her that kept a tight rein on the political "bent" which Colt alluded to. But she played the game all downtown women played when it came to dressing for work, taking advantage of clothing styles to enhance her attractiveness. At home she wore Levis and work shirts. She spoke in a clipped, almost English fashion, when she wasn't yelling into the phone. "Not a chance; you're my ace reporter. Speaking of which ..."

"How's my drugs, sex, and rock 'n roll story?" he filled in. Jane nodded. "Exactly what I've come to talk about." He waited for her to nod again, twisted out of his jacket, stretched out in the chair, and contemplated the view out the window across Elliot Bay. He could just see the tiny city park where the ugly man had met him that morning. He filled her in on the details and finished by asking, "So who spilled the beans? No one is supposed to know about what I'm doing."

"You talk to people. They talk to people. Word gets around." She shrugged and pursed her lips. "Let's see the stuff that guy gave you."

Garcia had studied the contents during his walk to work. He watched Jane while she considered the color snapshots and thin

sheaf of handwritten pages. She appeared puzzled by what she saw. "This guy," Jane said, indicating one of the photos, "is the one who gave you this? Gave you pictures of himself with all these teenagers?"

"Uh-huh." Garcia pulled on his right ear with his left hand.

"What's he doing?"

"Giving, or taking something from all those kids."

She turned to the papers. There were several sheets, each with four columns. The first two columns listed dates and times; the first date being in February. Usually an "X;" occasionally, a first name; less often, a surname, appeared in the third column. The fourth column, headed with "envelope," had some sort of notation: "fat," "medium," or "thin." Jane tossed the whole wad on her desk and said, "So?"

Garcia left his chair by the window and sat on the corner of the desk. "The photos are keyed to the list. See?" He pointed to inked numbers in the lower right margin of each picture. "I assume the "fat, medium, thin" refers to the envelopes some of the kids are giving to my mystery man."

"Why not the other way around?"

"Could be. But my guess is the envelopes contain cash the kids are handing over in return for the packages they're getting in the other photos."

Jane considered the pictures again and noticed that Garcia was right. In some photos she saw an envelope; in others a small package rolled up in paper. Suddenly she knew what she was looking at and a grin spread across her face. "These are photos of pay-offs. Q.E.D. This is our sex and drug connection!" Then she sobered and handed Garcia a copy of the Seattle afternoon paper. The front page, from the 'Asst Supt Dead' banner to the fold, displayed the color photograph of an unattractive older man, with barn door ears, protruding lips and a handlebar mustache. The eyes in the grainy photo were plainly blue.

"What the..?" Garcia almost shouted in surprise. He paced the tiny office and recited from the newspaper. "Robert Oprestig, 66, Assistant Superintendent of Schools, was found dead this morning," he read. "If he'd retired at 65 like you're suppose to, he might be alive and kicking today," Garcia added.

"Richard!" Jane complained. "Have some sympathy, for God's sake."

He smiled at Jane, the first shock of the headline passing, and continued reading, skipping along. "Body discovered by neighbor on victim's driveway. Foul play suspected. Battered about the neck and head." He scanned the rest of the article which included a brief biography. "Says he was a Socialist," Garcia remarked. "That must be why he only made it to assistant superintendent."

Jane knew he was baiting her. "All they want is to overthrow the government," Jane answered.

He read on. "Native of Alexandria, Virginia; graduate of Georgetown University; world-traveler who returned time and again to Bougainville," he read on."

"Isn't that a plant?" Jane asked.

Garcia shrugged and continued to let his eyes sweep across the article. Then, something struck him, bold as day. He looked at the words again to make sure he hadn't been dreaming. "Orchid aficionado," it said. "'Member of American Orchid Society. Always wore an orchid pin on his lapel to demonstrate his commitment to the popularization and propagation of these exotic tropical flowers,'" he quoted.

Garcia laid down the paper, returned to Jane's easy chair, and stared out the window. Two orchid lovers in 24 hours. Is that luck, or what?

"Must have happened right after you met Oprestig." When Garcia didn't reply, Jane went on. "Sunrise is a little past seven. The afternoon paper goes to press at eight. They had just enough time to hear about it and clear the front page. I bet your contacts with SPD will have more details by now. It's nearly eleven." When he didn't reply, Jane picked up Oprestig's packet and tossed it onto Garcia's lap. "Wake up time!" she cheerfully announced.

Garcia felt his stomach churning. He stood up and said, "I'll check up on this, Boss. There's something about the timing..." Garcia grabbed his jacket and, clasping the manila envelope of photos and notes, he left the room. Eschewing the elevator, he took the stairs down to the ground floor. By leaving the building that way, Garcia missed a visitor who wanted to free his hands.

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