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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