Seattle is one of my favorite cities, and I often think that if I did not live in LA, I might live there. Where the sky over Los Angeles is more often dimensionless and ill-defined, Seattle is capped by a continually redefined skyscape of clouds that makes the sky there a visibly living thing, breathing as it moves, cooling the city and its people with a protective cloak, and washing the air and the land with frequent rains that come and go in a way that freshens the place and its people. You can get the best coffee in America in Seattle, and browse in some of the best bookstores, and fish for silver and blackmouth salmon, and, until recently, the real estate prices were so low compared to those in Southern California that herds of Californians moved there. A friend of mine from Orange County sold her house and used the equity to buy a beautiful home on the water at Bainbridge Island. Cash. She used the balance of her equity to invest in mutual funds, and now she spends the bulk of each day painting in watercolors and digging for butter clams. So many Californians did this that property values in the Seattle area went through the roof and many native Seattleites could no longer afford to live in their own town. Whenever I visit I say I'm from Oregon.
I picked up a Ford Mustang and a street map from the Sea-Tac rental people, then followed Highway 509 north toward Elliot Bay and a seafood house I know that lies in the shadow of the Space Needle. I had a crab cake sandwich and fried new potatoes and mango iced tea for lunch, then asked a parking meter cop for directions to Wilson Brownell's address. With any luck, Brownell and Clark might be sitting around Brownell's place right now. With any luck, I might be on the next flight back to LA and not even have to spend the night. It happens.
Brownell lived across the Duwamish Waterway in an older, working-class part of West Seattle called White Center. It is a community of narrow streets and old apartments and wood-framed homes surrounding a steel mill. Young guys with lean, angry faces hung around near the mill, looking like they wished they could get work there. The ground floor of Brownell's building fronted the street with a secondhand clothing store, a place that refinished maritime metalwork, and a video rental place called Extreme Video. The video place was papered with posters of Jackie Chan and young Asian women tied to chairs with thousands of ropes. Extreme.
I missed Brownell's building twice because I couldn't find the building numbers, then found it but couldn't find a place to park. I finally left the car by a hydrant six blocks away. Flexibility in the art of detection.
Three young guys in T-shirts were hanging outside the video place when I got back, drinking Snapple. One of them was wearing a Seattle Mariners cap, and all of them were sporting black Gorilla boots and rolled-cuff jeans. A stairwell protected by an unlocked wire door had been carved from the corner of the building just past the metalwork place. There was a directory on the wall, and a row of mailboxes with little masking-tape tags for names and apartment numbers, only Brownell wasn't one of the names on the directory and the names on the masking tape had faded to oblivion. I said, 'Any of you guys know Wilson Brownell?'
The one with the cap said, 'Sure. He comes in all the time.'
'You know which apartment he's in?'
'I'm pretty sure it's apartment B. On the second floor.' You see how friendly it is in Seattle?
I took the stairs two at a time, then went along the hall looking for B. I found it, but the apartment across the hall was open and an older woman with frizzy hair was perched inside on an overstuffed chair, squinting out at me. She was clutching a TV remote the size of a cop's baton and watching C-Span. I gave her a smile. 'Hi.'
She squinted harder.
I couldn't hear anything inside Brownell's apartment. No radio, no TV, no voices making furtive plans, just the C-Span and street noises. It was an older building without air-conditioning, so there would be open windows. I knocked, and then I rang his bell.
The woman said, 'He's at work, ya dope.' Just like that, ya dope. 'Middle'a the day, any worthwhile man finds himself at work.' Eyeing me like that's where I should be.
She was maybe seventy, but she might've been eighty, with leathery ochre skin and salt and pepper hair that went straight up and back like the Bride of Frankenstein. She was wearing a thin cotton housecoat and floppy slippers and she was pointing the remote at me. Maybe trying to make me disappear.
'Sorry if I disturbed you.' I gave her my relaxed smile, the one that says I'm just a regular guy going about a regular guy's business, then made a big deal out of checking my watch. 'I could've sworn he said to come by at two.' It was six minutes before two. 'Do you know what time he's due back?' The World's Greatest Detective swings into full detection mode to fake out the Housebound Old Lady.
The squint softened, and she waved the remote. Inside, congressional voices disappeared. 'Not till five-thirty, quarter to six, something like that.'
'Wow, that's a lot later than I planned.' I shook my head and tried for a concerned disappointment. 'An old buddy of ours is in town and we're supposed to get together. I wonder if he's been around.' For all I knew Clark was inside asleep on the couch. You cast a line, you hope for a bite.
She made herself huffy. 'I wouldn't know. I don't spy on people.'
'Of course.'
'People come and people go. You're old and livin' alone, no one gives you the time a day.' She went back to C-Span, and now I could smell cat litter and turnips.
'Well, he's a little shorter than me, thinner, glasses, a hairline back to here.'
She turned up the sound and waved the remote. 'People come, people go.'
I nodded, Mr. Understanding, Mr. Of-Course-I-Wouldn't-Expect-You-to-Remember. Then I slapped my head and made like I'd just realized that I was the world's biggest moron. 'Jeez, he must've wanted me to meet him at work! I'll bet we're supposed to meet there, then go out! Of course!' The World's Greatest Detective employs the Relatable Human Failing technique in an effort to cultivate rapport.
The woman frowned at her television, then muted the sound again. 'What a bullshit story.'
'Excuse me?'
Her face cracked into a thin, angry smile that said she was as sharp as a straight razor, and if a guy like me didn't watch out she would hand back his head. 'If there's something you wanna know, just ask. You don't have to make up a bullshit story about old friends getting together. What a crock!'
I smiled again, but now the smile was saying, okay, you nailed me. 'Sorry about that.' Shown up by the Bride of Frankenstein.
She made a little shrug, like it wasn't a big thing. 'You hadda try, you just went too far with it. A guy making out as nice as you wouldn't be caught dead being friends with an asswipe like Will Brownell.' I guess they didn't get along. 'What's the real story?'
'Brownell's friend owes me six hundred dollars.'
She cackled and shook her head. 'I mighta known. Sooner or later it always gets down to money, doesn't it?'
'Uh-huh.' Everyone relates to greed. 'How about the guy I described? Has he been around?'
She made the shrug again, but it seemed sincere. 'That's not much of a description, young man. Could be anyone.'
'Fair enough. Can you tell me where Brownell works?'
'He works at some printing place.'
' New World Printing?'
'Maybe.' The other Seattle number that Clark had phoned.
I said, 'You won't tell Brownell that I was around, will you?'
She turned back to the television. 'What'd the sonofabitch ever do for me?' Nope, I don't guess they got along.
I went back down the stairs to the street and checked out the building. Two of the kids were gone, but the kid in the Mariners cap was sitting in the doorway to the video store on a wooden stool, inspecting a car magazine. The C-Span Lady's apartment was above the metalwork place at the front of the building, which meant Brownell's apartment was in the rear. I walked down to the end of the block, rounded the corner, then came up the service alley. A rickety fire escape ran up the back of the building to the roof like a metal spiderweb. I counted windows and visualized the location of the C-Span Lady's apartment so that I would know which windows belonged to Brownell. There were a lot of windows. Potted plants nested around some of the windows and drying clothes hung from the rails outside others, and a kid's tricycle rested on the fire escape outside still another. Figure that one. Brownell's windows were closed.