Rainy City by Earl Emerson

Author:Earl Emerson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Private Investigators, Thomas (Fictitious Character), Mystery & Detective, Political, Hard-Boiled, General, Seattle (Wash.), Black, Fiction
ISBN: 9780345429438
Publisher: Fawcett
Published: 1985-01-02T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

BARB WITH THE LAUNDRY BOSOMS WAS RIGHT. WE STOPPED at a pay phone and I found Henry Waterman in the Seattle directory. A young-sounding woman answered the phone in a wheezy, high-pitched voice. She told me her name was Judy. I had not asked, but she told me anyway, as if it were habitually the first thing she announced.

“Hello. This is Judy.”

“I’m looking for a Henry Waterman.”

“Hank’s at work right now. Could I have him call you?”

“I need to see him today. Is he still working in a leather shop?”

“Oh, Jesus no. Hank gave that crap up years ago. That whole hippy gig went right out the window when Hank stopped doing acid, you know. No, he’s working at a tire re-capping plant in South Park. After hours, he plays softball for them. Pitches. You want the address?”

It was a twenty-minute drive. I pedaled the bike home ahead of Kathy, hopped into the truck and headed for South Park. It was a grimy industrial area in the city’s south end, and the roads were blanketed in mud the color of weak tea.

Parking in four inches of ooze, 1 picked my way through a fenced yard piled high with stacks of worn, shabby tires. A spindly boy who looked too young to be working legally was crouched on the roof of the building shoveling a gritty, black substance into buckets.

Hank Waterman was operating a machine in the back room, a grinder. He switched it off, and we both waited for it to stop screaming so we could hear each other.

Long, stringy hair dangling just over his shoulders, stubble on his chin, the inevitable baseball cap, tattered jeans and a plaid workshirt from Sears that might have last seen the inside of a washing machine in 1975— Hank Waterman had conscientiously cultivated slob-chic. Who said America had no. peasant class? And who said they didn’t wear a national uniform?

“You used to know Barb Fensterspinner?” I asked. Waterman nodded. “I spoke to her half an hour ago. She said you dated Melissa Nadisky.”

Hank Waterman scratched his grimy forehead with a black thumbnail and gave me a blank look. “Melissa Nadisky?”

“You knew her as Melissa Crowell.”

The light bulb lit up. “Melissa? Sure. How the hell is she?”

“That’s why I’m here, Hank. She’s missing. Her husband is in big trouble and we have to find her. Nobody seems to know where she might have gone.”

“Geez, she’s married? Somebody said she was married but I didn’t believe it. What kind of jam is her old man in? Dope? Dealin’ dope?”

“It’s a lot worse than that, pal. Murder.”

“Heavy, man. Shit, I haven’t seen her in years. Honest to God, Buddy. Ask Judy. I’m living with Judy. I been with her… oh, about three years. We even got a St. Bernard.”

“I’m trying to track down some of her old friends, that’s all. I thought you might know some of them. You see, we think she might have run off with an old boyfriend, or somebody she knew about the time she knew you.

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