Waxwings Read online

  Life’s toughest trials, Tom read, should not be faced alone—a sentiment that exactly mirrored his own feelings as he leafed through the Yellow Pages. The listings for “Attorneys” ran to nearly one hundred pages, the lawyers pitching their wares like barrow-boys in a street-market.

  THE NAME’S BENNETT. I’M A LAWYER.

  I KEEP PEOPLE OUT OF JAIL.

  IS YOUR FUTURE AT STAKE? PROTECTING THE

  RIGHTS OF THE ACCUSED IS ALL I DO.

  IF YOU’RE IN TROUBLE, YOU NEED EFFECTIVE,

  AGGRESSIVE DEFENSE.

  DON’T GET LOST IN A LEGAL MAZE!

  WE’LL FIGHT FOR YOU!

  PROFESSIONAL, DIGNIFIED, AGGRESSIVE.

  IF IN CUSTODY, CALL COLLECT.

  JAIL VISITS.

  The advertisers mentioned a spectacular variety of crimes in which they specialized, from traffic violations to capital murder, but the plight of being a person of interest wasn’t included. Nobody, apparently, had cornered the market in mistaken identities. In the end, Tom called Hamish McTurk of DeWitt, Olmsted, Grabowski, Lu & McTurk, hoping he would turn out to be an expatriate Scot with whom he could talk in his own language.

  The voice that came on the line was not Scottish. This branch of the McTurks must’ve left the Highlands during the Clearances. But the lawyer had heard of—and, better still, had heard—Tom Janeway.

  “Well, I’ll be darned,” he said. “Hey, Phil? Know who I’m talking to? Tom Janeway. Guy who does those commentaries on NPR.” Speaking back into the phone, he said: “Phil’s another fan of yours. We’re big listeners in this office. Last pledge drive, we gave a thousand dollars to KUOW.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “Bet that’s where you heard our name, huh? We’re sponsors. We like to think we’re pillars of the public-radio community, supporting quality talk of the kind that you do so well, Tom. Hey, do me a favor, will you? Say something with an r in it.”

  “Barracuda,” Tom said. “Brambles. Bankruptcy. Arrested.”

  “I’d know that voice anywhere. Phil—stick around for a minute. I’m going to put him on speaker. Listen for the r’s. That’s your radio signature, right, Tom—those r’s? They really knock me out.”

  “The thing is, I’ve run into a bit of a problem.”

  “Hear that? ‘Prrroblem!’ You’re a sport, Tom. I wouldn’t do this to you, but I know you got a great sense of humor. You make me laugh. Like, what you said about the dot-coms a little while back? Getting sunlight out of cabbages? I’ve quoted you on that. That was a great line, Tom.”

  “Cucumbers. Extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers. It was from—”

  “You can’t say it plainer than that. I don’t know that anybody’s stuck it to the bubble economy better than you did, Tom. I’d really like to have a tape of that broadcast. Okay, Phil—see you. Phil sends his regards, Tom. Now, what were you saying?”

  Two minutes later, he pronounced this to be Tom’s lucky day, for he was still free for lunch. Less than an hour later, lawyer and client met in the lobby of the Rainier Club on Fourth. McTurk, close to Tom’s age, was small, bald, and snub-nosed, like a retired welterweight boxer: his pinch-waisted suit, cut from a fierce black-and-white houndstooth check, was hard on the eye, though when they shook hands, Tom keenly felt the shabbiness of his tweed jacket and his conspicuous want of a necktie. The attorney’s tie was decorated with a crowded regatta of little sailboats flying rainbow-striped spinnakers.

  “I’m afraid I’m rather underdressed,” Tom said.

  “Hey—that’s your prvilege. You’re a Bohemian.”

  As they climbed the stairs, Hamish McTurk nodded at a vast mud-colored canvas representing a logged forest, clearly inspired by photographs of the wrecked landscapes of Ypres and Paaschendaele. “Guy who painted that picture—Ken Callahan—used to hump Mary McCarthy when she was in high school. She was a famous author from here in Seattle.” McTurk appeared to offer this as an example of acceptable Bohemian behavior in his broad-minded city.

  When they were seated, in overstuffed high-backed chairs, at a large window-table in the third-floor dining room, Tom broached the subject of his questioning by the police, but McTurk waved his hand sweepingly across the linen tablecloth.

  “My motto? Never let legal business interfere with a good lunch. We’ll talk about that back in the office, and I’ll put you on the clock. But from what you said over the phone, you got nothing to worry about. So—enjoy.” The attorney’s eyes went on walkabout around the dining room, and to everyone he recognized he delivered a high stiff-armed salute. Then he said, “Yeah—‘sunshine from cauliflowers.’ Like I said, I tell that line to a lot of people. Kind of encapsulates the whole dot-com culture.”

  “Cucumbers. Of course, that’s Swift’s phrase. When Gulliver visits the Grand Academy of Lagado, he meets this guy . . .”

  “Swift?” There was a fierce courtroom snap in McTurk’s question.

  “Yes, Jonathan Swift. It’s a famous passage from Gulliver’s Travels.”

  “And you can do that?”

  “Well of course you—”

  “Okay, let’s call it fair use. I thought you made that one up, Tom.”

  “I attributed it to Swift in the broadcast.”

  “Maybe I just wasn’t listening too closely. Anyway,” McTurk said in a concessionary tone, “it’s a great expression, whoever wrote it—you or Jonathan. Sums up the business plans of ninety-nine percent of these start-ups.”

  “You know, I met a man on Bainbridge Island once, who’s planning to get fabulously rich making ‘digital smells.’ ”

  “I remember—you said that on the radio. Some kind of crazy-ass box you plug into your PC . . . Which actually sounds smarter than half the rinky-dink ideas getting funded in this town. Most of these so-called entrepreneurs? I’m just waiting for the day when I can go into McDonald’s and watch them flipping burgers.”

  “Have you heard of a man called Steve Litvinof ?” Tom said, warming to the prospect of doing a satiric hatchet job on GetaShack.com.

  “My oldest friend,” McTurk said, alarmingly. “Steve and I were at Syracuse together. Both Dekes. Now Steve, he’s a different kettle of fish altogether. He’s got a business plan that looks like a business plan. You ever diddle around on his site?”

  “Actually, my wife works there.”

  “So you know. When everybody else was dreaming up schemes to attract advertisers with content, Steve thought his way out of the box. At GetaShack, the advertisers are the content. The customers think they’re getting into a virtual community, right? What they’re really getting is commercials. It’s like TV without the programming, like a newspaper with no news. Know how Steve described it, a couple years back? He said it was like interactive Yellow Pages where everybody pays: the realtors pay, your restaurants and coffee houses pay, movie theaters pay . . . the supermarkets . . . the dry cleaners . . . That’s a revenue stream most sites would kill for.”

  “My wife does the . . . I suppose you’d call it content.”

  “The little black T-Bird? The tour-thing? Yeah, that’s cute. And better than cute, it’s real cheap. I tell you, Tom, I got lucky when Steve asked me to put a few bucks into the float back in ’96. Oh man, now that’s a serious chunk of change!”

  Tom tinkered with the venison pot-pie as Hamish McTurk laid into a filet mignon so rare that a pool of blood formed around it on his plate.

  “You sail, Tom?”

  “No, I never have.”

  Not missing a beat, McTurk described his sailboat in lavish technical detail, all of which was lost on Tom. He was talking about “lazy-jacks” when a departing clubman stopped by their table.

  McTurk seized his hand. “Bill! Of course you know who this is! Tom Janeway—does those great commentaries on ‘All Things Considered’? You’ve heard him, right? On the radio?”

  Bill slowly shook his head and gave Tom a befuddled smile. Within five minutes, the same exchange was repeated with a man named Larry a
nd another called Scott. Then McTurk called “Norm!” at a receding gray suit, which turned around and came to the table for the standard routine. Norm hadn’t heard of Tom either, but when he was gone, McTurk said, “So now you’ve met the King County Prosecutor.”

  “For the first and last time,” Tom said. “Fingers crossed.”

  “You slay me with those r’s, Tom, you really do. Hey—”

  Tom feared yet another introduction, but it was only the waiter.

  “Bring us the menu again, will you?” To Tom, he said, “I have to warn you: I’m a big dessert man.”

  Tom ordered coffee. McTurk had profiteroles in cream-and-chocolate sauce.

  “So who do you deal with at NPR? Bob Edwards? Jacki Lyden? Robert Siegel? Corey Flintoff? You know those guys?”

  “No, I work with a producer in D.C., just down the line. I’ve never actually met her face-to-face.”

  McTurk wagged his cream-laden spoon. “But you’d know where to go, right? If you had a concept?”

  “Well, I’d probably start by talking to Miriam—my producer. Or perhaps to someone at KUOW.”

  “I don’t talk to franchises, Tom. See, this is confidential, but Phil and me, we’ve been talking for a while about this. We’ve identified a market gap in public radio, and I want to pick your brain here a little.”

  “Yes?” Tom and McTurk were the only people now seated in the room. The waiters huddled by the desk, waiting to set the tables for dinner. Tom shared their impatience.

  “It’s a big niche, Tom. It’s the law.”

  “Really?”

  “Think about it. Everyone runs into a legal problem sometime in their lives. Like you calling me up today. Divorce . . . child custody . . . landlord-and-tenant . . . DUI . . . or maybe you accidentally took something out of a store without paying, or you got some inappropriate behavior going on at the office. Everybody’s been there. Even you. Even me. And what do you want to do? You want to talk to an attorney, Tom.”

  “Yes.” Tom could hear the longing in his own voice.

  “So you talk to us, Phil and me. We’re the Law Guys. We bat your problem around on air for seven, ten minutes. Maybe we solve it for you, maybe we send you to a specialist. We’re smart. We’re funny. We’re experts. Between us, we do basic criminal, family, driving, injury claims, consumer rights, immigration—and that’s a real hot topic with a lot of listeners—plus employment and financial. You with me, Tom?”

  “Yes,” Tom said, thinking how little he would relish hearing his own problem batted around on air for the entertainment of a nationwide audience.

  “You could call it ‘Bar Talk.’ ”

  Tom laughed cautiously, uncertain if this was meant as a serious title or a facetious joke. “Well, it certainly isn’t something for Miriam Glazebrook. It’d have to go to someone much more senior. I’ll happily ask her who you ought to send it to, if you’d like.” Surely Miriam knew the chief rejection-slip writer at NPR—and would enjoy Tom’s telling of this trying lunch.

  “I’d appreciate that, Tom. But you get the concept—like a legal Click and Clack?”

  “Oh, yes. I think it’s . . . major.”

  They collected their coats, and as they walked down to McTurk’s office on First, Tom told him that at least he’d got rid of his crew of illegals.

  “Why’d you do that? You planning on reporting them to the INS?”

  Tom explained the danger of having his house searched, with a Chinese squatter in his basement.

  “See? That’s why people need the Law Guys. You never had a problem there, Tom. Even if the cops did come around, they wouldn’t be interested in your builders. Patrol car stops a wetback on a highway for speeding: the cop’ll ask for his driver’s license, but can’t go for the green card, because that’ll land him in a violation-of-rights situation. The police don’t see illegals; it’s none of their business.” He laid his arm, clad in thick camel-colored alpaca, across Tom’s shoulder. “It’s like I said. Everybody needs to talk to an attorney.”

  In the Skylight Room, Sally said, “Go on, Finn, you take the last brownie.”

  Finn didn’t get it. The teachers were being nice to him. He’d had the first turn at the sensory table, and the last of the brownies. The moment he finished his picture of two dogs in a park, with a grinning yellow-crayon sun overhead, Sally pinned it up on the wall and said, “Isn’t that a great picture? You have used your imagination, Finn!” But he’d done much better pictures than that, and nobody ever put them on the wall.

  He excused himself to go to the bathroom. When he was halfway down the hall, the principal, Midge, stepped out of her office to smile at him.

  “Well—Finn!” she said. “Good morning. How are you?”

  “Fine.” He hurried past. She had a really spooky smile, like a monster’s. Her lips were pulled right back, and you could see her gray old teeth sticking out of her gums. Spencer’s mom had given him the same creepy smile, when usually she just said, “Oh, hi, Finn,” in a vague, flat voice, like he wasn’t really there. Caro’s dad had squatted down beside him with that big smile and asked, “How’s it going, Finn?” Weird, huh?

  It was good to sit alone on the toilet. He carefully pulled a stringy booger from his nose and ate it. A fly buzzed against the pane. Did flies have dreams? What would you dream about if you were a fly? The toilet was a good place for thinking. When he flushed, he closed his eyes tight shut, because he hated to see the poop and the paper get all swirled up together in the bowl. He didn’t know why that was, but it was really gross. When he was three, he thought it was scary. Now it was just gross.

  Washing his hands, he growled at his reflection in the mirror over the sink. He had death-ray orange eyes and vampire teeth. He was the Night Creature. He could fly over rooftops and stare into people’s windows without them seeing him. They called him Mister Fearless. Out in the corridor, he spread his black cloak and glided noiselessly over the linoleum floor. As he passed the principal’s office, she didn’t even turn her head from the screen of her computer. He was perfectly invisible, just a ripple in the air, like a draft.

  “Hello, Finn. Were you in the bathroom all that time?” That smile again. He really liked his teacher, but the smile made her look like a stranger. She was handing out empty milk cartons, construction paper, and drinking straws. “We’re going to make pirate ships,” she said.

  Finn enjoyed making things, especially the glueing. For several minutes, nothing existed for him except the satisfying scrunch of the serrated blades of his plastic scissors on the construction paper. Ships were cool. He loved to ride on ferries, and building his ship made him think of the long, long ferry ride they’d taken in the summer, him and his mom and dad, to Victoria, in Canada, where the money was called “loonies.”

  “Did you hear what I said, Finn?” Sally had pulled up a chair and was sitting right beside him. He could smell her sweat. “I said . . . oh, never mind. Tell me what you’re doing.”

  “I’m making a ship.”

  “Yes, but what are you doing with the paper now?”

  “Cutting out the sails.”

  “We’re all starting with the hull, Finn. The milk cartons—”

  “I’m not. I’m starting with the sails.”

  “Well, it’s your ship.”

  She put her arm around his shoulders and hugged him, squashing Finn against her big pillowy body. It was like being hugged by a hippopotamus. The lumpy weave of her cardigan hurt his cheek. He wriggled free, knocking a milk carton to the floor.

  “Finn? Are you okay, honey?”

  “I need privacy,” he said.

  Teacher Sally picked up the fallen carton, and her joints creaked as she got out of the small chair. “Okay, then.” She looked tired, and her smile was brief and skimpy—an everyday smile at last.

  When she was gone, he went angrily to work. He sliced his cut-out sail in two, took the straws that were supposed to be masts, and snipped them up, sorting through the bits to find arms, legs,
and a body for his stick-person. He’d make the head from PlayDoh. He tried a lot of different limbs before they looked right, then he raised his hand. “Hey? Please? I want glue!”

  “It gets worse,” Paul Nagel said.

  The detective appeared older than Tom remembered from their first interview. His face looked as if it had been moulded in potter’s clay, and his blue eyes were bloodshot. It was Saturday morning, nine and a half hours into the new millennium. Had Nagel been up all night and on the bottle, he could hardly have been in worse shape; but it seemed unlikely that his wrecked face owed anything to Y2K festivities.

  “We’ve had calls that put you on the trail back in February. The twenty-eighth. The day Tracey Groh went missing. She’s the one they found dead in Idaho. You were seen walking there again on November seventeenth of ’98, when Nicole Waxman—”