His mother never returned and his old man’s drinking never stopped.
Over time, it had pushed everything to the breaking point. It came just two years ago when his dad showed up drunk in the newsroom looking for him. The humiliation and shame of that night nearly cost Jason his job at the Mirror.
A job he’d shed blood to win.
But it also got his old man to admit that he had a problem.
He quit drinking and got counseling.
Nearly two years sober now and he was doing well, emerging from his self-imposed tomb a stronger man. Jason had reminded him that for a brief time in his life, he’d been a Seattle cop, a good one, and that he should do something about it.
He did.
First, he took early retirement from the brewery. Then enrolled in a few courses. He’d become a licensed private investigator with an agency run by an old cop buddy. He did well on his cases, even helped Jason out on a few news stories. His old man finally had it all under control. That’s right, Jason thought, looking at the brewery fading in his rearview mirror, he was convinced they’d put all this crap behind them.
But here he was driving to another bar to rescue his father.
Risking everything he’d worked so hard to achieve.
It played out before him as he came upon the bluecollar neighborhood where he grew up, in the south, between Highway 509 and the west bank of the Duwamish River, not far from the shipyards and Boeing Field. It was here, ever since his mother had read him bedtime stories, that he’d dreamed of being a writer and had decided that being a reporter would give him a front-row seat to life’s daily dramas. He studied them every morning on his first job in the business, delivering the Seattle Mirror.
Reading about other people’s problems helped Jason forget his own.
He had tried to comprehend how his mother could just leave. As years passed, his grades plunged, his writing dream slipped away, and his father got him a job driving a forklift at the Pacific Peaks Brewery. They would rise at dawn, climb into his dad’s pickup, and drive to the concentration of filthy brick buildings. For Jason it was a gate to hell and he vowed to pull himself out of it before he became a ghost, like his old man.
So, between loading trucks with beer, he read classic literature, saved his money, went to night school, improved his grades, enrolled in community college, and worked weekends at the brewery. He also got his own apartment, wrote for the campus paper, and freelanced news features to Seattle’s big dailies.
One of his stories, a feature on Seattle beat cops, had caught the eye of a Seattle Mirror editor, who gave Jason the last spot in the intern program after another candidate had bailed.
It was Jason’s shot at realizing his dream.
The Mirror ’s internship program was notorious. Jason had to compete with five other young reporters, each of them from big journalism schools. And each of them had news experience as interns at places like The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and Wall Street Journal. They all went full tilt in a do-or-die competition for the one Mirror job that came at the end. After Jason had put everything on the line and broke a major exclusive, the Mirror awarded him a full-time staff reporter position.
It was all in jeopardy now because of the screwup over Brian Pillar and whatever awaited inside the bowels of the Ice House Bar.
Jason parked in the littered lot next to a burned-out Pacer, rotting there in the far corner where drug deals were closed and bladders relieved. He made another round of calls, left messages, and checked the scanner before switching it off. Nothing was popping on the air, yet he couldn’t put aside his nagging feeling that something was going on up in Yesler Terrace.
The bar smelled of stale beer, cigarettes, sweat, and regret. A mournful honky-tonk song spilled from the jukebox; the wooden floor was littered with peanut shells and pull tabs. An assortment of losers populated the place. Two broken-down old-timers were at the bar. One was missing an arm, and in the glow of the neon beer signs above the bar, Jason noticed that the other had a patch over his eye.
Farther back, under the glow of lowered white lights, there was a pool table and a game in progress between a gap-toothed woman whose T-shirt strained the words DON’T TALK TO ME across her chest, and a tall slender man, whose arms were sleeved in tattoos. Beyond the game, six high-back booths lined the walls. All were empty except the one where Jason’s father was sitting.
Alone, except for a glass filled with beer on the table before him.
It appeared untouched.
Henry Wade looked up from it to his son, who stood before him.
“You drink anything tonight, Dad?”
His old man shook his head.
Encouraged, Jason sat across from him in the booth, nodding to the white rag wrapped around his father’s right hand.
“What happened?”
“Changing the blade in my utility knife to replace a bathroom tile.”
“This is why you had the bar call me? Dad, I’m working now.”
His father rubbed his temples as if to soothe something far more disturbing than a household mishap.
“Jay, you have to help me, son, I don’t know what to do here.”
Jason squirmed in his seat, then held up his finger.
“Hang on, it’s my phone. I gotta take this.” Jason fished through the front pocket of his jeans. “Dad, whatever you’ve got going on, I want you to go home just as soon as I-Wade- Seattle Mirror. ”
“Yeah, Wade-it’s Grimshaw at the East Precinct. Got your damn messages.”
“What’s up near Yesler?”
“Report of a homicide.”
“A homicide? Anything to it?”
“Something about a nun.”
“A nun? Can you give me an address?”
“Let me see.” Jason heard keyboard keys clicking, then the cop recited the location and Jason wrote it down in his notebook.
“Anybody else in the media calling you on this?”
“Not yet. We’re just getting people out there.”
“Thanks,” Jason hung up. “Dad, I have to go, now. It was good that you called me and didn’t drink. Now, I’m getting you home. We’ll talk later. I have to go.”
Chapter Five
J ason got his old man into a cab and sent him home.
It was good that he’d called, good that he didn’t drink and that he was trying to open up, but they’d have to talk later. Jason had his hands full with a story.
He laid rubber pulling his Falcon from the Ice House Bar and the neighborhood rushed by with his fears. Man, everything was at stake because after his dad and his job at the Mirror, what did he have in his life?
Seriously.
He had squat.
After things had ended with Valerie, he’d started up with Grace Garner and it was going great. Until she broke it off, saying that their jobs complicated things. That was a head-shaker. He thought they’d connected. He thought they had something real happening until- wham -she breaks it off.
He didn’t get it.
Then he’d heard she was with some FBI guy. That was months ago. Jason hadn’t seen her since and, if fate was kind, he wouldn’t see her tonight. Picking through his CDs he played a live cut of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song,” from the BBC Sessions, letting its ferocity pound Grace out of his mind as he upshifted to the murder.
A nun.
Everyone would be all over this one. He had to get on top of it, had to concentrate on the story.
As he drove, he alerted the night news assistant to wake up the on-duty night photographer and get him to the scene. Then he tried in vain to reach the East Precinct sergeant for any new info, while gleaning whatever he could from his portable scanner. But he wasn’t hearing much. Wheeling through the fringes of Yesler Terrace, he glanced up at the glittering condos of First Hill, soaring over the public housing projects.