Cast in Stone Read Free

like a bad toupee. I wheeled
through the cars and construction and thought about a feature spread
I'd seen in the Times a few months back. If the pictures could be
believed, the women's lavatories in the Colombia Tower were both
larger and considerably
    more
elegant than my apartment. At the time, I had dismissed this
incongruity as a rather dubious link to lasting fame. It occurred to
me now that maybe this wasn't as out of line as I'd once imagined.
After all, back around the turn of the century, when my dad was a
boy, the entire downtown section of the city had been regraded for
the express purpose of getting the newly fashionable flush toilets
high enough above the rising tide to prevent them from becoming
sewage fountains every time the tide came in. This was, historically
speaking, the town that toilets built. Maybe this helped in some
small way to explain Tony Moldonado.
    I
stowed the 9mm in my desk, the cooler in the closet, and its contents
in the garbage. The suitcase could wait. What I needed now was a
beer. I decided to splurge and opened a Chimay for myself. Chimay is
an ale brewed in Belgium by Trappist monks. I found it a bit pricey
for day-to-day swillage, but for special occasions it provided just
the right festive touch. It also provided a reasonable explanation as
to why Trappist monks were silent. If they consumed much of this
stuff, they were probably unable rather than unwilling to speak.
    I
made my way to the living room. The light on my machine was blinking.
This was something of a problem. If I listened to the messages
before arranging a fishing trip, I was probably going to find
somebody who wanted me to do something. If I left town without
listening to the messages, I'd spend the whole damn trip wondering
what in hell was on the tape and how in hell I could be so
irresponsible. I already knew the answer to the last part.
    On
the surface, I was still a great believer that there was absolutely
no sense in working if you already had money. I was, after all, going
to come into a pretty fair inheritance when I turned forty-five. My
old man,
    locally
renowned as an impeccable judge of character, had seen something in
me even when I was a child that had inspired him to reach from the
grave to save me from myself. His efforts had not been in vain.
Despite the best efforts of my ex-wife's team of lawyers, the
draconian complexity of my trust fund had managed to thwart even
Washington's hellish community-property laws. To Annette's
everlasting chagrin, my prospects remained intact.
    In
spite of this, however, some compensatory function of impending
middle age was beginning to worm its way into my consciousness. I was
starting to have visions of spending my declining years with the
Boys, down in the vicinity of Pioneer Square, debating the body and
bouquet of fortified wine with the other denizens of the district.
    Fortunately,
I was spared this moral dilemma. The phone tinkled. I swallowed half
the schooner of Chimay, wiped off my upper lip, and picked it up.
    "Leo,
jew chit. I seen you come in. How you doin'?"
    It
was Hector Guiterrez, the superintendent of my building. Hector
looked out for things around the apartment when I was gone. An
expatriate Cuban whose attitude toward the regime had earned him
several years in one of Castro's more colorful prisons, Hector
harbored a deep, abiding distrust of all authority figures. As my job
tended to bring me into constant conflict with a wide assortment of
officialdom, Hector had unilaterally adopted me as a fellow
conspirator. I'd never been totally clear as to whom we were
conspiring against or to what ends, but it seemed to make Hector
happy, which was good enough for me. Off the pig. It was us against
the world.
    "Glad
to be home, Hector. Thanks for watering the plants."
    "No
problem, Leo. The people we got to steek togeder. Jew know what I
mean?" I offered that I did.
    "How'd
eet go? Jew was gone a long time."
    "You
don't want to know," I said.
    "Somebody
been