fine. I dodged out of the way just in time to avoid being creamed by a tightly packed snowball that had been lobbed off the sixth-floor running track of Belltown Terrace. I looked up and saw Heather Peters grinning down at me and getting ready to take another potshot.
“Heather,” I yelled, “knock that off before someone gets hurt.”
The happy grin disappeared from Heather’s face. “See there?” I heard Tracie’s high-pitched reproving voice. “I told you we shouldn’t. Now we’re in for it!”
“Meet me at the elevator, you two,” I ordered, fully prepared to march upstairs and chew ass.
“Don’t be too hard on them,” a woman’s voice said. The voice that had called out the timely warning belonged to an elderly lady who, leaning heavily on a cane, was making her way slowly along the snowy sidewalk.
“They’re only young once, you know,” she added with an understanding smile. “Remember, it doesn’t snow here all that often.”
Mollified a little by her wise counsel, I toned down the rhetoric enough so that once I found them, all the girls got was a good talking to about the dangers of throwing anything at all off high-rise buildings. The bawling out was followed, in short order, by steaming mugs of hot chocolate all around.
Disciplinary lines tend to get a little fuzzy when the miscreants don’t happen to be your own flesh and blood, or maybe I’m just turning into a middle-aged softy.
After drinking their cocoa, the girls left my apartment to return to their own, and I retreated to the comforting confines of my ancient recliner, reveling in my living room’s toasty seventy-degree temperature. I was sitting there lapping up creature comforts when the phone rang.
“Hey, Beau. You going tonight?”
At once I recognized the thin voice as that of Lars Jenssen, a retired halibut fisherman who serves as my sponsor in the Regrade Regulars, an AA group that meets each Monday night in a restaurant just up Second Avenue from where I live.
My doctor-ordered stay at the Ironwood Ranch dryout farm in Arizona may have been cut short through circumstances beyond my control, but I had decided that I owed it to myself and to my ailing liver to straighten up and fly right. For the time being, anyhow. Working on my own and with Lars Jenssen’s continuing help, I was halfway through the prescribed ninety meetings in ninety days that are supposed to get boozy lives back on track again.
Lars lived another block up Second in a fourth-floor brick walk-up apartment that was a long way from my penthouse luxury, but he never complained.
“I’ll stop by for you around six-thirty,” he said, not waiting for me to say yes or no.
I thought of my shiny little 928 securely parked in the garage downstairs. It was safe and sound, and considering road conditions, I wanted to keep it that way. Nevertheless, I felt a moral obligation to offer Lars a ride in the frigid weather.
“Look, Lars, I don’t much want to drive. Someone will end up creaming my car if I do, but we could always take a taxi. How about if I grab a cab and stop by to pick you up?”
“Take a cab?” he echoed. “Hell, man, it ain’t but six blocks or so. Walkin’ll do us both a world of good.”
He hung up on me then, without giving me a chance to argue. But then again, I wouldn’t have had the nerve. Lars Jenssen was seventy-nine and ten months. I was forty-four. If he could walk six blocks in that kind of weather, then by God, so could I.
Rather than rush into the contents of Doris Walker’s envelope, I sat there with one last cup of cocoa, enjoying the warm quiet of my snug apartment, trying to sort back through the long interview with Pete Kelsey.
Part of the problem was that, liar or not, he was such a likable guy. At least he struck me that way, although the same thing obviously didn’t hold true for Detective Kramer. He found something ominous, something underhanded, in Kelsey’s forbearance with regard to his messy, and by
“Heather,” I yelled, “knock that off before someone gets hurt.”
The happy grin disappeared from Heather’s face. “See there?” I heard Tracie’s high-pitched reproving voice. “I told you we shouldn’t. Now we’re in for it!”
“Meet me at the elevator, you two,” I ordered, fully prepared to march upstairs and chew ass.
“Don’t be too hard on them,” a woman’s voice said. The voice that had called out the timely warning belonged to an elderly lady who, leaning heavily on a cane, was making her way slowly along the snowy sidewalk.
“They’re only young once, you know,” she added with an understanding smile. “Remember, it doesn’t snow here all that often.”
Mollified a little by her wise counsel, I toned down the rhetoric enough so that once I found them, all the girls got was a good talking to about the dangers of throwing anything at all off high-rise buildings. The bawling out was followed, in short order, by steaming mugs of hot chocolate all around.
Disciplinary lines tend to get a little fuzzy when the miscreants don’t happen to be your own flesh and blood, or maybe I’m just turning into a middle-aged softy.
After drinking their cocoa, the girls left my apartment to return to their own, and I retreated to the comforting confines of my ancient recliner, reveling in my living room’s toasty seventy-degree temperature. I was sitting there lapping up creature comforts when the phone rang.
“Hey, Beau. You going tonight?”
At once I recognized the thin voice as that of Lars Jenssen, a retired halibut fisherman who serves as my sponsor in the Regrade Regulars, an AA group that meets each Monday night in a restaurant just up Second Avenue from where I live.
My doctor-ordered stay at the Ironwood Ranch dryout farm in Arizona may have been cut short through circumstances beyond my control, but I had decided that I owed it to myself and to my ailing liver to straighten up and fly right. For the time being, anyhow. Working on my own and with Lars Jenssen’s continuing help, I was halfway through the prescribed ninety meetings in ninety days that are supposed to get boozy lives back on track again.
Lars lived another block up Second in a fourth-floor brick walk-up apartment that was a long way from my penthouse luxury, but he never complained.
“I’ll stop by for you around six-thirty,” he said, not waiting for me to say yes or no.
I thought of my shiny little 928 securely parked in the garage downstairs. It was safe and sound, and considering road conditions, I wanted to keep it that way. Nevertheless, I felt a moral obligation to offer Lars a ride in the frigid weather.
“Look, Lars, I don’t much want to drive. Someone will end up creaming my car if I do, but we could always take a taxi. How about if I grab a cab and stop by to pick you up?”
“Take a cab?” he echoed. “Hell, man, it ain’t but six blocks or so. Walkin’ll do us both a world of good.”
He hung up on me then, without giving me a chance to argue. But then again, I wouldn’t have had the nerve. Lars Jenssen was seventy-nine and ten months. I was forty-four. If he could walk six blocks in that kind of weather, then by God, so could I.
Rather than rush into the contents of Doris Walker’s envelope, I sat there with one last cup of cocoa, enjoying the warm quiet of my snug apartment, trying to sort back through the long interview with Pete Kelsey.
Part of the problem was that, liar or not, he was such a likable guy. At least he struck me that way, although the same thing obviously didn’t hold true for Detective Kramer. He found something ominous, something underhanded, in Kelsey’s forbearance with regard to his messy, and by
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