Inside Passage. Burt Weissbourd

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СКАЧАТЬ probation officer had a desk in a corner office. Corey waited on a chair in the hall. She watched him talking on the phone. Dick Jensen was at least sixty and round-faced. Even on the phone he had these ways of asserting himself when he didn’t need to.

      She was surprised when he came out of his office and motioned her to follow him. It was a little two-fingered summons. “Where’d you park?” he asked over his shoulder.

      “The lot in back.”

      They went down the stairs to the parking lot. “Which is your car?”

      She pointed out the black pickup.

      “Keys?” He held out his hand.

      “Why?”

      “Vehicle search.”

      “Fine.” She set the keys in his palm and watched him open her truck.

      He checked the back, under the seats, then the glove compartment. She was right there, making sure he didn’t plant anything. That’s when she saw him pull an ID card she had never seen from her glove compartment. He hadn’t put it there either. No, damnit, Lester had. This morning. Jensen showed it to her. It had her picture, but the name was Marsha Dunston. She didn’t recognize the address.

      “Where’d you get this?” he asked.

      She was trying to stay calm. False ID was a violation of the terms of her probation. “I’ve never seen this in my life. Never.”

      “Be careful what you say. You’re in enough trouble already.”

      “What trouble?”

      “You missed a meeting.” He opened his pocket calendar to show her an apparent appointment, circled in red.

      “How did they get to you?” she asked.

      “I beg your pardon, lady?”

      “Lester Burell planted that fake ID. You know him? Big guy with a cane. And I didn’t know anything about any meeting.” She sighed. This wasn’t working. His face was getting red. “Just get it over with.”

      “No problem. You’re not complying with the terms of your probation.” He turned and gave her another two-fingered summons, then walked back toward his corner office.

      Abe had been treating Nan Larsen, a real estate agent, for almost a year. She suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder, which often made her irritable. Today, she was carrying a large bag. She opened it and proudly took out a vanity license plate. It said NOMODOE. Abe was listening to her slowly say “no more dough” when there was a knock on his office door. His brow furrowed as the office door swung open and Corey Logan marched in.

      “I need your help,” she said. “With Billy.” And who was this woman? And what was that? A fucking license plate? “Right away.”

      “What?”

      “They’re setting me up,” Corey explained. “They’re saying I violated the terms of my probation.”

      “Who is this?” Nan asked. “This is my hour.”

      Corey shot her a look.

      Dr. Stein stood up and started talking, kind of formal. “I’m with a patient now.” He looked at his calendar. “Can this wait until one o’clock?”

      She checked her watch—11:30 a.m. Was he kidding? She had to find Billy and leave tonight. “NOMODOE can wait until one. I’m not going back to jail.”

      “I’m sorry,“ he said. “Could you please wait twenty minutes, or come back later? I can see you for five minutes at eleven fifty or for fifty minutes at one.”

      She didn’t know this person. “This was a bad idea,” Corey said, and she walked out the door.

      In the hallway Corey closed her eyes. Her head was spinning. She was lucky, she decided, that he was busy. What was she thinking? That he would help her? All she wanted was for him to be there if Billy got in trouble. Maybe talk with him. She had made up her mind. She had to leave Seattle. Jensen was under Nick’s thumb, and he could send her back to jail. With the false ID, an apparent missed appointment, her so-called “attitude problems,” and whatever else Lester would provide him, it was more than enough. Jensen had told her to come in again in two days. If she was still here, he would cut her off at the knees.

      She would find Billy this afternoon, explain what she had to do. And what he had to do. They would stay in touch by phone. She didn’t think Nick would bother him, and in a month they would be together. Billy would hate the idea of leaving, she knew that. Still, she had to give him the bad news today—whenever, wherever, she found him. Damn. She had lost half an hour coming here. And how had she been so wrong about Dr. Stein? She thought he liked her or at least wanted to help her. So why wasn’t he there for her the one time he could really help?

      She walked out of the waiting room and down the stairs. How could a guy face that sweet-and-sour smell every working day? Corey went out the front door, steaming. At the pet store she stopped to look at this great big turtle in the window, wondering how she had ever become so stupid about men.

      Abe showed Nan out at 11:50 a.m. Over time he had been able to help her be more comfortable with who she was. Days like today he caught himself wondering if that was a good thing. Abe grumbled, a gravelly sound, trying to clear his head. He had handled Corey Logan badly. He knew that, but Nan was a patient, and her needs had to be respected too. The problem was that Corey didn’t understand how a therapist worked, how at certain times he had to be distant, neutral. When she came back, he would explain how awkward it was for him to be talking with both of them at the same time. He would explain why it was inappropriate for him to talk to her when he was with a patient. It was certainly uncomfortable for Nan.

      He heard a noise in the waiting room and opened the door, hoping that Corey was there. She wasn’t. What was there was a very large turtle. A note was taped to its shell. It read: “Hi, my name is NOMOHARDTIME. I can wait as long as you like.” Shit.

      The address Lester had given her was on Federal Avenue. It was a three-story gray house with white trim and a white wrap-around porch. There was a black iron fence in front of a four-foot hedge separating the house from the street. At the gate there was an intercom. Corey wondered how Billy had ever come to be at such a fancy old home. On a school day, no less. Still, she was sure she would find him here. Lester had said she would.

      The western edge of Volunteer Park backed up against the big houses on Federal. She went into the park, climbed a chain link fence, and dropped down into the landscaped backyard. There was a statue with water pouring out of its mouth into a pond with big stones, like this was Italy or France. She knew this yard. Yeah, Lester’s dope-smoking photos. She crept to the back of the house, and looked through the kitchen window. Someone had left a plate in the sink. There were small daylight windows into the basement. She knelt and cupped her hands together to see inside. There he was, half-naked, asleep on an oversized couch amid soda cans, pizza boxes, and clothes strewn on the carpeted rec room floor.

      The window was cracked open an inch or two, and Corey was through it in seconds. Inside, she shook Billy’s bare arm. He raised his hands in front of his face: a frightened, self-protective gesture. When she let go, he rubbed his eyes.

      “Why are you here?”

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