A more perfect union

CHAPTER 9

Bellevue, a suburb which started out as a bedroom community due east of Seattle, has become a city in its own right. The transformation from sleepy suburb into a high-tech center has escaped the notice of confirmed cosmopolitan snobs who derisively refer to the entire east side of Lake Washington as the 'burbs.

To hear city dwellers tell it, Bellevue is a lilywhite, bigoted, upper-middle-class sanctuary. From what I saw that day, the blush was off the rose. I wouldn't call some of the areas slums, but they certainly qualified as pockets of poverty.

To begin with, I had a tough time finding Leona Rising's address on S.E. 138th. It's always like that. Bellevue's incomprehensible street system is a cop's nightmare. While I drove around lost, wandering in ever-narrowing circles, I saw a duke's mixture of kids out skateboarding and biking their way through the last full week of summer vacation. It didn't look like a totally segregated bunch to me.

Then, when I finally did find the place, on a small dead-end street just off Newport Way, the address turned out to be in one of a series of battle-weary duplexes much older and much more worn than their single-family-dwelling neighbors.

On that particular block, a somewhat shoddy dead-end street, my red Porsche would have stuck out like a sore thumb. There was no point in advertising my presence. I drove back up Newport and parked a few blocks away in the lot of a nearby public library branch. I returned to the house on foot. The aspirin I had fed my hangover was also helping my foot. For a change, the initial stab of pain from the bone spur wasn't quite as acute as I expected.

Approaching the place, I noticed a young man sitting on the front porch. At least I thought he was young. He was dressed in a loud, orange plaid shirt. His Levis had been rolled up at the cuff to reveal a long length of white athletic sock. On the porch near his feet sat a large, old-fashioned black lunch pail as well as an expensive-looking stainless-steel thermos.

At first glance I thought maybe he was in his late teens or early twenties, but closer examination showed a slightly receding hairline with flecks of gray dotting the short brown hair. I revised my original estimate up to thirty-five or forty. He didn't look up as I neared the porch. Instead, he sat there unmoving, staring dejectedly at his feet. He was sucking his thumb.

"Hello," I said, stopping a few feet away. "Anybody home?"

Surprised by my unexpected intrusion, he started guiltily, pulling his hand from his mouth and shoving it under his other arm. He held it there, pressed tightly between his arm and his chest, as though by imprisoning it he could conceal it from himself as well as from me. He stared up at me for a long time before he shook his head in answer to my question.

"I'm looking for Leona Rising."

"She's…not here." He spoke slowly, haltingly, in a deliberate monotone.

"What about her daughter, Linda Decker?"

His lower lip trembled. He began rocking back and forth, the repetitive motion slow and hypnotic. For some reason my question had brought him dangerously close to tears. "She's…not here either," he answered. "It's her fault I missed…the bus. It's all…her fault."

With that, he did burst into tears. He bent over double and sobbed while the comforting thumb crept out from under his restraining arm and back into his mouth. I stood there feeling like someone who has just unavoidably run over a headlight-blinded rabbit on the open highway. Whoever this guy was, he was no mental giant. My question had unleashed a storm of emotion I was helpless to stop. There was nothing to do but wait it out. Eventually, he quit crying.

When the thumb was once more concealed under his arm, he stole a sly glance up at my face. "What's…your name?" he asked ingenuously.

I stuck out my hand. "My name's Beaumont," I said. "What's yours?"

He stared at my extended hand for a long time as if trying to decide what he was supposed to do with it. As if remembering, he wiped his hand on a clean pant leg and shyly held it out to me. His grip was limp and sweaty, but he grinned at me suddenly, his tearful outburst of the moment before totally forgotten. "Beaumont…that's a…funny name," he said. "My name is…Jimmy."

There were no nuances or shadings in his voice, and the long pauses between words made it clear that he spoke only at tremendous effort.

"Do you live here?" I asked, deliberately keeping my question as simple as possible.

He nodded and pointed to a curtained window to the right of the front door. "That's my…room over there. Lindy…used to live here. She…left."

"Lindy?" I asked. "Who's that? Do you mean Linda Decker?"

He nodded again, once more becoming serious. "She's my sister. My…baby sister. She's lots…smarter. She's not like me. Not…retarded."

He spoke the words as casually as someone else might have said they were right-or left-handed or that they'd been sick with a cold. All the while he looked directly into my eyes with a disconcerting, unblinking gaze. I felt myself squirming under it.

"Do you know where your sister is?" I asked.

He went on, giving no evidence that he had heard my question. "Lindy's good…to me. Always. I don't want her…to go away. I want her here. With me. I…need her."

Once more his lower lip began to tremble and he fell silent, rocking slowly back and forth.

"Did she say why she had to leave?" I asked gently.

He shook his head slowly from side to side. "She said she had to…go. That's all. And then…those men came. I didn't like them."

"What men?"

"Big men, like on…TV. Detectives. They were asking Mama about…Lindy. They even…had guns. Real ones. Not toys. I tried to tell them. They wouldn't…listen. And Mama told me to…go sit down. To get out…of the way and be…quiet. I didn't want to. I knew the answer. That's why I…missed my bus."

His ragged, halting delivery made it difficult to extricate meaning from what he was saying. The story was lacking several key ingredients. I struggled in vain to sort out the connections, to see through to the pieces that were missing.

"I'm afraid I don't quite understand," I said finally.

Jimmy looked up at me determinedly. "I'm not a k-kid, you know. I'm a grown-up. Just like…you. When I cry, sometimes people make fun of me. Kids at the…bus stop. They…call me a baby. It makes me…mad!" The last was said so vehemently that two small streams of spittle slipped unnoticed out the corners of his mouth.

The missing pieces fell into place. "So you were crying and that's why you missed your bus?"

He nodded, no longer looking me in the eye, but relieved that he didn't have to go on explaining. His chin dropped until it disappeared into the collar of his shirt. Once more his thumb edged toward his mouth. "I lost my…paper," he mumbled in little more than a whimper.

"Paper? What paper?"

"With the…numbers on it. Bus numbers. So I can…find the right…bus. I never missed…work before. I go there every day."

Uninvited, I sat down on the porch next to him. "What kind of work do you do, Jimmy?" I asked.

He straightened his shoulders proudly. "Micrographics," he said. Surprisingly enough, the syllables of the long word rolled unimpeded off his tongue. "I take pictures. Important stuff. I put it on…fiche." He paused.

"You know about fiche?"

I nodded. "And where do you do this?"

"At the center."

"Is it far from here?"

"Too far to walk," he said glumly. He moved his foot slightly and bumped it against the lunch pail. He studied it for a long time as though he hadn't seen it before. "It isn't break," he said. "I'm hungry. Can I eat now?"

A golf-ball-sized lump bottled up my throat. Jimmy Rising was someone who was lost without his crib sheet to decode the bus system and without someone to tell him whether or not it was okay to eat his lunch. He needed permission from someone else. I swallowed hard before I could answer. "I'm sure it would be fine," I told him.

He quickly opened the lunch pail, pulled out a sandwich, unwrapped it, and ate it noisily with total self-absorption. When he finished the sandwich, he brought out an apple and poured some orange juice from the thermos. He bit off a huge hunk of apple. "Lindy gave me this," he said proudly, patting the top of the thermos. "It keeps hot…things hot and cold things cold. Did you know that?" he asked.

"Yes," I answered.

He reached over and touched the lunch pail, running a finger lovingly across the folded metal handle. "I bought this all by myself. With my own…money." He was speaking less hesitantly now. The nervousness of being with a stranger was gradually wearing off.

"Money you earned from work?" I asked.

He nodded smugly. "It cost…ten dollars and forty-seven cents. I bought it at Kmart. It's got some…scratches now. Lindy says that…happens to lunch pails. Everybody's lunch pails. They get scratched."

"You must love Lindy very much," I suggested quietly.

He looked past me and stared off into the vacant blue sky. When he finally spoke, his voice was full of hurt. Again he was close to tears. "She was going…to take…me with her. She promised. But now she can't."

"Why not?"

"She lost her job. It was a…good job. Building great big buildings. She's got another one…now. Not as good."

"You told me you know where she is?"

He nodded, slyly, ducking his head.

"Would you tell me? I need to find her."

There was only the slightest pause before he began rummaging in his shirt pocket. Eventually he dragged out a rumpled wad of paper and handed it to me.

"Her…phone number's there," he said. "She told me I could call. Anytime I want to."

I unfolded the scrap of paper. It turned out to be two pieces, actually, one with a telephone number scrawled across it, and the other, neatly typed, saying "210 Downtown Seattle and 15 Ballard." Upset as he was, Jimmy had evidently crumpled his bus-schedule crib sheet in with his sister's telephone number.

I jotted the telephone number into my notebook then straightened the typed piece of paper on my knee and handed it back to him. "Is this the paper you lost?"

His eyes brightened when he saw it, then his shoulders slumped again. "This's it. But it's…too late to go now."

"I could give you a ride," I offered tentatively.

There was a sudden transformation on his face. Just as quickly, it was replaced with a kind of desperate wariness. "You're…making fun of me," he said accusingly. "I'm retarded. Not stupid. You don't…have a car. You can't give…me a ride. I'm too big to carry."

"My car's just up the street," I told him. "It's a red Porsche. We can walk up and get it and have you to work in half an hour."

Still he hesitated.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"I'm not supposed to…ride with strangers. Lindy said."

Lindy had given him good advice, advice I wanted him to disregard. "Am I still a stranger, Jimmy?" I asked. "We've been talking a long time. And I really do have a red Porsche."

"Like on TV?" Jimmy asked.

I nodded. He struggled through a moment's hesitation before leaping off the porch like a gamboling puppy. "Really? You…mean it? You'd take…me all the way there?"

"I'd be happy to."

As quickly as it appeared, the animation went out of his face. "But I don't know…the way," he said hopelessly. "Do you? Have you been there?"

The bus directions had given me a clue. Dimly I remembered back in the sixties how the U.S. Navy had surplussed its Elliott Bay site, turning it over to a group of can-do mothers who had transformed it into a model center for the developmentally disabled.

I had gone to the center once on a mission to deliver a batch of free tickets for the Bacon Bowl, a Seattle-area police officer fund-raiser. It's an annual exhibition game between Seattle P.D. personnel and a team made up of police officers from Tacoma P.D. and the Pierce County Sheriff's Department. It gives a bunch of frustrated ex-jocks a once-a-year chance to get down on a football field and strut their stuff. Looking at Jimmy Rising, I wondered if he had been the recipient of one of those tickets, and if he had, did he like football.

Quickly, Jimmy Rising began gathering his belongings, his lunch pail and his thermos. "Can we go now?" he asked. His eagerness was almost painful to see. I don't think I've ever headed for work with that degree of unbridled enthusiasm.

"Sure," I said. "Let's get going."

We set off walking at a pretty good clip, but I had trouble keeping up. Jimmy kept bounding ahead, then he'd rush back to hurry me along. Watching him, I had an attack of guilty conscience, but I pushed it out of my mind. He was such a guileless innocent-it had been all too easy to con Linda Decker's phone number out of him. Anybody could have gotten it from him, if they'd only bothered to ask.

Of course, my guilty conscience wasn't so serious that I pulled the notation with Linda's phone number on it out of my notebook and threw it away. After all, as long as I had the information, I could just as well use it.

"Is Linda in…trouble?" he asked suddenly.

The question caught me off guard. I didn't know if he was asking me if she was pregnant or if he meant something else.

"What makes you say that?" I asked.

"Because those men were detectives. Just like on ‘Miami Vice.' That's my favorite. What's yours?"

I don't watch television, but I didn't want to explain that to Jimmy Rising. "Mine, too," I answered.

"Who do you like the most?"

That was a stumper. He had me dead to rights. "I like 'em all," I waffled.

"Oh," he said, and we continued walking in silence.

When I unlocked the car door and let him into the Porsche, he was ecstatic. "I've…never been in a car this…nice," he said. "Are you sure you don't…mind?"

"I don't mind," I said.

"But doesn't it…cost a lot of money? Mama's always…saying that. Cars cost…money." Reverently he touched the smooth leather seat. "Is this brand-new?" he asked.

"No," I answered.

We headed back down toward I-90. Jimmy was fascinated by the buttons and knobs. He turned the radio on full blast, moved the seat back and forth, rolled his window up and down. He had a great time.

It was well after two when we turned off 15th onto Armory Way and stopped in the parking lot of the Northwest Center for the Retarded. A woman walked out of one building and headed down a shaded walkway toward another. Jimmy leaped out of the car and bounded after her. "Miss Carson, Miss Carson. I'm here," he shouted.

Miss Carson stopped in mid-stride, turned, and came back toward us. Even from a distance I could see she was willowy blonde. I turned off the motor, telling myself that Jimmy Rising would probably need some help explaining why he was so late.

He came rushing headlong back to the car, dragging Miss Carson by one hand. "He's the one," he said, pointing at me. "He even knew how…to get here. I didn't have to…tell him."

Close up, Miss Carson was still blonde and still willowy. She had almond-shaped green eyes, a fair complexion, and a dazzling smile. She held out her hand. "Thank you so much for giving Jimmy a ride. That was very kind of you. He told me he missed the bus." She turned to Jimmy. "Did you tell him thank you?"

Suddenly shy, Jimmy Rising ducked his head and stepped back a step. "Thanks," he mumbled.

"I was glad to do it."

Miss Carson smiled at him. "You go on to work now, Jimmy. The others are just going on break. I want to talk to Mr…"

"Beaumont," I supplied.

"To Mr. Beaumont," she added.

Jimmy hurried away without a backward glance, and Miss Carson turned to me. The smile had been replaced by a look of concern.

"I'm Sandy Carson," she said. "I run the micrographics department. Where did you find him? We called his mother, Leona, but she couldn't leave work to go look for him."

Briefly, I told Sandy Carson everything I knew about Jimmy Rising missing the bus, about his being upset because Linda Decker had left town without taking him with her.

"No wonder he got rattled," Miss Carson said when I finished. "His sister's really special to him. Are you a friend of the family? Do you happen to know his mother?"

I shook my head, not wanting to admit to Sandy that I was a total stranger who had wandered onto the Rising porch in the course of a police investigation.

"It's too bad Linda couldn't take him," Sandy said. "He'd be a lot better off with her. His mother's about at the end of her rope." She glanced down at her watch. "I'd better get going," she said. "They'll be tearing the place apart. Thanks again," she added. "Coming here is terribly important to people like Jimmy. It's more than just a job, you know. It's their whole life."

With that, she turned and walked away, still blonde and still willowy, disappearing behind the same door that had swallowed Jimmy Rising.

I couldn't help wondering if Jimmy Rising ever noticed that about her, or if to him she was simply Miss Carson from micrographics.

Either way, it was sad as hell for Jimmy Rising and not so sad for J.P. Beaumont.