Awkward and complicated. This was beginning to sound like putting on a wedding—minus the bride and groom.
Next was Men’s Wearhouse: “Mr. Beaumont, when you were in on Monday, we were told that you needed your tux in time for Friday. It’s ready now. Could you please stop by at your convenience and try it on? That way, if any additional alterations are required…” Checking on a tux for Friday seemed like a very low priority.
Mel again: “I’ve been trying to think of where we should go to dinner with a new baby and all. I finally decided that we’d be better off eating at home. So I’ve called that new catering place, Magical Meals, and I’ve cleared it with the doorman. They’ll deliver a roast beef dinner with all the trimmings to the condo, complete with someone to serve and clean up. They’ll be at the house at six. If you think that’s a bad idea…” In fact, it seemed nothing short of brilliant.
Then a message from Lars: “Ja, sure,” he said. “If you have time, give me a call…”
I hadn’t been writing anything down, and by then my head was spinning. I called Lars back first. “What’s up?” I asked.
“I t’ink I’d like to go to another meeting,” he said. “If it’s not too much trouble.”
“I’m on my way,” I said.
I called Mel back and breathed a small thank-you when I reached her answering machine instead of her. “Busy with Lars,” I said. “Taking him to a meeting. Dinner sounds great.”
I forgot about the tux, but on the way to Queen Anne Gardens I remembered to call the flower shop and got the flowers ordered. Several different arrangements. Big ones. Spare no expense. So I may not be great, but at least I’m not entirely useless. In between all that I even managed to call the cab company and started the process of tracing Elaine Manning’s Saturday-morning ride.
Lars came out to the car looking like death warmed over. I’d managed to find another noontime meeting, this one over on the east side at a place called Angelo’s. I’d been there before, years ago. So had Lars.
“Thank you,” he said, once he got in the car.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I cannot believe t’ose women,” he said. “The first one knocked on my door this morning to see if I needed someone to help me with breakfast. Ja, sure, I can eat my own breakfast! And it’s been that way all day long, one of them after another.”
Are we going to a meeting just to get away from a bunch of pushy women? I wondered. Or is he afraid one of them will haul out a bottle of booze and slip some to him?
So we went to the meeting. Then, because Lars was in no hurry to go home, we went by and picked up my tux. And then, because he still didn’t want to go back to Queen Anne Gardens, I took him along on a jaunt through the grocery store to stock up on essentials and then home to Belltown Terrace with me, where he settled into my recliner and snored like a jackhammer for the remainder of the afternoon.
I did my best to work around him. The dispatcher from the cab company called to say Elaine Manning had been dropped off at the YWCA on Fifth. I called there and made inquiries, but to no avail. It’s a lot easier to tell someone to buzz off when you’re talking to them on the phone than it is when they’re standing right there in front of your desk. So I figured I’d try talking to the ladies at the YWCA another time when I didn’t have Lars Jenssen underfoot and a whole contingent of company bearing down on me from every point of the compass.
Then, because the house was still quiet—relatively quiet due to Lars’s Olympian snoring—and because I couldn’t think of anything more to do about LaShawn Tompkins right then, I called up LexisNexis one more time and, just for the hell of it, typed in the name Anthony David Cosgrove.
All right. So I complained about computers for years. Resisted using them. Griped about having to use them. But now I’m a believer. Within seconds of typing the name, there it was—a whole list of hits concerning Anthony David Cosgrove. To my surprise one of them was only two months old. It came from an obscure magazine called Electronics Engineering Journal. It was a long, amazingly dull article on corruption and payoffs among defense contractors. The reference to Cosgrove came near the end of the article.
According to industry analyst Thomas Dortman, payoffs with dollar signs on them are the ones that gain big headlines, but payoffs that result in job offers are almost standard operating procedure. One of the earliest Dortman recalls happened at Boeing in the early eighties. In that instance charges came to nothing, however, when the alleged whistle-blower, electronics engineer Anthony David Cosgrove, disappeared in the Mount Saint Helens explosion.