Portland Noir - Kevin Sampsell [53]
All that remains is to ask George where he was shortly after midnight last night. I don’t see the point. He’s not the tearful-confession type. I finish my latte and mutter a thanks, head for the door. “Come back anytime.” I’m tempted to take him up on it.
I find Hot Leggett’s Café in the ground floor of a building midway up the long block between Sixteenth and Maple on Hawthorne. Great spot for foot traffic from Ladd’s or the Buckman neighborhood to the north. The construction looks recent, reminds me of Ruby Jane’s description of what R&B’s landlord wants to do. I see evidence of a roof-top garden three stories above, espalier pears growing along the anodized balustrade at roof’s edge.
Inside, almost every table is in use by the kind of middle-years affluent types that seem to always find a way to spend half the morning kvetching over lattes in the neighborhood café. The furnishings are IKEA, the music reedy instrumental fusion, the aprons an ionizing shade of green. The only surprise is the Hot Leggett logo, a stylized demitasse emitting steam shaped like a pair of legs. I dig out the matchbox—the logo’s the same. I hadn’t noticed the cup the night before.
I don’t see Ella, but one of the baristas catches my eye. Zeke. He frowns, but finds a thin smile as I step up to the counter and surprise myself by ordering a small cappuccino.
“Dry or wet?”
RJ would approve of the question. “Dry.”
He takes my three bucks and gives me back a dime. The same at Uncommon Cup would be forty cents less, but then Ruby Jane isn’t paying for chi-chi recent construction and eight hundred square feet of Swedish furniture.
Unlike R&B, the espresso machine is fully automated, bean to brew. A half-minute of grinding, bubbling, and hissing, then Zeke sets a to-go cup in front of me. Guess he doesn’t want me hanging around. I take a sip. It’s fine.
“Where’s your girlfriend?”
He looks confused a moment, then recognition hits him. “You mean my sister?”
“Ella is your sister?”
“You thought she was my girlfriend?” His laugh is scornful. Last night he was the idiot; this morning I am.
“Either way, is she here?”
“I haven’t seen her.”
“You mind if I ask you some questions?”
“I don’t know anything about the broken windows.”
“What about this?” I show him the matchbox and he sniffs.
“I don’t know why we have those. We’re nonsmoking.”
“Ella’s not nonsmoking.”
“It’s still a stupid thing to spend money on. This isn’t a bowling alley.”
Color dots his cheeks. He’s clearly not on board with the Leggett legs matchboxes. But when I tell him where this one came from, his face goes carefully blank. “That could be any-one’s.”
“I’m sure.”
“We give them away.”
“What size do you wear anyway? Jacket-wise, I mean.”
I give him a hard stare, but he meets it without expression. I hear movement and a pair of women in hand-woven cotton blouses approach the counter, their salty hair pulled back with contrived insouciance. They smell like skin cream. There are two other baristas, but Zeke says, “Excuse me. I need to help these ladies.”
Chalk that one up to fumble-tongued luck. It never occurred to me to check the jacket’s size. Some investigator. But it’s still in my car, and upon inspection I can see it’ll never contain Zeke’s beefy shoulders. Probably fit Ella just fine though.
I return to Uncommon Cup. Ruby Jane is working the counter, so I show her the jacket. “Would you wear this?”
She shrugs. “Maybe, though it’s a men’s cut and I prefer my clothing not to hang in tatters. Why?”
“I’m still working things out. Do you mind if I use your computer?”
She directs me to her little office in the back. Within a few minutes I learn that the owner of record of Hot Leggett’s Café is Leggett Partners LLC—company officers, Ella and Zeke—while the business license for the Red and Black is held by one George Called Bingham, whatever the hell kind of middle name that is. No wonder he’s an anarchist. Leggett Partners owns a scattering of small businesses and mixed-use buildings around Southeast Portland,