Jackie's Wild Seattle by Will Hobbs Read Free Book Online Page A

didn’t look hopeful. “Maybe they aren’t flying today.”
    Up ahead, foot traffic had come to a standstill. One particular stall was mobbed. We heard cheers, shouts, and laughing. I caught Cody’s attention and pointed to a sign suspended above the crowd: CAUTION—LOW-FLYING FISH. Just then Cody saw one, an airborne salmon longer than his arm. I hoisted him up so he could see better. As soon as a customer bought a fish, one of the workers grabbed it and tossed it across the stall to others who did the wrapping. They never dropped one.
    â€œThis is major,” Cody said.
    As they were wrapping a sockeye salmon for Jackie, the cell phone in her purse rang. I fished it out and answered for her. It was Neal, and he wanted to know if his assistants were available for a rescue. He said it was Cody’s chance tosee Pioneer Square, where the bricks had fallen off the buildings during the earthquake.
    I asked Neal where he was calling from and he said, “From the Filipino eats place.”
    I said, “Where’s that?”
    â€œRight across from you,” he said, “about fifty feet away.”
    I looked across the street, and there was Neal’s shiny head and smiling face amid the crowd.
    A few minutes later Jackie was on her way home with dinner and we were on our way to Pioneer Square in Neal’s rusty old Toyota pickup. It was challenging fitting the three of us and Sage into the cab of the toy-sized truck. With Cody in the middle and Sage propping her front feet on the dash, we managed.
    We were barely under way when Cody grinned and said, “Very funny Scotty, now beam down my clothes. Friends don’t let friends eat farmed salmon.”
    Neal winked and said, “Friends don’t let friends drive naked.”
    Cody chortled like a pig in deep mud. I gave Uncle Neal a glance to the effect of, Don’t go there.
    Pioneer Square was ringed by five- and six-story buildings with a small leafy park in the middle. A carrier in one hand and big fishing net in the other, flak-jacketed partner at his side, Neal was quite a camera magnet. “My uncle, the tourist attraction,” I kidded him.
    â€œLet’s keep moving,” he said under his breath. We hustled past boutiques, coffeehouses, and bookstores. Pioneer Square felt familiar, a lot like Greenwich Village in New York, though the totem pole in the middle of the square reminded me I was a long way from home.
    We stopped at the door of something called Seattle’sFamous Underground Tours, and were they ever happy to see us. They’d had to cancel two tours after a raccoon got into the underground, whatever that was.
    A man led us to a spot where he opened a door fronting an alley, then shut it behind us as we descended into the late nineteenth century. “Tidnab,” Neal announced on the way down the stairs. Suddenly his dog was on high alert. Uncle Neal put on the heavy coat he’d been carrying over his arm and pulled on a pair of welding gloves.
    We found ourselves looking into musty shops and stores as we walked along streets abandoned long ago. “We’re under Pioneer Square right now,” Uncle Neal whispered. “Keep your voices down so we don’t scare the raccoon into some deep corner.”
    The main route that the tourists followed on their tours was lit dimly by electric light. I probed with Neal’s powerful flashlight beam into dark nooks and crannies. “We wouldn’t have a chance of finding that Bandit-spelled-backwards without Sage,” Cody whispered to Neal.
    â€œYou got that right. I can’t believe you figured out the raccoon code word so fast.”
    â€œBeam me up, Scotty. Why did they have to stop the tours?”
    â€œThey were afraid of getting sued. Afraid the raccoon might get cornered and rip some tourist’s face off.”
    A few steps farther and the flashlight beam lit up a strange sight: a toilet mounted on a platform