to
Wild Bill
Waterman as anything except Hanoi Bill. If deflating those in power was
to be
Peerless Price's job, dethroning my old man became his obsession.
According
to
urban legend, their mutual animosity finally boiled over in nineteen
sixty-eight when, after a heated shouting match in the Green Parrot
Lounge, my
old man called Peerless out. Said if he wanted to keep running his lip,
why
didn't he step outside in the alley for a minute and settle the matter
in the
time-honored manner of men.
Peerless
Price,
who basked in a well-deserved reputation as a barroom brawler,
immediately
picked up the gauntlet, and out into the alley they went. I remember
the big
bandage on my father's head and how, for weeks afterwards, he stayed at
home,
conducting business by phone in his darkened study. My old man always
claimed
that he got the twenty-three stitches in his forehead when Peerless
sucker
punched him with the stainless steel hand and that the beating which
put
Peerless in the hospital on thirty-day medical leave had been
administered
purely as an act of self-defense.
Just
as an
entire generation of Americans can remember precisely what they were
doing when
John F. Kennedy was killed, a great many Northwestemers can likewise
recall
what they were about when Peerless Price disappeared. It was easy. It
was the
Fourth of July weekend and, for the first time in its history, the city
had
issued permits for not one, but two holiday parades. While the
traditional
patriotic pageant was scheduled to be prancing downtown, a massive
antiwar
rally, led by none other than old Hanoi Bill himself, had been planned
for
Broadway.
I
remember
sitting between my parents on the stage in Volunteer Park on the night
that
Peerless Price disappeared, listening to speaker after speaker deride
that
faraway conflict and call for the immediate withdrawal of our troops.
Sitting
until the wee hours, dressed like a miniature FBI agent, until,
finally, it was
my father's turn to speak. I remember the harsh yellow light. And being
too
tired to follow his words and becoming lost in the sea of faces.
In
the weeks
preceding the holiday, Peerless had viciously attacked anyone and
everyone he
deemed responsible for issuing the demonstrators a permit to march,
branding
them as fags, traitors and Communist sympathizers. So incensed was
Peerless
Price that, against the wishes of his employers, he cast aside any
vestige of
journalistic impartiality and publicly proclaimed his intention to
march at the
head of the downtown parade, right next to the mayor. Needless to say,
his
failure to show up for the parade did not go unnoticed.
The
initial
police investigation revealed that he was last seen on the night
before, July
third, nineteen sixty-nine, at about eight o'clock in the evening when
he used
a credit card to pay for a meal at a Chinese restaurant in the
International
District. Two days later his car was found parked and locked in a pay
lot on South King Street,
a block and a half from where he had eaten his last meal.
Despite
the
Price family's public offer of a hundred-thousand-dollar reward for
information
regarding the whereabouts of their beloved brother, over the next two
months,
the largest manhunt in the history of the Pacific Northwest yielded
absolutely nothing, and the disappearance of
Peerless Price became the stuff of legend.
When
the
investigation was, at long last, drawn to an unsuccessful close, Bill
Moody,
the police commissioner, was asked by a reporter how it could be that
the best
investigators in the department had failed to turn up even a single
suspect.
"Oh,
we've
got plenty of suspects," he said.
"Who?"
pressed the reporter.
"Just
open
the phone book," Moody replied.
And
to mink, after
nearly thirty years of rumors and speculation, of the insistent story
of how
he'd been poured into the foundations of the Kingdome, or paved over
when they
built the new freeway, or, my personal favorite, how he'd been shredded
and
sold for crab bait,
Wild Bill
Waterman as anything except Hanoi Bill. If deflating those in power was
to be
Peerless Price's job, dethroning my old man became his obsession.
According
to
urban legend, their mutual animosity finally boiled over in nineteen
sixty-eight when, after a heated shouting match in the Green Parrot
Lounge, my
old man called Peerless out. Said if he wanted to keep running his lip,
why
didn't he step outside in the alley for a minute and settle the matter
in the
time-honored manner of men.
Peerless
Price,
who basked in a well-deserved reputation as a barroom brawler,
immediately
picked up the gauntlet, and out into the alley they went. I remember
the big
bandage on my father's head and how, for weeks afterwards, he stayed at
home,
conducting business by phone in his darkened study. My old man always
claimed
that he got the twenty-three stitches in his forehead when Peerless
sucker
punched him with the stainless steel hand and that the beating which
put
Peerless in the hospital on thirty-day medical leave had been
administered
purely as an act of self-defense.
Just
as an
entire generation of Americans can remember precisely what they were
doing when
John F. Kennedy was killed, a great many Northwestemers can likewise
recall
what they were about when Peerless Price disappeared. It was easy. It
was the
Fourth of July weekend and, for the first time in its history, the city
had
issued permits for not one, but two holiday parades. While the
traditional
patriotic pageant was scheduled to be prancing downtown, a massive
antiwar
rally, led by none other than old Hanoi Bill himself, had been planned
for
Broadway.
I
remember
sitting between my parents on the stage in Volunteer Park on the night
that
Peerless Price disappeared, listening to speaker after speaker deride
that
faraway conflict and call for the immediate withdrawal of our troops.
Sitting
until the wee hours, dressed like a miniature FBI agent, until,
finally, it was
my father's turn to speak. I remember the harsh yellow light. And being
too
tired to follow his words and becoming lost in the sea of faces.
In
the weeks
preceding the holiday, Peerless had viciously attacked anyone and
everyone he
deemed responsible for issuing the demonstrators a permit to march,
branding
them as fags, traitors and Communist sympathizers. So incensed was
Peerless
Price that, against the wishes of his employers, he cast aside any
vestige of
journalistic impartiality and publicly proclaimed his intention to
march at the
head of the downtown parade, right next to the mayor. Needless to say,
his
failure to show up for the parade did not go unnoticed.
The
initial
police investigation revealed that he was last seen on the night
before, July
third, nineteen sixty-nine, at about eight o'clock in the evening when
he used
a credit card to pay for a meal at a Chinese restaurant in the
International
District. Two days later his car was found parked and locked in a pay
lot on South King Street,
a block and a half from where he had eaten his last meal.
Despite
the
Price family's public offer of a hundred-thousand-dollar reward for
information
regarding the whereabouts of their beloved brother, over the next two
months,
the largest manhunt in the history of the Pacific Northwest yielded
absolutely nothing, and the disappearance of
Peerless Price became the stuff of legend.
When
the
investigation was, at long last, drawn to an unsuccessful close, Bill
Moody,
the police commissioner, was asked by a reporter how it could be that
the best
investigators in the department had failed to turn up even a single
suspect.
"Oh,
we've
got plenty of suspects," he said.
"Who?"
pressed the reporter.
"Just
open
the phone book," Moody replied.
And
to mink, after
nearly thirty years of rumors and speculation, of the insistent story
of how
he'd been poured into the foundations of the Kingdome, or paved over
when they
built the new freeway, or, my personal favorite, how he'd been shredded
and
sold for crab bait,
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