Middle of Nowhere (17 page)

With his left cheekbone virtually missing, Lieutenant Rudy Schock looked only remotely human. He looked more like some sort of flesh balloon, with what appeared to be a giant blood blister where his ear and neck should have been. Schock’s left arm and hand had borne the brunt of his attempts at self-defense. His elbow was no longer capable of a right angle, and his wrist hung limp and useless. His breathing was long and slow.

Lieutenant Mickey Phillipp had been the first struck—with a single blow to the base of the skull— unconscious, so that he lay in a pool of his own blood, but otherwise didn’t look as brutalized as his colleague.

The sight of the two injured officers turned Boldt’s stomach. He knew them both, though not as close friends; however, tonight they felt like brothers. Boldt could feel his own rage building, percolating dangerously near the surface. No matter who had struck the blows, Boldt directly blamed Mac Krishevski and the sickout that had caused such dissension in the ranks. This was no mugging, that much seemed clear.

An EMT said to Boldt, “A little harder and this one was either dead or never walking again.”

“Blunt object?”

“You got it.”

“Both lieutenants,” Mark Heiman whispered softly from behind Boldt. Heiman was himself a lieutenant— who until a week earlier had been with Narcotics. Such labels were gone now. Rank held little purpose anymore.

The alley was a block and a half from the Cock & Bull—an Irish bar in the Norwegian neighborhood of Ballard. Seattle demographics. The wet, narrow lane between brick buildings owned a pair of Dumpsters, a teetering stack of discarded wooden pallets, a Dunkin’ Donuts bag and a flattened McDonald’s fries carton oozing a sickly green mold that had once been potatoes. The alley smelled sour with urine and faintly metallic from the spilled blood. There was a lot of blood everywhere. “Somebody saw this,” Boldt suggested hopefully to Heiman, who was lead on the case.

“Other than the guy who did it?” returned Heiman. “If true, he hasn’t come forward.”

“How do you see it?” Boldt asked, wondering how Heiman’s report would read.

“How I see it,” the other said, “is one thing. A couple of lieus fifty yards from a major watering hole for the North Precinct? Does the name Krishevski mean anything to you?” He paused. “How I write it up? Robbery. Assault. Deadly force, with intent to kill.”

“A mugging,” Boldt stated dejectedly. There was no other way to put it on paper, but he suddenly wished he had reported his own attack so he might have established a pattern: first Sanchez, then him, now these two. Krishevski indeed.

“Without witnesses or further evidence—” Heiman sounded apologetic. “How would you write it up?” A little defensive.

“Same way, Mark. I hear you. But we’re thinking along the same lines, if I’m reading you right. And maybe it might help you to know that someone took an aluminum Louisville slugger to my shoulder and back two nights ago, and that I passed on reporting it because I didn’t want the paperwork.”

Heiman considered this pensively. “Then why don’t you look like the back of Phillipp’s head?”

“Rin Tin Tin. A K-9 on the other side of a neighbor’s fence. Hated the thing ‘til it saved my life.”

Heiman fumed. “These guys are going to get a war if they don’t watch out.”

Boldt nodded. “I said the same thing to Shoswitz. Told him to pass it along to Krishevski.” Looking down at the paramedics trying to stabilize the fallen lieutenant, he said, “But I’m thinking maybe the message didn’t get through.”

“Yeah? Well, it better, or I’ll deliver it myself.”

“You’d have company there.”

“Just say the word,” Heiman suggested.

“Steady as she goes: it’s what Krishevski wants. If he can’t get us to join them, he’ll get us suspended for conduct unbecoming, and he wins either way.”

“Is that what this is about? He lights the fuse, and watches as we self-implode?”

“Keep me up to speed, will you?” Boldt requested, handing him a card with his cell phone number. Hei-man returned the gesture. “While you’re putting this to bed,” Boldt said, viewing the bloody landscape, “I think I’ll have a beer over at the Cock and Bull.”

Heiman understood the implications: Boldt was known on the force as a teetotaler.

T
he Cock & Bull had been fashioned after an Irish pub, with low ceilings, exposed beams, low lighting. It served up fifteen micro-brewed and specialty beers on tap, another sixty in the bottle, fish and chips, burgers and sixteen-ounce T-bone steaks with Idaho baked potatoes. The place smelled of cigarettes, hops and campfire charcoal. Irish music played a little loudly, forcing patrons to shout, lending the crowded pub a sense of celebration and revelry. There was no explanation for the bars cops picked or the short-order grills they frequented. Sometimes the connection seemed obvious—an officer’s brother owned or managed the establishment, or the proximity to a precinct house made it an obvious choice. In the case of the Cock & Bull, a favorite haunt of the North Precinct, Boldt thought it was probably the name of the place and the emphasis on beer.

A few heads turned as he entered. Then elbows nudged. No one noticed that it was Lou Boldt; they noticed a lieutenant from the West Precinct. Two young waitresses ushered trays through the throng of lustful eyes and rude comments, used to it. A cop bar was part junior-high locker room, part mortuary, an uncomfortable blend of the morbid and the adolescent.

A pair of elevated color TVs at either end of the bar showed a stock-car race. Boldt attempted to contain his anger and rage at those in the room, all Blue Fluers. He wanted to drag one of them by the hair over to the alley and rub his face in the spilled blood. To show all of them the eerie electronic silence of Sanchez’s hospital room. He knew damn well there wasn’t going to be much sympathy in this room for two assaulted officers, and he had to wonder at how one week of absenteeism could change people so dramatically. How some overtime pay could wipe out all signs of loyalty. How could they go on drinking and telling jokes as if nothing had happened?

Would a thorough search reveal a baseball bat in the truck of one of the cars parked out back? Had it come to that? So quickly? Could the trust built via years of working side by side be cancelled out by the edict that there would be no more off-duty work and the denial of overtime pay?

He found himself drawn to one particularly raucous group, a dozen or more men crowded around a table like gamblers at a cock fight. Boldt edged up to the outside perimeter of this knot and caught the balding reddish tinge of a scalp he knew to be Mac Krishevski. The guild president held court at the center, explaining in a loud, drunken voice the difference between the fuzz on a peach and a sixteen-year-old girl and winning peals of laughter with the punch line: “licking the pit.”

He and Boldt met eyes—Krishevski’s glassy and excited, Boldt’s narrow and fierce.

“Dudley Do-Right rides again,” Krishevski said, not averting his gaze.

“We’ve got two lieutenants with their heads beaten in,” Boldt announced. He added disgustedly, “You guys aren’t celebrating that, are you?”

“We’re aware of the situation, Lieutenant,” Krishevski replied, suddenly sober, “and there’s not a man in this bar who isn’t pulling for Schock and Phillipp, so don’t go suggesting otherwise. If you’ve got business here, state it. Otherwise, find your own corner and let a fellow officer enjoy the camaraderie he’s entitled to.”

“My business is to gather information useful to the investigation.”

“Yes. Well, I’m sure you’ll want to start at one end or the other and work the room. Certainly not in the middle.” He indicated their location—dead center in the bar.

“If you have time between the tasteless jokes,” Boldt said, “you might discuss amongst yourselves what you know about the incident tonight.”

One of the drunker men said, “I know that by morning my head’s gonna feel worse than theirs do now.”

A couple of the others laughed, but not Krishevski, who once again met eyes with Boldt. There was a flicker of recognition there, a moment of understanding. Krishevski stood, addressing the drunken man, “You want to joke about a fellow officer’s injuries, you drink without me.” He moved to a different table, where he was greeted like a general returning from the front.

Boldt received a half dozen evil eyes from the men that Krishevski deserted. He turned and glanced around the room. He hadn’t taken a step before he felt himself the attention of someone’s stare. He thought nothing of it, realizing he was odd man out: a working lieutenant in a den of strikers; an officer based in the Public Safety Building, a world away from the North Precinct.

But that burning sensation persisted, and he looked to his right, intent on staring down whoever was responsible: John LaMoia stared back at him from a corner booth.

Boldt felt a chill. Had the phone call that had interrupted his dinner come from LaMoia? His former protégé? Friend, even.

LaMoia stood and headed down a hallway toward the men’s room. Boldt wanted to follow, but resisted. His sergeant had made no indication or signal whatsoever; he thought it best to wait him out.

LaMoia fit in at the Cock & Bull the way the suspender set fit in at McCormicks and Schmidts. He was a man who moved seamlessly between the uniforms and the brass, the meter maids and the Sex Crimes detectives, the entrepreneurial friend-to-all, who always had an investment worth your making or a bet worth placing. He navigated a thin line between snitches and interrogation rooms, right and wrong, never quite crossing into criminal behavior, but always carrying a cloud of uncertainty in the wake of his swagger.

Boldt’s cell phone rang. He moved to the front of the bar and stepped back outside to answer it where he could hear. LaMoia’s voice spoke into Boldt’s ear.

“It would be natural for you to say hello to me,” LaMoia said. “And when you do, I’m going to be rude. Just so you know.”

“And now I know.”

“The marina out at Palisades. One hour.”

“I’ll be there,” Boldt confirmed.

Boldt put some effort into questioning unwilling and uncooperative officers, reeling from their unwillingness to help him out. But his heart wasn’t really in it, following that call from LaMoia. He wanted the hour over quickly, and it wouldn’t cooperate. It dragged on like a sack of cement left out in the rain. When he finally checked in with Heiman, reporting he’d gained nothing from his interviews, it felt as if the entire night had passed him by.

He was back in his car when his cell phone rang.

“Lou?” It was Phil Shoswitz. “Got a minute?”

“You heard about Schock and Phillipp?” Boldt asked.

“I heard,” Shoswitz confirmed, “but I’m delivering another message.”

Boldt attempted to clear his head, knowing this had to be something of major importance. On the occasion of their last meeting, Shoswitz had been questioning the very nature of their friendship. “I’m listening.”

“The chief is going for a stolen base. He’s facing the possibility of National Guardsmen taking over his turf, so he’s gonna smoke a couple fastballs over the plate and hope to clean out the top of the lineup.” Mention of the chief got Boldt’s heart racing. “Cleaning out the lineup” didn’t help matters. What the hell? He knew Shoswitz’s opinion of the newcomer, and feared the worst. But it was worse than even that. “What I’m telling you is, you’re not going to sleep tonight—you’re gonna be on the phone to every goddamned officer of yours, because those officers were mine not long ago, and to a man they’re the best we’ve got, and I’d hate to see you lose them.”

“Lose them?”

“He’s sending out something like a hundred health care personnel in the morning, door to door, to verify every officer’s claims of illness. Those that aren’t ill will be held in violation of the guild contract and will be terminated without pay and will forfeit all benefits, including four-oh-one Ks.”

The static sat heavily on the open line. The implications were enormous: the chief would break the guild and restructure SPD in a matter of hours. Boldt could foresee a string of lawsuits stretching out over years, and a younger more vital police department for its newly installed chief. With the guild broken, he could negotiate new levels of pay and recruit from across the country, possibly cutting a deal with King County Police in the process and bringing the two departments under one roof. “Oh, my God,” Boldt muttered into the phone.