Past Crimes (22 page)

R
AIN HIT ME LIKE
a swarm of hornets the instant I stepped out of the Honda. The wind was flinging the drops almost sideways. I ran up the middle of the street, toward the eastern side of Harborview. Was I too late? Again?

The ambulance dock was the closest entrance. I followed a group of paramedics and drivers as they race-walked their gurneys through the automatic doors. One of the patients fought violently against his restraints, screaming. Nobody looked at me. Inside, I broke off from the medics and headed for the hallway.

It could be a trap. I didn’t doubt that Addy’s message was legit, but Guerin might still be counting on the news to draw me in. He could have a couple of cops watching the critical ward right now.

I had to risk it. Had to. Even if Guerin handcuffed me right next to the damn hospital bed, at least I’d be there.

And I had to be there, for Dono, if this was the end.

The elevator doors opened on the fourth floor. No cops in sight on the ward. No guards from Standard Security posted at Dono’s door either. The hair on my scalp rose.

I ran, drops of water flying off me, down the hall. I was halfway there when Addy Proctor stepped out of Dono’s room, followed by Dr. Singh and one of the uniformed men from Standard.

Addy spotted me first. “Van, thank God,” she said. “He’s still with us.”

“You should go in,” said Singh.

I did. They stayed outside. The door shut behind me.

He looked very thin. The day before, I might’ve believed he was only sleeping. Now his head didn’t seem to dent the pillow quite enough, and his steel-colored hair was disheveled. They had more wires attached to him now, a new monitoring machine next to the bed.

I stepped forward and took his hand. It was cool to the touch.

“Dono,” I said, “it’s Van.”

A nurse had tucked the sheets and the sky blue blanket very neatly around him. The top of the sheet made a crisp white stripe across his chest. It rose and lowered a fraction as the air was forced into his lungs and sucked back out again.

Rain beat against the windows, the wind behind it calling. Loud enough to mask the erratic tap of the EKG. A downbeat of Dono’s heart every two seconds, then three, then holding back at two again.

“We’ll get him,” I said. “I’ve seen the son of a bitch. Boone McGann. He’ll burn.” I leaned in close. “You need to be there to see it. To watch his face when judgment day hits him. You need to see that, Dono.”

His hand squeezed mine. Light as a spider’s touch.

I squeezed back, willing it not to be a reflex.

“Dono,” I said.

His back arched violently. He coughed and choked against the tube of the ventilator. I turned and yelled for help as his arm jerked weakly under my hand.

A nurse yanked the door open and pushed me away from the bed. She pinned his forehead down while her other hand began removing the ventilator. The heart monitor was shrieking. The nurse called for Singh. Addy’s face at the edge of the doorway, pale and clenched.

Dono’s eyes half opened. Black gun barrels in his long white face. The first I’d seen those eyes in ten years. His body was rigid, and his head, free of the ventilator mask, moved an inch one way, then the other.

I stepped forward, and his eyes found mine. Stayed there. His mouth twitched.

I leaned down and put my ear close to his face. Singh said something to me. There was an exhalation of breath from Dono against my cheek.

“I’m here, Granddad,” I said.

Another breath. I was so close that the stubble on his chin grazed my face.

Somebody was pulling at my arm. The guard. I reached out without looking and shoved him, and he crashed over something and fell to the floor.

“
Van
.” I heard Dono say it. The V was only air, pushed out an extra fraction.

“Tell me,” I said.

His big hand flailed suddenly and grabbed mine where it rested on the blanket, my fingers still looped around the ring of keys from Juliet’s car. He gripped me with spasmodic strength until the metal teeth bit into my skin.

“
Here
.”

“I’m here,” I said, my ear still an inch from his mouth. “Tell me.”

Dono went limp. His clenched fist eased over my hand. I looked up in time to see his eyes lose the light.

Someone grabbed me again, pulling me back. I let them. Singh closed in and started checking Dono’s pupils. A nurse gave him an injection. Another stood by a defibrillator cart, pads ready.

Addy was saying something to me, from outside the room. I looked at her.

“Come away, Van,” she said. The orderlies at my back released their hold on me.

I went. My eyes were still on Dono.

Addy and I waited and watched the whirl of action try to match the storm outside. I already knew it was pointless. Three minutes. Five, until Singh called it. Then the air was still again, somehow, and everyone had left the room, hovering around my peripheral vision.

“There will be time later,” a voice said.

It was Hollis, next to Addy. “We have to leave, lad,” he said. The nurses and orderlies and Singh and Addy all stared at him, uncomprehending.
“Police are coming. There’ll be time for your man soon, but right now you and I have to get gone.”

I wanted to stay with Dono, but there was no mistaking the tension lining Hollis’s broad face. He was soaking wet, his dark shirt plastered across his barrel chest and belly. I nodded.

He turned and walked quickly down the hallway, and I trailed along. Hollis led me out of the ward and to the open stairwell by the elevators.

He grunted. “Pray God they haven’t locked the fucking door,” he said as we went down the stairs and into a side hallway. At the end of it was a security door. “I found this doctor’s entrance.” He pushed, and it swung open instantly.

“There.” Hollis pointed, and I walked through the rain and stood at the passenger door of his big DeVille while he bustled around to get in the driver’s side and hit the power locks. I opened the door and sat down next to him.

The wind wasn’t as strong in the shadow of the building. With the starless night and the torrent of water washing over the car windows, we might have been on the ocean floor.

He started the engine and rubbed his hands together for warmth. “Christ Jesus. What a night.” He looked at me. “I’m not meaning to be cruel, son, but did you make it here on time? For your granddad?”

Van
, Dono had said.
Here
.

I nodded.

Hollis sighed. “Well, that’s something at least.” He reached out and gripped the steering wheel, pushing against it until it creaked to stretch his muscles.

“How’d you know?” I said.

“About Dono? That lovely old bat back there. Miz Proctor. She called and told me what was happening. She said she’d already sent you a message but you’d not replied. And that the cops were here, too.” Hollis fidgeted in his seat, trying to face me square on. I hadn’t moved since I’d gotten into the car. Hollis couldn’t seem to stop.

“I knew you’d race here the second you heard,” he continued. “So
I thought you could use a little help. I rang up Homicide. Your boy Guerin wasn’t there, but his partner was.”

“Kanellis.”

“That’s the name. I told him I was an old friend of your grandfather’s and that you had turned up at my door pleading for shelter. I thought you were armed and desperate. Begged him to hurry.”

I imagined Guerin out there in the rainstorm. “Where’d you send him?”

“Well, I might have told Kanellis I was Jimmy Corcoran. That little prick could use the excitement. Besides, Jimmy lives close enough to the hospital that I hoped they would send the cops on duty here. We got lucky.”

He exhaled and sat back in his seat. “Listen to me run on. God, boyo. I’m sorry. You have to know that your granddad held on as long as he could. He must have known you were here.”

I closed my eyes. Listened to the uneven drumroll of the rain on the roof. Twelve hours before, I’d listened to Julian Formes die. I’d chased after Boone. If I’d caught him then and been able to whisper the news in Dono’s ear, would that have made a difference?

“There’s something else I can do for you,” Hollis said. “If you’ll let me. Sometime back, your man was in one of his dark moods. He made arrangements for himself. A service, a wake, the whole deal. I know it’s not something you want to think about—”

“Get it rolling. He’d want it to be soon.”

“True enough.” He looked at me. “You can’t keep running like this, lad. Not for much longer.”

“I won’t have to. Thanks, Hollis.” I opened the door and stepped out of the DeVille. The rain fell straight down now, from clouds to pavement with hardly a sound.

I
WAS STANDING WHERE THE
land met the water at the far edge of Seward Park. The park was closed. It had closed at dusk, a lifetime or two ago. Before I’d seen Luce. Before Dono had died. A sodden mass of clouds blocked any moonlight from above and refused to reflect the city lights from below. All I could see of the horizon was a flat, leaden gray.

Goddamn it, Dono.

I finally get it. Why you asked me to come back.

You hadn’t planned on getting rich—that was your problem.

Sure, the Talos shipment was too good to pass up. How often does a chance at six million in untraceable rocks cross your path? Maybe you rushed the job, finding a crew you could get on short notice. Unstable assholes like the McGann brothers.

When Boone McGann was busted for violating his probation, did you see that as a good thing? One less guy who might betray you? With Boone and Burt together, it wasn’t hard to imagine Dono and Sal Orren as the ones left to bleed out on the floor of that abandoned airplane hangar, instead of Burt and Sal killing each other.

I’d call you lucky, Dono. But that luck just kicked trouble down the road a little way.

You wound up with the whole shipment. Handed maybe a quarter
of it to Ondine, and she was satisfied. Gave a few hundred grand in cash to Cristiana Liotti for the information. And you kept the rest.

So what then? You weren’t going to buy a damn mansion. Sure as shit you didn’t want to spend the rest of your life getting fat lying on some beach drinking umbrella drinks.

I thought I knew your way of thinking before I came back. But after the last few days of hell, I understand you a little better.

With a pile of diamonds suddenly in your hands, you started thinking about your legacy. Giving things away. You were handing over the reins of the bar to Luce and passing your share to Mike. And you wrote me a letter.

Because you had something to offer me, too. The diamonds.

I might not accept them, of course. You would have known that. It probably didn’t matter. It wasn’t just about offering me money. You’d be trusting me with the knowledge of what you’d done. A capital offense, with two men dead during the commission of a felony.

Just like the two dead skinheads ten years ago. So what if I hadn’t pulled the trigger on those men? You hadn’t killed Sal and Burt either.

Waves lapped softly against the low cement wall at my feet. I turned around and began walking through the forest trails of the park, back to where I’d left the car. The huge old trees blotted out the sky, until I made my way as much by feel as by sight.

The running had served a purpose while Dono had been alive. I’d wanted to tell him myself that we’d caught the man who’d shot him. See his face. My own olive branch to offer.

But Dono was dead now. And Detective Guerin would run Boone McGann to ground.

Staying at large was just kicking my trouble down the road, like Dono’s luck.

I reached the start of the trail, where I’d left the Honda. My personal phone was in the duffel bag. I replaced its battery—so what if Guerin learned where I was now—and turned it on. I’d find a motel, crash for a few hours. And then turn myself in.

The phone brought up the last Internet search I’d done, on the Talos
robbery. There were fresh headlines:
HOMICIDE VICTIM LINKED TO ARMORED CAR ROBBERY
. Cristiana Liotti. The press had caught up to what the police already knew.

It wouldn’t be long before Dono’s name was mentioned in articles about the robbery, too. Maybe he was already news. I clicked on the first link.

It was a full spread on Cristiana, with biography and a picture. The biography was padded with details about her high school in New Jersey, her volunteer work, anything that would make a short life seem richer. The photo was from a formal party, Cristiana smiling broadly, champagne flute in hand. Her dress was dark blue, a good color to show off her curled brown hair. People standing next to her were cropped out.

Behind her I could see part of a large banner, hanging on the wall. The banner had a design on it in dark green and gold. The photo resolution wasn’t great. Two thick gold lines on a green background. On top of one of the lines was a notch.

Then the notch became a barb, like at the end of a fishing hook, and the lines became two of the prongs of a trident.

And the design became the emblem of the Emerald Crown Yacht Club.

Ondine’s club.

O
NDINE LONG’S APARTMENT TOWER
was one of the tallest buildings in Belltown. From the roof I had an unobstructed view across a quarter of a mile, to the black waters of the sound.

It was three o’clock in the morning and almost pitch-dark on the roof. The wind moaned low and loud through the glass-and-steel canyon below. Every few moments a fresh dash of light rain slapped my back.

I looked over the edge. Fifteen feet down I could just make out the flagstone paving on Ondine’s balcony. Her penthouse apartment was set back from the main exterior of the building, creating a private terrace. The terrace was about the same size as a volleyball court. A stone dropped from the wrought-iron railing of the terrace would fall twenty stories before cracking the asphalt on Battery Street.

I swung my legs over the roof edge. The wind whipped at my hair and tried to knock me sideways as I hung by my hands above the terrace. I let go and dropped the last seven feet.

No lights came on. I couldn’t see anything inside the apartment through the reflective glass of the windows. I waited in the shadows.

Another minute passed. I tried the sliding glass door, lockpicks ready in my other hand, and was surprised to find it unlocked.

But not too surprised.

Ondine had been making a lot of bad mistakes lately.

I slipped inside and closed the glass door behind me. The sound of the wind was softer with the door closed.

Ondine’s apartment had an open floor plan. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could see a broad expanse of living area, with low-slung furniture arranged to take advantage of the view. A dining room was on my right. Artwork on the walls and abstract statuary dividing the spaces in between. Everything was leached of color in the gloom.

At the very back, I could see a short entrance foyer and the front door. To the left of the living area was a hallway. Probably leading to the bedrooms.

I wanted to go that way. Get down to it. Instead I did the smart thing and moved across the room to check my exit route. The dead bolt on the front door was a top-of-the-line Schlage, with steel-reinforced plates. This one, unlike the back door, someone had remembered to lock.

“Alec? Are you home?” Ondine’s voice, coming down the hall on the left. In a moment she appeared at the edge of the room, a ghostly blur in an ivory robe.

I turned on a reading lamp. Its silk shade was embroidered with dragonflies, and the outline of pale blue wings fell across Ondine’s unnaturally smooth face.

“Have a seat,” I said.

Her eyes flickered to the .32 in my hand.

“I’m expecting Alec back shortly,” she said.

“Good.”

Ondine gave a tight smile. Her lipstick was perfect. Maybe she really was expecting Alec.

“All business, like before,” she said, crossing the room to perch on a chaise. I moved back toward the far wall, where I had a clear line of sight on the front door and the hallway. Just in case there was another entrance to the apartment.

She nodded at the gun. “That’s hardly necessary.”

“Tell me about Cristiana Liotti,” I said.

Ondine removed a cigarette from a red lacquered box on a side table. She lit it with a match and took a small, unhurried draw.

“We’ve compared notes already,” she said.

“You told me what happened after. The parts you thought I needed to know. I want the other half.”

She brushed a hand through the long fall of her black hair. “How it started is common knowledge now. Cristiana Liotti learned of the diamond shipment while working at Talos.”

“So she told the one person who might be able to help her profit from it.”

“Dono.”

“Not Dono. She brought it to you. Cristiana was a member of Emerald Crown.”

Ondine raised an eyebrow.

“I’m guessing Cristiana had heard rumors about you,” I continued, “and she had nothing to lose. Did she drop hints or come right out and ask if you could help her profit somehow?”

She exhaled a wisp of smoke. “The little secretary crept up to me at the New Year’s banquet. Very, very nervous.”

“And you could trust Dono to get what information he needed from her and not leave a trail back to either of you.”

“Time was short.”

“Who brought in the McGanns?”

“McGanns,” Ondine said, stressing the plural. “You’re positively bursting with new information tonight. I arranged for the personnel.”

“When you say ‘I,’ you mean Alec.”

“We’d used Sal Orren before. But yes, it was Alec who recruited the McGann brothers.”

“Who were fuckups from the start,” I said.

“Which is why I instructed Alec to make things right. He could handle Boone McGann.”

“But he didn’t.”

Ondine tapped her cigarette ash into an oyster shell on the table. “Boone went into hiding after Dono. He’ll surface eventually.”

“Sure he will. Whose idea was it for Alec to go after Boone? Yours or his?”

Ondine opened her mouth to reply. Closed it again. We stared at each other.

“What is Alec to you?” I said.

“That’s not at all relevant.”

“Okay. What are you to him? The girl of his dreams? Or just a cash machine with benefits?”

Ondine’s face flushed. “Get out of here.”

“Dono made only one mistake, but it was a very big one. Taking the job and trusting that you could still hack it.”

I tapped the unlocked glass door to the terrace with the barrel of the .32. “You’re old, Ondine. And sloppy. Making a deal with Cristiana, who was way too close to home. Hiring psychos like the McGanns. Not to mention letting your piece of ass make a fool out of you.”

“You son of a bitch.”

“Dono’s dead.”

Ondine sat up rigid, like she’d leaned back against a needle hidden in the upholstery. She looked blankly at me.

“Dead?” she said.

“Earlier tonight. He came out of the coma for a minute or so. That was all.”

She turned away. Her back hunched. Outside, the wind changed pitch as it gusted, like the inhale and exhale of the entire city. I listened, forcing my own breath to slow.

Ondine stood and walked over to a huge ebony sideboard, her silk robe whispering and swirling. Decanters were set in a precise row. She picked one with an amber liquid and poured it into a crystal tumbler, took the glass and drank.

When she spoke, her voice was approaching steady. “You’re here to kill Alec.”

“Where is he?”

“Why are you so certain he’s helping Boone?” she said.

“Because Dono wouldn’t have told Burt McGann a damn thing
he didn’t need to know. There was no way for Brother Boone to track down Cristiana if she had just been Dono’s source. Somebody else knew who she was. And only someone with your connections would know how to find a specialist to bug Dono’s house.”

I crossed the room to stand in front of her. She took a fractional step back, pressing up against the heavy sideboard.

“Somebody fed Cristiana to Boone McGann,” I said. “It had to be you. Or someone very close to you.”

We stood there for a moment, looking at each other.

“His eyes,” said Ondine. She raised the glass but didn’t drink, just inhaled the fumes of it. I was close enough to smell it, too. Pear brandy, thick and cloying.

“Alec was working with the McGanns all along, wasn’t he?” she said. “If Boone had been part of the robbery—”

“Then the McGanns would have killed Dono at the hangar, along with Sal Orren. I think Burt tried to stick to the original plan and take both of them out on his own. But Sal was quicker than he expected. He took Burt with him.” I shook my head. “You got lucky, Ondine. If it had gone down that way, Alec couldn’t just skip town and leave you alive to figure it out. He would have killed you once they had the diamonds.”

“Let me,” Ondine said. Her hand gripped the carved edge of the sideboard. “Let me kill him.”

Kill. Not “deal with” or “handle” or another euphemism.

“Just like that?” I said.

“I’ve loved two men,” she said. “I lost the second tonight.”

“So prove it,” I said. “Alec and Boone want the diamonds. Which means they want me. No more bugs or tailing me around town. They’ll have to grab me and torture me, like they did with Cristiana.”

I pointed at the cordless phone on the wall. “I’ll hold Dono’s wake on Sunday morning. At the Morgen.”

Ondine ran a fingernail along the edge of her glass. Then she set the glass down and picked up the phone. She tapped a button on speed dial.

“Darling?” she said into the phone. Her voice was faster and lighter. Almost happy. “I’ve just heard. Dono Shaw has died.”

She listened for a moment. “I agree. The hospital is a dead end—Boone won’t go there. And the police are still hunting for Dono’s grandson. I think Dono’s house is too risky for Boone to stake out, if he’s determined to find Van.”

I leaned in to catch Alec’s next words through the receiver. “—to find him down in Stockton?”

“No,” said Ondine. “I think your instincts were correct. Boone is still in Seattle. And Van Shaw will almost certainly appear at Dono’s wake. The day after tomorrow, at his bar on Lenora Street.”

Alec grunted. “If the police are hunting for Shaw, wouldn’t he steer clear?”

“I know these people,” Ondine said. “They are sentimental, even when that leads to making foolish decisions. Maybe especially then.”

I glanced up in time to see one tear balance on the eye of her lower eyelash before she swiped it away, as deft as a magician.

“I’ll find McGann,” said Alec.

“Not tonight. Come home soon. I miss you,” said Ondine.

“Yeah, you, too,” he said, and hung up.

Ondine put the phone back on its hook. I put the .32 back into the pocket of my coat and picked up the same decanter Ondine had used. I poured a shot into a tumbler.

She walked back over to the chaise to sit down. She looked tired. And no longer fortyish. “I didn’t think Dono would say yes to the robbery,” Ondine said. “It truly surprised me.”

“So why did you ask?”

“Six million in diamonds does not come along every day,” she said. “And Dono had told me to call him if I saw an opportunity. He’d wanted to set some money aside, he said.”

“For a rainy day.”

“A hoard,” Ondine said. “That was the word Dono used when he told me he’d decided to keep the diamonds instead of selling them.”

“Hoard? Like treasure?” The word struck a note, high and far off in my memory. I was sure I’d heard it before.

Ondine smiled softly. “Later generations will marvel at it, he
said. Your grandfather was exaggerating. I never understood half his humor.”

Because it hadn’t been a joke. The diamonds were for the future. Mine.

I downed the ounce of brandy in one swallow. It seared my throat and kept me from talking.

“You were right,” I finally said to Ondine. “Love leads to bad decisions.”

“Yes. Alec was a blind spot.” She hugged her silk robe around her, like there was a chill in the wide room. “But I would never have taken his side. Not against Dono.”

I looked out the glass door, at the terrace and the retreating storm clouds farther out over the sound.

“If I thought that you had, we’d be done talking by now,” I said. “I’d have dangled you over that railing out there until you told me where Alec was hiding. Then I’d have dropped you anyway, just for your part in Dono’s death.”

Ondine was an ice sculpture. I set the empty glass back on the sideboard.

“Just so you know it crossed my mind,” I said.