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Authors: J. A. Jance

Ring In the Dead (6 page)

BOOK: Ring In the Dead
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If I had thought Tatum was a square shooter, I would have gone straight upstairs with what I had found from Alfonso and the other drivers, but he wasn't, and I didn't.

Cops patronize restaurants. We go to restaurants at every hour of the day and night, so it wasn't necessary to launch an official investigation in order to launch an investigation. I just had to get word out to the beat cops and to the guys on patrol and to the detectives riding around in their unmarked cars that the restaurants in Seattle were suffering from an epidemic of check skippers, and that we needed to be good neighbors and help our friends in the restaurant business find these guys.

That was a cover-­your-­ass subterfuge, of course. I'm guessing most everybody understood that we were working behind the scenes to give Pickles a helping hand, and they came through. As the produce guys ran their routes and as the cops talked to their contacts, a trickle of information started coming in. The details came in on Post-­it notes left on my desk while I was laboring in the Evidence Room; in messages left on my office voice mail; and in some instances, with guys I knew, in phone calls to the house at Lake Tapps.

I finally stapled an oversized map of Seattle to the wallboard in the garage at Lake Tapps and began inserting little plastic beaded straight pins into the map wherever I had a report about another dine-­and-­dash incident. As the collection of pins grew, it wasn't hard to see the pattern. They ranged all over town, with a gaping hole in the center of the city, from the north end of Columbia City on the south, to Capitol Hill on the east. The Doghouse was the only restaurant with any proximity to downtown.

Everybody on the fifth floor knew what was up, but no one breathed a word of it to Tatum. Instead, we gathered in the break room or in cubicles and talked about it. One of the detectives, who was married to a departmental sketch artist, took her to see the witnesses who had been at the Doghouse the day of the McCaffey shooting and to some of the other restaurants that had been victimized by the check-­skipping team. Over time we developed credible composite sketches of the two guys from the Doghouse. Once we had those in hand, we made sure the guys from Patrol had copies with them in their cars; we made sure the beat guys had them, too.

It sounds like this was all straightforward, but it wasn't. For one thing, it was an investigation that wasn't supposed to be happening and had to be invisible. For another, almost everyone had other cases—­official cases—­that they were supposed to be working. Continuing to toil in the vineyards of the Evidence Room, I was one of two exceptions to that rule. The other one was Pickles Gurkey, who was now officially on administrative leave. Once he got out of the hospital, he was placed under arrest, and then allowed free on bond to await trial after his family posted his immense bail.

I had visited with him in the hospital only once, after he was out of Intensive Care. He told me what he remembered from the crime scene—­that he had dropped his gun when the heart attack hit, but that he was sure he hadn't pulled the trigger. Clearly Lieutenant Tatum wasn't buying his story and neither was the King County prosecutor. I wanted to tell him that the guys from Homicide were working the problem and that we hadn't forgotten him, but I didn't dare. And I never went back to the hospital to see him again. I figured if Tatum got wind that there had been any kind of continuing contact between us, he'd be all over me.

They say luck follows the guy who does the work. In that regard we were bound to get lucky eventually. I was down in the Evidence Room one afternoon when the clerk hunted me down and said someone was waiting outside to talk to me. The guy in the hall was a uniformed officer named Richard Vega. He was holding a copy of one of the Doghouse composites—­the one of the taller man with the light-­colored hair.

“I've seen this guy,” he said, waving the sketch in my direction. “My sergeant sent me to Homicide to talk to you, and the clerk up there sent me down here.”

“Where have you seen him?” I asked.

“Hanging out down around Pioneer Square,” Vega said. “I'm thinking maybe he works somewhere around there.”

I thought about the doughnut hole in my circle of pins. Pioneer Square would be well inside it. So maybe, if the guy lived or worked nearby, maybe he didn't want to crap in his own bed or victimize establishments where he might want to be regarded as a regular paying customer.

I knew just where to go. A few years earlier, a Chinese family had bought up a local deli named Bakeman's. The joint was known all over the downtown area for and were doing land-­office business selling sandwiches made from fresh turkeys that were roasted on the premises every night.

In regard to restaurant food, pundits often say, “You can get quick, cheap, or good. Pick any two.” As far as that was concerned, Bakeman's was in a class by itself because they excelled in all three—­quick, cheap, and good! And since they were in the 100 block of Cherry, just down the street from the Public Safety Building, plenty of cops went there for lunch on a daily basis.

Bakeman's was one of the places without a beaded pin on my map, so I rushed there immediately, with a mimeographed copy of the tall guy's composite sketch in hand. It was early, right at the beginning of the lunch rush. The young Asian guy at the cash register took my order: white turkey meat with cranberry sauce on white bread. Mayo and mustard, hold the lettuce and tomato. I handed over my money. When the clerk gave me back my change, he was already eyeing the next customer. That's when I held up the sketch.

“You know this guy?” I asked.

“It's lunch,” he replied. “Gotta keep the line moving.”

“Have you ever seen him?” I repeated.

He glowered at me. “I'm serving lunch here. I got customers.”

I held up my badge next to the sketch. The clerk sighed and shook his head. “You guys,” he said wearily in a tone that said he thought all cops were royal pains in the ass.

“Do you know him?” I insisted.

He nodded. “White meat turkey on white, mayo, mustard, cranberry sauce. Almost like you, only he takes lettuce.”

“Do you know his name?”

“I don't know names. I know orders. Works construction. Dirty clothes. Who's next?”

“So he comes in after working all day, orders white turkey on white. When does he come in? What time?”

“Afternoons. Before we close. Around two or so. Next?”

“Any day in particular?”

“You want to talk more, order another sandwich.”

“Done.” I said. “Give me the same as before, both of them to go.”

“You didn't say to go for the first one.”

“I didn't know I was getting two sandwiches then, either. Now I want them both to go. But tell me, does he come in on a certain day?”

The clerk looked as though he was ready to leap across the counter and strangle me. Instead he glowered at the servers who were putting my sandwiches together. “Both of those turkeys on white are to go,” he shouted, and then he glared back at me. “Tuesdays maybe?” he said. “Sometimes Wednesdays, but not every week. Takes his sandwiches to go. Puts them in a lunch pail.”

My heart skipped with joy because this happened to be Tuesday.

I gave the clerk my money. He handed me my change. “Next?”

From the way he shouted, I knew better than to press my luck. Without asking any more questions, I took my sandwiches and left. Giddy with excitement, I practically floated back up Cherry to the Public Safety Building, where I rode straight up to the fifth floor, dodged past Captain Tompkins's Fishbowl, and ducked into the cubicle shared by Detectives Powell and Watkins. They were both in. They looked up in surprise when I entered. Surprise turned to welcome when they caught a whiff of the turkey sandwiches.

By two o'clock that afternoon, the three of us had set up shop. Worried that the two guys might have seen me in the Doghouse the day Pickles and I were there at the same time, I stayed across the street, tucked into the shady alcove of a building that let me watch the door to Bakeman's while using the excuse of smoking a cigarette to hang around outside. Watty, who wasn't as fast on his feet as Larry Powell was, stayed in an unmarked car parked at the bottom of Cherry, while Larry went inside and ate a leisurely bowl of soup. I had also contacted Officer Vega and asked him to hang around at the corner of First and Cherry. I was worried that if the suspect was on foot and headed westbound on the eastbound street, Watty wouldn't be able to follow in his vehicle.

At 2:20 I saw the suspect, trudging up Cherry from First carrying a heavy-­duty lunch pail. He certainly looked like the guy in the sketch. He was dressed in grimy clothes and appeared to have put in a hard day of manual labor. I watched him walk past the spot where Watty was waiting at the curb. By the time he turned into Bakeman's, my heart was pounding in my chest. There was nothing to do now but wait.

I checked my watch. The crowd inside the restaurant had died down. With no line, it would take only a ­couple of minutes for him to order his sandwich, pay, pick up his food, and leave. At 2:26 he appeared again. He stood for a moment at the top of the worn marble steps, then he stepped down, turned right, and headed back down to First. He walked past Watty's vehicle, which was parked at the curb, all right, but it was also pointed in the wrong direction on the one-­way street.

I slipped out of my hidey-­hole and made my way down the hill. When I got to the corner of First, I waved off Vega. After that, it was up to me. When I turned right onto First, I could see the suspect half a block ahead of me walking uphill. Two blocks later, he turned into a run-­down building called the Hargrave Hotel.

In theater circles, SRO means standing room only, and that's considered to be a good thing. In hotel-­speak, SRO means single room occupancy, and it's generally not such a good thing. The Hargrave was a flea-­bitten flophouse straight out of Roger Miller's “King of the Road.” It might have been a lot swankier in an earlier era. Now, though, it was four stories of misery, with ten shoddy rooms, two grim toilets, and one moldy shower per floor. Bring your own towel.

I waited outside until I saw Mr. Lunch Pail get into the creaky elevator and close the brass folding gate behind him. By then, Watty had managed to make it around the block. After flagging him down, I stepped into the building lobby, where a grubby, pockmarked marble countertop served as a front desk. Behind it sat a balding man with a green plastic see-­through visor perched on his head.

He looked up at me as I entered. “If you're selling something,” he told me, “we ain't buying.”

I held up my badge and my composite sketch. As soon as he saw the drawing, the desk clerk glanced reflexively toward the elevator. The dial above the elevator showed that the car had stopped on floor three. Clearly this was a one-­elevator building.

“Who's this?” I asked.

“You got a warrant?”

“Not at the moment,” I returned mildly, “but I'm wondering how this place would measure up if somebody happened to schedule a surprise inspection from the Health Department?” When he didn't reply, I pressed my advantage. “Who?” I insisted.

“Benjamin Smith.”

“How long has he been here?”

The clerk shrugged. “A ­couple of months, I guess. Pays his rent right on time every week.”

“Where does he work?”

“He's a laborer down at that new stadium they're building. The Kingdome, I think it's called. What do you want him for?”

“Girl trouble,” I said quickly. “As in underage. Might be better for your relationship with the Health Department if he didn't know that anybody had come by asking about him.”

Visor Man nodded vigorously. “My lips are sealed,” he said.

I ducked back outside. By then, Larry had caught up and was waiting in the front seat of the car with Watty. I climbed into the back. “The clerk says our guy's name is Benjamin Smith. That may or may not be an alias.”

“So if he is our guy,” Larry said, “what do we do now? Even if we can get his prints and connect him to the Doghouse crime scene, that still won't be enough to let Pickles off the hook. It'll be his word against Smith's word. Might be enough for reasonable doubt, but I'm not sure. We need to find a way to corroborate Pickles's version of the story.”

I thought about that. Presumably there had been three ­people present when Lulu McCaffey was gunned down. We had found two of them. Now we needed to locate the third. The blond guy was the one who had usually shown up in the establishments marked by the bead pattern on the map in my garage. When it had become clear that the light-­haired guy was doing dine-­and-­dash with a collection of different pals, I had given up carrying the short guy's sketch and focused instead on the tall one. Now I had a hunch.

“Do either of you have that other Doghouse composite?” I asked.

“I think so,” Watty said. “Hand me the notebook there on the backseat.” I gave it to him. He rummaged through it for several long minutes before finally handing me what I wanted.

“Wait here,” I said. “And open the door so I can get out.”

With the new sketch in hand, I hurried back into the lobby. When the desk clerk looked up and saw me, he gave a disgusted sigh. “You again,” he said.

I held up the drawing. “Have you ever seen this guy?”

“Sure,” he said. “That's Fred—­Fred Beman. Everybody called him Cowboy Fred.”

“Does he live here, too?” I asked.

“Used to. Left sometime in July.”

“Do you know where he went?”

“He's in Walla Walla,” the clerk said. “Went back home to the family farm. At least, that's what he said he was going to do when he left here With these guys, you can never tell how much is truth and how much is fiction.”

“Did he leave a forwarding address?”

The clerk turned away from me and pulled a long, narrow file box out of the bottom drawer of a file cabinet behind him. Inside the box was a collection of three-­by-­five cards. After thumbing through them, he pulled out one and handed it to me. All that was on it was a phone number and a P.O. box number in Walla Walla.

BOOK: Ring In the Dead
12.83Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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