A Dangerous Breed

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  In another minute, a Lexus GS sedan in granite gray appeared from the lot. It continued on the same route, passing me and shimmering its way up 6th. Burke’s broad frame was visible through the rear window.

  I didn’t follow right away. Burke might have marked the Dodge from his own truck. Pulling out behind him now could be a dead giveaway, accent on the dead.

  He went left on Bell. In another second, I hurried after him. I passed through the intersection in time to see the Lexus cross under the monorail track at 5th and turn into an alleyway on the next block.

  I stopped before the alley. Too easy to spot me in those close quarters. I left the truck at the curb and ran ahead to look down its length. The back of the Lexus was just vanishing from sight into a wide brightly lit rectangle. As I watched, the rectangle compressed until it was gone entirely. An automatic door had shut behind Burke’s car.

  After a slow count of twenty, I risked walking down the alley. The wide door was painted with the name empyrea.

  I retraced my steps to the front of the block, on 4th Ave. The alley ran behind the Cinerama theater and a luminous high-rise, maybe forty stories or more.

  The Empyrea. A newer addition to Seattle’s skyline. Its lower six floors had been clad in backlit glass that shone a verdigris green. The same pale green highlighted each floor of the looming tower above. Discreet signs in the windows advertised units still available. On the other side of the doors, posters of happy families and conspicuously affluent professionals, enjoying the amenities within. The lower floors of the tower operated as a hotel under the same name.

  I sent a text to a friend. More of a work acquaintance, really. I included the license plate number of Burke’s Lexus GS. I’d had to lean on my newer colleague Panni to trace Special Agent Rick Martens’s license. But for DMV checks on regular citizens, I had my own sources.

  Ten minutes later the name Garrett Costello and an address matching the Empyrea Tower added to our text thread. Unit 3105. High living. I spent two more minutes wiring my acquaintance his fee for the service. Pays to know people.

  Garrett Costello. A buddy of Burke’s, lending him his car? Or the name Burke lived his daily life under, to keep people like me off his track?

  I wasn’t inclined to wait to find out. The security of the average hotel was no challenge. I made my way in through a utility door off the alley and then cut across at the quiet mezzanine level to find the elevator.

  The elevator required a keycard to access the residential floors. I ignored the swipe pad. In my lockpick kit I carried a firefighter’s service key, which allowed me to open the Phase 2 panel inside the elevator and override the keycard controls. The button for the thirty-first floor lit up on the first try.

  Apartment 3105 was halfway down the hall, likely boasting unobstructed views of the southern skyline and the water beyond.

  I listened at the door. I could hear faint voices from a television, a news channel. I debated whether to pick the deadbolt or to coax Burke into coming out somehow, maybe by leaving a package at the front desk. The television went quiet.

  Then I heard muffled footsteps, close and coming closer, and had just enough time to get my hand on my Beretta before the door opened.

  Burke. Dressed for going out, and with a look of stunned surprise. A gift horse with a gaping mouth. I shoved him back into the dark interior of the apartment and drew the gun.

  “Hands,” I said, kicking the door closed behind me. “Up.”

  He froze. I pointed the gun at his knee, just as he had to me, to underline the point. He laced his fingertips on top of his head.

  I spun him around and quick-marched him up against the wall of the living room. His leg banged the glass table beside a black leather couch, knocking a full tumbler of water to the carpet.

  My left hand patted him down while the right aimed the Beretta at his spine. I stayed off to one side with a few inches of extra space. No point signaling to him exactly where the gun was, inviting an attempt to disarm me. And I wasn’t positive we were alone in the apartment. If anyone else suddenly appeared, I wanted Burke as a shield.

  He had a small squarish automatic, maybe a Walther by the feel of it, in a soft concealed carry holster over his right kidney. A gravity knife with a four-inch blade in the pocket of his overcoat. And a backup piece, a subcompact Glock on his right ankle. Armed for a damned standoff. I tossed all the weapons toward the door. Fury radiated from Burke like heat off a reactor core.

  “Get it over with,” he said.

  “You said it yourself: I’m not a shooter. But I will put a round through you if you step out of line.”

  “Then what the fuck is this?”

  “My turn for picture time.”

  I tapped his shoulder with a half sheet of cardstock and the penlight from my pocket. Slowly, he reached a hand from his head to take them. I drifted back to give myself some space. This high in the sky, the city lights made more of a soft undertone to the darkness in the room than any illumination we could see by. The shadows worked to my advantage.

  When he turned on the penlight, the beam bounced off the glossy print and into his face like a suntan reflector catching rays. Slashes of shadow trapped in the crags of his square face just served to emphasize his look of shock.

  I said what we both already knew.

  “Moira.”

  He didn’t take his eyes from her yearbook picture. As his gaze moved slowly over the contours of Moira’s image, motes of flashlight beam glimmered in his eyes.

  “How do you have this?” he said. Something like wonder in his voice.

  “She’s my mother.”

  Burke turned the flashlight my way. I had anticipated the glare. With twelve feet between us, his blinding me and jumping to attack wasn’t a practical option. Not that he seemed inclined. Flat-footed in both stance and attitude.

  “You and Moira were friends,” I said. “When you were both teenagers.”

  “And?”

  I took a breath. “And I want to know if you’re my father.”

  He stared at me for a long moment, before his lip curled in a snarling grin. If the laugh that followed had any humor in it, it was the kind that revealed itself when watching a video of someone you didn’t like taking a nasty fall.

  “You asking if I laid her? That it?”

  “That’s a first step.”

  “To what? Child support? Shit, you’re bigger than I am.”

  “Did you?”

  “Man, you really believe this. Dumb fuck.” Burke shifted, his heel squashing on the wet carpet. “I never got in the bitch’s pants. And without that, there’s nothing. I haven’t given two shits about her since. Happy?”

  “Not yet. I want proof.”

  “Proof?”

  “A hair sample. Including the roots.”

  The grin evaporated. “I should have known this was a cop trick.” He dropped Moira’s picture to the floor.

  “I’m no cop.”

  “Oh, I heard that. You’re just some snitch they told to break into my house to nab some DNA. What do they got over you? Another burglary rap?”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “Go fuck yourself. The only sample you’re taking from me is blood.” He nodded at the gun. “You got the stones?”

  I did. On any other day. Popping one through the outer meat of Burke’s thigh—a volcano of pain but nothing fatal, so long as he got help soon—and yanking out a fistful of his hair while he writhed on the floor might have been easy work. I didn’t even have to go that far. Burke was strong, but I could whip him across the head with the Beretta and continue from there.

  Except.

  Except I’d seen the way Burke had looked at Moira’s photo. Like you’d look at a childhood treasure you’d long believed lost.

  Except he hadn’t asked about Moira, or told me to take my fool questions to her. He already knew she was dead. Which meant he was lying about never giving her another thought.

  There was something stopping
me from hurting Burke. It didn’t take a flash of genius to figure out what that was.

  “Here.” I took a burner phone from my pocket and tossed it to him. He caught it one-handed.

  “In case you want to talk to Daddy?” he said, the predatory smile back in place.

  “In case you decide to stop bullshitting me. Until then I’ve got other things to do.”

  “Other contenders, huh? Mom spread it around a little?”

  I wasn’t going to give Burke the pleasure of seeing my anger.

  “Stay away from me, Shaw,” he said, “or I’ll finish this.”

  I backed toward the front door. Burke didn’t bother shining the penlight in my direction. He stood with the beam illuminating the cuffs of his trousers and his shoes, and the white edge of Moira’s photo on the frost-blue living room carpet. His shadowy outline only shifted once I began to close the door.

  I left the Empyrea via the lobby. As I joined a stream of people letting out from a show at the movie theater, I had to step around a long-limbed dude inclined with almost sagging relaxation against a post, a cigarette like a piece of smudged chalk stuck in the black sand of his heavy beard stubble.

  A few feet farther on, I caught the smoke. A pungent, deep-tar punch.

  No way that was an American brand, not even hand-rolled.

  I kept walking to the corner before looking back. The lean dude with the black overcoat and blacker stubble was still hanging there, eyeing the hotel lobby. He glanced vaguely in my direction. Then assiduously avoided doing so again.

  Maybe Burke had been leaving to meet him. Or maybe the dude was watching the lobby, intent on following Burke when he left.

  Podraski and Martens, the task force cops, had implied someone might have hired me to break into Burke’s house. Burke himself had demanded to know who I worked for. And if the smoking dude wasn’t from Eastern Europe, I was a Martian. Was Burke somehow on the wrong side of his boss, Liashko?

  I took my time returning to my truck, to make sure the smoking dude wasn’t on my tail, and to take a moment to think about my last sight of Sean Burke.

  As I had closed the door to 3105, he had moved. It had been hard to know for certain in the gloom, but I thought I’d seen Burke reaching down, rescuing the picture of my mother from the sodden floor.

  Junior Year, Part Five

  I didn’t skip classes often, not nearly as much as Davey. Part of my arrangement with Dono was that I could work with him so long as my grades maintained at least a three-point average and I stayed out of detention and other trouble. But today was a special case.

  Not having a car of my own, I had to hide in the trees that bordered the school parking lots while I waited for first bell. Lurking like some perv. At least the woods smelled good, more like cedar than the spruce trees I guessed them to be from their mossy, scale-like bark. I wanted coffee and breakfast but I’d had to make do with a Coke grabbed from the fridge early this morning and some wintergreen gum.

  When the lots were empty of students, I went looking. Burn Burkley’s white GTO was in the farther lot, between a pickup truck and a Ford SUV. Perfect. No one could see me from the school as I used one of Dono’s tools to pop the trunk.

  No alarm sounded. Maybe Burn didn’t have one, or he had installed some aftermarket brand on his shitmobile that only went off if someone unlocked the doors. It wouldn’t have mattered. What I was searching for took me ten seconds to find.

  Under the spare tire, a plastic Safeway bag filled with pinkie-sized bottles wrapped in gold foil. A quick glance at one told me the little flasks had been mass-produced in England, where I guessed poppers must be legal. Maybe Singer or Burn had a relative willing to mail them over.

  Twenty-two minutes until the end of first period. Time enough. I made one stop in the 400 block of classrooms, and another to wash my hands carefully in the bathroom. By the time the bell rang I was at my locker, picking up books as if it would be a nice, normal day ahead.

  Word was all over school by lunchtime. Vice Principal Rikkard had opened up Burn Burkley’s locker, and whatever he’d found there—rumors ranged from a sack full of airplane liquor bottles to a kilo of heroin—it had prompted a visit from not one but two police cars and the cops pulling Burn out of third period. No one had seen him since, but Lane March said he saw Burn in the back of one of the cop cars as they left, all snot-nosed and sweaty.

  Yvette Friel didn’t look much better. Like she was about to hurl, or had just hurled, or both. As I passed her in the hall at lunch I couldn’t resist twisting the knife a little.

  “Sorry about your party favors,” I said.

  She gaped at me like I’d grown fangs. Which it kinda felt like I had.

  I’d puzzled over why Burn would steal the poppers back from Colten Gulas, when his whole sales market was in the high school. He couldn’t have sold them at Watson without someone in Singer Boeman’s circle noticing and making the connection.

  But he could give them away. Maybe pour the liquid into dollar-store bottles for shampoo first so it wasn’t so apparent they were the same supply. And Burn’s sometime girlfriend Yvette was about to throw a huge bash tomorrow night. That was, if she didn’t end up in a police station answering questions all weekend. I didn’t put it past Burn to claim it was all Yvette’s idea.

  Colten and Candace met me after school, by the weird metal sculpture that the school had installed sometime during the 1970s. It was iron-gray and looked like sine waves had collided and broken into pieces. Like the artist had had a bad time in math class and wanted everyone to know it.

  “What,” Candace said before even saying hello, “happened? I mean, God. Everyone says there was an anonymous call to the fire department about a bomb or something. Or that the custodian found a puddle under Burn’s locker.”

  “Spillage,” I said. “Stuff leaked all over the floor in 400.”

  “You did it. How?”

  “Doesn’t matter. What matters is that by now even Singer has heard that Burn was busted with the goods. Colten is home free.”

  “I thought you were going to give them back to me,” he said, hunching his shoulders so that his backpack rode up around his head. “That would have been better.”

  I waited. Stared.

  “Colt, I think Van’s done his part,” Candace said.

  Colten sighed.

  “Who took the quilt?” I said.

  Another sigh. “I did. Rebecca Hoff said she really liked it, and I thought she really liked me, and . . .”

  “And you took it to give to her.”

  “She was graduating. If she had the quilt, she’d remember me. No one cares about the stupid thing, anyway.”

  I was back to staring. Keeping myself calm. Candace spoke even faster than before.

  “Van clearly does, honey. Go on.”

  Colten took off the backpack and unzipped it. “Here.”

  He handed a thick folded mass to me. It was stained and tattered in multiple places, and nearly pulled apart in others, but unmistakably a handmade quilt.

  “We had it as a dog blanket,” he said. “Fenster chewed a little.”

  Even if Colten hadn’t said anything, I would have known that. The quilt reeked of canine.

  “Go away,” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” Candace said.

  None of this was her fault, but I guess the look on my face must have spooked her a little, because she got Colten up and moving like he was on fire.

  When they were out of sight, I unfolded the quilt. A couple of the fabric squares had representations of people, but most stuck to patterns of diamonds and triangles and smaller interlocked squares. I remembered the quilt better now that I saw it. Reminiscent of Easter, pastel colors like pinks and sky blues and soft yellows.

  But I’d never seen the back before. Each student had stitched their name.

  There it was: moira shaw, in green thread. One of the interior squares that weren’t as frayed as the edges. I turned the quilt over to examine her squar
e. It, too, was made in shades of green, with a central square and triangles angling off it like a sunburst. I liked it. I ran my fingers over it lightly, feeling the ripples in the fabric and the stitching. She’d had me in her belly when she made this.

  I liked it a lot.

  Ms. Nasgate and Mr. Lindhoff were together in her classroom. A nicer meeting place than his cramped office, I guessed.

  “I found this,” I said, placing the folded quilt on one of the sewing tables. Ms. Nasgate was on her feet in an instant.

  “Oh my,” she said. “Look.”

  Lindhoff frowned. “Where’d you get that, Mr. Shaw?”

  I pointed to the quilt’s edge. “A dog’s chewed on it.”

  “I asked you a question.”

  “That’s no real concern, Milt,” Ms. Nasgate said to him. She was already unfolding the quilt, spreading it to drape smoothly over the table. “It’s very dirty, but the fabric we used is forgiving. A lot of these stains will come out.” She spoke breathlessly to herself. “I think we can rescue most of them with a little patching. Which one was your mother’s?”

  “This one,” I said. The speed of my answer wasn’t lost on Lindhoff.

  Ms. Nasgate smoothed the quilt’s cloth with her hand, like she was soothing a nervous animal.

  “Now, I wouldn’t normally break up a project, Van, but this is a special circumstance,” she said. “Would you like to keep your mother’s square? We’ll be reassembling much of this, anyway.”

  I shook my head. I’d taken some pictures of it. They would be enough.

  “She made it to be part of something,” I said.

  “Well, thank you very, very much. You know this is the only senior project since I’ve been here that was lost? We’ll take good care of it. And put it back in a place of honor.”

  “Mr. Shaw?” said Lindhoff. I inhaled, waiting for the shoe to drop. “I trust . . . no one was harmed in the recovery of this?”