by G. M. Ford
The last article in the booklet was not written by Peerless Price. As a matter of fact, it wasn't even from the Post-Intelligencer, but from the rival Seattle Times, written by one Judi Hunt, who was identified in the byline as a Times staff reporter. It was dated July ninth, nineteen sixty-nine. Six days after Peerless Price's disappearance, a customs inspector named Gaylord LaFontaine was summoned to Pier Sixteen by an unnamed yard boss, who was concerned about the ungodly odor emanating from an unmarked and unclaimed shipping container sitting alone on the far side of his yard. LaFontaine used a borrowed bolt cutter to pop the lock and, much to his revulsion and dismay, found the decomposing bodies of fourteen Chinese nationals, including four children, huddled together on the ribbed metal floor of the box. It was almost a shame that Peerless Price hadn't been around to say, "I told you so." Almost.
I dialed the Seattle Times.
"Judi Hunt, please."
I could hear her pushing buttons. "I'm sorry, sir, but I'm not showing a listing for a Judi Hunt." "Could you give me the metro desk, then." "Yes, sir. Thank you."
Three clicks and "Metro." A deep man's voice. I went for the cheery good ol' boy approach. "What's a guy gotta do to reach Judi Hunt?" "You'd either see a priest or you'd call the Psychic Hotline." "Oh?"
"Judi died in eighty-four or -five. Ovarian cancer."
I mumbled a thanks, but, mercifully, he was already gone. Undaunted, I rolled backward and pulled the phone book out of the bread drawer, thumbed my way back to the L's and followed my finger down the page. The Times article said Mr. LaFontaine was twenty-nine years old at the time of his grisly discovery, so I was guessing he was still with us; Yep. Gaylord LaFontaine. Twenty-nine seventy-four Fifteenth Avenue East. Three two nine, sixty-four eighty. With a name like that I figured there couldn't be two of them, so I dialed the number.
"Yah."
I could hear the sound of children's voices in the background.
"Is this Mr. Gaylord LaFontaine?" "Yah. Wadda ya need?" "Are you with U.S. Customs?"
"Used to be. Who is this?"
Before I could respond, the background voices grew shrill and he said, "Wait a sec." And was gone.
"Anyway," he said when he came back. "Sorry about that. Who did you say you were?"
"My name is Leo Waterman." I waited to see if he'd been reading the papers. Apparently, he hadn't.
"Wadda ya need, Mr. Waterman?"
I wasn't sure how to express it. It came out like "I wanted to ask you some questions about nineteen sixty-nine. That container."
No hesitation. "What about it?"
"I'm a private detective. I'm looking into something that may or may not be connected to that tragedy."
"If you don't mind me saying, Mr. Waterman, whatever trail you're following must be pretty damn cold by now. That was a hell of a long time -ago."
"Yeah," I said, "that's why I was hoping—"
"Hang on," he said again. The phone clattered in my ear. I could hear his voice in the background but couldn't make out the words. He was gone for a couple of minutes. When he returned, he sounded short of breath, and I could hear crying in the background.
"Sorry about that. Listen. I got a minor emergency here I gotta take care of. You wanna come over, I'll tell you whatever I can, but you've got to be quick about it 'cause I promised the kids a movie at four-fifteen." I checked the clock—two forty-five—got directions from LaFontaine and headed for the door.
The rain had turned to an insistent mist which seemed to wet everything at once, rather than a drop at a time. I sprinted for the Fiat, threw myself into the driver's seat and then . . . son of a bitch! For the second time today, my feet were completely awash. The rain had soaked its way through the passenger seat and filled the foot well with six inches of greasy-looking water upon which several petrified McDonald's French fries now floated. I eased the car forward into the garage.
I got out, found a bucket and an old margarine container and bailed out the floor of the car. Then dragged the shop vac over and sucked up the rest of it. While I was inside changing my shoes and socks, I appropriated one of the old towels from the laundry room and a roll of duct tape from the kitchen drawer. You know what they say. If you can't fix it with duct tape, that sucker can't be fixed.
What in better weather had seemed a mere slit had somehow mutated into an eighteen-inch gash in the rough black fabric. I dried the area off as best I could and used up half a roll of the silver tape to put the top back together. Okay, so it looked like hell. I made a mental note to go out and buy some black tape as soon as the weather cleared.
By the time I pulled to the curb in front of twenty-nine seventy-four Fifteenth Avenue East, I was feeling pretty smug. My roof repair had allowed nary a drop into the car, which was a good thing, because the minute I'd flipped on the heater, an acrid fog had begun to rise from the sodden carpet, reducing visibility inside the car to something akin to midnight on the moors. I had to drive with the windows down.
The house sat high above the street. Dark brick on the bottom, light blue stucco on the top, in kind of a neo-Tudor motif. Two sets of stairs up to the house. Six, then four. The wide porch was covered in blue Astroturf. The window to the right of the door displayed a yellow Neighborhood Watch insignia. I gave the bell a pair of assertive rings.
She was about three, with brown hair cut straight across the front and held on the sides by a pair of red plastic barrettes. She held her tiny hand up for me to see. Her small index finger was nearly covered by a Flintstones Band-Aid. Her blue eyes were still wet around the edges.
"Did you hurt your finger?" I asked.
She nodded and stuck the damaged digit in her mouth.
I heard the tapping of feet and a clone appeared at her elbow. A boy, this time. Same age; same face. Either twins or acid flashbacks.
"Is this your brother?" I asked her.
Another nod. Another finger in the mouth.
"Jason," he chirped. "Megan got a owee."
"She showed me," I said.
The door swung all the way open. Gaylord LaFontaine was a wiry five-ten, about a hundred sixty pounds. He had a round, open face with big features set apart from one another. He'd grown his twelve remaining hairs long and wrapped them around his dome a couple of times in a last-ditch attempt to forestall the inevitable. He was drying his hands with a black-and-white dish towel.
"You'd be Waterman," he said.
"The very same," I assured him.
He turned his attention to the twins.
"What have I told you two about answering the door?"
The pair began to recite in two-part harmony. "Never open the door to strangers. Never ..."
When they finished, he said, "All right, you two. You go in the den and watch cartoons for a bit while I'm talking to Mr. Waterman. Then we'll get dressed and go to the movie."
The deadly duo didn't require further prompting. In an instant, they went tearing around the corner together and were lost from sight.
“Cartooooooooooodooooooooooooooons.''
He ran the dish towel over his face and neck.
"It's murder when the weather's like this and they can't go out," he said. "Come on back to the kitchen. I've got a few things to do."
I followed him back to the kitchen. He talked as we walked.
"You know, I've been thinking about that day ever since you called. Haven't thought about it in years, but since you called, you know ... I can't get it off of my mind.''
He steered me into an oak chair at his kitchen table, poured us both a cup of coffee and sat down across from me.
He looked out over my head toward a blank spot on the wall, and took a sip of the coffee. "There's certain pictures . . . you know, images that are gonna be with me forever. Things I'm gonna see when I close my eyes, right up till they put me in the ground. That family there in the container ..." He took a deep breath.
"Family?"
"Oh, yeah. They were all related. Four generations of the same family. Fourt
een of 'em'. Four kids." "What killed them?"
"The heat," he said. "It was ninety-eight, a hundred all that week. The docs figured it was probably a hundred and sixty inside the container. They never had a chance."
"And the yard was closed for the holiday," I added.
"A full four days. The Fourth was on a Thursday. Everybody had the whole weekend off." He shook his head. "Wasn't even anybody around to hear 'em scream. Hell, they'd be lucky to last four hours in that kind of heat, let alone four days."
We shared a belated moment of silence before I asked, "And nobody ever went down for it?"
"Nah. Down on the docks, nobody ever goes down for nothing." His eyes narrowed. "It's dumb kids doing the hard time. The kind of people bring people over here in containers, everybody knows who they are, but they don't do time."
"What do you mean, 'everybody knows who they are'?"
"Just what I said. Wasn't any problem knowing what was going on. It had been going on for years and it's probably still going on now. Problem was proving it."
"How's that?"
"Listen. In those days, you got four companies using the Pier Eighteen yard. Two American, one Japanese, one Chinese. I mean ... I don't know about you, and I don't want to sound like a bigot here, but I don't see Safeway, Costco or Panasonic branching out into the illegal Chinese immigration business."
"If it was that obvious—" I started.
"The fix was in. They had big-time juice. They had somebody downtown and somebody in the Port of Seattle both. Somebody high up who could assign them to a commercial yard. Somebody who could fix it that a couple of containers here and there wouldn't be missed from time to time."
He read my expression. "Hey ... I'm telling ya. When I first come on, you know, I was green and eager, so I asked the port supervisor, went marching right into his office—and this guy was high up—I said . . . 'Hey, what's this little piss-ant company doing down here on the commercial end? How come it's not down at Harbor Island with the rest of the ham-and-eggers where we can keep better track of it?' 'Cause you know, Customs doesn't pay a hell of a lot of attention to the big commercial yards. Between you, me and the wall, the bureau figures a Panasonic container contains whatever Panasonic says it contains. It's the mom-and-pop importers like Seven Rivers you got to watch like a hawk. Know what the port guy told me?"
"What?"
"He said if I was planning on making pension, I oughta just do my job and keep my mouth shut. Said if he was me, he'd just sort of forget about Seven Rivers Trading altogether. Said Seven Rivers was political."
"Political how?"
He shrugged. "I always figured he could have meant it one of two ways. Either he was saying the fix was in . . . You know . . . that somebody in government was throwing his weight around for a piece of the action."
"Or?"
"Or . . . you know . . . that the whole refugee thing was political. Had a lot of people in those days didn't see anything wrong with people trying to get out of places like Red China. Made those poor souls in that box out to be like martyrs, and whoever tried to bring 'em into the country into some sort of humanitarians or something."
"The underground railway."
"You got it. Either way, somebody higher up decided it wasn't something for little old me to be messing around in. Soon as it was clear they were illegal, INS took over the investigation and boom, the bureau transferred me down to the airport. Two days' notice. No explanation. No nothing. Just down to the airport."
"You said before you figured it was still going on."
"Why not? Last time I looked, they were still down on Eighteen. Change the name every year or so, but it's still the same people. They've got an open door into the country. Why should they stop? I wouldn't."
"You think they're still bringing people into the country?"
He thought it over. "I think ... if you took two dozen INS agents and made a sweep through the International District you'd need a fleet of school buses to haul off the illegals. It's the same in every major city in America." He dropped his hands to his sides. "They gotta come from somewhere."
You couldn't argue with that, so I didn't.
He checked his watch. "Gotta go," he said. "Movie's clear up in Lynnwood at the dollar theater."
"Baby-sitting?"
He looked bemused. "You could say that."
I thought he was going to let it go, but I was wrong.
"They're my grandkids," he announced suddenly and with a certain amount of pride. "I guess ya could say we're kinda stuck with each other."
Unless I was mistaken, we were approaching another of those conversational moments when it didn't matter what you said next, so I kept it simple. "Cute kids," I said.
He spoke as if he were reciting a catechism.
"My boy . . . their father . . .he's out on McNeil Island. Went down for armed robbery . . . got four more years before he comes eligible."
"Sorry to hear that."
"He'd be takin' care of his kids, if he could." I tried to look like I knew that to be true. "What about the mother?" -
He gave a short, dry laugh. "If it ain't got anything to do with a crack pipe, it ain't got anything to do with Jolene." His eyes took on a new life. "That's how it happened, you know. Davey was just tryin' to get money to feed her habit. Davey never had that monkey on his back. It was her. No . . . right now, at least until Davey comes eligible, I guess I'm about all those kids got."
"They're lucky to have you."
"First the state wanted to send them to Jolene's trailer-trash family. Can't even take care of their own. Then they wanted to put 'em in foster homes, but I mean, what am I gonna do, send 'em off to strangers? I read about what goes on in those places. I couldn't let that happen. They're family."
"Lotta kids don't have anybody like you," I said.
He stuck his hands in his pants pockets and leaned back against the kitchen counter.
"Not exactly what I had in mind for my retirement. I'd sorta been thinkin' about cabin cruisers and grateful widows." We shared a small chuckle.
"Who knows," I said. "Maybe you're lucky to have them, too."
His eyes twinkled. "Well, if nothin' else, they keep me runnin' all day. I'll probably live longer that way." He smiled. "Could be you're right."
He crossed the room and leaned into the front room. "Okay, you two, you get your jackets ... the ones with the hoods, you get 'em from the hall closet and meet me by the front door."
They shrieked in unison and ran from the room.
''Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah.''
"The Little Mermaid," he said. "We've seen it before."
He and I ambled across the room and out to the front door.
"Thanks for your time, Mr. LaFontaine."
"My pleasure. Don't get to talk to other adults much these days," he said. "Hope whatever you're working on works out for you."
''Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah."
The kids were back, carrying matching red raincoats. I let myself out while Gaylord LaFontaine helped them on with the coats.
Chapter 12
Pier Eighteen Sits in the perpetual shadow of the West Seattle Bridge, nearly at the original mouth of the Duwamish River. That was before they rerouted its flow, tore Harbor Island from its bottom, and lined its banks with heavy industry. Way back then, it was actually a river. Nowadays, they call it a waterway. That's bureau-speak for "river they screwed up on purpose."
I lined up behind three container carriers waiting at the Pier Eighteen guard gate. I had my LEO WATERMAN, SENIOR INSURANCE ESTIMATOR, PRUDENTIAL INSURANCE COMPANY business card out and my rap ready. Something about the picture of that blue rock on the card. Never fails.
Didn't fail this time, either, because the guard just waved me through when the big eighteen-wheeler in front of me went roaring off across the yard. I guess they figured that if whatever you were driving wasn't big enough to load a container into or onto, you couldn't be much of a threat. A white sign stood in
a small traffic island just inside the gate. Costco and Eagle Hardware to the right, Safeway straight ahead. Triad Trading and Western Cold Storage to the left. Ahead and to the right, huge concrete buildings lined the edge of the waterway, each bearing a famous logo. To the left, nothing was in sight. It was like LaFontaine said. Didn't take a rocket scientist.
The yard was crammed with orange containers with the word HANJIN painted on their sides in bold white letters. Stacked four high, they ran row upon row, seemingly to the horizon, forming a corrugated canyon whose ribbed walls nearly erased the sky above the car. I kept it in first gear and drove slowly down the long central aisle for the better part of a half mile before I came to a perpendicular artery, where I turned left, toward the water. I figured I'd keep going until I got to the water and then reconnoiter. No need.
Triad Trading Company ran low along the bank, directly under the bridge. A rippled wooden structure from another era, whose loose collection of add-ons meandered its way in stages from the container yard down to the riverbank fifteen feet below. Ahead of me in the gloom, a mobile construction shed with the word OFFICE stenciled on the front stood dark and empty. To its right a sagging metal warehouse loomed up into the darkening sky like a monument to rust.
No lights. No cars. No nothing.
I pulled the Fiat into the narrow alley between the office shed and the warehouse and rolled nearly out to the end. In front of the car, ten feet of gravel driveway sloped precipitately down toward the river. I jammed the Fiat in reverse, pulled up on the e-brake for all I was worth and then turned off the engine and stepped out.
The evening sky was the color of a bad bruise, and it was ten degrees colder here by the water. My breath plumed out in front of me like steam. Pushed by the wet wind, the rain felt like it could cut my face and the cold, rather than being external, seemed to emanate from deep within my bones.
I walked past the front of the car and looked down into the black water, watching the raindrops pit the glittering surface and then disappear into the flow. Two hundred feet away, across the Duwamish, a green-and-white Washington State ferry was in dry dock. A motorized scaffold hung from the side. Two welders and two sets of tanks were sending dual showers of sparks spewing down into the water below. Above the sparkling streams, the lighted decks were alive with workers in green rain gear and yellow hard hats.
