Middle of Nowhere

by Ridley Pearson

  “Lamb’s good cold,” Liz said, without resentment. Her “healing,” her “new faith,” seemed to carry her through these situations.

  Husband to wife: “If I possibly can, I’ll stay.”

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  “We know that,” Liz answered. “Do what you have to.”

  There had been a time in their marriage when such a situation would have condemned them to impossibly long hours of cold stares and failed communication—

  sometimes a day or more of it. He credited Liz with the turnaround, not himself. Her struggle with her health had been turned into something positive. He knew in his heart of hearts, had known forever, that music was a gift from God. Knew this unquestionably. It was only since the birth of his children and his wife’s medically unexplained recovery from cancer that he saw himself on a slow road to the discovery that all of life was, equally, a God-given gift, and that it might do to credit the source from time to time.

  She said, “I’ll keep a plate warm for you,” knowing he was going to leave if he made that call.

  “Don’t lock your bedroom door,” he said. With that, Liz blushed and smiled, and for Lou Boldt the whole room grew brighter.

  M

  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. M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  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 148

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  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.”

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  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. Heiman 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.

  C H A P T E R

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  The 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 M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  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.”

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  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 M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  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 prote´ge´? 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 154

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  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.

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  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 M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  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 156

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  the process and bringing the two departments under one roof. “Oh, my God,” Boldt muttered into the phone.

  “Your people have to report for tomorrow’s day tour, Lou, or they’re thrown out of the game.”

  “If he fires that many people, it’s going to be Molotov cocktails instead of blue bricks.”

  “Just don’t let it be your people. Use the emergency calling tree. We’ve got to drop all the animosities and get as many people back by tomorrow morning as possible.”

  “Amen.”

  “And, Lou? I’m calling from a pay phone, because when the chief finds out this thing leaked, he’ll be looking for a scapegoat, for sure. He won’t appreciate some people being tipped off and others left to eat it. But that’s how it going to be, no matter how hard we try. There’s no way we’ll reach everyone by morning. Just so you know. I wouldn’t be making calls from my home or my cell.” He added, “The airport might work—

  they’ve got those business centers on A concourse.”

  “I follow.” He sensed the man about to hang up.

  “And thanks, Phil.”

  “What are friends for?” The line went dead. M

  Palisades, a marina and upscale restaurant, hung off the south shore of the Magnolia peninsula, supported by pilings and enough docks to house several hundred pleasure craft, all neat and shipshape and sparkling M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  white under the lights. Teak and aluminum and enough fiberglass to wrap the city in a dome. Boldt appreciated the view of the skyline, and LaMoia’s choice of location. The prices at the restaurant guaranteed they wouldn’t run into fellow officers. Palisades was more for the professional set and gold card tourists. Boldt walked the docks, drinking in the cool night air and charting the determined progress of the slowly moving cavalcade of lights from the sta
te ferries. He made out the man’s distinctive silhouette from a distance. Bold. Confident. Even aggressive. You wouldn’t walk up to LaMoia at night without knowing him.

  Boldt approached him in silence, distant city lights reflecting in the silver black water a mirror image that looked like a giant, glowing key, or the mouth of a shark. Boldt felt an urgency to get this meeting over with and head to the pay phone. If Schock and Phillipp hadn’t had their blood shed, he would have postponed the meet.

  “Sorry about the cloak and dagger,” LaMoia said. Boldt answered, “I appreciate the call. We need to talk.” The two of them worked in concert to watch for anyone watching them, an unspoken system that had one looking toward the restaurant, the other searching the neighboring docks, then switching assignments in a dance born of years of working the field together. LaMoia supplied: “Many hands make light the work.”

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  “Yeah?” Boldt complained. “Well, I’m a little shorthanded, thanks to you and the squad.”

  “Don’t go forming stereotypes, Sarge. You think I’m home watching CHiPs reruns or something? I’m working Maria’s case.”

  Boldt’s surprise registered on his shadowed face as confusion.

  “Damn right. Figured a slouch like you could use a little help.” LaMoia added, “I’m working all sorts of shit you don’t wanna know about.”

  That much was probably true. LaMoia’s investigative approach was anything but conventional. “You have to come back on the job,” Boldt informed him. Not only were LaMoia and his wealth of contacts invaluable, but Shoswitz’s news threatened the man’s future with Homicide.

  “Don’t look a gift horse—”

  “I’m serious, John. The chief—”

  LaMoia interrupted. “Schock and Phillipp had Ron Chapman under surveillance. I’d lay odds on it.”

  “Chapman?” Boldt questioned, his thoughts jarred. Chapman swinging a baseball bat on a fellow officer? Not likely. “Krishevski is Property. Chapman is Property. But I don’t see Ron Chapman doing Big Mac’s dirty work. Chapman hasn’t even joined the Flu! That doesn’t make sense.”