by Richard Hoyt
“Have you heard of anybody being arrested? Four more days and three or four parts have passed and they don’t have their man. It was only after we had gotten ourselves into this, Denson, after we’d had the damn thing printing names and addresses in various colored letters, that the Pooh-Bahs realized what would happen if we can’t find the guy. If we can’t find him and Toba’s failure is made public, the computer program might be set back five or ten years.”
“All this while you’ve had to sit here and watch.”
“Just one legal phrase short of a full suspension. I’m not supposed to leave the building during duty hours. It’s like this is the big game and I’m having to sit it out. God, you wouldn’t believe how they’re fucking it up. The captain started out okay, what with the Sioux Falls cops. Only once they saw Toba, they wanted a pure Toba victory. The captain said if you have too many cops hanging around the park, you’ll spook the nut. That’s the beauty of Toba. That’s the logic. And he’s right, you have to be careful. There’s precedent for how to go about it, though. The captain agrees with the chief in these matters because you don’t make captain unless you know how to protect your ass and suck some jerk’s cock at the same time.”
I said, “Maybe you should lie back a little, slide along with the group.”
Willis scowled. “That’ll be the fucking day. I go to all the briefings, of course. There’s nothing in my instructions that says I can’t do that. Besides that, it makes them nervous. They know they’re stupid bastards. The captain told them the Sioux Falls Indian brothers were in a stupor from drinking all that cheap wine and ordered them pulled.”
“I’d think that was part of their cover. You mean to tell me they don’t have anybody directly watching the park? Nobody cheating with a pair of binoculars or something?”
“What they’ve got, Denson, are surveillance teams hidden in the wings, waiting for the Toba to go whee-woo, whee-woo and tell them they’ve got a hot one. Let the butcher come to us, the captain says. Each day the stakes increase …”
“That a pun?”
Willis was impatient. He glowered at me. “That’s spelled s-t-a-k-e-s, Denson. Instead of cutting his losses and trying a little old-fashioned human intelligence, the chief decides to ride with the gamble. Let Toba do it. The Pooh-Bahs’ll catch the guy red-handed one minute and call a press conference the next: here’s your butcher murderer. The scuttlebutt around here is that they ‘know the body’s Moby Rappaport but are keeping it secret for some reason that probably makes sense only to them. If that’s the case, then the killer could very likely have something to do with the salmon industry people.”
“It could, I suppose, but this business of freezing a corpse and cutting it up with a saw sounds more psychopathic, I’d think.”
“Sure it does. The department shrink ran the facts through a computer and the computer says the M.O. is psychopathic; the killer will keep on delivering body parts to Pioneer Place Park until he runs out of parts or we catch him.” Willis put the palms of his hands over both ears and puffed out his cheeks in exasperation. He looked at the ceiling. “My God! Brilliant! Glad you told me that, professor!”
“Toba sounds like a helluva system.”
“Denson, there are people in this world who will stand in the pouring rain and not get out their umbrellas unless a machine tells them it’s raining. This is perfect for Toba, the chief says, a setup. My aching ass!” Willis slumped in his chair.
“I assume they do have folks working the psycho angle.”
“They get the dumbest cops on the force on something like this, because it’s the dumb ones who rise in the hierarchy and get the good cases. The thing is …” Willis lowered his voice, “… I can work the psycho angle myself without leaving this office — all I have to do is check a terminal out and plug it in right there.” He pointed at an electrical outlet behind a metal file cabinet. “If I just had one person on the outside to work with, just one decent investigator.”
Richard Willis was a desperate cop. I began to see what he was working toward, and my mouth turned cottony.
He said, “One thing I can’t do is check out the people involved in the Rappaport salmon case. It would be nice if I could find somebody to work that angle out.”
“Me?” I was dumbfounded. I could see how Willis had gotten into trouble.
“I’ve been a cop for twenty-four years, Denson. A man develops habits after a while; he’s changed by his job. I wade in shit, friend, it’s my job. That guy out there with the saw and the corpse is throwing it in my face every day — I don’t care if I am about to be kicked off the force. I don’t like that.” Willis was fuming.
“It’s their screwup, not yours. Why don’t you let them go under?”
Willis ground his teeth together. “The public pays us to use our brains, Denson.”
“Your desk’s free of listening devices, I take it.” Was this the time to bring up the awkward question of the bug I found in Melinda Prettybird’s apartment? I decided not.
“It’s clear.”
“Suppose I agree to help you play John Henry to Toba. What’s in it for me?”
I was a little too loose for Willis’s taste. “Don’t get cute, Denson. I didn’t say anything about playing John Henry. If I lay the butcher in their lap, I’ll have the simple and sublime pleasure of sticking it up theirs and breaking it off.”
“What would that do to your departmental hearing?”
“Hearing?” Willis smirked. “Why they’d have to cancel it, of course.”
“And then there’s the question of what’s in it for me.” I was amiable, friendly. All these people and motives were intertwined in some kind of treacherous story. Of course, I wanted to help my friend Willie Prettybird, but even more than that I wanted to know what the story was. We all want to know what the story is — that’s why scandal magazines are so popular.
20 – PARTNERS
Richard Willis ran his hand slowly across his face and sighed. “I’ll tell you what: I can be your friend in the future. Gilberto moved to California; I’m here. For the present, at least, I’m still a detective. I have access to our files. That kind of arrangement has to be a mother lode for an independent like you, out there on your own. I can pull a file just like that.” Willis snapped his fingers.
He was right. That kind of friend on the force is worth bucks to a private investigator. “Gilberto and I got on pretty well,” I said.
“I got to be a detective lieutenant, Denson, because in the end I’m smart enough not to turn over all my responsibilities to a mother-fucking machine. Some of them, I don’t mind, but this is ridiculous.”
“I’ll have to work with you and for a client at the same time. To my knowledge he’s no murderer.”
“If your client turns out to be the killer, I expect you to tell me when you find out. I don’t know if you P.I.s take any kind of blood oath, but in a case like this I have to have that promise.”
I thought briefly of Willie Prettybird. Willie couldn’t have had anything to do with it. He couldn’t. “I agree,” I said.
“Done then,” Willis said. “Sometimes I wonder about this city. First they commissioned some fag architect to design that sweetcake pergola like this was Paris or something. Then they stick a totem pole in the ground knowing damn well it was gonna draw Indians like flypaper. What the hell were they thinking of?”
“I don’t think this is really the place to discuss something like this, do you?” I gestured to the hallway.
“You’re right, and I like that kind of caution.” Willis looked at the clock on the wall. He stood and finished the dregs of his coffee. “My shift’s officially up — if you call sitting on your butt working a shift. I feel like a little drink. What do you think, Denson? What the hell, it isn’t every day a man has an opportunity to snatch his career from the brink of extinction by assholes. I’ll buy.” He glanced at himself in the mirror on his wall and adjusted his bow tie. “I know a place.”
“I don�
��t have a lawn to mow,” I said. I followed him down the hall to the police department parking lot outside.
Willis had found a way of fighting back. He had a chance. He was in an expansive, talkative mood. “It’s one thing after another, you know that, Denson. I got this purge hanging over my head, and on top of that my wife has a bladder infection. You ever had to put up with a woman with an infected twat, Denson?”
“Well, I don’t know,” I said.
“My old lady gets these damned infections, see, and starts accusing me of porking Thunder Thighs, that’s this old girlfriend of mine. Her doctor says it’s from too much humping — like I’m some kind of rutting maniac. What does he want me to do, squeeze my weasel?”
“He probably does, so he figures everybody should.”
“So the infection goes from her twat up her urinary tract to her bladder. Her doctor gives her medicine that turns her pee orange. But she complains the infection makes it burn when she takes a leak, so lately she’s taken to sitting in a sink full of water. She says soaking herself relieves the burning. It’s times like this that makes you wish you had a bathtub.” Willis gave me a disgusted look.
“Does the sitting help her out?” I asked.
“If she’d use the kitchen sink, I don’t suppose it’d make any difference — that’s if you don’t mind her peeling potatoes in it later on. The kitchen sink’s solid, built right into the cabinet. But no, she’s gotta use the one in the john. Yesterday, she managed to rip the pipes from the wall while she was sitting there with her ass in the water, reading Judith Krantz. You’re not married, are you, Denson?”
“I’m by myself.”
“You single guys have to flog your dog every day; I gotta find time to fix the damned sink. Nobody wins.” Willis fell silent. “If she just wouldn’t read that awful crap, I don’t suppose it’d be as bad.”
I listened to the jabber on the police radio as Richard Willis turned into a small bar under the southern end of the Fremont Bridge.
“This place belongs to my brother-in-law,” he said, as we stepped into the warmth of the bar. “These guys pour long for me; Denson, you like whiskey?” Without waiting for me to reply, he said, “Two double bourbons on the rocks, Earl.”
“I like whiskey,” I said.
Willis took a stiff slug when his drink arrived and made a face. “Here’s to the spectacle of a good detective having to find a private detective to help him save his job. Isn’t this a fine state of affairs? Enough to make a man puke. This stuff tastes miserable, doesn’t it? Here’s to justice! Here’s to a little well-intentioned conniving!” Willis took two more slams of bourbon. “The chief finds it hard to believe somebody managed to slip stuff into that park when it’s being guarded by the terrible Toba. It doesn’t compute, as they say.”
“I don’t understand how this thing works at night?”
“Infrared cameras, Denson. The streetlights are all it needs.”
“What does Baby Toba watch, exactly?”
“The sidewalks on all three sides of the park have been programmed as a perimeter. If somebody steps on the sidewalk Toba starts making its racket. A sudden shadow is all it takes. Anything. Of course, as I pointed out to the damned fools at one of their briefings, all the murderer has to do is give a chop a sling out of his car window, and there you have it.”
“How does Toba get around that?”
“It doesn’t, not really. But the Baby Toba cameras that monitor the sidewalks show the street as well, so the captain has cops watching the screens. If they see a suspicious motion from a passing car they hit a button.”
“I see. I suppose Toba then flashes the licensed owners of all cars in its vision at that time.”
“That’s exactly it. All that and they can’t get the butcher. He has to know they’re watching the pergola, but he can’t know about Toba. How in the hell is he beating that camera? That’s the question.”
“Easy,” I said. “He uses the underground.”
“For what? The underground doesn’t go under the park. The killer’d still have to surface, cross a street, and step over the little fence around the park there.”
“Maybe he’s got his freezer down there.”
Willis shook his head. “They thought of that, believe it or not. They checked the underground and all the buildings inside Toba’s traffic monitors to make sure there aren’t any freezers or lockers where someone could stash a corpse. I can’t guarantee how good a job they did. They exalt the mediocre.” Willis rubbed his chin. He reached inside his jacket and gave me a sheet of paper. “Here’s a checklist I Xeroxed. Look at it now. I can’t risk letting you walk around with it. We can’t risk walking around with paper.”
I looked at the checklist of rooms and businesses searched. I looked for appliance stores. There were none.
Willis said, “The Prettybirds are right up there on the department’s list, Denson; I guess you figured that.”
“So what about the bug in Melinda Prettybird’s apartment?”
“I told you most of mine. You want more, it’s your turn,” he said.
That was fair. I wanted to know the truth, too. I unloaded. I told Richard Willis everything — my conversations with Willie, with his sister, with Mike Stark, with Foxx Jensen and Doug Egan. I included every detail I could remember in my Augustus Poorman story.
“Do you know a cop named Harner?” I asked. “When I got back he pulled me in for a few questions about my trip to SalPaclnc with Poorman.”
“Harner did?”
“Oh, yes. Played with a model farm on a table.”
Willis smiled. “Harner and I do a Mutt-and-Jeff act. I’m the hard guy. He plays with his model. He’s not a bad guy, actually. A bit careful.”
“A company man.”
“It’s the rare one that isn’t.”
“Judging from his questions, I’d say he’s working on a link between Poorman and Foxx Jensen.”
Willis was irked. “They never tell me anything around here now. I’m a regular damned pariah. I knew Harner was working on something related to this business. I wasn’t sure what.”
“Now you know.”
“He doesn’t suspect you of anything, does he?”
“He said not. He thought I was pretty dumb though.”
Willis said, “It sounds like you might have been. I’ll talk to Dan and see what it’s all about.” Willis killed his whiskey double in one chilling pull and waved for two more. “Replace ‘em when they’re dead,” he said to the bartender. “This business gets curiouser and curiouser.”
“A real fish story,” I said.
“For your own good, don’t believe anybody. I mean anybody.”
“You say they searched the underground? I still think that has to be the answer. The butcher’s got his goodies stored down there.”
“I told you already. They took a good hard look at the underground, every sidewalk, every room, every vault. They found nothing. The captain says if cops keep poking their noses around, they’re gonna queer it for Toba.”
“So they don’t have anything.”
“Nada. Nada. Nada.” Willis’s voice rose. He waved his hand angrily. “They’ve got diddly squat! Half of them don’t know their dicks from a gearshift.” Willis was sloshed.
“I can’t believe they didn’t spot one single suspicious person.”
“All right, what do you want me to say? Toba put them onto one guy, driving an old car. Thought maybe he threw something out of the window. They lost him in the rain.”
“What kind of an old car?”
“Shit, who knows? An old coupe. One of those late thirties numbers.”
“A Ford, maybe? Find out for me.” I hadn’t told him about Stark’s car. I didn’t remember it until now.
Willis pursed his lips. “I’ll find out. But for God’s sake call me if you find anything. I’m having to take Gilberto’s word on you.”
“I might have to bend a few rules.”
Willis said, “Liste
n, man, my cock’s two inches from the paring knife. You don’t know how many regulations I’ve twisted in the last hour.” He was intense, passionate.
“I can guess.”
“Bend whatever you goddamn have to. Laws, elbows, I don’t care.”
I did, but I didn’t say anything. “And if I think Willie Prettybird is behind all this?”
“I can’t see how he isn’t.”
“I think Willie’s okay. We were talking about the bug, remember?”
“We were talking about the bug. One second you’re going on about how great a guy Willie Prettybird is, and the next you want to know about the bug. The bug was where it was supposed to be, Denson. Some Seattle cops put it there by authority of a court order.”
“What?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I’ve got a few ideas. After you were in my office the other day, I looked up the file on Melinda Prettybird’s complaints. Did Willie or Melinda tell you who those guys were who got beaten up while they were bedded down with her?”
“I don’t think they mentioned the first two. They said the third guy ran a taco place in Tacoma.”
“The first one, sleuth, was a kid named Kim Hartwig.”
“The missing law clerk?”
“When Melinda Prettybird awarded him the succor of her bed and breast, he was just starting work on an opinion for Rappaport in the case of Cowlitz vs. the United States.”
“Oh, shit.”
“That’s what I’d say if I were you. There’s more.”
“Lay it on me.”
“Hartwig, Denson, is a suspect party in a judicial tampering case.”
I said, “And the other party?”
“The guy you talked to in Astoria. The fisherman Doug Egan. I found that much out.”
“Whoa! Good old Doug!” I told Willis about Mike Stark’s having seen Egan and Hartwig in Ivar’s.
“What we’re looking at is a giant tub of crabs. Melinda Prettybird may have been doing a little tampering herself. I’m betting that’s the reason for the bug in her apartment. All that little squaw has to do is wiggle it a couple of times and blink those big brown eyes. The sound of her zipper’d take Hartwig to his knees. He’d do anything.”
