Past Crimes

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  Guerin’s people hurried in and out of the rooms around us. They were hunting for any bits of wire or other evidence that the burglar had left attached to the power outlets in the house. As the crime-scene crew found each bit, they bagged it as evidence and brought it back and laid it on the table in front of Guerin. Like timid cats offering dead mice to their owner.

  They had screwed up. After Dono was shot, the CSU should have seen the same scratches on the vent covers that I’d found and uncovered the bugs.

  Guerin didn’t offer any excuses. Their mistake was his mistake.

  He nodded at the ice pack in my hand. “You sure you shouldn’t be at the hospital?”

  “I’ve had concussions before. This is just a headache.”

  He inclined his head a fraction. “Maybe call a friend to stay with you instead.”

  “How many other cases are you carrying?” I said. “Besides Dono’s?”

  Guerin picked up a larger plastic evidence bag, which held one of the two bugs on the table. The third bug was rolled up in a sock in my coat hanging by the door, where I’d hidden it before the cops had arrived.

  He looked at the bug through his bifocals. “Your grandfather has my full attention.”

  I got up and walked over to the window. Dawn hadn’t touched the sky yet. Every light in the house was on. The cluster of cop cars and lab vans on the street in front of the house had their parking lights blinking, per regulation. A Christmas display.

  “Did he have your attention before he was shot?” I said.

  “If you’re asking me whether Dono was under investigation, I can’t answer that.”

  I pointed at the evidence bag. “The guy who planted those went to a lot of trouble. There’s money somewhere in this.”

  “Which means crime, when your grandfather is involved. Weren’t you the one telling me you didn’t know anything about Dono’s life nowadays?”

  “I didn’t. But I can make some guesses. So I’m going to guess that you’re even more in the dark than I am.”

  Guerin started to say something and then closed his mouth.

  They drill politeness into the Seattle cops with six-inch galvanized screws. It always amused Dono, and I was starting to get the joke.

  When Guerin spoke again, his voice was level and hard enough to skate on. “If you go around looking for your grandfather’s associates, firing off any question that comes into your head, then we could lose a chance to build a case against someone. He could walk.”

  I took his coffee mug and refilled it from the pot. I traded my ice pack for a fresh one from the freezer—Dono had at least a dozen in there—and sat at the table again and looked at the detective.

  Guerin could park me in a cell for a while. Two days, if the law hadn’t changed recently. Then he’d have to let me go. A harassment charge could keep him from doing it again. Ganz could set that up.

  But I didn’t want to lose two days. And I didn’t want Guerin distracted, thinking he should keep half an eye on me.

  “Okay,” I said. “You handle it. I want Dono’s shooter busted, same as you.”

  Guerin frowned. “Are you sure about that? The same as me?”

  “Why does everyone assume I’m going to kill the guy?”

  He took a long inhale. Then he looked at the bug again.

  “We’ll find him,” Guerin said. “These are handmade. There can’t be too many guys running around with that kind of expertise.”

  I knew of at least one. Jimmy Corcoran.

  *

  AFTER THE COPS WERE gone, I left a voice mail for Hollis, asking him to get in touch with Corcoran. I checked the doors and windows in every room of the house and settled in on the couch in the upstairs office to get some downtime.

  An hour later I got up and checked all the entrances again.

  Eventually I went back to the couch, where I lay and just stared at the textured white semigloss on the ceiling.

  I didn’t want to close my eyes. Every time I did, I saw the three flashes of light, just off at my two-o’clock.

  It almost always started the same way. Three flashes, the night flares from an enemy’s Kalashnikov. The shots that had kicked off the fight. Then came the blast of an IED somewhere to my left, a slap of wind and a keening buzz that filled my ears and made the rest of the fight nothing but more hot lights and sweat trickle stinging my eyes and slaps on my shoulder to tell me when it was my turn to move and cover the next man as we fell back, rock by rock, out of the village.

  It wasn’t a long exchange. It wasn’t even especially bloody. Two casualties on our side, one serious enough to earn a ticket home. The bad guys had lost at least three times as many.

  There had been worse nights. Much worse. But that action was one of the times that stuck with me. Maybe because the K fire had surprised us all. Maybe because it had been my first real heat since I’d rotated back with my face patched together. The scars had still been pink.

  I fought the urge to get up and check the house once more.

  Instead I stared hard at the whorls of paint on Dono’s ceiling, breath whistling fast and shallow over my dry lips. I held it in for a count of five, a three count after the exhale. And again.

  My heart beat faster. Nearly up to the pace my stress had set. Like paddling fast on a surfboard to catch a wave. I let my breathing settle down, and my pulse followed like an obedient dog.

  The breathing trick was only one step. There were others that the shrinks had explained. Most of them had me focus on the reality of my situation. Telling myself that I was safe.

  Those wouldn’t help this time. Because it wasn’t true.

  My hometown was one big minefield, just waiting for me to wander back in.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  WILLARD WAS STANDING JUST outside the entryway of Corcoran’s apartment building. He was smoking. The orange dot at the end of his cigarette bobbed up and down in the early-morning shadows. Dressed in his long coat, he looked like one of the building’s support columns.

  “Willie,” I said. The orange dot jumped a little.

  “Fuck,” Willard said in his buffalo voice. “You snuck up on me.”

  But I hadn’t. I’d just been walking, having parked a couple of blocks away. If Willard was keeping watch, he’d lost a few steps.

  “You got another?” I asked. My head still hurt. One part hangover, two parts the knot behind my ear that the burglar had given me.

  Willard grunted. “Don’t remember you smoking.”

  “Army,” I said. I caught a flash of teeth as Willard smiled, quick and flat.

  “Me, too,” he said. “Different war but same deal.” He reached into his coat pocket and brought out a crumpled pack of Camels—and he tapped a stick out and offered it to me. The pack was completely covered by his shovel-blade hand.

  There was a lighter in the pocket of the barn jacket I’d taken off Dono’s coatrack. I lit the cigarette with it. I hadn’t smoked in six months, and the first long draw tasted horrible and perfect at the same time.

  “Dono?” Willard said.

  I shook my head. Nothing new. “Is Jimmy coming down or are we going up?” I asked. It had taken me a few extra minutes to find the right block. Hollis might have beaten me here and told Willard and Corcoran I was on the way.

  “Up. Once we’re done,” Willard said. “Jimmy’s wife don’t like smoking in her place, not even on the balcony.”

  The ash fell off my cigarette. “Corcoran’s married?”

  “Oh, yeah. Kids, too. Not his.”

  “You’re shitting me.” The idea of Jimmy Corcoran raising stepkids was about the same level of smart as asking a guy who’d pounded a case of Red Bull to hold your nitroglycerin.

  Willard took a last drag, down to the filter, and dropped the butt to step on it. He looked at the pack in his hand for a minute and then put it in his pocket.

  “Screw it,” he said. “We only got an hour till the wife comes back. Let’s go upstairs.”

  I stubbed ou
t my half-finished stick on the nearest column. Maybe I’d light it up again in another six months. But probably not.

  Bad Man Willard, banished from the goddamn building just to have a smoke. And the wife wasn’t even home.

  Sharing an elevator with Willard was like being in a horse trailer with a Clydesdale. He pushed the button marked 8, and the doors closed. The elevator walls were green silk. Next to each numbered button on the panel was a tiny brass plaque inscribed with Asian characters.

  “Is Corcoran’s wife Thai?” I said, guessing at the characters.

  Willard exhaled, just enough to be a sigh. “Cambodian. Whole block is Cambodian.”

  I wouldn’t have thought Corcoran that open-minded. Last I remembered, he was still referring to everyone west of the Pacific Ocean as Chinamen.

  Willard must have caught the vibe of my surprise, because he raised his eyebrows. “Better’n being alone, kid.”

  We stepped out of the elevator into a narrow pink hallway, and I let Willard lead us midway down to a pink door with the number 87 in brass under the peephole. Willard knocked and tried to open the door, but it was locked. There was a sound of fast movement from inside.

  “It’s me. And Van,” said Willard, and the door opened a crack to show Corcoran’s glaring eye and half his bald skull.

  I smiled. “I’ll have the Kung Pao chicken and two egg rolls.”

  “Asshole,” he said. He stepped aside, and Willard and I walked in.

  The place looked like a two-bedroom, tidy but tight. An eight-by-eight dining area with a small circular table was on our left and a counter on the right, partly separating the entryway from a compact kitchen. The living room had a lot of plants crammed into it and wide brown awning stripes on the wallpaper. The only thing in the whole place that looked like it might belong to Corcoran was an easy chair in cracked and stained brown leather.

  “Sit down over there,” he said, gesturing to a low couch next to the ancient chair.

  An intercom on the wall beeped. Corcoran pressed a button on it.

  “—me, Jimmy,” said Hollis’s voice under the static whine. Corcoran pressed another button and buzzed Hollis in.

  I took out the surveillance bug that I’d pocketed before the cops arrived and tossed it on the dining-room table. It landed on its side, the little receiver pointed out toward us like a mouth ready to whistle. Corcoran and Willard looked at it.

  I raised my finger to my lips—don’t talk—and showed Corcoran the note I had written on a page torn from Dono’s notebook before leaving the house:

  “When was the last time you swept your home?”

  Corcoran sneered, which was probably a reflex for him, but his forehead wrinkled with uncertainty. He handed the note to Willard just as Hollis came hurriedly up to the still-open door.

  Hollis peered around Willard’s broad back, his face bright pink. “Got here fast as I could,” he said, clipping the words to rush to the next breath. He shut the door behind him. “What’s on?”

  I mimed silence again and pointed to the bug on the table. Hollis looked at it quizzically. Corcoran stepped over to the table to pick it up. He turned it over, poking at the inner workings with a yellowed fingernail. I pulled out a chair from the table and sat.

  After a moment Corcoran set the bug down and shuffled quickly to the back of the apartment, returning with a large gray plastic toolbox. He reached for a remote control and turned on the plasma television. Trumpets suddenly blared over a frenzied commercial for a Ford dealership. Corcoran opened the toolbox and took out what I recognized as an old-school cell-phone scanner. He began fiddling with it, untangling its wires from a mess of other junk.

  While Corcoran worked, Hollis went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. He found a sixer of beer and brought it back to the table, handing a can to Willard as he passed. Corcoran ignored us, walking around the room, holding the scanner close to the electrical outlets and the walls.

  “Check the air vents, too,” I said under the noise of the TV. Corcoran frowned, but he made sure to pass the scanner near each grate before moving off into other rooms along the hall.

  Hollis sat down next to me, offering a beer. I shook my head. Willard finally moved, into the living room. He eased his bulk into Corcoran’s leather chair.

  Hollis leaned in to whisper in my ear. “What the fuck’s going on?”

  “We might be wired,” I murmured back. I tapped the bug with my finger.

  “Christ Jesus,” Hollis said, blanching. “Is it feds?”

  I shook my head no. Hollis continued to stare at the bug. Corcoran reentered the room with a screwdriver and started removing one of the vent grates. He was totally focused on the task, and I saw a bit of sweat on the side of his bald head.

  “Okay,” said Corcoran finally, “enough.” He sat on the back of the couch and dropped the screwdriver into the toolbox. He looked flushed, like he’d just run a mile.

  Willard turned off the TV with the remote. “You all right?” he said to Corcoran.

  Corcoran motioned, and Hollis tossed him a beer. Corcoran popped it and took a long pull. “Fuck it,” he said after a breath. He stood and picked up the bug off the table again. “This was at Dono’s place?”

  I nodded. “One in almost every room.”

  He grunted. “Do you know how long they were there?”

  “No,” I said. “What can you tell me about it?”

  “All kinds of shit about how it’s made,” he said. “But that’s not what you care about. You understand how it works?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Hollis shifted in his seat. “Well, I fucking sure don’t,” he said. “Someone catch me up here, damn it.”

  I pointed at the little black snout of the receiver in Corcoran’s hand. “These were hidden behind the vents,” I said. “They pick up any noise in the room and automatically call a preset number, which records everything.”

  Corcoran belched softly. “The guy on the other end can dial in from anywhere and listen to the recordings. Just like voice mail.”

  We all looked at the device on the table again. Like it was a dead scorpion, something that had once been dangerous.

  “How did you find the damned thing?” Hollis said.

  I told them how I’d been cold-cocked by the intruder the night before. The story cheered Corcoran right up.

  “The guy who hit me left three bugs behind when he ran away,” I said. “I held on to this one.”

  “If it was me,” Corcoran said, “I’d have finished the job. Tied you up. Or just stomped on your head one more time.”

  Hollis scratched the side of his neck absentmindedly. “The guy who shot Dono didn’t stick around to finish him off either. Do you think it’s the same guy?”

  “The guy who hit me was small, with white hair,” I said.

  Corcoran grinned. “An old midget threw soldier boy a beating.”

  “This guy was good enough to fastball Dono’s alarm system. And he built these bugs by hand.”

  “These ain’t exactly state-of-the-art shit,” Corcoran said. He picked up the bug again. “It’s decent work, I’ll say that much. This receiver is about as good as you can buy. I’d have used a smart phone instead of these old clamshell parts.”

  “There can’t be too many small old men in Seattle who specialize in B&E and bugging,” I said. “You know anybody who matches that skill set?”

  “I know a couple who work local, who might be up to this,” Corcoran said. “One’s Chinese or Jap or something like that—”

  “The guy who hit me was white, from what little I saw of him.”

  “Then you’re out of luck.’ Cause the second guy I know is black and too damn old to be jumping out of windows. Like fourscore and seven.”

  I tapped the bug in Corcoran’s hands. “Can you trace the number it’s calling?” I asked him.

  He smirked. “If it’s preset in the phone? Please.”

  “I want to know everything about the account the nu
mber is attached to. What’s the number, who set it up, when they’ve used it. The whole history. Especially if you can get access to the voice-mail recordings.”

  Corcoran shrugged. “That’s not tech. That’s phone-company records.”

  “Out of your reach?” I asked.

  “Who said that? I didn’t fucking say that.” Corcoran tossed the bug back onto the table and began rummaging in his toolbox. “Getting the number’s nothing. I can have that in two minutes. The rest of it—” He shrugged. “Depends on which phone company holds the account. If it’s one of the big American companies, I could maybe try to get in touch with people who work for them. Data engineers, people like that.”

  I understood what he meant. Hacking into phone accounts from the outside was tough. It was a lot easier if you knew a company employee with the right access who might be willing to enhance his hourly wage by taking five minutes to look up information on your behalf. Corcoran may not know those employees himself, but he could ask around. The power of networking.

  “But if it’s some rinky-dink private business, then I doubt we’ll get very far,” Corcoran finished. He had fished an older-model cell phone out from the toolbox and was disassembling it.

  “I’ll deal with that if I have to. But I need to learn whatever we can fast. Like tomorrow.”

  “I’ll have to spread some money around,” Corcoran said. He began attaching the circuit board of the bug to the screen components of the second cell phone with narrow-gauge wires.

  “How much money?” I said.

  He glared at me. “Did I put my hand out? Fuck you.” He went back to concentrating on the phones. “Punk,” he muttered.

  I needed Corcoran. But I was angry and tired and close to slapping the wire cutters out of his hand.

  Willard saw it on my face. “You’re thinking about Spokane,” he said to Corcoran.

  “Course I am. Nobody has to fucking remind me,” Corcoran said.

  Hollis looked between them. “What’s Spokane?”

  Corcoran’s lip curled. “You tell them,” he said to Willard. “I’m fucking busy.”