Rodriguez said, ‘‘Forget it. No can do. Got me an appointment.’’ The big man sniffled snot back into the back of his throat. It sounded grotesque.
‘‘This health clinic? Forget about it. It’s a trap.’’
‘‘I’m busy.’’
‘‘It’s a trap. The cops tricked her into this. Listen, I’m following her right at this very moment,’’ Coughlie said. ‘‘I need help with this.’’
‘‘Busy.’’
‘‘Listen to me-’’
Rodriguez interrupted, ‘‘Try me later.’’ The line clicked.
‘‘Hello?’’ Coughlie said into the receiver, astonished the man would hang up on him. A first. ‘‘Hey!’’ he shouted. He held out the cellphone and stared at it, placed it back to his ear and repeated, ‘‘Hey!’’ Nothing.
McNeal parked the BMW.
Coughlie pulled over, fearing he might have to follow her on foot.
McNeal approached a bus stop and stood there waiting. A bus stop? She had mentioned to him that one of Melissa’s surveillance videos had shown a bus. Rodriguez regularly used the bus to reach the sweatshop. Brian Coughlie went numb with the thought.
He tried the pager again. But this time, his cellphone never rang with the return call.
A city bus pulled to a stop. People shoved for position. Stevie McNeal climbed aboard.
CHAPTER 58
As Stevie sat across from the rear door of the city bus watching the landscape parade past, she reminded herself of the big man with the hooded sweatshirt, consulting a color printout-a freeze-frame- from the video. She tracked the exact second the bus arrived and departed each of its stops, looking for an elapsed time of twenty-two minutes and seventeen seconds as recorded on the digital video. Believing she was onto something, she wanted to test her theory before taking up SPD’s time with it. Adding to her excitement was the realization that she might have lost her tail-as unintentional as it was-by leaving the station through a back exit during a time she was anticipated to be on-air. She assumed, quite rightly, that if there was any time her guards ran for a bite to eat, or took a break, it was during the two-hour period that N4@5 typically occupied. As much as she appreciated the reassurance of their presence she preferred her independence, especially on the eve of what she believed was to be a major discovery. This way she could savor the moment of delivering news of her discovery to Boldt or LaMoia-or better yet, both at the same time. If she found the sweatshop, or even the general neighborhood where the man had left the bus route, she would be doing something positive to help Melissa, not just sitting back and being a target of these people. Playing the victim was not her idea of taking part.
Her eye constantly referenced the printout she held in her lap, the eerie dark image of the big man a blur at the bus door, but the stair-step pattern of the skyline seen through the bus windows distinct, if not distinctive. Looking outside again, she intentionally blurred her eyes to recapture the vague image on the printout. Still nothing; the background offered not a hint of the footage Melissa had shot. Melissa needed her and she was not delivering.
The bus pulled to yet another stop. Fremont Bridge-the same place she had turned around her last time out. She checked the printout and glanced up, her eyes stinging, her head ringing with defeat and grief. If only Melissa knew how much she cared, how much she loved her; if only she had taken the time to be with her, to involve her in her life-maybe even then things would be different, she would feel differently somehow, but she had not done these things. She deeply regretted it now.
Stevie had little time to think about such things. She looked up as Brian Coughlie climbed onto the bus.
He moved down the aisle deliberately, self-confident and strong, looking directly at her and never taking his eyes off her, and for an instant a spike of fear raced through her. Where the hell had he come from? What the hell did he want?
The seat next to her was vacant. She would have gladly had it occupied by the smelliest street person at that moment, although the determination in Coughlie’s eyes indicated nothing would stop him from taking that seat. The bus rolling, Coughlie sat down next to her and looked straight ahead.
‘‘I caught your act,’’ he said, still looking toward the front of the bus. ‘‘A Watchman,’’ he explained. ‘‘Nifty little gadget. I keep one with me everywhere I go now. Addicted to the news, I guess you could say.’’
‘‘What a coincidence,’’ Stevie said, ‘‘both of us on the same bus and all.’’
‘‘In your dreams,’’ he replied. ‘‘SPD dropped the ball when you took off from the station. Not my boys. No sir. Right there is the difference between local and federal, I’m telling you. Be glad we’re on your side.’’
‘‘You’ve been following me,’’ she said with disgust.
‘‘Hell, you’ve so many people watching your ass you might as well be leading a parade. You’re a regular majorette!’’ His arrogance disturbed her-a different man from the one previously seeking partnership.
The bus bounced. All the passengers’ heads rose and fell in unison. Stevie’s teeth chattered, but that had nothing to do with the bus’s jerky movements.
‘‘Tell me about that little stunt of yours.’’
‘‘Stunt?’’ Her legs shook she was so nervous.
‘‘Your idea or Boldt’s? This flu thing. . It’s a simple enough question.’’ He waited for her, but she couldn’t find a defendable answer, couldn’t find her voice at all. ‘‘You reported this flu was spreading out at Fo-No-Fort Nolan. who gave you that? Who’s your source on that? Or did you make it up? Does the news simply make things up? This is my turf we’re talking about here.’’ His crimson face took on a greenish purple under the tube lights. ‘‘I’ll catch hell for this. You know that? Health inspectors. ACLU. You buried us with that piece.’’ He pursed his lips and edged forward on the seat. ‘‘This story is bullshit.’’
‘‘The CDC issued-’’
‘‘Oh, that’s bullshit! We’d have seen it before anyone else! Don’t you get it? It’s our detention facility we’re talking about. We’d have been the first notified. Our population would have been the first immunized. Did they use you?’’ he asked incredulously. ‘‘Or are you part of it?’’
They met eyes. His were bloodshot and half-blind with anger. She wanted off that bus. It stopped, but she didn’t look up. ‘‘Whatever it takes to save her,’’ she said.
‘‘It was Boldt’s idea,’’ Coughlie said.
‘‘I’m telling you: The CDC issued a health bulletin.’’
‘‘And I’m telling you, it’s not possible. They used you.’’ He looked around. ‘‘And what’s this about? You don’t mind me saying so, you and a city bus have got nothing in common. Is it the videos?’’
‘‘The police found a bus ticket,’’ she lied. ‘‘It was worth a gamble.’’
‘‘If they’d found a bus ticket, it would be them riding the bus, not you. What’s going on with you? Why are you lying to me?’’
‘‘Why are you having me followed? Protection? From what? From whom? Or do you want me to do your work for you? A federal agency keeping a reporter under surveillance-’’
‘‘A witness.’’
‘‘No, Brian. Not me. You want to deal with all this, or are you going to call off your people?’’
‘‘You’re making a mistake-a big mistake.’’
‘‘It’s mine to make,’’ she said.
‘‘Yes, it is,’’ he answered. His smile turned her stomach. ‘‘So have it your way. But remember: Some mistakes are costly.’’
The bus pulled to another stop. Coughlie stood and disembarked. He didn’t look back.
CHAPTER 59
A woman detective from vice named Laura Stowle was dressed in nursing whites to play the role of clinic receptionist. LaMoia commented on how a tightly packed white uniform had irresistible effects upon him, and how, based on this rare opportunity to see Stowle’s darkly handsome face and ‘‘well-rounded pers
onality’’ in such a tantalizing costume, he needed to ask her out.
Boldt told him to keep it in his pants.
The clinic had gone along with the substitution because the receptionist required no medical training and until a doctor or paramedic became involved in the process there was no legal expectation of privacy.
‘‘The only problem with Stowle in this assignment, Sarge, is that even with her hair pulled back, she’s a little too cute, a little too much like a soap opera star instead of the minimum wage ethnic receptionist we’ve all come to expect.’’
‘‘One of these days that mouth of yours is going to get you into more trouble than it can talk itself back out of,’’ Boldt warned.
‘‘This mouth of mine ought to be registered as a weapon, what it can do to a woman.’’
‘‘You’re not scoring any points, John. Go inside and take a chair. You want to stare at Stowle? Permission granted. At least I won’t have to listen to you.’’
LaMoia occupied the chair in the far corner for two hours, wondering why it was that waiting rooms offered only grossly outof-date magazines and wall clocks the size of pizzas. He was bothered by how young the people using the free clinic were, and how much of its traffic seemed involved, one way or another, with drugs and addiction. Only seven people had arrived as a result of Stevie McNeal’s broadcast.
Each of the seven times, Stowle had signaled all four of the undercover cops inside, and Boldt in the control van. The lavaliere microphone was hidden in her dark hair, its wire running down the back neck of her dress. Seven different people, all seeking the RH-340 flu shot-all health care workers or dockhands who had been on the scene of the container recovery.
The eighth time Laura Stowle signaled LaMoia it was for a tall Hispanic male wearing a dark sweatshirt with a hood. LaMoia buried his face into a six-week-old copy of People; the janitor with the bucket and mop kneeled down to work a piece of gum from the stone floor; a wiry-looking woman in hot pants and platform shoes pulled out her lipstick and used the mirror of her compact to get a good look at the door behind her; a woman in civilian clothes, typing at a station behind Stowle, took her fingers off the keyboard and took hold of her weapon, beneath the table.
The big man was told to wait. He took a seat two chairs away from LaMoia, who had the audacity to turn to the man and say, ‘‘How ya doing?’’
‘‘Feel like shit, man,’’ the other said, his nose running, his voice rough.
‘‘I hear that,’’ LaMoia said, returning to his magazine.
After five minutes the Hispanic male was handed a form to fill out. He looked at it with contempt. Standing in front of him, Stowle explained in a bored voice, ‘‘We need your name, place of employment, if any, and relevant phone numbers for notification of follow-up. They’re very important. If you need the Spanish form-’’
‘‘Yeah,’’ he grunted.
She returned with a different clipboard and spoke Spanish. ‘‘You can skip the insurance part because the treatment you’ve requested is free. Fourth line, date of exposure, is extremely important because it will determine the extent of treatment you receive and therefore the effectiveness of that treatment. Repeated exposures don’t matter to the physician. It’s the initial exposure that is critical to proper diagnosis and subsequent treatment. If there’s anything I can help you with-’’
‘‘You could speed things up a little,’’ LaMoia said, interrupting in English. ‘‘Or maybe a drink after you’re through here.’’
Stowle glared at him.
The Hispanic sniffled, coughed and scribbled his name onto the top of the form in crude but legible handwriting: Guermo Rodriguez.
Stowle returned to her place behind the counter.
LaMoia was called a few minutes later under the name Romanello. ‘‘ ’Bout time,’’ he said, placing the magazine down. ‘‘Good luck, man,’’ he said to the other. ‘‘You’ll be a couple years older by the time they call you.’’
Rodriguez stood simultaneously and returned the clipboard and form to the receptionist, who passed it on to the officer at the keyboard station behind her, the woman’s loaded weapon still available on the shelf by her knees.
LaMoia passed into the back and took up a position in the examination room adjacent to the room where Rodriguez would be examined, effectively blocking any use of the building’s back exit. They had him cornered now. LaMoia waited impatiently for information back from downtown. The keyboard operator’s input of the outpatient form was not headed for the clinic’s medical records but instead was connected by modem to the department’s criminal records bureau. The name Guermo Rodriguez came back negative: no criminal arrests or convictions. The system also failed to kick a driver’s license or a registered vehicle. Guermo Rodriguez did not exist. He was, however, a man who might ride the city buses. Rodriguez had more than likely listed a bogus address on the clinic’s form, as well as a bogus phone number. Rodriguez was probably himself an illegal, a connection that could easily put him into service for a corrupt INS official.
‘‘He’s gotta be our guy,’’ Boldt announced over the radio. ‘‘The sweatshirt matches what we saw on the videos. We go with it.’’
A few minutes later Rodriguez was given an injection of a placebo, told to take aspirin and drink plenty of water, and released.
By the time Guermo Rodriguez left the clinic, SPD had fifteen officers in ten vehicles assigned to his surveillance-the largest surveillance operation conducted by the department in the past eleven months.
CHAPTER 60
With SPD monitoring his every footstep, nearly his every breath, Rodriguez was carefully followed, first to an all-night pharmacy where he bought a bottle of aspirin, some cough syrup and a head cold decongestant, and subsequently to ‘‘A place on Military Road in Federal Way,’’ as LaMoia explained to Boldt, who had returned to the office to oversee and direct the surveillance from the situation room. ‘‘He climbs up into an eighteen-wheeler cab-a flatbed-and takes a two-hour nap. I got a hunch that truck’s his home for the time being. But then he fires it up and drives off. What’s that say to you, Sarge?’’
‘‘Mama Lu was right about the new moon,’’ Boldt answered. ‘‘There’s a shipment coming in. Tomorrow? The next day? Soon!’’ The truck was intended to move a container.
‘‘So then he drives a couple miles, parks it and takes a lawyer’s lunch at a greasy spoon-only it’s after midnight. He’s in no sign of being in any hurry.’’
‘‘We know for certain he’s in there?’’ Boldt pressed.
‘‘Cranshaw is getting his fill of cherry pie and coffee. We got a visual.’’
‘‘Waiting for a meet?’’ Boldt proposed.
‘‘That or a call. Got to be. You want I should bring him in for a chat?’’
‘‘Negative,’’ Boldt stated. The evidence they had against Rodriguez was entirely circumstantial. ‘‘I could try for a trap-and-trace on the diner’s pay phone-’’
‘‘Now there’s a long shot.’’
‘‘Never get it,’’ Boldt admitted.
‘‘Let’s hope this guy’s girlfriend doesn’t have a thing for the inside of truck cabs or something. I hope to hell we’re not wasting our time
here.’’
‘‘Is sex the only thing you think about?’’ Boldt asked.
‘‘No way!’’ LaMoia answered without missing a beat. ‘‘I’m pretty fond of money, too.’’
At 3:00 A.M. Wednesday morning the flatbed semi with Rodriguez behind the wheel finally left the diner’s gravel lot. Boldt was awakened from a nap in a storage room where a bunk bed offered detectives a chance to lie down. Surveillance was tricky at that hour, and with Boldt’s request for a phone warrant denied, all the police could do was guess at the call Rodriguez had been seen making from the diner and to follow him at a comfortable distance.
Thirty minutes later he used a bolt cutter to enter the gates of a naval storage depot that proved to have been part of the 1988 base closure
s that had caused a brief downward blip in King County’s otherwise stellar economy. Rodriguez pulled the flatbed down to a dock area where a pair of towering cranes pointed up toward the night sky. It was those cranes that caught everyone’s attention.
Fifteen minutes later, as LaMoia and two other detectives made their move to get a better vantage point, Rodriguez was spotted crossing through the navy yard’s side gates on foot. A moment later he dragged a motorcycle out of the weeds and took off without lights, catching the surveillance team by surprise and LaMoia in the midst of cutting a chained gate accessing a dark spit of land that looked directly across a small thumb of water at the navy yard. Detectives pursued in unmarked cars, but Rodriguez took the cycle off-road and disappeared.
‘‘Eluded?’’ Boldt roared into the phone.
‘‘We screwed up, Sarge.’’
‘‘And then some,’’ Boldt said.
‘‘Didn’t expect the bike.’’
‘‘Don’t try for sympathy from me. You lost our prime suspect.’’
‘‘We still have the flatbed,’’ LaMoia reminded, attempting to salvage something from his loss, ‘‘and the two cranes. Gaynes is still on Coughlie. He paid a visit to KSTV. He took a brief ride on a city bus. You got that, Sarge? A city bus!’’ He added cautiously, ‘‘This navy yard has got to be the place. It’s perfect. The cranes, for Christ’s sake! I’m gonna issue a Be on Lookout for Rodriguez. We’ll set up out here. If we’re right about this drop, Sarge, we had better be prepared for an all-out war. I’m thinking Mulwright and Special Ops.’’
‘‘I’ve got to report it to Hill, John.’’
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