“Crap, you’re right,” he said. “I’ll head back now.”
He was just entering the Fairhaven district of Bellingham. He followed the signs to Interstate 5 and headed back south.
****
Flying was hell under the best of circumstances. Seattle to San Juan, Puerto Rico was almost ten hours including an hour and a half sitting around in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. The flight from Seattle to Dallas-Fort Worth wasn’t so bad. It was long, boring and Richard Randall was cramped into a center seat, but it was bearable.
The leg from Dallas-Fort Worth to San Juan was sheer hell. The damned plane was loaded with screaming brats. There was a family in the row behind him and no matter how much he complained, the little twerp behind him wouldn’t stop kicking his seat.
If all flights to Puerto Rico were such misery, no wonder the passengers clapped when the plane touched down.
Then there was customs. Puerto Rico was part of the good old USA, right? Then why go through customs? It would be easier to get into Cuba.
But Dick thought ahead. This was why he only brought nine thousand, nine hundred dollars with him. He wasn’t about to get himself into trouble bringing ten thousand dollars. He spread the cash around. A couple thousand in his socks. A couple more in a secret compartment in his belt. Some in an envelope in his carry on. He threw in a couple of pictures of jewelry in case any suspicious customs agent should ask about the cash. He would say he was buying presents for his wife.
The damn fools should buy that.
Getting a cab was like picking a card out of the deck in the magician’s hand. No telling what he’d get. They were lined up like at any normal airport, but as he walked down the row, the cabbies vied for his business like barkers at a Tijuana whorehouse.
Fortunately, the cabbie spoke English. This was part of America, right? So why didn’t they all have to learn English? Well, anyone who he had to deal with spoke English, that was good enough.
Richard Randall, Dick to his friends, was an average size, average looking man. Middle aged, a head full of short gray hair, brown eyes, maybe a little chunky, but absolutely nothing to make him stand out in a crowd. He’d have to find ways to make himself more memorable when he got to the hotel.
The cab deposited him in the turnaround of the El San Juan Hotel. The place was magnificent. High ceilings in the lobby gave the feel of some old-time cathedral. The casino right off the lobby was anything but religious. Crowds bustled nosily about the casino. Garish neon signs touted the slot machines. Women in cocktail dresses and men in tuxes made him feel like he was in some James Bond movie.
He’d have to avoid the casino though. He’d dropped enough cash in Vegas over his lifetime to realize that sitting down at one of the tables would be his undoing. He had other plans for his money.
His room was great. Luxury re-defined. He thought about the cost, three-hundred bucks a day wasn’t that bad. He needed to treat himself once in a while.
The thick Porterhouse steak for dinner and the Dewar’s White Label in the Blue Bar off the lobby were pricey, but what the hell? He was making an investment in his future. He tipped generously. He wanted the staff to remember him when some nosey cop came looking.
The next morning Dick was back at the taxi stand.
“Banco Popular,” he told the cabbie.
The dark-skinned man grunted and pulled into traffic.
Shit! Driving in San Juan was taking your life into your own hands. Dick was glad he hadn’t bothered to rent a car. He wasn’t going to be here that long anyway. Just a quick trip to the bank then he’d be back on his way to the airport.
His first stop was at the Western Union office. He slipped the cabbie a twenty and told him to wait then went in to rent a mail box. He had to have a local address for the next step in his plan. It only took a few minutes then he was back in the cab and they were off.
The Banco Popular headquarters was in a tall white sky-scraper in downtown San Juan. Vertical rows of windows gave it the appearance of being striped and the windowless top floor had the name blazoned in sky-high letters.
Randall waited in the lobby for an officer to approach him.
“May I help you, señor?” the dark-haired woman in a blue suit asked.
“I certainly hope so.” He gave her his best smile. “I need to open an account.”
“Come with me, please,” she said.
“It will be my pleasure.”
In the form-fitting business suit, the dark eyed woman was breath-taking.
“Are all the bankers in Puerto Rico so beautiful, or did I just get lucky?” Dick asked. He knew that the woman would remember his flirting.
And it was just that easy. He left the cash with the pretty bank officer and caught a cab back to the airport.
In and out. No one the wiser...for the time being.
****
It was late afternoon by the time Ted pulled into the parking lot of his sister’s new restaurant. He immediately spied Chris’s silver Porsche Boxster. The expensive German sports car had been a graduation present from Chris’ dad, Harry, those many years ago. Chris kept the sleek car in showroom-new condition.
Location, location, location, Ted thought as he climbed out of his low-slung roadster. You’re going to do okay here, chica.
His sister, Hope, his mother and two of his other siblings moved to Seattle with him from East LA after Papa was killed looking for his missing brother in Mexico. Mama couldn’t stand to live in the family home anymore. Hope had other reasons to move to Seattle.
They sold the family business, the El Chaparral restaurant, where Papa had worked for over twenty years and headed north. Ted found them a house in the Magnolia district and the family settled in.
It didn’t take long for Hope to find a new restaurant location. With a spectacular view of Lake Washington, the building had started out life as an Italian restaurant. It didn’t take much to give it a Mexican look. It already had a round domed dining room and stuccoed archways. The Mediterranean colors worked too. Hope was supervising an extensive kitchen remodel and a redecorating effort.
She insisted on building an outdoor patio overlooking the lake. Ted questioned the wisdom of investing in an area that would only get used a couple of months in the summer. No one was going to want to dine al fresco during Seattle’s interminable drizzly winter.
Chris agreed with Hope. During the two months of summer Seattleites flock to anyplace where they could sit outside, especially since she had a view of the lake.
“It’s about time you showed up, hermano,” the short, dark beauty called out as Ted came into the entry way. She was dressed in jeans and a scrungy old Cal State LA T-shirt. Her shinny black hair was tied back in a long pony-tail and covered in a red, white and green bandana.
“Sorry, I got caught up in stuff and forgot.” Ted pulled off his light jacket and hung it on the coat rack. “What can I do to help?”
“I was going to have you hang the light fixtures,” Hope said. “But I found someone taller for that job.” She pointed to the dining room where the tall, blond-haired Chris Hardwick straddled a step ladder while he wired a black wrought iron chandelier to the ceiling.
“How’d you rope ol’ Chris into working for you?” Ted asked. “I thought he’d be so busy with his new job that he’d never get a free minute.”
“He brought me lunch and I just kinda drafted him. Look what followed me home, can I keep it?”
“Hey ‘mano,” Chris shouted from the dining room. “It’s about time you showed up.”
“Hey, yourself. How come you’re doin’ my job?”
“Well, Hope needed someone actually tall enough to reach the ceiling.” Chris broke into a huge grin.
The Mutt and Jeff height difference between the two friends had been a joking point since their freshman year at the University of Washington.
“Maybe Hope can find me a job that actually takes some skill,” Ted rejoined. “Any dope off the street can hang lights.”
Ted was his father’s son. Put a tool in his hand and he could fix anything. Hope soon had him hooking up the new broiler and stove in the remodeled kitchen.
“Oye chico,” Ted said to one of Hope’s workers, “¿Donde esta una llave iglesia?”
“Aqui,” the young man replied, handing Ted a crescent wrench.
Hope found a Mexican-American contractor to do the remodel and all of his crew were Latinos. More Spanish was spoken on the job than English.
“Have you reported to work yet with Catrina?” Hope asked.
“I’ve checked in,” Ted said. “But I haven’t really started any cases yet.”
Ted worked for Catrina Flaherty, a former police woman turned PI. He left her employ after the Millennium Systems case to work for his father for five years, but now that he was back in Seattle, it was back to work at Flaherty & Associates.
“I’m supposed to move into Jeff’s office,” Ted went on, “but somehow, it just doesn’t feel right.”
Jonathon Jefferson was Catrina’s partner who was killed while capturing a drug dealer in Mexico.
“She wants me to be a full partner, but I don’t quite feel like I belong yet.”
“Cat’s good people.” Hope pointed her dripping paint brush at him. “You’ll be just fine. Jeff would want you to have his office.”
Ted, Hope and Chris labored into the night, long after the work crew knocked off for the day. By the time they called it quits, Ted was exhausted. He wanted nothing more than to return to his Capitol Hill apartment and crawl between the sheets.
Chapter 2
Chris sat in his new office and surveyed his surroundings. Impressive, he thought, with bookcases full of law books lining the walls. He never had and probably never would open one of the books. In this Internet Age, everything he needed was on-line and with his near photographic memory, he only needed to read something once to store it in his vast mental warehouse of information.
His diplomas and shiny new license, not even old enough yet to have gathered any dust, hung on one wall. He knew that as time passed, he would accumulate a variety of trophies for that wall, like the ones in Dad’s office.
Chris smiled at the fact he had a window. New associates didn’t usually get an office with a window. This was one time he didn’t regret being the boss’s son. His step-mom, Candace, also a newly-minted attorney, had the window office next to him. A little nepotism goes a long way. What the hell? One day, we’ll be running this place. We might as well get used to it.
He thought about Candace for a minute, and how much he’d hated her when she first married his father, Harry, in large part because he thought she was a gold digger. She was closer to Chris’s age than she was to his father’s. He resented her looks too. She could have graced the cover of any fashion magazine with long black hair and emerald green eyes. Hell, with her figure she’d look great as a Playboy centerfold. What would a hot young chick like Candace see in an old coot like his dad?
Chris resented the fact that she would try to take Mom’s place. The resentment was long past. Candace had worked her tail off as a paralegal and never tried to be his mother. Instead she had been a great study partner in law school. He saw her at the office every day and liked how she treated him like someone special.
He respected the way she took to Kayla, too, the poor little girl whose mother had been killed by the Mexican drug cartel and whose father was rotting in prison on drug trafficking charges. Dad and Candace were planning to adopt Kayla. I guess we’ll have a new little sister, he thought.
He stared out his window. From the sixty-fourth floor of the Columbia Tower, Chris could look up Puget Sound all the way north to Possession Point. On the other side of the Sound, he could see Bainbridge Island and Eagle Harbor with the ferry boats going in and out. Puffy white clouds hung in the deep blue sky. Sail boats, motor yachts, tour boats, tugs and container ships plowed back and forth on the inland sea below him. For a moment he was lost in thought.
He was at the wheel of Dad’s sailboat, the Courageous. The bright red hull sliced through the white-capped topped swells and kicked up a long wake. Gulls cried and the scent of the sea filled his nostrils.
“Hardwick,” Ben Johnson, one of the senior partners at Hardwick, Bernstein & Johnson said as he blew through Chris’s door. “I have a little job for you.”
Chris snapped back to the present. Ben was dressed impeccably as ever in a charcoal pin-striped suit with a starched white shirt and a red power tie.
“Morning, Ben.” Chris smiled. It was hard calling him Ben. He had known his as Mr. Johnson since he was a little boy.
He considered his own attire. He never thought he’d be showing up to work every day wearing a tailored suit. However, he had to admit to a little vanity. He liked the way the soft fabric draped off of his athletic build. Chris knew he looked good. He allowed his blond hair to grow long as a last statement of his individuality. He hoped his long, thin solid red tie that flapped around unrestrained gave him a dash of indifference.
“It’s a good first case. Really not much to do.”
“What is it?” Chris hadn’t handled a case on his own yet. He had spent several years as a paralegal while he worked his way through law school and had second chaired a case or two since passing the bar.
“My wife has a relative, kind of a distant black-sheep cousin. I hate to sound snobbish, but she’s kind of trailer-trash.
“Anyway, her kid’s in trouble. Again. She has a problem-child son. Always getting in trouble with the law. Maybe you can reach him.”
Chris put down the stack of papers he had grabbed when Ben entered the office. “What’s he done?”
“He’s been arrested up in Island County. Breaking and entering. He’s only sixteen, so it’s juvie stuff. We normally wouldn’t bother with a case like this, but Edith put the pressure on. This is her cousin.”
“Okay, what do you want me to do?”
“Talk to the boy. You’re closer to his age, maybe he’ll relate to you. Maybe he’ll think you’re some kind of hippy lawyer. God knows that he doesn’t listen to me. Clayton won’t listen to anyone. Thinks he’s smarter than everyone else. Talk some sense into him. Protect his rights. Keep him out of court. Get a plea bargain. Get this thing handled and everyone can all go on with their lives.”
“Yes, sir.” Chris accepted the folder that Ben Johnson handed him.
Ben turned and headed out of the office then stopped at the door.
“Oh, by the way, I hear that you’re looking for crew for your sailboat for the fall racing season. My son, Timothy would love to sail with you.”
“Great. Have him give me a call.”
Ben continued out the door.
Shit, Chris thought. Just what I need, a senior partner’s snot-nosed kid on my boat.
****
The offices of Flaherty & Associates hadn’t changed much. Ted worried about parking his sleek black BMW in the parking lot of the old warehouse. He’d take the bus if it weren’t so difficult. It would require a transfer downtown and a six-block walk. A bus trip would take an hour. He could drive in fifteen minutes.
The SODO neighborhood was a cluster of warehouses, factories and tired old buildings. SODO once meant South of the Dome, but after the Kingdome was imploded; real estate entrepreneurs changed it to South of Downtown. The glamour of the areas surrounding Seattle’s new ball parks hadn’t reached this far south yet.
He flashed his keycard at the reader and pulled open the heavy glass door. There was no lobby, just a landing with a distressed ficus plant and a long staircase leading to the mezzanine level offices.
Ted climbed the long flight of stairs and used his keycard again to unlock the heavy oak door. He took a moment to look around before entering.
Near the door, Abiba, a large Ethiopian woman wearing outlandishly bright colors looked up from her desk.
“Mr. Higuera. Good morning.” She said in her haughty-sounding British accent.
“Good
morning, Abiba.”
Ted stepped inside. Behind Abiba’s desk, he saw the two dozen or so other mismatched desks filled with women who looked like refugees from some third-world conflict.
The desks were pushed together in twos and fours. Tired looking women worked busily on various projects. These were Catrina’s rescues. Time after time, his boss saved women from abusive relationships, found them a new place to live and provided employment to get them back on their feet. Women with headsets chatted away incessantly on the phone, fingernails clicked on keyboards, drawers opened and shut, all contributing to the constant background noise that Ted remembered from Catrina’s office.
“Coffee’s ready. Can I get you a cup?” Abiba asked.
“Sure, thanks.”
Ted entered the warren of desks and made his way to the back of the large, open room. Against the back wall were two offices with large windows and glass doors. One was Catrina’s; the other had been Jeff’s.
Jonathon Jefferson, who everyone called Jeff, had been a Seattle Police Department officer until his partner outed him. No one wanted to work with a gay cop. When no other officers responded to his call for backup in a shots fired situation, Jeff decided it was time to quit.
True to her nature, Catrina rescued Jeff. She made him her partner and gave him a home at Flaherty & Associates.
Ted thought for a minute about his friend. Jeff lost his life capturing a drug dealer in Mexico to free a mom from jail in the U.S. The macho ex-cop was anything but your stereotypical gay man. Now Ted had his office.
He stopped at the office door. Abiba had cleared out all of Jeff’s things except for the American flag that stood on a brass eagle-topped pole in the corner.
“Jeff’s husband, wanted you to have the flag,” Abiba said from behind Ted. “Henry wanted you to remember how much Jeff loved his country and all he did to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves.” She handed Ted his cup of coffee. “Just like you like it, black like me.”
Bikini Baristas: Ted Higuera Series Book 4 Page 2
