The Complete Bragg Thriller Box Set

by Jack Lynch

  He didn’t bother to turn it off. He just swung around in the chair, opened the window behind the desk and pitched out the recorder into the night. We could all hear it smack into the alley below. Bomber closed the window and turned back around. He cleared his throat.

  “I don’t want to hurt your boys, Grady.”

  “What?” Jackson asked sharply.

  “I don’t want to hurt your boys, Tom and Wally. Probably, they’re good boys.”

  “Yes, they’re good boys.”

  Bomber nodded, and stared for another minute or two at the older man sitting across the desk from him in the castered chair. Grady had a little tic working in one cheek.

  “Maybe a little excessive,” Bomber continued. “Tom and Wally. I think they’ve become a little excessive.”

  Bomber lapsed into silence again. Grady Jackson stared down at his feet.

  “And you,” said Bomber.

  Grady’s head snapped up.

  “You’ve gotten sloppy, I think. You’re taking on business I don’t think you should. You’re taking on the sort of business my people take on. You’re crossing a line there, somewhere. You’re giving your own profession a bad name. I’ve been watching it for a long time now.”

  “Bomber,” the older man protested, “we’ve worked together in the past…”

  That made me raise my eyebrows, but then I thought there shouldn’t be anything too surprising about that.

  “That was in the past,” Bomber told him. “Many years ago. I’m in retirement these days. You’re an older man than I am, Grady. I think maybe you should be in retirement too.”

  Grady opened his mouth as if to say something but then closed it again. He was staring at the edge of his desk, and then a faint shrug lifted his shoulders.

  “All right, Bomber, if that’s what you want. I’ll leave the agency. I’ll retire.”

  “No,” Bomber told him. “Not leave the agency. Close down the agency. I think the Jackson agency should go out of business. Give up the license. Take things easy. Let your boys, Tom and Wally, find something else to do.”

  Bomber made the barest pause. “Before something bad happens to them.”

  Grady Jackson slowly raised his eyes, dread tugging at slack facial muscles. “Oh no, Bomber. You wouldn’t do that.”

  “Yes, I would, Grady. I would have it done. Somebody from back East, probably. Several somebodies from back East. Some men who would like a trip to the Coast, do a little work, then swing down for a little fun in Las Vegas before going home. Shotguns, I think.”

  Grady lowered his head to his hands. “Oh God, Bomber, I beg you. No.”

  “Yes, I think so. If your boys stay in the business, I think so. Shotguns. We’ll try to have it happen in their showers, though. Easier to clean up things afterward that way.”

  We all sat there for quite a long while without speaking. Grady lowered his hands finally. He made another little shrug of his shoulders.

  Bomber stared at him a moment longer. “Good,” he said then, getting out of the chair. He came around the desk and put one hand on Grady’s shoulders. “By the end of the month. You’ll tie up the loose ends and farm out the longer-term business and you’ll shut down by the end of the month, Grady.”

  “Yes,” said Grady in a bare whisper.

  “Good,” Bomber said again.

  On the sidewalk out in front of the building, Bomber turned to me, stripping the cellophane off a cigar. “Well, what do you think? Did I do okay?”

  “You did wonderful. You certainly convinced me.”

  “Yes, but Grady is a tough old bird. He might change his mind. What then? What if he doesn’t shut down?”

  “I think he’ll shut down, Bomber. But if he doesn’t, forget it.”

  “I could have it done, you know. Just the way I told him. It would cost somebody some money, of course.”

  “No, Bomber. That’s a favor I couldn’t ask. I’m already worried about the kindness you’ve extended me. Worried about phone calls I might get down the road.”

  He laughed and clapped me on the back. “Don’t worry about it. I like you. If there’s a phone call down the road, it shouldn’t be anything that would upset you. After all, I’m retired now, practically.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  When Bomber and his two men left, I just stood on a nearby street corner and thought about things. It had been dark out since before we went up to see Grady Jackson. It wasn’t raining, but there were no stars out, just streetlights, auto headlights, light from nearby buildings. A sharp little breeze had come up and people were scurrying by, heads down, shoulders hunched. Something I’d noticed since coming into Seattle more than a week earlier was that there were a lot of guys walking around town in navy watch caps and carrying paper bags who looked as if they were fresh off the boat.

  What I was doing, I knew, was delaying a decision about what to do next. Fly back to San Francisco and home and get to working on saving Morrisey’s client from the gas chamber, or bum around Seattle for a few more days. I decided I couldn’t make that decision yet. I have a friend on the Chronicle. Whenever you ask him how are things, even when he’s just two minutes away from putting on his hat and going home, he answers, “It still could go either way.”

  I got my car and drove down to Benny’s building on Western Avenue. Benny had been eager to get back to the office as soon as we’d pulled into the boat moorage out in Ballard. Probably, he was still there. Dolly and the kids wouldn’t get home until later that night. Or the next day maybe. I decided I’d go see how Benny was settling back in. And then I leveled with myself. What I really wanted to find out was whether or not Zither might still want me to pose for her, with or without my clothes on.

  I went into the building and didn’t even look down the hallway toward Benny’s office. I just went up the stairs and down the hall to Zither’s studio. I rapped on the closed door and heard her call out for me to enter.

  I went in and closed the door behind me. I didn’t see Zither, but then she called from behind the beaded curtain.

  “I’ll be right out.”

  I nodded and strolled over to a painting she was working on to see if I could see whatever erotic imagery she was trying to put into it. I made out a hand, but I couldn’t tell what it was doing or even whether it was a man’s or a woman’s. I heard the clicking of the beaded curtain behind me and turned.

  She looked gorgeous. She had blossomed from stark black and white. She was wearing a pair of form-fitting white satin lounging slacks and a hot pink blouse. Her long hair was cinched at the back of her neck with a matching pink scarf, and she was wearing eyeliner and lipstick and some other makeup. She also was carrying two glasses of white wine and stopped in her tracks and gave me a wide-eyed look.

  “Oh, hi,” she said.

  I had the feeling I wasn’t the ship she’d been waiting for to pull into the harbor. “Hi. Look, if I’m interrupting something, I’ll just…”

  “Oh no, that’s all right,” she told me, crossing and handing me one of the glasses. “I’m expecting Zack, is all. He’s the man with the gallery that’ll be showing my work next week. We’re having dinner this evening to discuss things.”

  “Sure.”

  “Benny told Mary Ellen about the day you two spent. Pretty exciting, it sounds.”

  “All in a day’s work,” I told her, setting the wine aside.

  “So when are you leaving?”

  “Soon, I think.”

  “Will you be coming back?”

  “Not for a while, chances are.”

  “Oh. Too bad.”

  There was another rap on the hallway door. I picked up the glass of wine and went to the door.

  “Pete?” Zither called.

  I turned.

  “I’m sorry. But I never know what your schedule is.”

  “Don’t fret. I hardly know myself.” I opened the door. A tall pleasant-looking chap who looked about half my age was standing there. “You Zack?”

&
nbsp; “Yes, sir.”

  I should have known he would call me sir. He had respect for his elders. I handed him the glass of wine. “This is for you. Have a good evening.”

  He turned as I stepped past him and started down the hall. “Why, thank you. Thank you very much.”

  I went down to Benny’s office. He was filing things away.

  “Mind if I use your phone?” I asked.

  “Help yourself.”

  “When do Dolly and the boys get in?”

  “They’ll pull in around ten o’clock. We’ll probably stay up half the night drinking champagne and celebrating. Why don’t you join us? Spend the night?”

  “No thanks, Benny. This should be a night for family.”

  “But I told you. That’s what you are.”

  “I know, but…” I dialed around until I found an airline that could put me on a midday flight for home the next day.

  Then, without giving myself any more time to think about it, I dialed Lorna’s home number. Maybe we could have a farewell toast of some sort. Maybe dinner, even. Depending on how things went, maybe I’d even cancel the phone reservation and spend another couple of days there.

  Brad Thackery, the Seahawks fellow, answered the phone for her. I almost hung up then and there, but screwed up enough courage to ask for my ex-wife. Lorna came on the line as high as a kite. She said the Seahawks had signed the contract for Scandia Farms to cater their big post-season bash. She was so excited she didn’t even think to mention all the money I’d saved everybody by stopping the two men from taking off for Canada. It was all Go Seahawks time. I told her I’d just called to say good-bye. So we said good-bye and I hung up the phone, uttering another colorful word or two.

  “Ball take a bad bounce?” Benny asked.

  “The goddamn ball always takes a bad bounce in this town.”

  “Now, now…”

  “No, I swear to God, Benny, Seattle is a jinx for me. It always has been. I’ve never had a relationship with a woman in this town that went straight and true all the way down the line.”

  “Have you ever? Anywhere?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  Benny broke up in a fit of giggling. He closed the file drawer and came over to punch me on the arm.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he told me.

  “Why not worry about it? You know, Benny, I don’t think I’ve grown an inch emotionally since Lorna and I were still married. We’re different people now, but you know, our relationship this time was basically the same as it ever was.”

  “Ah hell, Pete, forget about Lorna. Why don’t you pop upstairs and say hello to Zither?”

  “I already did. She has a date.”

  Benny didn’t giggle this time. He howled. He was fun to watch, and by the time he got a grip on himself, I was smiling a little myself. Ruefully, perhaps, but smiling. I had to get out of this town, that was all.

  Benny and I shook hands and told each other to keep in touch. I drove out north on Aurora Avenue again, looking for a motel where I could spend the night. These were old habits. I drove north instead of south toward the airport, because the north end of town was where I’d grown up, such as it was. And I drove out Aurora instead of Interstate 5 because when I was a kid, Aurora had been the main thoroughfare.

  I slept well that night and had a leisurely breakfast at a nearby pancake house, then got back onto Aurora Avenue and headed toward downtown and the airport beyond.

  I was looking at all the new buildings down there again, resenting them. Aside from one monster that should have become another Tower of Babel before it was finished, there was one other dark, monolithic thing that always got my attention. It had a sharply sloping top to it, so that at a distance it looked like a huge ship that had been upended, with its sharp prow sticking up into the sky.

  I wasn’t in any great hurry, and I decided to drive over there and find out just what that monster was. It was on the corner of Fourth Avenue and Blanchard Street. I parked on the street nearby and went up some stairs and into the building lobby. I asked the first man I saw what the name of the building was. He told me it was the Fourth and Blanchard Building. It figured. I thanked him and went back outside, but before going back to the car, I wandered down to a small plaza beside the building entrance. The sun had come out and a couple of people were sitting there on benches enjoying the break in the weather. And then I stopped.

  They weren’t people. They were statues. Bronze statues, I supposed. One of them was of an old woman in a cloth coat and hat, bent over a shopping bag. And across from her, on another bench, was the statue of an older man with his topcoat unbuttoned and his bronze hat tossed on the bench beside him. He was staring up at the morning sun with his hands behind his head and a big grin on his face. It was the most astonishing statue I’d ever seen. It captured something about Seattle that was just slam-bam right.

  I went back to the car then, pulled away from the curb and headed for the airport, and I had to ask myself, How could anybody not like a town where they did something that perfect?

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JACK LYNCH modeled many aspects of Peter Bragg after himself. He graduated with a BA in journalism from the University of Washington and reported for several Seattle-area newspapers, and later for others in Iowa and Kansas. He ended up in San Francisco, where he briefly worked for a brokerage house and as a bartender in Sausalito, before joining the reporting staff of the San Francisco Chronicle. He left the newspaper after many years to write the eight Bragg novels, earning one Edgar and two Shamus nominations and a loyal following of future crime writers. He died in 2008 at age seventy-eight.

  DIE FOR ME

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2002, 2014 Jack Lynch

  Previously published as Wolf House

  ISBN: 1941298397

  ISBN-13: 9781941298398

  Published by Brash Books, LLC

  12120 State Line, #253

  Leawood, Kansas 66209

  www.brash-books.com

  BOOKS BY JACK LYNCH

  The Dead Never Forget

  Pieces of Death

  The Missing and the Dead

  Wake Up and Die

  Speak for the Dead

  Truth or Die

  Yesterday is Dead

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ONE

  She wouldn’t tell me what it was all about at first, she just asked questions about being a private detective: how the hours were, whether I like it. Ordinarily I would have hung up on a caller like that, but she said we’d had an important telephone conversation some years earlier.

  “You worked for the newspaper,” she told me, then paused again.

  I held the receiver loosely to one ear and stared out the window, down onto Saturday morning Market Street in San Francisco, where the well dressed, the casual and the homeless moved at varying gaits up and down the sidewalks.

  The woman on the phone was taking her time, and I was beginning to fidget. I had a lot of memories to do with the days I’d worked on newsp
apers; some good, some hilarious and some ugly. I didn’t feel this was going to be one of the hilarious ones. I wanted her to get on with it.

  “The girl at the answering service said you might have a job for me.”

  “Yes, I do,” she said after a pause. “But it’s not what most people would think of as ordinary work. This isn’t even an ordinary day to be calling. I guess I was lucky you came in this morning.”

  “I show up at a lot of dizzy times, but let’s get back to you.”

  “All right. I was hoping we might get to know each other again. I can’t expect you to remember my voice after all these years, but it was such a crucial conversation, from my viewpoint at least. You quite literally saved my life. You were so decent to me. I thought I might hear back from you sometime.”

  “Maybe I’m a changed man from the one I was back then.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. I’ve seen your name from time to time. From what I’ve read of the things you’ve done and the people you’ve worked for, I don’t think you’re all that different.”

  “Maybe you’d better tell me a little more about that earlier conversation.”

  “That’s easy enough. I remember it as if it were yesterday. I spoke first to an assistant city editor. He sounded quite busy, and told me he was transferring my call to a reporter named Bragg. And then you came on the line and I told you, ‘I think I have a story for you, or at least some caption matter.’ ”

  I leaned forward in the chair and put my elbows on the desk. I had indeed heard those words, in that tone of voice, nearly a dozen years earlier. “What day of the week was it?”

  “A Sunday.”

  That made me wince. I remembered all right. “That was my last day at the newspaper.”

  “Oh? Then maybe that’s why you never called back. Not that it matters. But do you remember our conversation now? The things you said to me?”

  “Not the specifics of it. I certainly remember what it was about. Other things later in the day pushed it out of my mind. But that was a long time ago. I’m glad to hear your voice again. What’s happening?”