by Dick Lilly
“I already thought it was getting a little weird and then he said, ‘We didn’t kill Carl Barclay. Tell Mr. Falconer that. Tell him we want to help find the killer. We think this man killed people who worked for our company. Tell him that.’”
“So I’m thinking, ‘Holy shit, who is this guy?’ and wondering what to do next when he stands up, suddenly just brusque as hell, and says ‘Tell Mr. Falconer I will meet him for breakfast tomorrow or the next day if he is alone. Otherwise he will lose his chance.’”
“Of course I asked, ‘Chance for what?’ That’s when he said you’d know.”
“That’s what he said? ‘We didn’t kill Carl Barclay ... we think the killer also killed people who worked for our company’?”
“If not exactly those words, pretty close. That’s what I wrote down right afterword.”
“And he didn’t say where we were meeting for breakfast?”
“No. Like I said, he just walked out.”
Theresa absently threw a couple fries in the direction of the gulls who snatched them on the fly. “Time to catch a plane, get away from the scary guys.”
“Me not included, right?”
“You I’ll miss.” She took his elbow and, leaning against him just a little, led him back across the crowded street to the car parked under the viaduct.
Chapter 25, Nora Hamilton
Sunday, June 15, 5 p.m.
“It weren’t no ten grand, mister. Guy came to the door, standing there just like you are now, gave me five hundred bucks and says my husband is gonna call the next day or the day after and I’m supposed to say ‘I got the money for the new couch.’ What I really got was just enough money for the rent.”
Falconer had driven up the hill from Delridge to Pigeon Point where Nora Hamilton rented a rundown place backing onto woods on a block still untouched by gentrification. She answered the door in jeans and a black tank top, bra underneath working hard to push a heavy load into view. Pink highlights streaked her brown hair. The sunlight that made her squint when she opened the door sharpened the lines around her eyes and mouth. She wouldn’t have liked the look; she still hadn’t hit forty.
Falconer stood on the small slab of concrete that served as a porch. “Is that all?”
“It sure as fuck was all the money, I’ll tell you that.” The woman swung her leg to intercept a small dog making a run for the yard.
“Like I said, I heard ten grand.”
“Yeah, and who’d you hear that from.”
“Guys in the joint who talked to the cops. Your husband was bragging about getting a lot of money for something he was going to do. That’s what they said. ‘Ten grand for something he was going to do.’ They said the money was going to come to you.”
“Well, I didn’t get no money except what I already told you.” She started to close the door.
“You want to know who got the rest?” Falconer had no idea but he wanted to keep her attention.
“You saying there was ten grand? Don’t shit me, mister.”
“Falconer. How about if I come in?”
Nora Hamilton gave the dog another kick and opened the door far enough for Falconer. The house exhaled a damp, musty smell, like bad breath, into the summer day.
“What the fuck? I got nothing else to do.” She waved Falconer in the direction of a plaid fabric covered La-Z-Boy that doubled as a scratching post for the orange cat asleep on the cushion. Falconer, holding the animal at arms’ length, lifted it off and set it on a sheet of plywood lying on top of the carpet.
“Hole in the floor.” Hamilton answered Falconer’s unasked question. There’s another one in the nook, too. My sweet landlord’s idea of maintenance. What a shit eater. ‘Well, Nora, he says, I guess I won’t raise the rent, after all.’ What a smarmy bastard. Floor’s all rotted out. And there’s mealy bugs in the wood, too. Fuckin’ place stinks, too, don’t it? Smells like rot. If I had ten grand first thing I’d do is get the fuck out of here.”
As though standing had been a tiring exercise, she sat heavily on a maroon couch across from Falconer. Flattened cushions told him the woman spent a lot of time there.
Hamilton waived the remote to silence the TV and then fished a pack of cigarettes and a yellow Bic from among magazines and a pizza box on the coffee table. Exhaling with a smoky sigh, she sagged against the back of the couch. The dog curled up against her thigh. “Shit, shit, shit,” she murmured, an incantation of regret.
“So my stupid Willie thought he was worth ten grand and got himself killed for a measly $500. Stupid dumb fuck.” Her eyes filled with tears and she squeezed the dog until it squirmed. After a while, she went on. “He called, you know, and he asked that dumb question about did I get the money for the couch, tried to make it sound nonchalant – you know, casual – which he wasn’t and never could be since he was on the prison phone and they always listen, you know they listen – and I said yes.” She shook her head, acknowledging the irony of the worn out piece of furniture she sat on.
“Fuck, I didn’t know what it was all about but if he’s got something going I’m going to help him out, see. I know he’s doing it for me, whatever it is, ’cause he loves me, even though we might never see each other again – on the outside, I mean, ’cause I get over there to visit every couple of months. I tried, anyway. I did. And now he’s dead so I guess I don’t have to do that anymore, do I?” She stared at Falconer, wanting him to share her sorrow.
“What’d he look like, the kid who brought you the money?”
“Weren’t no kid. He was maybe thirty, around there. Little shit, though. Full of himself. All attitude. Kinda guy gets himself beat up in a bar. Looked like it, too. Scars on his head you could see ’cause he had real short hair like he’d been shaving his head. Funny thing, too. He wore gloves, the kinds without fingers. It was a warm day so I thought maybe he rode a bicycle but I didn’t see one around. That amused me at the time, the thought of this guy delivering $500 just like he was one of them downtown bicycle messengers. He kept the rest of the money, too, didn’t he?”
“I don’t know. There’s a good chance it never existed. Most likely your husband got conned.”
“Conned right out of his life. Ain’t that as fucked as it gets?”
“They think the money was for the hostage taking. That’s why he did it. They – the state cops – think Willie and the two other guys were paid to grab the guard. That’s the story the guy who’s still alive is telling. Name’s Randy Chalmers.”
“Oh, yeah, Chalmers. Willie’s ‘best friend’ in there. Led him around by the nose. Another shitass conman. Him? That shit got Willie killed?” She wept silently and Falconer waited, shoving the cat away with his foot.
“Chalmers says they were just supposed to hold the guard for a while, create an incident, then give up. They even handed out a manifesto calling for prison reforms. You probably saw that in the paper.”
“It was on the TV.”
“They never imagined that prison officials would try to free their hostage by force. They were going to let him go. That’s what Chalmers is telling the state’s investigators. He called it a big ‘communication failure’ between the three of them and the hostage negotiators.”
“No shit. They killed two guys because of a ‘communication failure?’ What a sick fucking joke.”
Hamilton’s tears welled up again and she pulled the dog tightly against her chest, rocking back and forth as though offering the animal comfort, or finding solace herself in the embrace. When she looked up, Falconer went on: “Who put them up to it, and why? Who paid? That’s the real question, isn’t it?”
She looked at him, hard and unforgiving. “No, mister Falconer, the real question is why they killed my Willie when they didn’t have to.”
Chapter 26, Snake
Sunday, June 15, 10 p.m.
“Lotsa people know this guy. Sorta,” said Danny. “They’ve heard of him because he’s some kind of dealer, or they remember talking to him in a bar. They remember t
he snake tattoo. No one I talked to remembers a name. Some of them called him The Snake or Snake like that was his name. Seems to be what he goes by.”
Falconer and Danny Armster were in the A4, parked on East Pike across from the Meteor, a tavern that had been in the neighborhood for half a century, decades before that part of Capitol Hill became trendy. For all that time, too, the place had had a rough edge and still did.
“I talked to people around here and kids on The Ave. Both places people said they saw him from time to time, every week maybe, sometimes every few days. Seems to wander across a wide territory, more like a wolf than a snake,” Danny joked.
“Maybe combines the dangers of both.”
“I think he wears a wig some of the time. Most of the time people said he was a skinhead, shaved bald. Some described him as having dark brown or black curly hair, though. So two guys with cobras tattooed on the back of their left hands, or one guy who sometimes wears a wig?”
“Has to be one guy.”
“Yeah. Whatever description they gave, if they could name a place they thought he’d be, most often this was it.”
“So, given the odds, we only have to wait three or four nights.” Falconer was sarcastic. Stakeouts like tipsters always seemed like a waste of time – except when they paid off.
“I don’t think so. See the guy crossing the street?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Looks like the skinhead version. Right height and build.”
“Could be. But I’ll bet you the next round of coffees he walks right past the place.”
“Shit, he did. No, no, wait a minute, Eric. He stopped to talk to the smokers.” They waited. A big guy with a gray Santa Claus beard and wearing a baseball cap pulled out his wallet, slipped a couple bills to the skinhead.
“Old debt or new order placed. I didn’t see our Snake hand him anything,” said Danny. “And he just went in. You lose, Eric. I know that’s rare, but you lose. He just went in.”
“Let’s give him a few minutes to get settled.”
After a while they got out and jaywalked. Falconer found a gap in the concert posters that covered the tavern windows and peered in. “Best of all possible worlds. He’s at the bar and the guy next to him just went to a booth.”
Danny went in first, sat on the Snake’s left, between him and the door. The tattoo was there, the cobra wrapped around a beer glass. Danny could see he had a couple decent sized scars where his hairline would be if he weren’t shaved and one down the side of his nose. “Right where Roman Polanski cut that guy in Chinatown,” Danny thought. “Rough life this guy leads.”
The bar was blonde wood, under thick varnish showing its own scars and cigarette burns. Behind Danny and Snake, only a few tables were occupied by Sunday night serious drinkers, the guys who wouldn’t let the weekend end even if they were working Monday morning.
Falconer came in and sat to the kid’s right. Close up, Snake didn’t look thirty, more about Danny’s age. That might have made his appearance at the Roberts’ place a little more plausible, somebody one of the kids could have met. You’re getting out of high school. What comes next? That age, there’s always a fascination with life’s rough edges, Falconer knew. You’re trying to score dope on The Ave and you run into this guy and that’s what you’ve found, a rough-edged son of a bitch, a sleazy little rabbit ready to lead you down a hole. Or, like the kids said, maybe he just crashed the party. Yeah, because somebody paid him to, thought Falconer.
“We’d like to talk to you,” Falconer said quietly, leaning into the kid’s space. Snake snapped his head from Falconer to Danny and back, figuring out who Falconer meant by “we,” how many there were, trying to decide if they were going to be customers or some kind of problem. Problems were always around.
“What about?”
“That little party in Laurelhurst you dropped by last week,” Falconer said. “Handing out free samples. Arson. That sort of thing.”
Snake pushed back from the bar. “That some kinda riddle? I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”
“We want to know who paid you,” said Falconer in the same level tone, no hint of threat, just assurance that, of course, there’d be an answer.
Snake turned and suddenly slid off the high padded bar stool, took a step toward the door. Danny spun around, cutting him off and, left food planted, slammed his right boot upward into the guy’s kneecap. In the same movement, he lifted Snake off the floor with a blow to his gut that took his wind and left only a silent scream for the damaged knee. The look in his eyes was one Danny recognized, a mixture of hatred and fear, fear dominating. From behind, Falconer grabbed Snake’s left arm and pulled it back and up between his shoulder blades. With a glance back to make sure nobody moved, he said to the barman, “Our friend’s a little drunk; we’d better get him home.” He and Danny lifted Snake between them and walked him out the door into the darkening end of the long summer day.
Around the corner and halfway up the side street there was no traffic and nobody on the sidewalk. Between darkened store windows, they held the Snake up against a dirty brick wall, seen from a distance a tight conversational group, maybe a drug deal. Who would care? Fists clenched not to fight but against the excruciating pain, Snake managed only a litany built of the words shit and motherfuckers. When he raised the volume, Danny took a small bat from his pocket and suggested Snake might want to keep his teeth because on top of repairs to his knee, dental work would be expensive.
“Fuckers. What do you want?”
“The name of the guy who paid you to drop drugs on those kids in Laurelhurst.”
“That wasn’t me. Somebody else.” Danny gave the dealer’s knee a light tap with the bat. “Shit!” Snake doubled over against the pain and they had to pull him upright.
“The name and how to contact him.”
“OK, OK. Give me a second here.” They waited while Snake took a long series of deep breaths. Tears ran down his cheeks. “OK. Don’t kick me again. This is the truth, I swear to God. They call on my cell. I never met them in person and I don’t know any names. I don’t know shit, man.” The tone was pleading, and contained a flash of insight that he was in the middle, dumb, used and screwed.
“Give us your cell phone.”
“No, man!” Not so much a refusal as another plea. “I can’t do business without my phone. You’ll put me out of business. Don’t do that.”
“Borrow one. We only need it for a couple days,” said Falconer. “Give us your address. We’ll mail it back to you – unless we decide to give it to the cops.”
“It’s OK. You can leave it with the bartender.” With a jerk of his head he gestured back around the corner toward the Meteor.
“Naw, we’d like to have your address,” said Falconer. “For insurance.” Bat back in his pocket, Danny swung his leg as though aiming, still holding Snake’s shoulder against the wall. Falconer wrote down the University District address he gave them. It was close to The Ave, where the homeless kids he preyed on hung out.
“And your real name, please.”
Snake gave up the fight. “Corey Wayne.”
“Doesn’t sound real,” said Danny.
“Fuck your mother, too.” The words came with spit. Danny tapped the knee.
“There’s more though, isn’t there, Corey? These guys weren’t just voices on the phone, were they?”
“I told you I never saw them.” Snake spit each word between teeth clenched against the pain. “That’s the fucking truth, you assholes. Just voices on the phone. Two of them.”
“Tell us the story,” said Falconer.
“About a month ago the first one called, says he got my name, not my real name, from a bartender I know. Not the guy back there. He’s straight. I mean he doesn’t deal, doesn’t help me.”
“The guy on the phone, what’d he call you?”
“Snake. Everyone calls me Snake. You seen the tattoo.”
“Yeah, great artwork,” said Danny. “Maybe someday
they’ll hang your hand on a museum wall.”
“How much did they pay you?”
“$500.” Double that to get the right answer, Falconer thought.
“How’d they get you the money?”
“How I told them. Put it in an envelope, give it to a barman I know.”
“Which barman? Where?”
“I ain’t rattin’ him.”
Danny kicked him below the knee. Anyplace near the torn ligaments worked. Snake doubled over with a cry of pain. “Ohh, fuck.” A pause. “Guy named Ricky at Hole in the Wall.”
“Which is?”
“A martini bar on Post Alley near Trattoria Mitchelli.”
“Ricky say what he looked like, your employer?”
“Like a lawyer.”
“Anything else?”
“That’s all he said. He thought he was a lawyer.”
“Why’d he think that?”
“How the fuck would I know? Maybe he was wearing a suit.”
“Maybe we’ll ask Ricky,” said Falconer.
“Oh, shit. I’m toast, man. Don’t do it.”
“What about the other guy?
“He’s the one who called and told me about the party and what to do. All the details. What drugs, you know. Even told me to burn the boat on the beach.”
“He knew about the boat?”
“Yeah. Said there would be kindling and a can of that charcoal starter stuff underneath.”
“And there was?”
“Yeah, why not?” Falconer and Danny exchanged glances.
“What’d he sound like?”
“Like you. Like he gave the orders and expected you to do what he said.”
Falconer nodded at Danny. They let go of Snake’s shoulders and he slumped to the sidewalk, whimpering with pain.”
“Take some pills for that,” said Danny. “You’ve probably got a pocketful.”
Back in the car, Falconer said, “I’m not sure you needed to kick him that hard.”
“Think of it this way. We didn’t have to waste our time trying to keep him from running away.”
