Lying in wait

19

Sue Danielson and I had agreed to drive to the Ballard Fire House in separate vehicles. It was later than it should have been when I dropped my grandmother off at her house and headed that way.

Back when I was a kid, the Ballard Fire House was still just exactly that-a firehouse. That was its raison d'etre from the old horse-drawn fire-engine days back in the early 1900s. Sometimes in the early seventies, the firemen moved into more modern quarters, and the old firehouse was transformed into a trendy sort of night-club/restaurant. It has operated in that guise ever since.

The Fire House was evidently a popular place. I had to park two blocks away. When I reached the entryway alcove, I found both Sue Danielson and June Miller waiting for me. Former congressman Miller was nowhere in evidence, and I had to look twice before I recognized Sue.

I'm used to seeing Detective Danielson in her work mode down at the department, dressed in what passes, I guess, for women's business attire-skirts, blazers, sensible heels-if heels can ever be said to be sensible, that is-and in blouses so prim, they leave absolutely everything to the imagination. The outfit she wore salsa dancing had barely any blouse and even less skirt. As soon as I saw her legs, I realized with a shock that I'd never noticed them before. It made me wonder if I'm getting old.

Dressed as she was, Sue was no slouch, but next to June Miller, I could see why Sue might have felt a bit drab in comparison. The wife of the former congressman was pencil-slender, but still curved in all the right places. She wore a sophisticated long black dress with an attention-capturing, knee-high slit up one side. Inch-wide straps ran across otherwise bare shoulders. She didn't walk. When she moved, she glided.

While I stopped at a table and forked over the cover charge, June and Sue went on inside and staked a claim to a spot three tables from the dance floor and right on top of the bank of electronics handled by the band's chief soundman.

I caught up with the women just as the band began revving up. "Your husband won't be joining us?" I shouted to June over the cacophony.

She shook her head. "Not tonight," she yelled back, followed by something totally incomprehensible.

"What?"

"Brett's having some friends for overnight."

More's the pity, I thought.

A cocktail waitress came by, and we ordered drinks-tall 7-Ups with lime all around. No wonder there was a cover charge. The Ballard Fire House wasn't making any money on drinks at our table, and it turned out that most of the others were pretty much the same way. Whether the drinks had booze in them or not, people tended to nurse them rather than swill them down. As far as I could see, most of the people came there to dance, not to drink.

And I do mean dance with a capital D.

People hit the dance floor the moment the band-a twelve-member, all-male outfit named Latin Expression-finished tuning up and struck the first note of the first number. Thanks to Ralph Ames, I've been in enough Mexican restaurants to have a nodding acquaintance with mariachi music, which generally sounds to me like Polish polka with a south-of-the-border twist. And the words "salsa dancing" had made me think that what I was in for was a group of round, sausage-shaped guys wearing sombreros and glitzy Cisco Kid costumes. Wrong.

These were good-looking young men in white shirts, splashy up-to-the-moment ties, and double-breasted suits. The two backup singers were as energetic and as well orchestrated as the Supremes. The three singers belted their hearts out in what sounded to me like Latino-beat rock, and I never understood a single word-for two reasons:

Number one: Everything except the between-song patter was in Spanish. Listening to it reminded me of a disastrous recent date with Alexis Downey where I had been force-fed a Chinese-made art flick. Alexis had assured me in advance that we were attending a must-see film with some of her friends and that she knew I was going to love it. I didn't come close to loving it-I didn't even like it, and I don't think English subtitles would have helped.

Number two: The music Latin Expression played at the Ballard Fire House was far louder than the small space could accommodate, which made it much too loud for me. I remember telling my mother once long ago that you can't have too much bass. Latin Expression proved me wrong. The deafening roar of the bass guitar thrummed in the tabletop and shivered the back of my chair. The decibel level may have turned my ears to mush, but it didn't seem to faze the dancers.

They were there to dance, and dance they did. To every single song. There was none of this phony hanging back and waiting to see who would go first, or if the band would play fast tunes or slow ones or something in-between. People grabbed partners and headed for the dance floor as soon as the first note blasted through a pair of two-story-high collections of speakers stacked in the front corners of the room.

Sue and June were old hands at this. Within minutes they both saw people they knew and recognized from other salsa-dancing venues. Guys stopped by the table long enough to shout dancing invitations to the two women. Soon both my tablemates were led onto the crowded floor, where they danced their hearts out to numbers that could have been rumbas or sambas or tangos or some variation on all of the above. Fortunately, no one asked me to dance.

Everyone seemed to be having a good time. Everyone but me. Somewhere in the middle of the third number, someone turned on a red-and-yellow rotating spotlight that flashed across the gyrating figures on the dance floor and then splashed directly into my eyes. I was already tired, and blinking to dodge the flashes of light almost put me to sleep-in spite of the ear-shattering volume.

In other words, salsa dancing wasn't my favorite. And it was odd to realize that a culture so alien to me was thriving right there in the middle of Ballard-what was once strictly white-toast Ballard-only blocks from the apartment where I had lived as a boy growing up. Times do change.

I was truly lost in a crowd, a fifth wheel. While musical numbers followed one after another, I sat there all by myself with no one to talk to and nothing to do but watch. To keep myself occupied and awake, I tried putting all the little pieces together: salsa dancing and Sobibor. Two murders and a hit-and-run. Thousands of gold teeth and a gold wrench. And Nazi toy soldiers standing in rows.

The sudden thought hit me with the force of a lightning bolt and left me feeling sick and shaken. What about those damn soldiers? I wondered. What if they weren't made of lead at all? What if they, like Bonnie Elgin's wrench, were made of solid gold?

As soon as the thought crossed my mind, I was torn. On the one hand, I didn't want to miss the meeting with Lorenzo. On the other, I couldn't wait to get my hands on one of those soldiers in the basement of the Gebhardt house on Culpeper Court. Even considering it was almost eleven, I was sure Else would let me examine the soldiers for myself. Checking the metal content wouldn't require the professional services of someone like the crime lab's Janice Morraine. Just hefting them would be enough to tell me what I wanted to know. Or else I could scrape off some of the paint and see whether or not there was gold concealed beneath the enamel.

My distress must have showed. June Miller came back to the table for a sip of 7-Up. She offered reassurance and counseled patience. "They'll be here pretty soon," she said. "Maria gets off work around eleven."

There was no point fighting the music and trying to yell out an explanation. That was hopeless. Against my better judgment, I slouched deeper into my chair and listened to the boom of a complicated conga-drum solo. From then on, though, with my mind still working overtime, I kept one eye on the door. My vigilance was rewarded when, through the haze of cigarette smoke, I spotted a man and a woman who paused just inside the doorway.

The two of them, a man in his thirties and a somewhat younger woman, entered the room cautiously, as though they expected the Ballard Fire House to be furnished with armed land mines rather than tables and chairs. The man looked like a young Cesar Romero. He wore gray slacks, an open-necked white shirt rolled up at the sleeves, and no tie. Walking with a noticeable limp, he went to the nearest corner and sank into a seat directly in front of the stacked speakers.

Great, I thought. We'll never be able to talk there.

The woman, presumably his sister Maria, appeared to be several years younger. Her dark hair, crinkled as if newly loosened from tight braids, fell almost to her waist. She stood near the door, surveying the room with quick, nervous glances that betrayed her anxiety. Eventually, she must have spotted June Miller. That wasn't difficult, since June's blond hair glowed like a pillar of yellow flame among the other, mostly dark-haired dancers. As soon as June smiled and waved, the young woman turned to the man and nodded.

June had given me strict orders not to approach either one of the newcomers until she personally cleared it with them. What I did do, however, was make my way, between songs, onto the dance floor, where I reclaimed Sue Danielson from the apparently pleasant clutches of a young Latino man with whom she had danced several dances.

The man spoke little or no English, but he danced with the verve and flair of a professional. Invariably, he had returned Sue to our table with a courtly bow to her, and with a politely deferential nod to me as well. I did my best to return the favor when he relinquished Sue to me on the dance floor, but he seemed genuinely mystified when, instead of dancing away with her, I dragged her back to our table.

"They're here?" she asked.

"Just came," I answered. "Maria's the young woman standing just to the left of the door. Her brother's seated at the table right in front of the speakers."

"Should I go get June?"

"She said for us to stay put, remember?"

June had spent much of the evening dancing with a balding gentleman who must have been close to sixty and who seemed to be the most capable dancer in the room. While I squirmed with impatience, a laughing and unconcerned June Miller danced two more interminable numbers with her smooth-move partner. Just when I was about to go cut in on him as well, the band finally took what I considered a well-deserved break.

Instead of returning to our table, however, June hurried over to the new arrivals. After a moment's conference with Maria, June turned and beckoned to Sue and me.

Carrying what little remained in our three drinks, we threaded our way across the room. As we neared the table, I was surprised, as I often am, by how closely the Identi-Kit artist had managed to capture Lorenzo's likeness.

He wasn't a large man; but he was sleek, like a racehorse, and compactly built. Almost hidden behind the cloth of his unbuttoned shirt was a gold crucifix that glowed in the dim, overhead lights.

Gold again, I thought. That particular commodity seemed to be everywhere at the moment.

"Detective Sue Danielson and Detective J. P. Beaumont, this is Maria Hurtado and her brother, Lorenzo," June was saying.

Maria, seated beside her brother, rose to her feet and then tentatively shook hands, first with Sue and then with me. Lorenzo didn't move, and he didn't offer his hand, either. His eyes stayed full on my face.

"How do you do," he said formally.

There were only four chairs at the table. I rustled up a fifth and then sat in that one with Sue and June on either side of me and with both the Hurtados facing us. From the way he watched me, I knew it was no accident that Lorenzo had chosen the chair he was seated on. From that vantage point, he could observe the entire room. Whatever the real story behind his brother's death back home in Guatemala, it had left Lorenzo Hurtado a cautious survivor.

Still holding my gaze with his, Lorenzo used casual and unhurried movements to extract a package of cigarettes from his pocket. He offered the cigarettes around the table. When no one took one, he did so himself, shaking a cigarette loose from the pack, which he then returned to his pocket. He lit the cigarette with a steady, tremble-free match. June had told me Lorenzo was frightened of cops. If that was the case, he was doing a hell of a good job of covering it up.

Once the cigarette was lit, Lorenzo was the first to speak. He did so slowly and deliberately, as if taking scrupulous pains so as not to be misunderstood.

"I didn't do it," he said.

"Didn't do what?" I asked, playing dumb.

"I did not kill Senor Gebhardt, and I didn't see who did it, either."

"But you were there when he was killed?"

"Yes," Lorenzo said. And then, "No." And then, "Maybe."

"Look, you can't have it both ways," I insisted. "Were you there or weren't you?"

The lights around us reflected on the smooth, closely shaved skin of Lorenzo Hurtado's narrow face, capturing a slight involuntary tic. "I don't know for sure if I was there or not when Senor Gebhardt died," Lorenzo answered. "But he was still alive when I stepped onto the boat. I know that because I heard him."

"What exactly did you hear?" I asked.

Lorenzo closed his eyes and shuddered. He swallowed hard, then opened his eyes again and stared at me while a stream of ashes spilled unnoticed from the smoldering and forgotten cigarette clutched between his fingers.

"You are a policeman, Detective Beaumont." It was a statement, not a question.

The music wasn't playing, but even so, Lorenzo Hurtado spoke so softly that I had to strain to hear him. I nodded.

"Senora Miller says things are different here; that it isn't the same as it was back home in Guatemala when my brother died. So maybe you don't know what it's like. Have you ever heard the sound of someone being tortured?"

Suddenly, Lorenzo Hurtado was the interrogator and I the mere questionee. "No," I answered truthfully. "I have not."

His eyes narrowed. Although they appeared to be staring directly at me, I don't think he was seeing me so much as he was seeing something else, recalling a witnessed event from long ago-a terrible, intimate ghost from his own past.

"There is a time," he said slowly, measuring his words. "It comes almost at the end, when there are no more cries for help or mercy, when there is no more begging. I heard no words on the Isolde that night, only a groan. It is the nightmare sound of someone consenting to die, Detective Beaumont. Of someone wanting to die. It is the sound I think of now when the priest reads to us about Jesus ‘giving up the ghost.'"

Lorenzo Hurtado paused and shook his head. "Before that night on the Isolde, I had heard that sound only once before when I was a little boy of eleven. When it comes in my dreams, it keeps me awake even now. Because, Detective Beaumont, once you hear it, you never, ever forget."

"You're saying you came on the boat, heard this terrible noise-the sound of someone being tortured-and then you just left? You didn't even try to help?"

"I ran," he whispered. "I ran as far and fast as I could."

"Judge not, jerk," I berated myself, while a single tear welled up in the corner of Lorenzo Hurtado's eye and coursed a glistening track down his cheek. He made no effort to brush it away. For a time, no one at the table spoke, although Maria Hurtado was weeping openly.

"I know now that I should have tried to find help," Lorenzo continued finally. "I don't know what happened to me. Maybe if I hadn't run away, Senor Gebhardt would still be alive. I should have tried to help, but I didn't. I pray to the Holy Mother every day, asking for forgiveness."

Shoulders heaving, Lorenzo caught his breath, sighed, and looked away. Call it gut instinct, but there was no question in my mind that Lorenzo Hurtado was telling the absolute truth.

Clearly, although the man was right on the edge, someone had to keep asking questions, and I was elected. "After you heard the groan, tell us exactly what happened then."

Lorenzo shuddered and cleared his throat before he spoke again. "I guess I panicked. Maria's a nurse. She works at the V.A. Hospital. She says what happened to me is a flashback. You think what's happening now is what happened that other time. What is gets all mixed up with what isn't. I don't remember all of it. I think I may have hidden somewhere for a while. My shoes and clothing were covered with mud, but mostly I ran."

"Until you were hit by the car?"

"Yes. I don't remember that exactly, either. I mean, I don't remember how it happened, but yes. The car hit me."

"And then?"

"After I got away from the lady in the car, I went home."

"Where do you live, Lorenzo?"

"Capitol Hill. Maria and I share an apartment there, with our mother."

"How did you get home?"

"I called Maria from a pay phone. She had dropped me off for work, and she came back to get me."

"And bandaged your leg?"

"Yes."

Since Maria was a nurse, there had been no necessity for them to seek medical treatment for the cut on Lorenzo's leg. That explained why his description and the Identi-Kit sketch hadn't rattled any chains of recognition at the hospital emergency rooms where Sue Danielson had made inquiries.

"What were you doing on the Isolde at that hour of the morning? What time was it, four-thirty? Five?"

"Five. Senor Gebhardt asked me to come to work then. He said we had a lot to do that day, that we needed to get an early start."

"What exactly were you doing?"

"Getting the boat ready to go out. I was supposed to help him overhaul the engine starting next week, but he called me on Sunday. He said he had decided to put off the overhaul until later. He said while it was still good weather, he wanted to take the boat out for one last test before we started working on it. I did some other work on the boat the day before, on Monday, checking the equipment, fuel, and fluids-making sure everything was right. Mostly I helped him load stores on board. The next day he told me he wanted me to come help him load on everything else."

"What everything else?"

Lorenzo raised his shoulders and shook his head. "I don't know. He said it would be hard work, that it would take all day."

"There was a wrench," I said, "a small box wrench that was found near the scene of the car accident. The lady who hit you found it in the street after you left. Do you know anything about that?"

He nodded. "It was on the deck of the Isolde when I came on board," Lorenzo said. "I stepped on it and almost fell down. I'm sure it was one of Senor Gebhardt's tools, and I was afraid I had left it out overnight. He was careful about his tools. I was going to return it to the toolbox without letting him know it had been left out. When I picked it up to put it in my pocket, it felt funny, and I wondered why it was covered with paint."

Sue Danielson had been quiet throughout the interview. She didn't keep still because she's some kind of shrinking violet or because I'm particularly brilliant. The truth is, interrogations can shatter like glass with too much handling or interference. Because Lorenzo focused on me and seemed so concerned with whether or not I believed him, Sue simply assumed it was better to leave well enough alone.

Now, though, she stirred. "How long had you known Gunter Gebhardt?" she asked.

"Five years."

"How did you first meet him?"

"Through my cousin, and one of my cousin's friends. They went to work for him, fishing, and they asked me to come along. We made good money."

"Was he hard to work for?" Sue asked.

"It was a job," Lorenzo answered. "He paid us, and the checks didn't bounce."

"You didn't have any trouble with him?"

"No," Lorenzo answered. "No trouble," but for the second time, that same involuntary tic I had seen before flitted across the man's tense jawline. He glanced reproachfully at June Miller as if to say that exactly what he had feared would now happen-that we would blame him for Gunter Gebhardt's murder.

Lorenzo stood up, as did his sister. "My leg hurts," he said. "I want to go home."

Sue looked at me questioningly, one eyebrow raised. I shook my head, indicating we should let him go. After all, we had come so far in the process that I didn't want to risk alienating him by pressing any further right then. Besides, the band was tuning up again. Sitting there right on top of the speakers, as soon as the music started, we wouldn't be able to hear a word.

As the first notes of the next number blasted out of the speakers, I got up and followed the Hurtados out into the night.

"Wait a minute," I called after them as they started down the streetlight-lit sidewalk.

Lorenzo swung around angrily. "What do you want now?" he demanded.

For an answer, I pulled out my copy of the Identi-Kit picture-the one with Lorenzo's own likeness staring out from the paper.

"Have you seen this?" I asked, handing it over to Lorenzo.

He glanced down and studied the picture for a moment. Then he nodded and handed it back. "Yes," he answered. "I've seen it."

"So has everyone else in this city," I told him. "Including the third party who was on the Isolde with you and Gunter Gebhardt the night he died."

Beside him, Maria inhaled sharply. Her hand rose reflexively to her throat. Lorenzo's eyes rose to meet mine. "What are you saying?" he asked.

"Two people are dead so far," I answered. "If the killer believes you saw him and can possibly help lead us to him, he may very well come looking for you. Thanks to this, we found you, and the killer may be able to do the same thing. Sometimes, in cases like this, we'll put a witness in protective custody, but I don't think that would work too well here. Do you?"

Lorenzo looked at me but said nothing.

I knew I was bending the rules, but it sure as hell wasn't the first time. "If I were you," I continued, "and if I had anywhere else to go, I would take my mother and sister and go there. At least for a while."

Lorenzo's questioning gaze held mine for a long moment. Finally, he nodded. "I have another cousin," he said. "His name is Sergio Hurtado, and he lives in Yakima. I can take my mother and go there. Maria can't miss work, but she can stay with friends."

"Does your cousin have a phone?" I asked. "Can I call you there if I need to?"

"Yes," Lorenzo answered. "Yes, you can."

"Is he listed in the telephone directory?"

Lorenzo nodded. And then he offered me his hand.

As we shook, I realized the entire process had been a test, from the moment the two of them stepped inside the door of the Ballard Fire House. It had been a life-and-death examination on the subject of trust, and although there were still many unanswered questions, I knew I must have passed.