Middle Of Nowhere

CHAPTER 20

Boldt placed the call from his cell phone, disturbing Phil Shoswitz at home. Boldt's former boss had the kind of contacts within the department that John LaMoia had in the private sector. LaMoia could come up with any and all information on a suspect or witness, be it financial, tax-related, insurance or medical. He had "Deep Throats"-sources within institutions and industries-that would have made government agents blush. Shoswitz had formed similar relationships within SPD-ironically, in large part, due to his many years of guild service-and had ways of turning gossip into hard fact. He knew the scuttlebutt in the department's vehicle garage as well as the chief's social calendar. Exactly as Boldt needed.

Recognizing Boldt's voice immediately, Shoswitz said, "You're supposed to be working that phone tree."

"Already in motion. What about Schock and Phillipp's condition?" Boldt asked.

"Word is both are going to pull through, although Schock may lose the eye. Phillipp won't be completing any full sentences for a week or so, but he'll be back on the job." Shoswitz already had the full medical re ports on the two and understood Boldt wanted this information first.

Boldt said cautiously, "I need to know if they had drawn I.I. duty as a result of the Flu. I hear they may have followed a fellow officer into that bar."

"I can ask around, but I won't get confirmation, Lou. Not if it's I.I."

"And that lack of confirmation will tell us what we need to know."

"Not necessarily."

"I read this wrong, Phil. Blue on blue. I was thinking we were getting roughed up in order to cut our numbers, strengthen the effect of the Flu. And sure, maybe a brick through a window. Some rookie pissed off his paycheck isn't coming in and drinking too much. But assaults? Sanchez? Schock and Phillipp?" He left himself out of it. "Would we do that kind of damage to each other over guild politics?"

"Don't underestimate what a desperate man will do," Shoswitz cautioned.

"Six months into a strike, maybe. But one week? Does that make sense? And so carefully executed to look like muggings. The things are textbook, Phil."

"Your point?"

"I could use a little help here," Boldt prodded. "I've got two Vice cops poking around a bar and apparently following a Property sergeant. What's that about?"

"I'll ask around," Shoswitz confirmed. "But if they were I.I., about the best we'll get is a denial. We'll be working hunches is all."

"I have another source I can work," Boldt told him. "Sanchez may be able to fill in some of this."

"I thought she's comatose."

"So does everyone," Boldt said. "Right now, that's the one advantage I've got."

It was too late to visit Sanchez at the hospital. She'd be medicated and fast asleep. But it wasn't too late to grab onto a few limbs and start shaking the tree. Whoever had committed the assaults would have fresh blood to hide, might even have defensive wounds to show for their efforts.

Boldt called Gaynes and Matthews and caught them up on the assaults, as well as Shoswitz's alert about the surprise health inspections. He put them onto the task of firing up the departmental phone tree and to start making calls. Gaynes rallied without complaint, a soldier in the trenches.

Daphne, as ever, ferreted out Boldt's true intentions: to question Ron Chapman at his home. She refused to allow him to go at it alone, and informed him she was bringing a stun stick along as backup. He knew better than to argue with her, or to admit that he'd welcome her company. He picked her up at her houseboat, and they drove to Chapman's together, using the drive time to prepare.

"The two of you at this hour, it's not social," Chapman said, shutting the door behind them. He had made no effort to keep them out. Perhaps, Boldt thought, he didn't want to eat alone.

"Little late for dinner, isn't it, Ron?"

Chapman lived in a studio apartment with a partial view of Pill Hill. He had the TV going and a Stouffer's microwave meal on a folding table in front of the room's only chair-a La-Z-Boy recliner. He'd been widowed several years earlier, and the dust bugs and dirty windows confirmed a life of a man turned within. To Boldt, the room felt sad and depressed, crowded with too many snapshots of the late wife. Some people couldn't let go. Chapman suddenly struck him that way, and Boldt found it odd that his attitude about a man he'd known for years could change with a single look inside that man's home. If there had ever been joy here, it now rested in the urn that held his wife's ashes.

Chapman didn't offer them seats, in part because the only two chairs were at a small table that framed the galley kitchen's doorway, and there didn't seem to be any more room for them elsewhere.

"Little late for a house call, isn't it, Lieutenant? Strange times, these."

"You hear about Schock and Phillipp?"

"Rudy Schock?"

Daphne said calmly, "They were assaulted tonight."

"Not far from the Cock and Bull," Boldt supplied.

Ron Chapman carried an extra thirty or forty pounds on his Irish bulldog looks. It wasn't easy for such soft flesh to remain so absolutely still. Then, at once, he returned to his dinner like a dog to its bone.

"You were at the Cock and Bull tonight, Ronnie. What's that about?"

"A guy can't buy himself a drink?" Chapman complained, working on the dinner in the small plastic tray. "Since when?"

"What do Schock and Phillipp mean to you?"

The man glanced up, as hot as his prepared dinner. "Who says they mean anything?"

"Why play games?" Boldt asked. "Are you into something here? Tell me I'm wrong."

"You're wrong."

"Convince me," Boldt said.

"I've got my dinner to eat."

Daphne asked, "Are you afraid of them?"

Chapman stiffened.

She clarified, "I'm not talking about Schock and Phillipp. I'm talking about whoever did that to them. Are you afraid of those people?"

He wouldn't look up from his food. "Way I heard it, they were mugged. A street assault. Why should I be afraid of that? Their bad luck is all."

She said, "You don't have to swing the baseball bat to be guilty of assault. There's conspiracy. There's intent. You want to think about that."

Boldt said, "Next to Narcotics, Property is probably easily the most tempting duty of all of 'em. You guys are carefully hand-picked. Doesn't mean temptation doesn't win out now and then. There's a heck of a lot of goods on those shelves."

"There's cash on those shelves," Chapman said. "Jewels. Weapons. And as far as I know it's all still there, Lieutenant. Go ahead and check."

"You came to that bar looking for someone. Two officers right behind you were assaulted. What if I told you they were following up on a case that was being worked by Sanchez just before her assault?"

Daphne turned her attention to Boldt, angry at not having been included in on this.

Chapman wouldn't take his head out of his dinner.

Boldt said, "Maybe I've got it wrong. Maybe you were doing a favor for Schock, or Phillipp. Wearing a wire? Making a contact?"

"It wasn't like that!" the man objected heatedly, fork in mid-air.

Daphne picked up on Boldt's lead. "The rumor mill is brutal," she said.

"You can't do something like that to me! Label me a squirrel for I.I.?" He thought this over and flushed. "It's not funny, Lieutenant. Especially not the way things are going right now."

"Let's take you out of the equation, Ron. That's what I'm suggesting. Let's put Schock and Phillipp working the Cock and Bull-it isn't their usual bar, or yours either, Ron." He let this sink in. "They're looking to work someone. That leaves me asking who. Who in your opinion, might they have been looking for up there?"

"I know what you're asking," Chapman said. "And you got this all tangled up."

"So help me untangle it."

"I was in for a drink is all."

"And Schock and Phillipp? A drink as well?"

"I didn't talk to them. Wouldn't know."

"Sergeant," Daphne said calmly, "you've stayed on through the Blue Flu. Precious few others have been so… bold as to do so. If you hadn't stayed on, others who've never worked Property would have been assigned to that duty. But you stayed. One could almost imagine you're protecting Property from outside eyes. And now these assaults.. Sanchez, Schock, and Phillipp. Someone even showed up in Lieutenant Boldt's backyard uninvited. You want to talk about mistakes? That was a mistake. You know the lieutenant's reputation as an investigator. Do you think he's going to let this go… four brutal assaults?"

"You two do what you have to. You come to whatever it is by yourselves," Chapman suggested. "Leave me out of this."

Boldt craned forward. "But then there is something, right, Ron? Something to leave you out of?"

"You're tangling this all up."

Boldt repeated slowly. "So… help… me… untangle.. it."

"Dinner's getting cold."

Daphne said, "We can be convinced otherwise. Tell us it was Schock and Phillipp doing the dirty work. Tell us they pursued you into that bar. What do they have on you? What do you have on them?"

"I'd like it if you left now," the man said.

Daphne stepped closer to Chapman. Boldt admired her technique. "He's Property, Lou. There have to be people who owe him favors." To the subject she said, "Is covering for someone the right way to play this?" "It's not like that!" Chapman shouted. "Now leave!"

Twenty minutes later Boldt pulled the Chevy to a stop at the end of the dock that led to Daphne's Lake Union houseboat. He escorted Daphne to her front door. He wasn't going to add her to the list of assaults.

"So we know Chapman's caught up in something," the psychologist said.

"Yes, we do."

"But not what, nor to what degree."

"No."

"So what's next?"

"I go back to John for an update. You start working the phone tree. We save as many people as we can before the axe falls."

"And if John has something, you'll call?"

"Your line'll be busy," he said, "from all that calling you'll be doing."

"Lou…"

For a moment, the connection between them was everything, and he had to remind himself of Icarus's perilous journey too close to the sun, or that even the most loyal husband remained subject to the laws of gravity. They paused at the front door to her houseboat, and for one awkward moment it felt to him as if they might kiss; then he turned and left.

John LaMoia lived on the third floor of a waterfront loft that thirteen years earlier had been a drug lab in the heart of a gang-controlled neighborhood. The lab had been busted by police, including a wet-behind-theears patrolman who, when the raid was concluded, noted the spectacular view on the other side of the painted-over windows. LaMoia had never forgotten that view, nor the neighborhood, because of the repeated radio calls taking him there: disruptions, street wars, stabbings. He bought low, well ahead of the gentrification that followed, restored the interior, installed security, and scraped the paint off the windows, so that now he commanded views of the waterfront-the piers and tourist restaurants on Alaskan Way-as well as Elliott Bay's sublime gray-green waters and the whitecapped peaks of the Olympics beyond.

It wasn't often that a blue-collar policeman like LaMoia celebrated a capital gains cut, but when Congress voted a lowering of the surcharge to twenty percent, John LaMoia threw a beer bash for fifty of his closest friends-mostly women.

Boldt stepped inside, and LaMoia threw a lock behind him. It clicked into place with authority.

He caught him up on the Chapman visit. "I wanted to go back over what you saw at the bar before you went to bed and lost the immediacy of the moment."

"Worried my memory will slip? That sounds like something Matthews would say," LaMoia countered.

"Does it?" Boldt questioned, distracted-even disturbed-by the comment. "The Flu," Boldt said apologetically, "has thrown us together round the clock. You know how it is."

LaMoia said, "Hey… I was just teasing, Sarge."

"Let's go back over who was there tonight at the Cock and Bull," Boldt said.

"Sarge, it's a pub. Probably a hundred of us in there. All unemployed cops. You expect me to recite the roll call?"

Boldt interrupted. "Anyone from Property at the bar?"

"Property?"

"Chapman clammed up, but he grew all nervous when I pointed out he didn't belong in that pub. Daphne and I are thinking we've got this one wrong. What if Schock and Phillipp were into something Ron Chapman found out about?"

"Something inside Property," LaMoia said, connecting the dots. He nodded, "I suppose it could fall that way, couldn't it? What about Maria and the possible I.I. connection?"

"Tomorrow morning," Boldt said. "Tonight we deal with the assaults while the blood's still fresh."

LaMoia squinted his eyes shut. When Boldt had first started working with him, LaMoia had been a smoothfaced young loudmouth, smart but a little too sure of himself. Now the face showed ten years of rough road, and though the mouth still broadcast his unparalleled self-confidence, the eyes revealed a more practical, sea soned man. "What I remember," he said, squinting ever more tightly, "in terms of Property, is that Pendegrass and some of them guys were whooping it up over the race-a NASCAR qualifying heat-on account I was trying to hear about this unscheduled pit stop, and I couldn't hear nothing because of their racket. And I'm trying to think now, but I gotta put Chapman's arrival right about then. Maybe I looked up and caught sight of him or something, you know? Maybe I had this little brain fart on account Chapman's still active and I'm thinking it was gonna be him getting the shit beat out of him, and how I'm not gonna let something like that happen, and what a pain in the ass it was going to be for all concerned. And then I'm thinking how stupid it is for Chapman to show his face at the Bull. You know? And then I'm wondering if maybe he took a brick the way you did, because there's been more of that, you know, and so maybe he's showing up pissed off and ready to settle the score or something, and that kinda leans me away from wanting to help him out too much. I mean, if a guy is stupid enough to walk into a room like that, maybe it's Darwin's law that he get the living shit beat out of him. But the point is, the pit stop was something to do with communications. Radio problems between the crew and the driver, and they didn't want to get into the final third of the race without communication-"

"John…"

"Which means I heard the explanation, Sarge. Get it? I heard the guy explaining the pit stop. Which means that Chuck Pendegrass and his riot squad had either shut up, cut out, or all gone to take a piss at the same time, which is technically impossible on account the men's room is only one urinal and a crapper, and there must have been three or four of them over there hooting it up." He repeated, "I got a hunch Pendegrass split the minute Chapman walked through that door. And let me just say that he and his buddies did not impress me as being ready to leave a few minutes before that."

"When Chapman arrived, or Schock and Phillipp?" Boldt pressed.

"You got me there. Maybe it was a minute later."

"But Chapman didn't speak to Pendegrass?"

"I can't say one way or another. Maybe Pendegrass shut up when he saw Chapman, same way Chapman caught my eye." He added, "Chapman caught a lot of people by surprise, Sarge."

"So Pendegrass left when?"

"No clue."

"They could have talked," Boldt theorized. "For that matter, they could have simply made eye contact. Some kind of visual."

"We don't even know that Chapman came looking for Pendegrass," LaMoia reminded him.

"No," Boldt agreed. "But we could ask him."

"Yes, we could at that," LaMoia replied, collecting his coat off the back of a chair.

"Doesn't Chuck Pendegrass have a boy about ten?"

"Tanner," LaMoia answered knowingly. "But what's that about?"

"Nothing," Boldt said, but inside he was thinking that ten was a good age for Little League and aluminum baseball bats.

Before LaMoia knocked on the front door of the gray house, he said to Boldt, "I hate this shit. Cop on cop. I don't even want to think it, much less confirm it."

"We don't know that that's what we've got," Boldt said. "Sanchez could have been a burglary gone wrong. She could have nothing to do with Schock and Phillipp. Probably totally unrelated."

"Then what the hell are we doing here, Sarge?"

"I'll tell you what… Boredom does weird things to people."

LaMoia tugged at the sleeve of his deerskin jacket. "This rain's a bitch."

"That's the wrong coat for Seattle. I've been telling you that for a couple years now."

"They make chamois out of deerskin, Sarge. Doesn't hurt the jacket."

"Jacket doesn't stop the rain," Boldt said.

"Can't have everything."

Pendegrass met the front door himself, his face enmeshed in a three-day beard, already in a snarl. His hair was wet, his eyes rheumy. "Don't want any." He stepped back, intending to shut the door on them.

LaMoia slipped the toe of his cowboy boot up onto the jamb. "I've seen this done in movies," he said, giving Pendegrass his best Pepsodent smile.

"A pair of detectives got hurt tonight," Boldt said.

"Is that right?"

"Thought you might tell us what you know," LaMoia added. "Maybe out of the rain."

"Pass." Pendegrass eyed the detective. "Since when are you back on the job?"

"Since Schock and Phillipp took an ambulance ride," LaMoia answered. "You ever heard of loyalty to the badge?"

"We could use some help," Boldt said, suspecting the man had an alibi in place.

"You saying I'm a suspect in this assault?"

"A suspect?" LaMoia glanced at Boldt as if this was the furthest thing from his mind. "We were thinking witness." LaMoia explained, "You and I were both down to the Cock and Bull earlier tonight."

Boldt chimed in, "And LaMoia didn't catch a whole hell of a lot of what was going down. But he remembered you were there."

"I bet he did," Pendegrass said, cautiously eyeing the detective. "And by the way, get your foot outta my door."

"Maybe you saw something… someone," Boldt said, "and don't even realize its importance."

"There were a whole lot of someones at the Bull tonight, Lieutenant."

"Ron Chapman showed up," Boldt said.

"Is that right?"

LaMoia ventured, "That would be about when you left."

"We're thinking baseball bat or pipe," Boldt added, catching the man's eye.

"Nightstick, maybe," LaMoia said, reminding Pendegrass of a possible police connection.

"You mind if we come in and talk about it?" Boldt asked, a rivulet of rainwater running down his neck.

"I'm home sick, Lieutenant. In case you forgot. Not a real good time for me."

"Your name will never get mentioned."

"Even so… I'll pass."

LaMoia complained, "All we need is five minutes on what you maybe did or did not see in that bar. Right? You know the drill."

"That's right, I do." He added, "I can crush your foot in the door, if you'd prefer."

LaMoia left his boot there.

Pendegrass looked pretty drunk. The longer he stood there, the more apparent it was. He was known as a mean drunk. Boldt didn't want this degenerating into a rumble. Drunk cops like Pendegrass loved a chance to fight, and LaMoia always seemed to find his way into the middle of such things.

"You weren't too sick to visit the Cock and Bull," Boldt reminded him.

"A medicinal visit."

"Chuck?" a woman's voice called out from inside the house, distracting the man. "Who is it, honey?"

"You were there," LaMoia said, "during the time in question. You left around the time Chapman arrived, which was only minutes before Schock and Phillipp. You're jamming us up here, Chuck. You see that? You see the way it's gonna look? You not wanting to talk. In the right place and the right time? So you didn't see nothing. You heard something, maybe? Like a head getting cracked open or someone in some kind of pain."

Boldt wanted to take advantage of the man's apparent drunken vulnerability, not give him the chance to sober up and rethink his answers. "We'd like to do this tonight. Now," he said strongly. "You know how it is when a witness avoids you or delays you. These are fellow officers who got hurt, Chuck. We want to clear this one."

"Before the morning news, I'll bet. Before John Q. Public pressures city hall to cave in on this sickout."

"Politics?" Boldt gasped. "You think we're playing politics?"

"Do whatever it is you boys gotta do. But this here ain't happening. No way."

"We've got two brothers down, you know," LaMoia repeated, "and your not talking ain't right, no matter how you slice it. Don't matter what you think of Phillipp and Schock. It ain't right."

"Chuck?" the woman called out again. She rounded the corner and approached the door wearing a perplexed expression. She was small and mousy, her hair a mess. "Chuck, it's raining. These men are standing in the rain. John LaMoia, isn't it?" she said to the sergeant. Every woman associated with the department knew LaMoia's face.

"And Lieutenant Boldt," LaMoia said, extending his hand.

"Chuck?" she said, her concern obvious. "They're standing out in the rain."

"No, they're leaving," Pendegrass said, meeting eyes with Boldt.

Boldt took his best shot at the woman. The background sound had taken him a minute to identify. "Funny time of night to be doing a load of laundry."

She clearly didn't appreciate the tone of his comment. "Chuck brings back that cigarette smell, and it's straight into the machine for the clothes and into the shower for him. One of the few laws around here that I made up."

Boldt caught sight of the studio shot of the two kids hanging on the wall as the woman pulled the door open further. He said, "Does your son own a baseball bat, Mrs. Pendegrass?"

"Whose doesn't?" Pendegrass asked. He shifted his weight, preparing to shut the front door, boot toe or no boot toe. As he did, he offered Boldt a glimpse of the stairway climbing to the home's second floor and, sitting on one of the steps, a pair of ankle-high hiking boots bearing the Nike logo. He wondered if there might be a slight tear in the nylon above the side logo. Boldt had seen a similar Nike logo at point-blank range while lying face down in his driveway.

Pendegrass elbowed his wife out of the way, kicked LaMoia's boot clear, and slammed the front door shut.

On the way back to the car Boldt said, "I'm starting to think if we searched his closets or his locker downtown, or the trunk of his car, that maybe we'd find a baseball bat or a balaclava," Boldt said. "And that might begin to make sense of things."

"Eggplant? What's with that?" LaMoia asked naively. "Or is balaclava one of those Greek desserts?"

Boldt dismissed the man's ignorance. "He's on Krishevski's squad. Right?"

"Right as rain."

"So maybe that's all we need to know."

They ducked through the downpour and ran for the parked car, LaMoia calling out loudly and complaining about how much he loved his deerskin jacket.