Pied Piper

CHAPTER 77

Lisa Crowley’s Taurus followed signs to Seattle via 509 North; Griswold and Boldt were fifty yards back and following. Her one stunt had been to drive around the block in an effort to spot any surveillance, but Boldt picked up the ruse before her second turn, instructing Griswold to drive past, take two lefts and wait at the intersection. Moments later the Taurus sped past, silencing Griswold who was, at the time, exercising his right of free speech. They reentered traffic and followed, allowing several cars to come between, Boldt monitoring the steady flow of radio traffic as SPD attempted to keep watch on Lisa Crowley.

“They’re two cars back,” Boldt informed the Griz.

“Cops?”

“Yes.”

“So we’re fucked.”

“We’re challenged,” Boldt corrected.

“It’s that taillight. Can see the fucking thing for miles, I’m telling ya. I never knew how bright.”

“That’s the idea,” Boldt said. And as he did so, another idea took its place. “You just earned yourself a bonus, Griz.”

“No shit?” Griswold sat up a little higher in the seat. Squared his shoulders. “This cop shit’s okay,” he said. Regarding his filthy dash, littered with candy wrappers, he added, “Wish like hell this thing had a siren.”

Bernie Lofgrin had used his considerable clout as director of the Scientific Identification Division to trick the motor pool into giving him another of SPD’s surveillance vans, a steam-cleaning van confiscated in a drug bust and presently outfitted with surveillance hardware.

Acting as the Gang of Five dispatcher, Lofgrin monitored SPD’s progress at Sea-Tac from an I-5 Park and Ride five miles north of the airport. The step van had full radio capabilities, a cellular phone “switchboard” that allowed real-time conferencing between up to six separate cellular numbers, digitized video surveillance and four separate computer terminals, two of which were specialized for law enforcement. Lofgrin was like a bear in a honey jar, enjoying his chance to work the high-tech gadgets to where he had nearly every major component of the van’s electronic arsenal working in some regard. He even had the video camera trained out the back at the on-ramp’s approaching traffic, a color SONY playing to his left.

Boldt called Lofgrin a few minutes before eight o’clock and requested he reposition the van at the intersection of 99 and South Lander in a parking lot on the southeast corner facing the traffic light. Boldt paged Raymond, his snitch who spent a majority of his time at the Air Strip but was on that night driving a lime green Corvair with whitewalls. The page went through; he would be hearing back from the man within minutes, in however long it took Raymond to leave the Corvair and walk to the pay phone. LaMoia was given specific instructions and told to rendezvous in the same parking lot on South Lander, as soon as he had switched cars with Gaynes, who was parked on South Jackson, a block from the Kingdome. With quick access to either I-5 or 99, Gaynes remained on standby; Boldt’s wildcard, placed well north of Sea-Tac, Bobbie Gaynes was his last line of defense.

“What the hell are you planning on doing?” Griz asked, having overheard the series of calls.

Boldt didn’t feel like explaining himself, nor was he sure he could. He finally mumbled, “I’m pulling an end run on my own people,” voicing his own realization of what he was doing. It didn’t sound right to him; he wished he hadn’t said it.

Griswold knew to let well enough alone. He said, “You ever want a quarter of beef real cheap, I’m your man.”

“Freezer’s full,” Boldt said. Pointing, he said, “Change lanes.”

Griswold pulled out from behind the truck and accelerated past it. Boldt pointed back into the right lane; Griswold obliged him. “Pork bellies are cheap right now.”

“My locker freezer needs defrosting. If I get around to it …”

“Yeah, okay.” He reached for the car’s radio. “You mind I listen to the Sonics? It’s the fourth quarter.”

“I mind,” Boldt answered.

Griswold debated turning on the radio anyway, but he caught Boldt’s eye and withdrew his hand and placed it firmly on the wheel.

“Hang back a little,” Boldt instructed.

“That same truck’s gonna come right up my butt.”

“Hang back,” Boldt repeated firmly.

“Sweet mood you’re in,” the driver muttered.

“And put a sock in it,” Boldt added.

He didn’t know the whereabouts of Flemming’s surveillance crews, but he doubted they were far off; in the panic of briefly losing Crowley, both the Taurus and the drilled taillight had been mentioned over the airwaves. Minutes later, SPD’s mobile surveillance had reacquainted themselves with Crowley; two cars unmarked were currently trading the tail back and forth. Boldt could only hope that what was good for the goose was good for the gander, and that if SPD took the bait he offered, Flemming might too. He had little doubt of the FBI’s participation in the tail, although unlike SPD he had yet to identify the offenders. As in so many on-the-fly, real-time operations, it all came down to a matter of timing and coordination, and of luck, good or bad.

Another truck passed them-SYSCO Food Services-blocking Boldt’s view of the pinprick taillight, followed by another surge of adrenaline that swarmed his system in a flood of heat and anxiety, a kind of mock flu with which he lived for weeks on end. He chastised Griswold not to lose the taillight, not to allow himself to be passed, and so the Country Squire pulled out and struggled to regain its position. “Seattle drivers suck,” Griswold said, swerving and confirming his statement. The SYSCO truck sped up, preventing them from passing it. Boldt wondered if it was FBI and if they had made the Country Squire. “Faster,” he said, as if this might help.

The Country Squire grumbled and complained and then sounded as if a rocket had been ignited beneath it. It lurched forward, throwing their heads back in unison, and roared ahead. Griswold smiled warmly and said, “The old girl has got it when you want it.”

They traveled another ten minutes this way, blocked by a vehicle, passing it, blocked again, passing again. Car tag. Boldt used the cell phone to check on his troops. He felt grateful for the Seattle drool, the light drizzle that leaked from the sky, for it delivered extreme darkness and low visibility, and yet was hardly the kind of weather to keep Seattle’s homeless off the streets. The closer they drew to the city, the more abundant and apparent the city’s nomads. One or two clung to hand-scrawled signs proclaiming “I’ll Take Any Job.” One man sold flowers at a stoplight.

Boldt bought a bouquet of daffodils for three bucks. If anyone had been considering the Country Squire as a possible surveillance vehicle, Boldt had just shattered that image. He rolled up his window, confident he and Griz were now off any such list for consideration.

“What the hell you do that for, Big Spender?”

Boldt set the flowers down gently onto the trash-strewn dashboard. “Try to get the stink out of this thing,” Boldt answered. The car crashed through a set of potholes. It felt like an amusement ride.

“We’re what, two, three miles from the light at Lander? You want I do anything special when we get there?”

Boldt heard the man, but only as a distant hum, his words indistinguishable, his attention riveted instead on the dash, where with each bounce of the poorly sprung car the bouquet of flowers shook additional yellow dust-pollen-onto the candy wrappers. He wetted the tip of his thick finger and touched it into the pile and returned it to arm’s length where his tired eyes could focus upon it. “Daffodils,” he said softly.

“Hey, you gotta give it a rest, man,” the driver suggested.

“Arrest?” Boldt replied, mishearing. “They grow daffodils in Skagit, don’t they?”

“Every damn flower there is, far as I know.”

“Bulb flowers,” Boldt said.

“Whatever. Flowers is flowers.”

“No,” Boldt said, grabbing up the bouquet and shaking it violently, his hand open beneath it catching the fine mist of yellow dust that fell. “It’s tulips mostly in Skagit, and tulips produce all kinds of pollen, but none of it’s yellow, not this kind of vibrant yellow. You see? There can’t be that many daffodil farms.” It made the FedEx vehicle manifests all the more important.

“One mile, maybe.”

“Stay with it.”

Boldt called Liz and asked if Theresa Russo had dropped any papers by, and before he finished with the woman’s name, Liz confirmed that she held an envelope for him. A long thoughtful pause hovered between husband and wife, all the unspeakable questions lingering between them, unintentionally driving Boldt’s sense of guilt to higher places. “We’re making some progress,” he said. It was all he could think to say.

“I’m praying.”

He wasn’t sure if he should thank her or not. He was going to have to learn more about his wife’s faith and how to respond to it. The idea of a strong faith nibbled at his conscience, tempting him. With all he had seen, all he saw in the line of duty, he wondered if he could bring himself to such a place. Others had. It worked for some. As the Country Squire closed that last mile to South Lander, Boldt caught himself in a state of silent vengeance; not the pure faith required of him, but an attempt to make a connection with something, someone, greater than himself and to seek partnership and to gain confidence in what he had planned. Not exactly prayer, but he was trying.

“Is that Lander?” Boldt asked his driver, indicating a traffic light in the distance.

“That’s the one.”

He dialed Lofgrin in the surveillance van. As he did so, he instructed Griz to negotiate the Country Squire immediately behind the Taurus. Griz was beyond questioning him; he accelerated past several cars and then pulled in behind the drilled taillight.

“Okay?”

“We’re all set,” Boldt said.

He looked ahead to the right and the mostly empty parking lot that included a lime green Corvair and SPD’s steam-cleaning van, the command van, the destination of his phone call.

“Yeah?” Lofgrin answered from inside that van.

“Do it,” Boldt said. In the next minute or two he hoped to throw both SPD and Flemming off Crowley’s scent. He sat back and watched, reduced to spectator, frustrated, tired and angry.

Mounted to the dashboard of the steam-cleaning van was a small gray box that might have been mistaken for a radar detector. All fire trucks, ambulances and certain police vehicles-including all command vans-carried such boxes, the function of which was to transmit radio signals to upcoming traffic lights, switching and holding the lights to green. Aimed as Boldt had directed, Lofgrin engaged the box and stopped traffic on 99, including Crowley and Boldt directly behind her, a half mile and closing.

The moment the traffic stopped, a good-looking black man stepped into the street and approached the stopped traffic carrying a spray bottle in hand and several more hooked in his waist. The light rain continued to fall. Raymond sprayed a part of the windshield of the first car and wiped it quickly. He hurried around the front of the car and clearly delivered a sales pitch into the driver’s window, holding up the bottle for the driver to see. The driver motioned him away.

Ten seconds had passed since the light had turned red, no cross-traffic in the intersection. Boldt willed Raymond on. Seattle drivers were notorious for running red lights.

Before Raymond raised his rag, the second driver waved him off. The street person worked the windshield to the third car and the driver passed him some money. Boldt had been approached this same way, also during a light rain-the fluid Raymond was selling repelled water off the glass windshield, making it far easier to see. The stuff actually worked.

Thirty seconds …

“Hurry up,” Boldt mumbled.

Crowley waved, refusing the service, but Raymond went at her windshield anyway. Her window came open and he gave up, shouting, “No charge! No charge!” He crossed in front of her, walked along the curb, and patted her car on the rear fender to let her know he was there. In a sleight of hand worthy of a magic show, Raymond stuck a piece of chewing gum over the drilled hole in the taillight.

At this same moment, across the intersection, the hood of a car stuck its nose out onto 99.

Lofgrin allowed the light to go green, and the first cars surged forward.

“Go ahead,” Boldt told Griswold, “but allow this car up here-you see it? — to cut in ahead of us.”

“I got it.”

A car horn sounded impatiently from behind. The Country Squire rolled but allowed Crowley to gain a car’s length that was quickly filled by the car pulling out. It was a dark car, a Nissan, its shape similar to a Taurus. They nearly rear-ended the car.

Griswold honked before Boldt could stop him. “Turn your fucking lights on!” Griswold roared.

As if hearing him, the car in front did just that, and as the taillights flashed red a white pinprick hole appeared.

Griswold understood the switch then and said to Boldt, “You sneaky bastard.” He added, “He got us close like that so we’d block him-”

“Screen him,” Boldt supplied.

“So like the others don’t see the lights come on.” The driver grinned. “They just see the hole in the same taillight.” He added, “What’s all this about, anyway?”

“It’s about a little girl,” Boldt said. He held his breath awaiting radio traffic to confirm the ruse.

“Anything?” he heard over the radio.

“Nothing yet … check that … Affirmative, I’ve got the target up ahead.”

Boldt heaved a sigh of relief: Surveillance had bought the switch.

As instructed, LaMoia waited a mile before turning off, making a right onto Royal Brougham and immediately speeding up. At 4th he would make a left and then would join the long on-ramp to 90, with each turn going faster, making sure to keep enough distance to use the darkness to hide the make of the car.

Crowley, and Boldt with her, climbed the viaduct, the traffic thickening. Behind them, three vehicles turned right in pursuit of the drilled taillight.

Griz, checking the rearview mirror, said, “I don’t get it. Aren’t those your guys?”

“In a matter of speaking,” Boldt replied.

“I suppose that’s the part I don’t get,” he said.

Boldt gloated at his success. Through the rain, the skyscrapers shimmered to his right. Viaduct traffic was clocking sixty. It was fast for wet highway, fast for Boldt, but there were no more drilled taillights to follow. They had to stay close to the Taurus.

“She sure is checking her mirror a lot,” Griz reported.

“Back off,” Boldt ordered.

“We could lose her.”

“Back off!” Boldt saw the nervous head movement in silhouette.

“She’s changing lanes-”

“Get over!”

Griswold dropped back further and slipped in behind a limousine. “Can’t see her.”

“Shut up!” Boldt barked nervously, his stomach a knot.

“Tunnel,” Griswold said, as the limousine slowed for the short tunnel further separating them.

“This is not good,” Boldt said, “not good.” The Country Squire flowed with traffic into the tunnel.

Boldt caught a faint glimpse of taillights.

“Exit!” Boldt shouted at the driver.

Griswold jerked the wheel and negotiated a sharp right immediately at the tunnel’s end. He slammed on the brakes. Every street, every intersection, was jammed with bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Griswold said, “I told you we should’a listened to the Sonics game. At least we would’a known when it was getting out. Who needs this shit?”

“She does,” Boldt answered. “She knows exactly what she’s doing.”