The Art of Deception

Now You See Him, Now You Don’t

It went against all her training, her substantial education, and certainly the rules set forth for volunteer workers, but upon hearing from an SPD narcotics officer that a street kid-a girl-had invoked her name during a sidewalk shakedown from which the girl had been released, Daphne Matthews found herself personally involved. Her first stop was the Shelter, where she learned that Margaret had been kicked loose after the maximum stay allowed. Where to look next?

A late March storm swept angrily over the city, driving frigid rain behind a nasty wintry wind that made it feel more like December. She pulled up her collar and ran for the Honda. This wasn’t a night for a pregnant girl to be out in the elements, and Matthews didn’t want Margaret having to negotiate street favors for the bare necessities of warmth and a place to sleep. She knew what these girls did in order to survive. With Margaret putting her name out to an officer-an obvious cry for help-how was Matthews supposed to return for the evening to her houseboat and a glass of wine? She decided to make one loop of downtown looking for the girl. Forty-five minutes, max. It wasn’t as if she had a hot date waiting.

Once into the driver’s seat she brushed the rain off her and turned toward the backseat in search of her umbrella. Looking out the car’s rain-blurred rear window, she thought she saw a figure-a man, for sure-standing behind the railing of the wedge-shaped concrete parking garage. Standing there, and looking across at her.

Turning around in the seat, adjusting her rearview mirrors-both outside and in-she picked him up again: a black silhouette like a cardboard cutout, standing absolutely still on the second level of the triangular parking garage.

After the first spurt of panic iced through her, she thought it was probably Walker, and though disturbed he might be following her, she’d done nothing yet to shatter his regard for her, nothing to turn a fan into a foe, though she knew how fine a line she walked.

As she calmed ever so slightly, not one to shrink and wither, she decided to face up to him. She threw the Honda in gear, bumped it out of the Shelter’s parking lot, and drove quickly around the block and into the garage entrance. She resented taking the parking stub, realizing it would cost her a couple bucks to get her message across to Walker, but peace of mind was cheap at twice the price.

She drove up the ramp to level two and parked in the first open space she encountered. She grabbed her purse, locked the car with the remote, and walked quickly toward the area of the garage where she’d just seen the silhouette. No one.

She called out, “Mr. Walker?”

She took hold of the railing and eased her head out for a more panoramic view. The new football stadium loomed to her left, dominating the skyline and obscuring a good deal of “The Safe,” as residents called baseball’s Safeco Field. To the right, skyscrapers competed for a view of Puget Sound. She looked above her and below her in the same general location, wondering if she’d gotten the level wrong. When she looked straight down at the sidewalk, she took into account all the pedestrians, alert for anyone hurrying, anyone fitting Walker’s general build, his sweatshirt and jeans, anyone looking back up at her.

It was during this surveillance that she spotted the rooftop light rack and bold lettering of KCSO patrol car #89. It appeared on the street to her right, immediately adjacent to the parking garage’s exit. Prair? she wondered.

A daily runner, Matthews ran, and ran hard. She flew past the rows of parked cars, circled down the oily car ramp she’d driven up, all in an effort to keep her eye on that moving patrol car as it cornered the parking facility. She wanted desperately to get a look at its driver. She wasn’t merely running, but sprint-ing down the echoing confines of the garage, the myriad of colorful lights-neon, traffic lights, headlights, and taillights-spinning like a kaleidoscope.

Focused as she was, she didn’t see the group of four street punks until she was nearly upon them. Huddled together under the overhang of the garage’s next level, they looked over at her with hollow eyes-hollow heads, was more like it-the pungent odor of pot hanging in the air.

The patrol car sped by on her right. She looked out, but too late.

One of the bigger boys in the group came out toward her from between the parked cars. “What are you looking at?”

She debated displaying her shield but decided against it. Kids like this held a particular dislike for authority. In doing so she experienced what must have been a defenseless civilian’s panic.

But if high on pot, they didn’t represent much threat of violence, no matter what the posturing. It didn’t fit the model. If the pot were an attempt at a comedown from an amphetamine high, though, she had problems. Her volunteer work at the Shelter had not gone for naught.

Another of the young toughs, this one with peroxide hair and a face that held enough piercings to set off an airport security check, followed on the heels of his friend. “She’s fine-looking, eh, Manny?” The kid coughed and spat, the phlegm attaching to the car he passed.

Matthews stood her ground. “There was a man up here. Up there,” she said, pointing to level two. “Just now. Maybe six feet tall, looking west. Maybe in a sweatshirt and jeans, maybe a uniform.”

“Take it somewhere else,” the bigger one said, but his eyes had locked onto her purse.

“She is damn fine,” the kid with the dye job whispered to his buddy, encouraging him forward, defining his own interest in Matthews.

“Did you see a patrol car? King County Sheriff’s?”

“Yeah, right,” replied the leader sarcastically.

“Up there on level two,” she said.

“There’s four of us, lady.” He stepped out from between the cars, now only a few feet from her.

Where was that sheriff’s car now that she needed it? This south end of town was rough at night-the very reason the Shelter was no more than a block away. Some of these hotheads carried weapons; she didn’t want that in the equation. Bribery, on the other hand, had its place. “Twenty bucks answers my question.” She tried to put his attention on her purse out of her mind, not wanting to see him as a criminal but instead as a source of information. If the blond kid wanted to try his doped-up luck at groping her, the purse carried a Beretta, a can of Mace, a single pair of handcuffs, a mobile phone, and a Palm Pilot. Connecting that purse to the side of his face would put the kid in the next county. Reaching into the purse, grabbing hold of the weapon, chambering a round-all that would probably take ten seconds that she wouldn’t have.

“Didn’t see no cruiser,” the leader said, “but maybe the uniform, yeah. How ’bout that twenty?”

The option presented itself for her to grab the gun while pretending to retrieve the twenty, though it upped the stakes considerably. She had no intention of shooting some stoned kid, nor of provoking the remaining three to fire on her.

She asked, “What color uniform?” This question would separate fact from fiction. Blue for SPD. Dark brown khaki for KCSO.

“Army maybe.” The kid took another step closer.

She found his answer intriguing, for if he’d believed a khaki uniform meant an army officer, it added credibility to why he and his pals hadn’t fled, whereas a blue uniform would strike the fear of God into any one of these kids. But khaki was more likely King County Sheriff, not army.

Evaluating her situation came down to mapping an exit route.

She felt confident she could outrun any one of these kids. The problem was that this leader stood between her and the exit. The only ramp available to her led up and into the garage. Cars streamed around this parking garage, their lights glinting like those of a carousel. So many people, so incredibly close by, and yet oblivious to her predicament. Her extreme isolation-one against many, alone and yet surrounded-bore down on her.

“What color shirt?” she asked.

“What about that twenty?”

She faced a choice then-her gun or the payoff? She clicked open her purse, and for a moment the sounds of the city surrendered to the intense drumming in her ears. She drew a twenty from her wallet, keeping her hands hidden behind the screen of her purse. There lay her gun. On the bottom of everything was the small can of pepper spray, a far more reasonable means of defense given the threat. She made one stab for it-fingers dart-ing through the contents of the purse-and by an act of divine intervention, she touched the can’s cold metal and drew the Mace from her purse, her hand concealing it.

They all heard the car enter from the other side of the building, saw the spread of its headlights as shadows crawled across the stained concrete. During this brief distraction, Matthews placed the twenty at her feet and, cradling the pepper spray, turned and walked toward the ramp that led to level two. She heard the big kid hurry to retrieve the money, the scratching of the soles of his boots on the concrete. She sensed the other kid’s bold advance as he tested the possibility of following her, maybe scoring a little payoff of his own-maybe money, maybe something else.

“Dude!” the big one called out as the headlights swung to encompass them all.

Matthews hurried then, not running, not wanting to signal her fear, up the ramp and straight toward her Honda. The lights flashed and the horn beeped behind the signal from her remote button.

She wondered what the message was, as she bumped the Honda out into the busy street, like stepping through a stage curtain and walking into the audience. She searched for significance in every incident, every encounter she experienced, the psychologist seizing upon every opportunity to learn something about herself.

In the process, she nearly forgot about the man in the khaki uniform overlooking the Shelter’s parking lot. Nearly, but not quite.