Dead Float (17 page)

Chapter Thirty-five

Murray Felding dropped me at the Aerie after my arraignment. Considering that I'd just given him a three thousand-dollar retainer (he'd asked for five), it was the least he could do. I groaned as I got out of his Cadillac, and he said, “Have your stomach looked at.”

“Yeah. I had blood in my urine this morning.”

“Great. Make sure you get that in your medical record.” Then he roared off.

There were no surprises at the arraignment. I was charged with assaulting an officer. We planned to counter with a charge of police brutality. Bull Dorn attended so the judge could see his face, which sported two black eyes and a large bandage across his swollen, distorted nose. We showed the photograph of my bruised groin, and then Murray had me approach the bench so the judge could see the swollen lump on my neck. But in light of the damage I'd inflicted on Dorn, I didn't expect the judge to go easy.

I was right—he set bail at one-hundred thousand dollars, which forced me to put my property up as collateral. The bail lender's fee plus Murray's retainer blew a huge hole in my meager savings. I looked straight ahead as I was escorted out of the courtroom, but I could feel Dorn smirking.

I had to admit he'd won round two.

I wasn't hungry when I got home, but Archie was. I'd left him to fend for himself this time. I fed him while the Sonny Rollins from the other night played out and
Solo Monk
came up. I went out on the porch and sat for a long time just listening to Thelonious' eccentric musings and watching the finches swirl around the feeder. Archie sensed my dark mood and lay next to me with his body against my foot. A big feral cat I called One Ear, for obvious reasons, crept to the opposite end of the porch and dropped her head to drink from Archie's water dish. Archie eyed him but didn't move from my side. I took this as a show of support.

Even thought I was mad as hell at myself for making such a sophomoric mistake, I was also righteously indignant about being baited. I was charged with a felony. I might beat it, but only if Escalante stepped up and told the truth or convinced his partner to drop the charges. Fat chance of that.

I sat there with my mind churning, feeling stymied, pinned down, and uncertain about what to do next.

By the time Monk finished, the wrecking ball bouncing around in my head had stopped. I decided to put Dorn and the assault rap aside. It was a complication I didn't need, and Felding was on it, anyway. The real issue was that I was in somebody's crosshairs, and the mischief he or she had in mind made my doing time for a felony look like a pleasure cruise. That decided, my next step became crystal clear.

***

At 9:15 that night I sat in my car across and down the street from the martial arts studio, patiently waiting to see who emerged when it closed at ten. A light rain made it hard to see, and I had to run my wipers every couple of minutes to clear the windshield.

Just after ten, four people trickled out. The woman I was looking for was not among them. At a quarter past, the man with the spiky yellow hair came out, locked the door, and got in a low-slung sports car, cherry red with a double white stripe down the hood. What the hell, I thought, he may be a harder nut to crack, but I had a hunch he knew the killer, too.

I followed him up Milwaukie into the Brooklyn neighborhood, where he turned right onto a side street. We hadn't gotten more than a block before he abruptly pulled over. I had no choice but to cruise on past him, at which point he pulled out and fell in behind me, right on my bumper. It was clear I'd been busted, so I pulled over and he followed suit, parking a fair distance behind me. I was thankful I'd brought the Glock along but panicked at the thought of actually carrying it. I tucked the revolver in my belt and reluctantly got out of the car.

Spiky Hair was already out of his car. “Why are you following me, dude? You a cop?”

“No, I'm not a cop,” I replied as I walked toward him. “I just want to talk to you. I need some information.”

“Oh, it's you,” he said as I became illuminated by a streetlight. “Why the fuck should I tell you anything?”

“Uh, because I'm willing to pay you for the information?”

He considered that for a moment. By this time, we were facing each other. Spiky Hair's small, narrow-set eyes and squat nose seemed at odds with his jutting, block-like chin, thick neck, and watermelon shoulders. Haloed in the light reflecting off the mist in his hair, he turned a corner of his mouth up. “Let's see the money.”

I opened my wallet and teased out two crisp one hundred dollar bills brought just for this purpose. Without saying a word he reached for the bills. I tensed but let him take them. “Okay,” I said with false optimism. “All I want is the name of the guy at your gym who smokes the smelly cigarettes. And anything else you know about him.”

He put the bills in his hip pocket and shook his head. “Fuck off,” he said with a laugh and turned to go.

“Hey! You can't just walk away,” I said in a voice filled with indignation but lacking conviction. The last thing I needed was another fight.

He whirled around and stepped up in front of me. “
What?
You want a receipt?”

He tried to shove me, and I pushed his hand away instinctively. Infuriated, he threw a short, powerful jab that I just managed to slip, his thick fist grazing the side of my head and ripping at my ear. His leg came up, and I twisted just in time to take a powerful kick in the hip instead of my bruised groin. I grunted as a shock wave of white-hot pain surged through me. He shifted his weight and unleashed another kick. I twisted again and braced for the blow, but it never came. Instead, his leg flailed past my head as his other foot slipped out from under him on the wet pavement. He landed flat on his back in front of me with a very surprised look on his face. The hazard of kickboxing out of doors in Portland. As he scrambled to get up, I moved behind him, pulled the Glock out of my belt, and shoved it behind his ear.

He froze. I slowly turned him around, and when he opened his mouth to speak, I jammed the barrel in. His body became rigid as steel. I definitely had his attention.

“Now, listen to me,” I said in a hoarse voice between breaths, “I'm sick and tired of people pounding on me. You can either give me the information I just paid for, or I'll blast you a new windpipe.
Do you understand?”
The safety on the Glock was still engaged, a point he had failed to notice. I slowly pulled the barrel out of his mouth and positioned it between his eyes, which were now the size of dinner plates.

“Talk to me,” I said.

“Chuck. His name's Chuck. That's all I know, man.”

“Not good enough.” I slid the barrel down his nose, stopping at the tip. “What's his full name?”

“That's the only name he uses. Pays cash. Started coming in four or five weeks ago.”

“Where's he live?”

“Some place off 26 on the way to Hood. On a river.”

“The Sandy? What river?”

“I don't know. I just heard it was a cabin on a river. You know, rustic.”

“Who told you that?”

“One of my client's been there.”

“Give me a name.”

“Aw, come on ma—”

I pushed on the gun, flattening his nose. “
Tell me.”

“CJ, CJ Manion. She was the woman working out when you came in.”

“Does Chuck know about me?”

“I don't know. Maybe CJ said something. Chuck stopped coming in after that.”

“Where does CJ live?”

“Southeast 16th . I don't know the address.”

The pain in my hip was easing. Spiky Hair's breathing was coming in ragged gasps. There were tears in his eyes. I said, “If Chuck lives way out by Mt. Hood, why would he come all the way into Portland to work out at your gym?”

“The girl, CJ. She's worked out there for a long time. They have some kind of history.”

I waited for a long time without speaking. “Anything else you know about Chuck?”

“No, man. Nothing. Honest.”

“Then get out of here.” As he started to leave, I added, “And keep your mouth shut about this. Understand?”

He already had his back to me, but he nodded. I stood there in the rain as he got in his car, started it up, and drove off. I got back in my car and started to shake from the shock of the encounter. I took a couple of deep breaths to calm myself. I'd been lucky. If I hadn't dodged that first punch or if he hadn't slipped on that second kick, I'd probably still be sprawled in the street with a broken jaw and an empty wallet.

But even so, I felt guilty about what I'd just done. That look of stark terror in the man's eyes lingered like a shameful after-image. That wasn't me, I told myself. I don't do things like that. At the same time, I can't say a part of me didn't enjoy his transformation from someone bent on felony assault to a model of cooperation. And it's fair to say that I now understood at the gut level the enormous power a gun can impart to someone. It wasn't a revelation that brought me much comfort.

I did take comfort in the fact that I now had the name of someone who might lead me to the killer. But as I headed back to Dundee I had an uneasy feeling that these events were changing me, like I was on some kind of slippery slope.

Chapter Thirty-six

I got back to the Aerie just after midnight, dragged myself into the house, fed Archie, and hobbled upstairs. The spot on my hip that had caught Spiky Hair's kick had taken on some color, but nothing like my stomach, which looked like a swirling abstract painting in purples and yellows. It would have been amusing, I suppose, if I hadn't been in so much pain. I took two aspirin and eased into bed like a nonagenarian.

I got up early feeling tired, edgy, and sore. A cool wind gusted off the valley, promising rain. Sipping a cappuccino at the breakfast table, I opened my cell and scrolled down to Nando Mendoza. “I need you to search ViCAP for me,” I told him. ViCAP's a national law enforcement database open only to law enforcement agencies. Nando could access it. He never told me how, and I didn't want to know. “I'm looking for a contract killer. He uses a knife. Nearly decapitated that guy on the Deschutes. He's using the name Chuck. That's all I've got. No last name. I'm guessing late thirties to mid forties. Caucasian, six three or so. Slender build.”

“Such minimal information will run the cost up.”

“Oh, and he smokes foul smelling cigarettes.”

“I would rather have his last name.”

“It's all I've got. I need this, Nando.”

“Okay, my friend. I will do what I can.”

On a whim, I also asked him to see what he could dig up on Daina Zakaris. I had no reason to suspect her of anything, but her reluctance to talk about her background had left me a little curious. “She's Lithuanian, late thirties or early forties, lives in Seattle,” I told him. “Just run a background check on her.”

I was making another coffee when the phone rang. “Cal? Philip. What the hell happened, man?” I hesitated a moment, not quite getting the question. “Have you seen
The Oregonian
? You made the front page again.”

My heart sank. “Shit. I was hoping to stay under the radar. Did they at least use a good picture?”

“Under the radar—are you kidding? Let me read you the headline.” I heard the rustling of newspaper. “‘Deschutes Slaying Suspect Assaults Investigating Officer.'”

I literally winced, then let out a deep sigh. “Well, it kind of got out of hand. Dorn got pissed when they didn't find anything in the storage unit, so he kneed me in the balls. Then I broke his nose.” I left out the part about what Dorn had said about Nancy and the fact that Escalante had saved me from getting my head blown off.

Philip snorted a laugh. “You okay? I mean, how're they hangin'?”

“They're bruised, but not broken.”

“Well, the good news is your stock went up around here. I checked it out. You're not the first guy Dorn's roughed up. Half of Jefferson County wants to give you a medal.”

“Tell them to send money instead.” I went on to tell him that Murray and I were fighting back with countercharges, that the whole thing was costing me an arm and a leg, and that I'd get suspended from the bar if I was convicted.

Philip wasn't upbeat about my chances with the white man's justice system, but he did tell me that if I lost my license for assaulting Bull Dorn, I could always guide for him. Assuming, of course, I wasn't convicted of murdering Hal Bruckner.

Changing the subject, I said, “Everything good for picking Claire up tomorrow?”

“You bet, buddy. I've got you covered. I'll spend tomorrow night visiting my cousins on my mother's side. See how the white folks are living down there.”

I chuckled. “I'm sure they're just as curious about you. Maybe you could demonstrate some Piute war chants or something.”

After Philip signed off I checked the online white pages and found a C. Manion on SE 16th. I jotted down the address, but I was in no shape to drive back to Portland. I had nothing pressing at the office, so I decided to visit the urgent care center in Newberg to have my groin examined and the visit duly recorded. I'd drive to Portland in the morning to see if I could catch CJ Manion at home.

On the way back from Newberg I stopped by Pritchard's Animal Care Center to check in with Hiram. I'd seen that he called, and I figured it was about the latest article in
The Oregonian
. The waiting room was crammed with people and nervous dogs and cats. I got a couple of strange looks when the receptionist called my name and I went in without an animal. Hiram was stitching up a cat that had lost a fight. As he stitched and snipped, I explained what had happened. “Well,” he said, “it looks like Dorn was banking on that planted evidence to allow him to make an arrest. Hence the frustration. Perhaps the case against you is not going so well for them.”

“Maybe so. My knife was accessible to everyone in the camp. So the big thing they have is my affair with Bruckner's wife as a possible motive. Of course, now, after the fight with Dorn, I've shown that I have a violent nature. Whether I was baited or not, that'll go against me. Of course, if the assault charge sticks, I'll get disbarred, too.”

Hiram shook his head. “I know you had cause, Cal, and I don't want to pile on, but, honestly, was it worth putting your law practice in jeopardy?”

I nodded and cast my eyes down. “I know, Hiram. I, uh, he brought my wife into it, and after he hit me, everything just sort of went red.” It was all I could think to say.

He waited for me to look back up, met my eyes, and nodded. “We all draw lines beyond which no one should cross.” He dropped the subject. “This killer you know only as Chuck, do you have reason to believe he's still in the area?”

I shrugged. “My guess is he's long gone, but I can't say for sure. I do know he stopped coming into the martial arts studio.”

Hiram stroked his chin. “I see.”

He didn't want to say it. He was worried about Claire coming to the Aerie in the middle of all this craziness.

So was I.