Past Crimes (5 page)

I
FOUND HOLLIS BRANT’S NUMBER
in Dono’s address book. My call went straight to voice mail. I left a message. Hollis hadn’t seen me in a dozen years. But he knew how I’d left things with Dono. It wouldn’t be much of a leap for him to figure out something was very wrong, if I was in town.

At three o’clock in the morning, I was on the couch in my old room, settling into something close to sleep. My phone rang.

“Van? It’s Hollis.” He was almost shouting, trying to hear himself over a deep, throbbing pulse in the background. “How is he? Have they caught the fucker?”

“You know about Dono?” I said. Stupid question. I was still groggy.

“Course I know. The second I got your message, I made some calls. Now, tell me how he is, goddamn it.” I got a fix on the pulsing sound. A boat’s diesel engines. Not far from shore, if Hollis could get cell-phone coverage.

I shared what I knew. Hollis responded mostly with curses—at the shooter, at the doctors, at the whole damn world. I told Hollis I needed to talk to him, in person.

He grunted assent. “I’m on the water right now. You know Harbor Island?”

“Yeah.”

“I should make port by six-thirty—I’m running with the current. At Malcolm Yards, on Malcolm Road. Not far off Terminal 19.”

“I’ll find it.”

“Good. We’ll get the bastard who did this, count on that. And, Van? It’s good to hear your voice again, lad. Too fucking long.”

I wondered who had clued Hollis in to what had happened with Dono. And why Hollis was making port at Harbor Island. He used to moor his big Chris-Craft, the
Francesca
, way out in Ballard along with half the other pleasure boats in Seattle.

There was no hope of sleep. I got up and showered. My jeans were stiff and flaking with dried blood. In Dono’s closet I found trousers that fit me well enough and a tan chamois shirt that wasn’t too tight. I was a little shorter than Dono, but bigger across the chest and shoulders.

I drove to the 5 Point Café on Cedar Street near the elevated monorail tracks to kill time and pound coffee while watching the night traffic drift by.

Come home, if you can.

Hollis was a smuggler. He was an occasional business partner of my grandfather, usually when a job called for getting things across the border from Canada or down the coast by boat. More than that, he was one of Dono’s few friends. Or he had been, the last I knew. The old man didn’t socialize a lot.

Hollis, on the other hand, picked up friends like pennies. He seemed to have a well-placed contact in shipping or customs at any Pacific port that Dono could name.

There was a good chance that whatever job Dono had been working, Hollis would be part of it. And if Dono had found himself in real trouble, Hollis would be someone he’d want on his side.

Unless he already knew that his friends couldn’t help him. Maybe mending fences with me was Dono’s last resort.

And a shitload of help I’d been to him.

I looked at my watch. 0500. Too early. But moving felt better than sitting. I left money on the counter and drove out to see the orange dinosaurs.

That’s what I used to call the gigantic gantry cranes on Harbor
Island when I was a kid. Dinosaurs. In fact they were much bigger than any beast that had ever lived. Ten stories high at the operator’s shack. Twice that if they raised their long necks. Big enough to lift multiple boxcar containers at one time off the commercial freighters. Even miles in the distance, as I came down the long avenue onto the island off the West Seattle bridge, the cranes looked like monsters, gazing at the coming dawn.

The Port of Seattle had major terminals on Harbor Island, along with docks for a hundred other companies, ranging from big to not-quite-big. A few private moorages were there as well, but the vast majority of the island was industrial—shipyards, importers, and acre after acre of massive white cylindrical petroleum tanks.

I found the right road and the right gate and parked the Charger.

Malcolm Yards looked like a small drydock operation. It was closed, the rolling gate locked with a chain looped around its posts. An eight-foot chain-link surrounded the yard, with razor-wire strands angled out over the street side. Beyond the fence, in the weak illumination thrown by a handful of floodlights, I could see a squat office building and a big, square-framed lift machine to haul boats out of the water.

The little drydock had lots of privacy on its cul-de-sac road. A nice choice for a smuggler. I guessed Hollis wasn’t making port here because he liked to watch the cranes working.

The sky had turned a pale gray, not yet daylight but with enough sun bouncing off the cloud cover to make it feel like dawn could break any minute. Cars on the overpass zooming between West Seattle and the city sounded like the buzzing of bees. It was still too early for the Monday-morning rush hour.

A white Ryder moving truck drove past me and made a partial circle around the cul-de-sac. It parked on the opposite side, about a hundred feet away. Roads were very wide on Harbor Island, to allow room for commercial vehicles to maneuver. The moving van wasn’t that large. A fifteen-footer, just big enough to handle a one-bedroom apartment, if you stacked it right.

There were two men in the cab of the Ryder truck. The one closer
to me on the passenger side glanced at the Charger. In the half-light, he probably couldn’t see me sitting inside.

The driver got out and walked up to the gate and unlocked it, letting the chain hang loose. He pulled hard on the gate, and it moved an inch. He was tall, but as thin as a marathon runner, and it took another two hard pulls before he got enough momentum going and the gate rolled slowly open. He climbed back into the Ryder truck and drove it through the entrance. They left the gate open.

As the truck’s headlights shone across the yard, I saw something else. There was a man on the bow of one of the boats tied up at the Malcolm dock. The dock was fifty yards from where I was parked, but even at that distance I recognized Hollis Brant’s broad, sloping shoulders and thick arms.

The Ryder van stopped halfway from the office building, a hundred feet or so from the dock. Its headlights went out, but the parking lights stayed on. The thin driver and the passenger got out. They walked toward the dock—and Hollis’s boat.

So it was business. Hollis had told me to get there at six-thirty, so he could take care of whatever deal he had with the guys from the Ryder van before I showed. He must have seen me pull up early in the Charger. He’d chosen to stay put on his boat rather than come and unlock the gate.

I could take the hint.

The driver and the passenger reached the boat. There was enough light now for me to see Hollis wave them aboard. They climbed up, and the three men went down below.

A couple of minutes passed. Then the rolling door on the back end of the Ryder truck began sliding upward. A big guy ducked under the door and stepped down. He wore a leather jacket with a few too many zippers and studs on it to be for real, and motorcycle boots.

He peeked around the truck at Hollis’s boat. Everything there looked quiet. He flipped his jacket up to adjust a pistol stuck in his waistband, getting it comfortable against the small of his back. Then he began walking toward the dock.

Maybe it was nothing. Maybe Hollis was expecting the third guy to join the party.

But it didn’t feel like nothing.

Crap.

I started the Charger and drove it through the open gate. The Ryder truck was between me and the dock, shielding my car from view. I lined up my front tires with the side of the truck and gave the accelerator a gentle tap before putting the car in neutral. The Charger kept rolling forward at a fast walking pace as I opened the door and stepped out.

I had plenty of time to jog over to the front door of the little office building. The Charger rolled into the side of the Ryder van. It made an impressive crunching sound. I was glad I’d opted for the insurance.

There were shouts from the direction of Hollis’s boat. Running footsteps pounded on the wooden planks of the dock. I poked my head around the corner of the building.

“Ah, shit!” I said, loud enough to carry. “Goddamn it!”

I might have been right about the driver being a marathon runner. He reached the two vehicles, which were now connected in a T shape, at the same time as his big friend with the motorcycle boots. Behind them I saw Hollis, stepping off his boat.

“What the fuck?” the driver said. More startled than angry.

“Goddamn it,” I said again, “that fucking parking brake. I know I set that damn thing.”

The passenger finally caught up with his two buddies. “What happened?” he said, puffing. His sweatshirt read
CHICAGO BEARS
in orange letters. The big biker just stared dully at the crash.

“This asshole,” said the driver, jabbing a finger at me. “All we fucking need right now.”

“Hey, I’m sorry,” I said. “I swear to God I set that brake. It’s a rental, see?”

“Fuck you and your piece-of-shit car,” said the driver. The biker nodded. Happy to have some direction. He was my height but must have outweighed me by sixty pounds, thirty of it a rubbery layer that strained at his XXXL T-shirt. The Bears fan moved around to the other side of me. He was smaller than his partner, but not by a whole lot.

“I’m covered for that, no problem,” I said, gesturing toward the Ryder van. Hollis was about twenty yards away, ambling like he had the morning to spare. I couldn’t tell if he had a gun. “At least it’s a rental, right? You guys work here?”

“We ought to fuck you up,” said the driver.

The biker took that as a command. He reached for the gun at his waist, and I punched him in the throat, as hard as I dared without crushing his windpipe. He gagged and staggered back. The gun clattered on the asphalt, and I kicked it away under the moving truck.

The Bears fan tackled me. I got an arm in between us, and as we hit the ground the point of my elbow dug into his chest. The pain made him wince. My left forearm went numb. I grabbed him by the shoulder and bucked upward, head-butting him in the face. Blood spurted from his nose, and I twisted sharply and got free.

I rolled up onto my knees, just as a kick from one of the biker’s motorcycle boots missed my skull by a hair. I upper-cutted him in the balls. He screamed. As I got to my feet, the Bears fan swung blind, and his fist glanced off the side of my head. My ear rang.

My left arm wasn’t responding fast enough. I hit Bears twice in his bleeding nose with my right and kicked his legs out from under him. He went down hard. I could feel the biker coming up fast behind me. I turned, bracing for the hit, just as the biker was suddenly yanked away.

“I said knock it off, you little shits.” The speaker was a wiry man in his fifties, with a bald head and a disgusted expression on his face. The biker was being restrained by one of the largest men I’d ever seen. In his grip the big biker looked like a teenager getting a hug from his father.

I knew both of them. The wiry, bald one was Jimmy Corcoran. The giant was Willard. I’d known them almost as long as I’d known Hollis, who’d finally joined the rest of us. I saw the bulge of a pistol under his blue tank top.

“Look, dude,” I said to the driver in between deep breaths, “I’m just here to see about getting my boat hauled out. I didn’t want trouble.”

Corcoran and Willard both glanced at me, then at Hollis. Apparently it was his party.

Hollis made a show of looking at the vehicles and shrugged. “Screw it. A couple of dents. Let’s just forget about it.” He turned to the driver. “Forget all of it.”

“Hey,” said the driver. “We had a deal.” His eyes kept flicking back to Willard, who loomed behind the biker like a wall. Willard had that effect on people.

Hollis smiled. It was not a friendly smile. “Which you wanted to renegotiate. Isn’t that how you put it? So we’re renegotiating. Here are my new terms: Fuck off.”

The driver hesitated, but the Bears fan had already started moving toward the Ryder truck, holding his smashed nose. Willard took his hand off the biker’s shoulder, letting him follow. The driver gave me one last glare and turned and walked to the moving truck.

They didn’t wait for me to back the Charger away from where it still touched the side of the Ryder truck. They just put it in gear and pulled out with a grinding of metal against metal.

“Well,” said Hollis, “wasn’t that a fine start to the day?”

Y
OU OWE US,” JIMMY
Corcoran said to me as we sat down in the cockpit of Hollis’s boat. “And not just for keeping your ass from getting stomped.”

Hollis opened the sliding glass door to the cabin and went into the little galley. He spoke loudly enough for the three of us outside to hear. “The deal was going south anyway.”

“I owe you for the save,” I said, “but not the money. Those guys weren’t planning on paying for whatever they wanted.”

“Laptop computers,” Hollis said.

“Hey,” said Corcoran.

“Oh, stuff it, Jimmy,” Hollis said, chuckling. “Van doesn’t give a shit. And he may have just spared me some serious grief. Now, do you want breakfast or no?”

Willard smiled. Corcoran still looked dyspeptic.

“Shouldn’t have made a deal with those idiots in the first place,” Corcoran said. The face below his bald skull was heavily lined. Too many years of squinting angrily at people and gadgets. Corcoran was a tech guy. In his youth he had been a prodigy with electronics. Dono was no amateur, and neither was I for that matter. But Corcoran had the touch.

“How’s Dono?” Willard said. His voice was like gravel in a cement mixer.

“I called the lads after we talked,” Hollis said to me. He turned on a drip coffeemaker and came back to the cockpit as it started gurgling. “They both wanted to be here, to hear what happened straight from you.”

Hollis resembled nothing more than an orangutan. Short and very wide, with strong, overlong arms. He was a little more potbellied than the last time I’d seen him, and his tight orange curls were dusted with white. He wore a sky blue tank top and baggy khaki shorts. Way too light for the morning, but the cold didn’t seem to bother him.

I gave the three of them a condensed version of the past day, including the fact that Detective Guerin might be looking up Dono’s known associates. That earned frowns from Corcoran and Willard.

“You know this guy Guerin?” Corcoran said to Hollis.

Hollis sighed. “Not one of mine. Jesus, boyo. What a Christly homecoming for you. Let me get a look at you.” He made a show of it, examining me head to toe like I was a racehorse. “Damnation. You used to be a bulky kid. The army shaved you down a layer.”

“Fifty-mile marches will do that,” I said. The fight had tired me more than it should have. Too many weeks of soft time in Germany and not enough sleep in the last forty-eight hours.

“What happened to your face?” Corcoran said.

I rolled my neck, trying to get some of the tension out. “When was the last time any of you saw Dono?”

Hollis leaned against the cabin, folding his arms. “I saw him just last week. First time in a while. We met at the house and shared a drink or two.”

That must have been the visit when Addy Proctor saw him. “Talking about work?” I said.

He smiled ruefully. “Talking about old-man stuff. I had a little health scare. A tumor, right here.” He pointed to his right shoulder blade. “Not malignant, as it turns out, but oh, shit, did it put me on my guard. Nothing to shrivel up your balls like having your doctor ask you to come in so he can tell you news in person.”

“I’m glad it’s all right.”

“You and me both. But your man didn’t talk about his work. And it’s been a year or more since he and I put any deals together. Fucking economy, you know. I got the impression that your granddad had been taking some time off for himself.”

That got Corcoran’s attention. “He could afford that?”

Hollis brought the coffee out on a big metal tray with crackers and cream cheese and a large hunk of smoked salmon. The coffee smelled good. He set it down on the pedestal table in the center of the cockpit. “Whether Dono could afford it or not, he was doing it. Tuck in,” he said.

I wasn’t hungry, but I took a big gulp of coffee before I realized that Hollis had laced it with whiskey. My nasal passages closed up. I coughed and sputtered, and Hollis laughed and nearly fell back into the cabin.

“Oh, my Jesus, kid. I am sorry. I forgot it’s been forever and a day since you’ve broken bread with me.” He wiped his eyes, and I began laughing with him, the adrenaline from the fight finally starting to ebb.

Hollis hadn’t forgotten to warn me. He just knew how to lighten the mood.

“How about you?” I said to Willard and Corcoran.

“Shit,” said Corcoran. “I haven’t seen Dono Shaw in months.”

Willard nodded. “Almost half a year for me.”

“What was our last job with him?” Corcoran asked Willard. “That place out in Magnolia?” Willard nodded again, and Corcoran looked like he wanted to spit. “That was last summer. Your granddad was never much of a joiner, kid, but he’d become a fucking hermit recently.”

That startled me. Not that I thought Jimmy Corcoran was Dono’s favorite person, but he or Willard or both of them would meet Dono at his bar, the Morgen, for a drink from time to time. Even if there was no score to plan, they kept in touch. It was part of the same grapevine that had so effectively passed the word about Dono’s shooting. Hard to imagine Dono cutting himself off from it.

I took another sip. The coffee was burned, but you could hardly tell with half the mug filled with hard alcohol. “Hollis, you already knew about Dono when I called you.”

He nodded. “I got a call from Ondine Long.”

“No shit?” said Willard. It took a lot to break his habitual placid expression.

“In person, no less,” said Hollis. “I gathered she’d heard the news directly from the police. You know how connected she is.”

I did. Ondine was a fence and a fixer. She knew people everywhere. People a hell of a lot more influential than an old smuggler like Hollis.

“She was calling just to tell you about Dono?” I said.

“She was asking me,” said Hollis. “What did I know, if Dono was mixed up with any trouble. I didn’t have anything to share, of course, and she told me to call her if I learned more.”

Corcoran’s mouth twisted an extra notch. “And you were eager to help.”

“Screw off. I’ve done business with the woman,” Hollis said.

“Did Dono have a girlfriend?” I asked.

Hollis shrugged. “Not that he mentioned. And I can usually tell when he has a woman around regular. He’d shave more. Dress a little better.”

Willard shifted uncomfortably. The narrow bench seat was too small for him. Of the three of them, Willard seemed to have changed the least. His heavy brow and jaw were maybe a little more so, making his face even more doleful than it used to be, but his eyes were still quick and alert. Willard was muscle, of course, but not dumb muscle. And his huge size made him too memorable for a lot of jobs. Occasionally he worked as a driver. He was surprisingly skilled, provided he could fit behind the wheel.

“Did you say he was shot point-blank?” Willard said.

“To the back of his head,” I said. “Just inside the front door. Maybe the shooter was at the door and Dono turned away. Or maybe they were both inside and Dono was leading him out. Either way—”

“You think Dono knew him. Or her,” Willard said.

“Yeah.”

“Well, I hope to shit you don’t mean us,” Corcoran said, reddening.

“Of course not, Jimmy,” said Hollis.

I remembered Hollis’s tendency to be the peacemaker of the group.
Dono was too flinty, too much the leader. Corcoran couldn’t help being an asshole. And Willard followed whoever had a sensible plan. So it was left to Hollis to smooth the waters.

“I’m not looking at you,” I said. “But if anyone knew what was happening in Dono’s life, it would be you three. Some score he was working on—or had already done.”

“Which might have gotten him shot,” Willard said. He shook his head. “I got nothing.”

“I need to get moving,” Corcoran said, nudging Willard. Willard stood up and stepped out onto the side deck, which was enough to make the
Francesca
rock a little.

“Sorry again about Dono,” Willard said.

“Yeah,” said Corcoran, following. “Sorry.”

Hollis and I watched as the two men got off the boat and walked up the dock. The morning breeze had some force to it now. Each time the wind gusted, I could hear loose sailing lines tap and clang against the aluminum masts in the marina in a dissonant melody.

“Do you think they’re telling the truth?” I asked Hollis. “About not working with Dono?”

Hollis took a big swig out of his mug and refilled it from the thermos. “Willard, yes. Hard to say with Jimmy. He doesn’t like people knowing his business any more than your grandfather does. But I think Dono would have mentioned it to me if they had something on. What department did you say your boy Detective Guerin worked out of?”

“H.A.” Homicide/Assault, downtown.

“So they’re not letting the East Precinct handle it as an aggravated,” Hollis said.

“No. It’s attempted murder, straight up.” We both understood the implication. The cops didn’t expect Dono to recover.

We sat quiet for a moment. The seagulls floated on the air over the breakwater, dipping down with renewed hope to look for small fish each time the surface water rippled in a way I couldn’t perceive.

“Are you done with the army?” he said.

“Just on leave. Ten days.” Down to eight now. Better get my ass in gear.

“And you decided it was time to see Dono. Good.” He flexed his fingers. “Fucking arthritis. So who knew you were coming home?”

I looked at him. “You’ve been wondering about that, too.”

“Of course I have.”

“When did he tell you he’d written to me?” I said.

Hollis frowned. “Boyo, he didn’t say a fucking thing to me about it.”

When I was small, Hollis Brant often brought me a gift when he came to the house, a Japanese windup toy or some other exotic item from one of his friends on the freighters, as he called them. As I grew older and started to help the two men with their work, Hollis would slip me a few bucks on the sly with a wink. I knew where Dono hid some of his money and would help myself when I needed it, but I appreciated Hollis’s gesture. I liked him. He might even have liked me, but eventually I realized that the toys and the money were just part of Hollis’s method, being generous and building alliances as an investment for the future. I might be in a position to help him out someday. Bread on the water.

I wondered how strong the friendship between him and Dono still was, if Dono hadn’t told Hollis that the prodigal grandson was on his way home.

“Dono must have told somebody I was coming,” I said. “Maybe even when I was going to arrive.”

“You didn’t tell someone yourself? Not even your young friend—what’s his name?”

It took me a second to realize whom Hollis meant. “Davey Tolan? No, I haven’t talked to Davey in years.”

And it hadn’t even occurred to me to call Davey, during the storm of the last day. Hollis was right. A hell of a homecoming.

“I can’t leave this to the cops,” I said. “What they know about Dono isn’t going to give them a lot of extra motivation.”

“You want to … ah, deal with this bastard yourself?”

“Serving him to the cops on a platter will be enough.”

“I’ll tell you, Van, I’m surprised you’re back,” said Hollis. “Happy, too, don’t get me wrong. But I thought you’d put Seattle behind you.
The way you and Dono parted. He hadn’t even mentioned your name to me in God knows how long.”

“I decided to bury the past.”

“And this kind of business,” he said, pointing to where the three morons had driven the Ryder van away from the crumpled Charger. “It isn’t your life anymore, is that it?”

I’d done well in AIT, Advanced Individual Training, during my first months in the army. A recruiter for the Seventy-fifth Regiment came by to talk to a few of us. As part of his sales pitch, he had recited some lines from the Ranger Creed. Mentally alert, physically strong, and morally straight. It was the last bit that had made my ears prick up.

“No,” I said to Hollis, “it’s not my life now. But I don’t give a damn what anybody else does.”

He stared at me for a moment, brow still furrowed. Then he sighed. “All right, then. I won’t judge you either. Some of my best friends are citizens. Or so they claim.”

“Here’s to profit,” I said, quoting one of Hollis’s own lines.

“Nah. Here’s to Dono.” We drank. Hollis swished the coffee through his teeth like mouthwash before swallowing.

“Your granddad,” he said “He wasn’t much for the light hand with you. But he did care.”

“I know.”

“You may still get your chance,” Hollis continued. He didn’t seem to have heard me. “Your man was always a quick healer. You recall the time? No, certainly not, you were very small. He had dislocated his shoulder somehow, but it didn’t stop him from leading a little discussion we had with the Fitzroys. Nasty pieces of work, those lads, but we showed them something. That was a fine day.” He waved a paw toward the city. “A bed in a hospital. That’s no proper fate for a man.” His empty coffee mug dangled from his finger. From out across the sound, the low horn of a ferry echoed.

“Showed them,” he said again. And damned if he wasn’t welling up, the tears starting to roll down his ruddy cheeks.

Hollis could have gotten close enough to Dono, no question. He
might have had a little automatic ready. He could have put the muzzle right up against Dono’s head as they walked to the door after a long night of bullshit and booze.

But even if I could fathom some motive for why Hollis might have wanted to kill his oldest friend, I couldn’t see him as the shooter. Dono was still alive. Hollis would have finished the job.

I stood up and patted him on the shoulder. He nodded. I stepped out of the cockpit and down to the dock and walked away. When I looked back from the shoreline, he was still sitting there, head down and mourning one of the last of his kind.