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?”