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SEATTLE (Saturday, Dec. 1, 2012, early morning) — Mac woke up to the sound of the fax machine spitting out pages. He was instantly awake, no drowsy awakening. He identified the sound as the fax, relaxed for a moment. Janet’s list of nominees. He looked at the clock: 7:30 a.m. He got up, padded into the shower.
First on his agenda was an old Marine buddy who needed to do some more talking. He dressed in baggy jeans, T-shirt. He laced up his New Balance, shrugged the jeans down over them.
Quietly he went down the hall to the guest bedroom where Danny slept. Danny was snoring. Mac unzipped Danny’s duffel bag, carefully rummaging through the bag: jeans, shaving kit, and a book. Mac pulled it out. Danny hadn’t been much of a reader; Mac didn’t suppose that changed much.
The book turned out to be a diary. Mac opened it, thumbing through the pages. Nothing marked, nothing stored in there. Why was a man on the run carrying a diary, for Christ’s sake? Mac’s own name jumped out of him. He began reading.
“Me and Mac and Troy got chewed out this morning for fucking up that bar last night,” Danny had written in a barely legible scrawl. “Mac has a black eye. My arm is in a sling. Troy is limping. Troy made all the apologies. Mac would have gotten us into more trouble mouthin’ off, but Troy made him agree to keep quiet. The owner says we did several thousand-dollars-worth of damages and we’ll damn well pay for it. The guy Mac threw through the window is in the hospital. Still, it was a damn good fight.”
Mac snorted. He remembered that fight. He was pretty sure his black eye had come from Danny’s own elbow.
“Hey, give me that,” Danny said, sitting up quickly. “You’re going through my stuff!”
“Yup.”
“How come?”
“Because you’re not telling me everything,” Mac said, holding up the diary as evidence. “Why lug this around?”
“It’s a diary I kept when we were stationed in Texas.”
“I see that.”
“Troy asked me if I still had them. When I said I did, he asked me to read through that one and see if it made me remember anything unusual. I took it out to the oil platform to read last shift.” Danny shrugged. “I don’t know what he expected me to find.”
“Didn’t know you kept a diary.”
Danny shrugged again. “It seemed like something to do. A teacher I had, he said he’d kept one in Nam and that he was glad he had. I’m not much of a writer. Didn’t want you to know about it. You’d have flipped me shit every chance you got. Troy knew.”
Mac grunted. The diary was like one a high school girl might keep with a lock and key. He would have been unmerciful back then if he’d known.
“So did you read it?” Mac asked, still idly thumbing through it.
“Yeah. Lots of bar fights. Lots of fantasy about girls,” Danny said ruefully. “I don’t see much that would be important.”
Danny reached for the diary. Mac held it away from him. “Aren’t you going to give it to me?”
“Shit no. I’m going to read it,” Mac said without pleasure. He didn’t need to be reminded what a bunch of punk kids they’d been.
The diary was just what Danny had said it was: a list of bar fights, fantasies about women, and bitching about the boredom of being stationed in Texas. The diary covered the six months before the four of them had been shipped to the Gulf.
“Find anything?” Danny said, rising up on one elbow from his position on the bed. He’d been dozing on and off for the last hour while Mac read.
“No. You had a shitty imagination about sex. Other than that....” Mac shrugged. He tossed the diary back at Danny. “Get dressed, will you? Janet faxed over some information I want you to take a look at.”
“And breakfast?” Danny asked hopefully, flinging back the covers.
Mac nodded. He ducked into his room, grabbed Janet’s list, and went on down to the kitchen. When Danny came down a few minutes later, Mac was absorbed in the list of names; Danny quietly found the eggs and bread and cooked breakfast. Mac didn’t look up until Danny put a plate of food in front of him.
“Thanks.” Mac went through the list again; he recognized many of them. Faces on television, names in the paper. One name stopped him.
“Danny, does the name Howard Parker mean anything to you?” Mac started paging through the end of the diary he’d just read.
“Yeah,” Danny said, swallowing first. “He’s that asshole who led that fucked up joint DEA mission, remember? We damn near bought it on that one, on a no-brainer.”
Mac found the passage he’d just read and read it again.
“Anybody else on this list you recognize?” Mac said. He handed over the pages.
Danny looked through them. “Well, I think this dude, Francis McGregor, wasn’t he one of the higher ups at the base when we were there?”
Mac nodded. “Yeah. Sounds right. And I think Norman Bishop was in Desert Storm.”
Mac picked up the phone and called Janet. “Can you get me bios on Norman Bishop, Francis McGregor and Howard Parker?”
“Sure. I’ll fax them over. What about Parker?”
“I knew him when I was in the Marines.”
“Really? He’s from this area, you know. Old family. He or his family own more of Snohomish County than I like to think about. Made big money when development moved out that way. His cousin has been a state senator for that district for a decade or more. Howard Parker had a military career — Marines I think. It’s a pretty spectacular bunch. We did a feature on them not too many years ago. I’ll have someone dig it out for you.”
“He live out in Snohomish?”
“Hell, no. He’s got big digs out on Lake Washington, with alarmed gates and security guards. He’s still military some way, I think. Director of Homeland Security would be a big deal for Seattle.”
“Any local ties to Francis McGregor?”
“Not that I know of. But we’ll check it for you.” Janet paused. “Mac, you think Warren is out here about Parker?”
Mac shrugged. “I assume you’ve looked over the list. Any other locals?”
“A few. Puget Sound is home to a lot of military. A lot of military like to retire here. Scoop Jackson saw to that. So, others may have come through here at some point in their careers.”
Scoop Jackson had been Washington’s U.S. Senator for a couple of decades. Thanks to him, military dollars had flowed to the Puget Sound and to Boeing and other industries. Mac looked at the list. “Let’s check for that, to be sure,” he said slowly. “It makes sense that if Warren is here, then there’s some connection to the region.” He kept looking at the name Howard Parker. Thought about Donnelly’s research. It felt right. “But I want Parker’s bio as fast as possible.”
“OK. He’s got a reputation for being a cold-hearted son of a bitch, but killing a cop doesn’t seem his style.”
“If he’s got money, he’d hire it done.” Or call on his connections in and out of the military. Mac was beginning to place him better. Parker had always been connected. A manipulative, cold-hearted son of a bitch, as Janet had called him.
Mac glanced at Danny who was gesturing to him. “Got to go. Get me that bio.” He hung up. Looked at Danny. Danny motioned to the floor.
Mac tensed, listening. He heard the soft sounds of creaking floorboards that Danny had heard. Someone was out there; that board was just inside the front door. Shit. They’d stayed here too long. Silently, he picked up his backpack, added Danny’s diary and the faxed pages.
“Think I’ll take a shower,” Mac said casually. “You should get some more sleep.”
“Don’t use all the hot water,” Danny said, moving just as silently, tying his shoes, shrugging into his jacket.
Mac turned on the kitchen sink. “What do you hear from Blankenship?” he asked over the sounds of running water. Normal sounds. Reassuring sounds to those just feet away, he hoped.
“He likes the embassy, but says women in veils are hard to date,” Danny said, following Mac to the back door.
Mac hoped it still opened silently as it had when he’d been a teenager sneaking out of the house. He looked out the window. He didn’t see anyone up close to the back of the house, probably watching from the street. Didn’t want some neighbor calling the cops about someone sneaking through the back yard. Walk up the front door, that was okay, but neighbors didn’t like men going in back gates. Well, watchers on the street could be avoided.
Mac took a deep breath and shoved the door open in one smooth move. He went out the door, dodging quickly to the left. Danny followed him. Staying close to the house, he moved around the side to a hole in the hedge to the Sanford’s house, down along the side of that house to the side street a block away from his own home.
Mac grinned at Danny, motioned for him to wait. He picked up a rock and threw it through the basement window of Sanford’s house. The burglary alarm went off. He expected the men in his house were having second thoughts about staying much longer.
“Now saunter as if you own the world,” Mac said, heading out to the street. He turned right, heading down hill, cut through an alley to the all-night grocery on the intersection of Olive and 38th. He went inside. “Hi, Harry,” he said.
“Mountain Dew?” Harry asked, reaching into the cooler.
“And a Dr Pepper,” Danny added. He picked up a package of cigarettes and tossed them on the counter too.
“Burglary alarm going off at Sanford’s,” Mac offered.
“Damn alarms,” Harry grunted. “If it ain’t some dog setting off the house alarm, it’s kids setting off car alarms. Does anyone do anything? Hell no. Nobody comes. Nobody cares.”
“I hear ya, Harry.” Mac plunked a $5 on the counter waved off the change. “Can I use your phone?”
Harry motioned to behind the counter.
Mac punched in Shorty’s cell phone number.
“Yeah.”
“I need a ride.”
“Who do you think I am, Tonto? Or his horse? What was his name?”
“Shorty, don’t give me any crap, okay?” Mac hissed through clenched teeth, turning away so Harry couldn’t hear. “Someone just broke into my place. They’ve got to have my car staked out. I need you.”
“For God’s sake, Mac, I’m a schoolteacher. I drive a Lexus. Smoke a little pot, okay, but I live in Bellevue. The ‘burbs man. You’ve got me running the streets again. Where am I supposed to find you?”
“Where are you now?”
“I am doing my laundry at the apartment complex,” Shorty said. “Like normal people do on a Saturday morning.”
“Meet me at the Examiner,” Mac said, thinking rapidly. “I’ll leave word with the parking attendant to let you in. There will be someone waiting for you — an old Marine buddy of mine named Danny. If he doesn’t sound fresh out of Louisiana, it’s not him.”
“Gotcha.”
“Thanks, Harry,” Mac said, turning around.
“Anytime, kid. Say hello to your aunt for me.”
It required two bus transfers for them to get to the Examiner, but Mac wasn’t in any hurry. He and Danny sat silently. Mac didn’t try to think about the meaning of things, he concentrated on staying in the moment, of being aware of what was going on around him. The dude with the loud voice, the chatty schoolgirls, the man in a business suit, Mac watched them all. He watched the driver, saw him chat with an old lady while she fumbled for her coins. He watched the street, the stops, the people waiting for the bus. Mac got off two stops before his transfer point with Danny padding along behind him. He glanced around casually to see who else got off. No one. Of course, it wouldn’t take a genius to figure he’d head for the newspaper and meet him there, Mac realized. One step at a time.
The second bus was already packed, and both of them stood, holding on to the bar, as the bus lurched down the hill towards the waterfront. Overly full buses were one of Mac’s least favorite places. “Not as bad as riding on an Afghani bus,” Danny murmured softly.
Mac snorted. “Nothing is as bad as an Afghani bus.” But he felt the muscles in the back of his neck unclench a bit at the memory of the crowded, raucous buses of third world countries. “No chickens,” he added.
“I sat next to a woman holding a pig, once,” Danny said reflectively. “They don’t smell as bad as you’d think.”
The bus spilled them all out at the ferry terminal. Mac followed the crowd out the door and then north along Alaskan Way. Shoppers and tourists. Street bums in army fatigues, panhandling. Kids on skateboards, roller blades and bicycles.
Too many people. Too much jostling, shouting, talking. Horns blared. Cars weren’t moving. Pedestrians waited at the crosswalks and then swarmed across the street. Mac drifted among them. Not hurrying. Working at not being noticed. Fat lot of good it did, he thought sourly, seeing a lady lock her car door as he crossed the street in front of her. What does she think? I’m going to carjack her in a traffic jam? He circled around the Examiner building, an old brick building off Pioneer Square and went into the parking structure attached to the building.
“What’s up, Mac?” the attendant cackled as he always did. He was a small man with bad skin who’d not had many brain cells before he drank them away. Mac made a habit of chatting with him when he was on duty. “You’re not supposed to be on foot when you come here.”
“My ride will be along shortly,” Mac said easily. “You let him in? He can park in my spot.”
“Your spot?” the attendant laughed again. “Got your name on that place you park in, do you?”
“Nobody else parks in it,” Mac said, laughing along with him. “So when this Filipino dude in a Lexus shows up, introduce him to Danny here and have him back into that spot. I’ll be down in a bit.”
“Sure thing, Mac. What’s it going to hurt? Want me to buzz you upstairs when he shows?”
“That’d be great. His name is Shorty.”
“I can do that,” the attendant nodded. “Shorty. Danny. So what’s going on?”
“Danny’s an old buddy from out of town, we’re going to show him the sights,” Mac said. “Shorty’s got a Lexus to drive. Think we’d take my rig?”
The attendant laughed again. “Gotcha.”
Mac nodded at Danny who settled in on the cement step at the attendant’s cage. Mac went in through the entrance to advertising, smiled at one of the girls who worked in classifieds and went up the back stairs to the newsroom.
People nodded at him, mostly intent on what they were doing. Mac nodded back, picked up a Mountain Dew in the break room, and sat down at an empty desk near his own. He pulled out the diary, checked the dates and names, and went on the Internet for telephone numbers of the DEA in southwest Texas. He jotted them in his notebook.
Janet dropped a bunch of paper on his desk. “Your fax is off,” she said. “What are you doing here anyway? It’s your day off.”
Mac took the pages, looked through it. Parker’s bio. He nodded his thanks. Janet stopped at another reporter’s desk to talk about a story on her way back to her desk. He read the profile the newspaper had run on Parker and his family a few years back. A powerful man with a powerful background.
He logged into the tax assessor’s database online. Pulled up a list of all of Parker’s properties, printed it out.
Mac’s phone rang. “Davis,” he said.
“Mac, it’s C.J. Kellerman,” said a familiar voice. Still, it took a moment for Mac to place the name.
“Kellerman,” he said. “I didn’t expect to hear from you.”
“We need to meet, Shadow,” the man said, using a nickname Mac hadn’t heard in a long time.
Mac was silent for a moment. “How about we meet on the pier your boys threw me off of the other night,” he said at last.
“Weren’t my boys, Shadow. If they had been, they wouldn’t have fucked it up. But yes, that pier will be fine. Say, thirty minutes?”
“Better make it an hour,” Mac said, glancing at his watch. “I need to put in some time in the office, or they may decide I don’t work here anymore.”
“Sure, Shadow,” Kellerman said easily. “In an hour at the pier.”
Mac hung up the phone slowly. I respected that guy, he thought. More than anybody, I admired him. What’s he doing in this mess?
Mac picked up his phone, buzzed Janet through the intercom. “Find us a private office,” he said tersely. “I need to fill you in.” He started typing up notes into the computer.
“Right.” Janet hung up, called him back in a few minutes. “Conference room A. 15 minutes?”
“Right.” Mac said, barely pausing in his typing. He pulled up a file he’d buried in a private directory he’d set up the second week he’d been on staff and made a printout. He picked it up from the printer and walked into the conference room with Janet close behind him. She closed the door.
“So, give,” she said. “What’s up?”
There was a knock on the door; the assistant projects editor, usually referred to behind his back as Precious Kevin, stuck his head inside. “Thought I might join this conversation, get filled in,” he said.
“No,” Mac said flatly. Janet looked at the table in front of her.
“Why not?” he said belligerently. “The story belongs in our unit.”
Precious Kevin was a few years younger than Mac. He was small, soft, and always put together just so. Preppy. Mac couldn’t stand him, hadn’t liked him from the day he started, a kid with no experience, but a master’s degree from Northwestern. Connections, the office gossip concluded. It sure wasn’t brains.
Mac looked at him. “Beat it, Kevin.”
The editor hesitated, met Mac’s eyes and left, quietly closing the door behind him.
“That for me?” Janet asked as if nothing had happened. Mac slid her the notes.
“Here’s what I know,” Mac said. “I know Howard Parker is up for a nomination he wants very badly. Eight years ago, I was a Marine on loan to the DEA for patrol in the southwest — New Mexico and Texas. Hard to tell just where the borders are down there. We busted a coke warehouse, damn near got killed. The DEA mucky-t-muck who came out to take credit for it was Howard Parker.
“I don’t know what made Troy — an old Marine buddy — suspicious, or what exactly he suspects. He’s an aide for a Senator from Chicago these days. Started asking questions. He’s disappeared. The third member of that patrol had his house torn apart in Shreveport, and his kid sister kidnapped. The fourth is abroad, and apparently out of it.”
“You don’t have a story yet,” Janet observed.
“I know. But I just got a call from my old sergeant, he wants to meet — on the pier I was thrown off.”
“You think it’s a set up?”
Mac shrugged. “Possibly. If so, better that you have insurance. You have enough there to turn it over to Jason or whatever the hell his name is in the D.C. bureau, and bust the story.”
“Why are you meeting this guy, if you think it might be a set up?”
Mac hesitated. “Kellerman was my hero when I joined. I looked up to him. He was what I thought a Marine should be. Later, I worked with him training at a survival school. He was tough.” He thought for a moment and then smiled. “He used to do this introductory speech at the survival camp. ‘We’re going to teach you to survive no matter what. If you have a weapon you will use it. If you have only your knife, you will use that. If all you have are your teeth and bare hands, then damn it, you’ll survive using those.’ And then he reaches down pick up a live chicken and bites its head off. Everyone got the point.”
Janet looked at him blankly, then shook her head and laughed. “That’s not the best way to kill a chicken,” she said. At his surprised look, she added, “I used to be a farm girl.”
“You?”
“Long story. Anyway, killing a chicken is easy. You just wring its neck. Pick it up by its head, swing its body around, and the weight of the body will break its neck. Cleaning it without a knife or something might be difficult but killing it... not so much.”
Mac stared at her.
“Not as impressive as biting its head off, however,” Janet added. “Didn’t you know how you kill a chicken?”
Mac grimaced. “I’m the original city kid. I doubt I knew that chicken came from anything but KFC until I was in the military. And then it came from the freezer.”
“Hardly the point, anyway, I guess,” Janet said with a shrug. “I can see why you want to give this guy a hearing. Are there precautions you can take?”
Mac set aside the issue of how to kill a chicken and returned to the issue at hand. His lips quirked in a half smile. “Oh, yeah. Precautions are on the way.”
“Good.” She hesitated. “You want to be wired for sound?”
“Hell, no,” Mac said. “He’ll check me out for that. I doubt this is a for-attribution meeting. But what he says, I’ll remember.”
“Give me a call when you’re done, OK? At home. I’m about to go off duty here,” Janet said. “Save me a sleepless night.”
The message light was blinking on Mac’s phone when he returned to his desk: The parking attendant. His ride was here.
Mac left the building on a different floor than he’d entered it and walked down a flight of stairs to the main level of the parking lot. He could see Shorty’s black Lexus parked near the attendant. Shorty and Danny leaned against the hood.
“Let’s go,” Mac said, walking up to them. They jumped.
“Where we going to?” Shorty said, starting to unlock the car.
“We aren’t going to need the car just yet,” Mac said. “I got a call.” He explained.
“I dunno, Mac,” Danny said, after hearing about the telephone call. “I would have taken Kellerman’s word for just about anything.”
“Yeah,” Mac acknowledged. “Why I want to hear him out. But I don’t want to be stupid about it. Like the man said, if those boys the other night had been his they wouldn’t have fucked up.”
“So you think it’s a set up?” Shorty asked.
“Maybe. Maybe persuade first, take me out if that doesn’t work,” Mac said. “Here’s the plan.”