BY THE TIME I WAS READY TO HEAD ACROSS the great water to Port Angeles, it was after four. I probably should have taken a departmental car, but between driving a Porsche 928 and a Dodge Diplomat, there’s really no contest. However, I did stop by Captain Powell’s fishbowl long enough to get a verbal okay from him.
“If you put a dent in that little hummer of yours while you’re over there,” Powell warned, shaking his finger in my face, “you’d better not plan on vouchering it.”
“No problem,” I told him, fool that I am.
Lemmings rushing to the sea have nothing on Seattlites bent on escaping the city and going across Puget Sound on sunny Friday afternoons. With my usual finesse and timing, I managed to be stuck smack in the middle of the worst of the traffic. At the ferry terminal I bought a ticket to Winslow and maneuvered the 928 into the proper line.
The ferry Walla Walla is a huge, cavernous affair. When it was ready for loading, row after row of cars started their engines and drove onto the car decks. For a while, it looked as though I would make it, but I didn’t. Loading stopped three cars away, leaving me near the head of the line for the next ferry—an hour later. The Washington State Ferry System is nothing if not implacable. No amount of whining, pleading, or dashboard pounding would fix it. And so, I sat there in my car, doing a slow burn, with nothing to do but think.
Halvorsen’s report of his conversation with the detective in Illinois had had a disquieting effect on me. It had stayed in the back of my mind and nipped away at me all afternoon. Now, sitting there trapped in the ferry line, I let out all the stops and stewed about it in dead earnest.
In order to find a killer, a cop sometimes has to put himself in the place of either the victim or the killer, and sometimes both. In this case, I had thought I was coming to grips with Tadeo Kurobashi, with who he was and what made him tick. But now, Alvin Grant’s talk about Lorenzo Tabone and Aldo Pappinzino showed me that there was a giant blind spot in my perception of the dead man.
Tadeo Kurobashi’s connection with a Chicago-based Mafia boss was something that didn’t fit and didn’t make sense, something I couldn’t get a handle on. Had Kurobashi been involved in the drug trade as Andy Halvorsen had suggested? Even as I asked the question, I discarded it. Nothing in Tadeo Kurobashi’s life had hinted at drugs. To all appearances he had been a hardworking entrepreneur, brought to his knees by a conspiracy of less than honest competition.
And if the mob was involved, as they evidently were, what did they want? Was the Mafia branching out and going high-tech these days? Had Tadeo invented some kind of electronics wizardry valuable enough to the criminal element that they were willing to kill in order to lay hands on it? If so, what was it and had they already gotten it? Sitting there in the line with the setting sun glaring in my face, my frustration level went up yet another notch or two.
I wished I could be in two places at once. Kimiko Kurobashi, unwittingly or not, probably held the key to everything I didn’t know, and by now, Detective Halvorsen should have finished interviewing her. What had she told him, and would it help us find her father’s killer? As my need to know went over the top, I reached for my car phone, dialed the Whitman County sheriff’s department, and asked to speak to Detective Halvorsen.
“Sorry, he’s sick. He’s gone home for the day,” the dispatcher told me.
“Home!” I yelped. “I thought he was on his way to Spokane.”
“I know he was planning to, but he called in sick early this afternoon.”
“Do you have his home number?” I asked.
“I’m not allowed to give it out.”
Of course he wasn’t allowed to give it out. I had the number myself, in my jacket, in the backseat. It just wasn’t easily accessible. I found it though, and a minute or so later, Halvorsen’s phone was ringing. It had rung seven or eight times, and I was about to hang up when he finally answered.
“Hello?” He sounded funny—distant, hesitant.
“Andy? This is Beau, in Seattle. Are you all right?”
“She’s gone,” he managed. His words were slurred. He sounded drunk.
“Gone?” My heart rose to my throat. Kimiko dead too? Had someone gotten to her in the hospital, or had she fallen victim to some unforeseen medical complication?
“How can that be?” I demanded. “I thought she was getting better, that the doctors said she was going to be okay.”
“Doctors? What doctors?”
“Kimiko’s doctors, goddamnit. Halvorsen, are you drinking or what?”
“Who said anything about Kimiko? Monica’s gone. She left me. Went home to her mother. I can’t believe it. How could she? I mean, she’s why I divorced Barbara. I gave up my kids because of her.”
Monica was gone, not Kimiko. My relief was almost overwhelming. “So Kimiko’s all right? Did you talk to her?”
“No, I came home to tell Monica I was on my way to Spokane and found her packing to leave. I tried to talk her out of it, but she wouldn’t listen. Wouldn’t even talk to me.”
The poor bastard doesn’t know when he’s well off, I thought. I said, “That’s too bad, Andy. I’m sorry to hear it. What are you going to do?”
“Beats the hell out of me. Wait here, I guess. See if she changes her mind and comes back.”
I didn’t tell him not to hold his breath. Going to her mother’s was probably nothing but a smoke screen. My guess was that Monica’s shopping around had zeroed in on somebody more to her liking and closer to her own age.
The next ferry had pulled into the Colman dock and was disgorging its load of vehicles. Around me, people were returning to their cars, starting their engines.
“Look, Andy,” I said. “I’ve gotta go. The ferry’s here and I’m going to have to hang up. Don’t try to do anything tonight. You’re in no condition, but tomorrow get your ass to Spokane and go to work. It’ll be good for what ails you, take your mind off your troubles.”
“You’re probably right,” Andy Halvorsen mumbled, but he didn’t sound convinced. I replaced the phone in its holder, started the car, and rumbled up the gangway onto the car deck. Front and center.
It’s an eighty-seven-mile trip from Seattle to Port Angeles, part of it by ferry and the rest on narrow two-lane secondary roads that meander through the forests of the Kitsap Peninsula, Bainbridge Island, and the Olympic Peninsula. It sounds rural, and it is, but it’s also full of traffic, particularly on Friday nights. I didn’t make very good time.
The various port and sawmill towns that dot the Washington coastline—Port Angeles, Port Townsend, Raymond, Sequim—are as similar as peas in a pod. I’ve always maintained that you could get drunk in one, wake up in another, and never know the difference.
Port Angeles is built on two levels. The upper one is the town proper. Regular houses are there along with churches, grocery stores, and the trappings of small-town life and business. The lower one is a duke’s mixture of tourist traps and lowbrow hotels, taverns, cafes, and restaurants that cater to freighter crewmen, sawmill workers, derelicts, and, occasionally, legitimate tourists. The shops do a land-office business in used books and made-in-Washington gewgaws.
The first person I asked for directions, a teenager pumping gas at a Texaco station, had never heard of the Ritz Hotel. I had expected an establishment with that kind of name to have a certain amount of stature in town and to be something of a landmark. The second person I asked, a grizzled drunk with a rolling gait and a pint bottle of vodka stashed in his hip pocket, nodded and pointed.
“Right up there, fella. Right over Davey’s Locker. You got a quarter for a cup of coffee?” I tossed him a quarter, knowing full well he’d put it to bad use.
Davey’s Locker turned out to be a tavern on the street level of a long, narrow, two-story frame building whose blackened shingles were rotting with age. The street outside was empty, so I parked directly in front. The tavern, its front windows painted an opaque blue, took up the entire bottom of the building except for the width of a steep, dilapidated stairway that led up from a single door in one corner of the front of the building. Gilt letters stenciled on the glass proclaimed somebody’s small joke on the world—THE RITZ HOTEL. Ritz indeed! It looked like an over-the-hill flophouse. A condemned over-the-hill flophouse.
To my surprise, the battered door wasn’t locked. I pushed it open and looked up a steep flight of scarred linoleum-covered stairs. Both the walls of the stairway and the ceiling as well had been covered with what looked like old egg crates. I recognized the wall covering as a poor man’s version of make-do soundproofing. A single naked light bulb hung from a twisted brown cord high above the stairs.
Attached to the wall on the downstairs landing was a pay telephone. The number was printed on the face of the phone, but when I reached for my notebook to check that number against the one taken from Tadeo Kurobashi’s message pad, I realized I had left my notebook on the seat of the car. I stood there wavering for a moment, wondering if I should go back out and get it right then, or wait.
I decided to wait. My life is like that, made up of small and seemingly inconsequential decisions that come back later and nip me in the butt.
“Hello?” I called up the stairs.
Nobody answered, but just then a gigantic burst of music rumbled down the stairs like an avalanche, with bass notes so loud that they vibrated the wooden hand rail I was holding.
“Hello,” I called again, but there was no answer. No one could possibly have heard me above that earsplitting racket.
The music stopped momentarily and then started again at the exact same note. It sounded as though an entire symphonic orchestra must be rehearsing in the dim upstairs reaches of the Ritz Hotel.
I climbed to the top of the stairs, covering my ears with the palms of my hands in an effort to filter out some of the music. The noise level reminded me of a rock concert. The music, more classical than rock, was nothing I recognized.
The upstairs landing was soundproofed just as the stairs had been, and so was the long narrow corridor that led from the top of the stairs to the far end of the building. I had expected that the corridor would be lined with a long row of doors leading to separate rooms. Instead, only two doors were showing in the entire hallway, one at the far end of the building and the other directly in front of me. I waited until the next lull in the music and pounded on the door as soon as it was quiet.
The man who opened the door was in his mid to late thirties, six-foot-five at least, with long flowing chestnut hair. I know women who would kill to have hair like his, women who have paid a hundred dollars a crack for permanents and dye jobs in futile attempts to duplicate that look.
In the old days this guy would have worn rope sandals and been called a Jesus freak. Instead, he wore earphones and carried an open laptop computer. I looked beyond him, expecting to see a roomful of people. Instead, I saw a huge room filled with all kinds of computer equipment. Clay Woodruff was an electronics junky. A hacker.
“Are you Clay Woodruff?” I asked.
He nodded. “Whaddaya want?” he demanded, holding one of his earphones away from his head. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”
“My name is J. P. Beaumont. I’m with the Seattle Police. May I come in?”
“Come back later. I’m working on a deadline.”
He punched a few keys on the computer and closed his eyes to listen. Again a blast of music exploded around me. I waited. He was evidently playing only a short passage on some kind of complicated synthesizer, and I figured he’d stop the music again before long. When he did, I was still standing in the doorway.
“Not enough bass,” he muttered loudly when he once more shut off the music. “Ever since those kids messed with my stuff, I haven’t been able to get enough bass.”
“It sounds like there’s more than enough bass to me,” I yelled, in order to be heard through his earphones.
Clay Woodruff looked at me in surprise, as though I had materialized out of thin air. “I’m here concerning Tadeo Kurobashi,” I added, still shouting.
Woodruff’s thick, bushy eyebrows came together in a frown. “What about him?” he asked.
“He’s dead.”
In one swift motion, Woodruff peeled off his earphones and put them on a table beside the door. “You’re kidding. When? How?”
“Last Sunday night, after he came here to visit you.”
I pulled out my ID and handed it to him. Woodruff looked at it carefully, then gave it back to me, closed the lid to his computer, and switched it off.
“Let’s go downstairs,” he said. “We’ll talk there.”
He closed and locked the hallway door behind him, put the key in his pocket, and then carried the laptop with him, stuffed under one arm like an oversized book. We had to go out on the sidewalk before we could go into the tavern. I stopped at the car long enough to retrieve my notebook, then he led the way into Davey’s locker. “Beer?” he asked.
It was long after hours. I was on my own time and in my own vehicle. “Sure,” I said. “Why not?”
Clay sat at a table just inside the door, placing the computer on the floor beside him. He signaled the bartender, holding up one finger on one hand and two fingers on the other. With a nod the bartender translated the prearranged signal into action, bringing over one large pitcher of beer along with two empty glasses and setting them on the table in front of us.
“How’s it going?” Clay asked.
The bartender shrugged. “Usual Friday night crowd. No problem.”
Clay poured two beers, expertly filling the glasses without running the head over the top. “Tell me what happened,” he said.
And so I told him some of it—Kurobashi’s death, the vicious attacks on Kurobashi’s wife and child—interspersing the telling with enough questions so that in the process of giving out information, I was also receiving it.
Yes, he and Tadeo had worked together at RFLink. Yes, he had been present during the patent discussion between Blakeslee and Tadeo, and when Blakeslee had refused the product, both he and Tadeo had quit outright. No, he had never received a summons to testify in Tadeo’s behalf during the patent infringement trial, and yes, he would have been glad to do so had he been notified.
Woodruff told me that he had received a commission to compose an original work for the Houston Symphony, and he had been working on that night and day for months, not accepting phone calls or seeing any visitors. Maybe the subpoena had come then, he said.
Throughout the discussion, Woodruff seemed gravely concerned, particularly when I told him about what had happened to Machiko and Kimi. “Are they going to be all right?”
“Machiko’s already out of the hospital. She’s staying with a friend of Kimi’s near Pullman. Kimi’s in Sacred Heart in Spokane. From what I heard today, she’s doing much better, but she’s a long way from being released.”
“I see,” he said.
“According to Mrs. Oliver, you called Mr. Kurobashi on Friday.”
Woodruff nodded. “That’s right.”
“Why?”
“I had told Tad that when I finished up with my commission, the two of us would do something together.”
“What do you mean? Go fishing? Take a trip?”
“No, no. We were a good team, the two of us. I knew that Tadeo was working on something, had been for years, and I wanted to market it for him. It takes three things to bring off a new product—engineering, money, and marketing.”
“What new product?”
Woodruff’s eyes became veiled. Until then, his answers had been forthright and easily given. Now he clammed up. He covered his mouth with his hand, letting one finger rest against the side of his nose. I worked my way through college selling Fuller Brush door-to-door. I can tell when somebody stops buying. Clay Woodruff had stopped cold.
“I can’t talk about it,” he said.
“What do you mean you can’t talk about it?”
“I’m doing a favor for a friend,” he replied. “Just because Tad is dead doesn’t mean I won’t keep my word.”
I wasn’t getting anywhere, so I tried a different angle. “When Mr. Kurobashi came to see you that day, did he seem upset to you?”
“Upset? Hell yes, he was upset. He had lost everything, and all because I didn’t testify. Then, out of the blue, I call him up and act as though we’re still asshole buddies. He was pissed as hell.”
“Were you?” I asked.
“Was I what?”
“Were you still asshole buddies?”
“As far as I was concerned we were,” Woodruff replied.
“Why didn’t you testify then?” I asked.
Woodruff drew back and looked at me. “I already told you. Because I never got called. I never got a summons. When I explained that to Tad, he understood. When I tried to reach him on Friday, I was calling in the dark. I had no idea that the judge had ruled against him and he was losing his business.”
“Tell me about his state of mind that day. Did he give any hint that he was in some kind of trouble or that his life might be in danger?”
“No.”
“And this product that you say he was working on. Would it be something that could be of use in illegal activities, something the Mafia might have a vital interest in?”
“No.”
“Did you ever know Mr. Kurobashi to have any dealings with criminal types?”
Once more Woodruff’s eyebrows knitted together to form a solid bridge across his nose. “You’re asking me if I have any knowledge of Tad being involved with organized crime?”
“Yes.”
Woodruff’s finger moved away from his nose. He rubbed his hand thoughtfully back and forth across his jutting chin. The salesman in me recognized the gesture as a buying signal—decision time.
“Wait here,” Woodruff said. “I need to go get something. Want another beer?”
“Fine,” I said.
Woodruff picked up the pitcher and filled both of our glasses; then, grabbing his computer from the floor, he excused himself and walked over to the bar. He spoke briefly to the bartender, then he came back to where we had been sitting.
“It’s upstairs,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
“Take your time,” I said casually, trying to conceal any show of curiosity about what he was going to get. The bartender came to the table and busily wiped off the damp rings left by the pitcher and glasses.
“So you’re from Seattle, are you?” he said, “Here for the weekend?”
“Just tonight,” I replied.
“The music starts up at nine,” he offered helpfully. “Local group, R and B. Real laid back. People around here seem to like it.”
“You mean you don’t play Woodruff’s music here in the bar?”
The bartender grinned. “Oh, it gets played in here all right. Not necessarily on purpose. For instance, everybody knows that section he was working on today pretty much by heart.”
“The soundproofing’s not that good?”
“You could say that.”
My glass was partially empty, and the bartender filled it with the dregs of the pitcher before hurrying back to the bar, where someone was calling him for a refill. I sat there alone for several minutes watching the denizens of Port Angeles and Davey’s Locker perform. They all knew one another, knew who was good at pool and who was lousy, who could hold their beer and who couldn’t. A television set in the background was quietly playing a “Star Trek” rerun to an audience of one medium-old lady with a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other. The place seemed as innocuous as an overgrown living room.
I drifted for a few moments, sipping the beer and contemplating what it would be like to live in a small town like this as opposed to a big city. When my glass was almost empty, though, I began to grow uneasy. It was taking Woodruff a hell of a long time to bring back whatever it was he was going to show me.
I turned and tried looking out the window, but the opaque blue glass barred any view of the street outside. I stood up, walked over to the door, opened it, and looked up and down. In either direction, the sidewalk and the wide one-way street were totally deserted. I stepped far enough out onto the sidewalk to see the windows of Woodruff’s apartment above Davey’s Locker. They were dark and empty, with no sign of life behind them, and when I tried the door to the stairway that led up to the Ritz Hotel, it was locked with an old-fashioned Masters padlock.
There was a sudden sinking sensation, a lurch in my stomach, telling me that somehow, for some reason, I’d been suckered. I turned toward the 928. My door was still locked, but I could see that the door on the passenger’s side wasn’t, even though I knew I had locked it. After all, I’m a cop. I always lock car doors.
“Damn!”
I hurried around to the driver’s side and opened it with my key. I shoved the key into the ignition and turned. Nothing happened. Not even so much as a click.
“Damn,” I said again. “Damn, damn, damn.”