A Dangerous Breed

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  “I’ve got the full profile; I can send that to you,” Corrigan said. “It’s not anything that can be used in court, just so you know. For that a lab tech would have to witness the samples directly—”

  “Not necessary,” I said.

  “Cool. I gotta get out of here, get some sleep. It’s been a minute since I’ve pulled an all-nighter.”

  I hung up.

  Sean Burke, seventeen. Boyfriend of Moira Shaw, sixteen. A relationship doomed to fail, but it had lasted long enough to permanently change at least one of their lives, not to mention starting mine.

  God.

  Burke had wanted to know. I wasn’t up for sharing the news. Not yet.

  A notion of ordering another Boxer’s Fracture tequila drink or six occurred. I let it slide past. Getting bombed—more thoroughly bombed—wasn’t going to help my mood. I was still figuring out what the hell my mood was.

  Of all the fathers I might have imagined, Burke wasn’t even on the list. If the man had any redeeming qualities other than his faith in his friend Martens, I hadn’t seen them.

  I owed Burke my life. I wasn’t sure I owed him the truth.

  An hour later I surrendered my stool at the counter and wandered outside into an unexpected sleet. The slush fell at an angle that spoke of intentional spite, working its shivering way under collars and into gloves. While the cold didn’t instantly sober me, it ensured my body would be burning every bit of fuel to stay warm, sugary alcohol included.

  I needed clean clothes if I was going to stay at Addy’s for any longer. I’d stop at my apartment, pack a bag.

  But once I got there, I found myself sitting in my leather wingback chair, an extravagant piece that I’d bought because it reminded me of one Dono had once owned. I began looking up gubernatorial candidate Palmer Stratton on my laptop. He was the man in charge. The one who would decide whether Sean Burke—my father, my brain insisted on adding—would live or die, indirectly.

  I didn’t like Stratton’s face. Or his Holy Order, Ivy League, yacht-and-country-club background. Even his mom, Margaret, pissed me off, with her endless causes, every one of them hyping the Stratton name.

  I knew it was classist. I knew my opinion of Stratton was powered by booze. But fuck the guy. Whatever good he’d done as a prosecutor was just to balance the scales, make him more palatable to voters before he leapt into the political arena. He practically had crusader stamped on his Botoxed forehead. With all the morally superior fervor that word implied.

  Stratton was the man I needed to convince. Or barter with. I had knowledge that might be crucial to bringing down Liashko. Stratton was the only guy who could assure me that whatever happened, even if that didn’t include the arms trafficker in handcuffs, the Feds would get Burke to safety.

  His campaign webpage listed a private fund-raiser at the Alexis Hotel tomorrow night. For key donors and potentials, no doubt. Security would be tight. I’d have to think how to clear those hurdles, once my thoughts were back in full working order.

  A text lit up my phone on the armrest of the chair.

  ANYTHING?

  It was from Burke. Maybe he was as curious, in his own sociopathic way, to know the results as I had been.

  I could keep delaying the inevitable, or get it over with. I chose the latter.

  Anderson Park reservoir. Half an hour.

  The park would be closed at one o’clock in the morning, but I doubted Sean Burke would be put off by city ordinances any more than I was. Plus the reservoir was practically on my doorstep. Home field advantage.

  He came from the north side, past the volcano-shaped fountain that had been turned off for the winter. Enough glistening frost from the earlier rush of sleet remained that his shoes made crunching sounds on the pathway.

  “So?” he said, while still ten yards off.

  I nodded confirmation.

  He stopped short. “Damn.”

  “Can’t put it better than that.”

  A curved concrete border around the dormant fountain served double duty as a bench. We sat. Burke seemed no worse for wear from his binge on downers the night before. His grizzly-brown hair shone wetly. Too long since the sleet had fallen; maybe he’d showered before going out. In his black windbreaker and khakis, he might have been about to tee off a very late round of night golf at the Jefferson course.

  “I dunno what to do about it, now that we know,” he said.

  “Now you tell me about you and Moira. No bullshit this time.”

  Burke took a long breath. “It’s been thirty years. More.”

  I waited.

  “Gus brought me along one day when he came to see your old guy, Dono. Pops was buying something from him. Some sort of whatsit that would help Gus get past a burglar alarm. That sound right?”

  It did. Dono could make such a tool in his sleep. Though Gut Burke must have been willing to pay a small fortune for my grandfather to bend his rules and deal directly with a mob enforcer.

  “Moira was at the house that day,” Burke said. “Damn. Gut had to slap my skull, I was staring so hard at her. I know she’s your ma and all, and I don’t mean no disrespect, but shit, I was a teenage boy. I managed to talk to her some. She wouldn’t give me her phone number at the house. But she said she’d call me.”

  And she had. Moira Shaw, straight-A student, apparently had a thing for bad boys. I couldn’t muster any surprise, given our family. My mouth was dry.

  “We had to sneak around,” Burke continued, “and we hardly ever went anywhere when it was just the two of us. We’d go to the movies or hang with friends of mine from school.”

  “She ever talk about herself? Her plans?”

  “College for sure, I know that much. But Moira was . . . her mom had died like a couple of years before. She was kinda distant.”

  “Not too distant.”

  “Well, yeah. When she, ah—when she said she wanted to get with me, it was a surprise, you know? I figured she still had her cherry. Sorry.”

  I shook my head. We were past protecting anyone’s memory.

  “Then she called me a week after and broke it off. That was it.”

  “What about later? The letters she wrote you?”

  Burke’s head snapped around. “Jesus. You’ve seen those? What, did she keep copies?”

  “Her best friend caught her. That’s how I learned your name.”

  He relaxed. “Well, shit. Yeah, she wrote me. I was wanting to get back together. She sent a letter: Thanks but No Thanks. Embarrassing as fuck. I’m glad you didn’t see it.”

  “And that was all?”

  “Almost.” He took out his keys and began to remove something from the ring, slipping it off an inch-long ball chain of metal, like a tiny dogtag necklace. He handed the object to me.

  It was a round brass disc about the size and shape of a fifty-cent piece. Tarnished half green from inattention. My religious education was nonexistent, but I recognized it as a Catholic medallion for a saint. The image etched in relief showed a bearded man standing ramrod straight, with a lighthouse in the background on his left side and a twin-masted sailing ship on the right.

  “Saint Brendan,” Burke said. “Built a boat and sailed around spreading the gospel. Moira sent that to me a few weeks after her kiss-off letter. She didn’t explain why. I figured it was ʼcause Gus and I got around a lot, we needed protecting.”

  She might have sent the medal to Burke after she realized she was pregnant with me. The timing was right. Stopping short of telling him about the baby—maybe she’d already judged Burke as a rock-bottom choice to raise a kid—but wanting her child’s father to be safe nonetheless.

  Moira had been sixteen. Hard to fathom exactly what she might have been thinking, or the stress she was under.

  I could sympathize with her desire to keep Burke safe, though. Lousy daddy material or not.

  He looked at the frost on the ground, sparkling in the lamplight. “I wish she’d said something.”

  The brass medallion fi
t in the key pocket of my coat like it had been crafted for it.

  “What’s Liashko bringing into the country?” I said.

  Burke frowned. “I told you to keep out of that.”

  “Stepan and his team are dead, you’re taking over. That makes you more valuable to the Feds now. Do you have any written guarantee they won’t cut you loose?”

  “Leave it.”

  “Not now I won’t. Not after this.”

  “I’m askin’ you. For Moira.”

  Angry as I was at Burke, laughter nearly won the moment. His cheap fucking ploy.

  I tapped the medal in my pocket. “All this means is that a teenage girl gave a damn. Don’t start pretending Moira was more to you than she was.”

  Burke looked at me like I’d sprouted antennae.

  “I’m on Liashko’s hit list, too,” I said. “You want payback for Gus? Let’s get it. Liashko will rot in a supermax cell twenty-three hours a day for the rest of his life. He’ll know every minute that you’re the reason. Give me something.”

  “You’re crazy,” he said. “I mean you’re really fuckin’ bughouse.”

  “But not stupid. I found you. I can do a lot more. What don’t you know about Liashko’s deal? Where can’t the Feds go?”

  Burke just kept staring. “I know what he’s selling, but not where he’s got them stashed. Yet. The paranoid fuck isn’t trusting me.” His hands tightened around his knees. “You really think you can find his stuff?”

  “I got a knack for it. What am I looking for?”

  He looked at the dry fountain, like it might help him decide. Grunted a laugh.

  “Shit, I’ve gambled this far,” he said. “Might as well go all in. You know what a Verba is?”

  It was my turn to be stunned. “Russian surface-to-air missile launchers. Portable, for ground troops.”

  “That’s right. When things really started to slide for Anatoly, he found a way to lift a bunch of those babies from some separatist group backed by his old Russian masters and blame their disappearance on the Ukrainian armed forces. Forty missiles with reusable trigger mechanisms and sights. I saw ’em myself, in Moldova, more than a year ago. Liashko’s looking to close up shop. Everything he stole out of the war in the Donbass region, in one go.”

  Jesus. Like most modern missile launchers, the Verba had seeking and guidance tech built right in. Designed for infantry grunts who might have to fire the weapon after only a few spare minutes of training in the field. The missiles came with ultraviolet and infrared sensors both, to engage targets with even minimal radar signatures.

  Just one of those could bring down a jetliner, or a military chopper, or a cruise missile. Damn near anything in the sky. Forty, deployed strategically, could temporarily cripple a nation.

  Burke must have read my shock. “Ease up before you have a stroke. We’re all over this.”

  “We?”

  “Anatoly’s buyer, the guy I’ve set him up with, is ATF.” Burke spat on the ground in satisfaction. “An agent pretending to be a cartel go-between. We’ll have a hundred Feds in combat gear swarming that piece of shit like ants on a dead rat the second he shows his face.”

  Because they didn’t know where the Verbas were.

  For once, I was ahead of Burke and the task force both.

  “This could still go sideways,” I said, “if Liashko never lets on where he’s got the missiles.”

  “Like I said, I’ll take that chance. Anatoly has fifteen million comin’ to him, he thinks. That’s a fucking big incentive. If you can really point me to those missiles, that’s all we need. Once we nail this asswipe, you’re home free.”

  “And you’ll have a new name.”

  Burke grunted. “Yeah. It may not be much of a life in whatever podunk shithole they stick me in. But I’ll be livin’.”

  He stood up.

  “For whatever it’s worth, I liked her,” he said, and he pointed to my pocket with the medal of Saint Brendan. “Hang on to that. She woulda wanted you to have it.”

  “If I don’t see you . . .”

  “You won’t.” He smiled grimly. “One more week, and I’m as gone as gone can be.”

  Betty closed her bar early on Mondays. I let myself in the back and went directly to the alcove where she kept the DVR that captured the feed off the security cameras.

  The cameras had been a debate between us in the old location. Betty didn’t want her customers to feel watched. I wanted a positive ID on anyone who made trouble. Taking that side had felt odd at the time: Van Shaw, Crimestopper. But I’d persevered. That same week a brawl had broken out in one of the U District watering holes, resulting in everyone threatening to sue everyone else. That had probably helped my argument.

  The DVR stored a week’s worth of high-def from eight different cameras I’d installed at key angles. Right now, I was concerned about the one to the right of the main bar. I clicked on last Saturday and sped through the captured feed until just before closing time.

  There I was, with Special Agent Martens across the bar from me. His blue rep tie in full color. I let the silent video play at normal speed, as Martens gathered his coat and left the screen toward the back of the bar, as I went in the opposite direction to close up.

  Martens returned almost immediately to the screen. Crouching very low, hiding from the rest of the bar behind the high counter. I watched as his image pulled out the recycling bin from underneath, removed something, and crept back the way he’d come.

  A beer bottle. My beer bottle, the Reuben’s Porter I had tossed during our little talk about me becoming an informant for the ATF task force.

  Martens already had easy access to my fingerprints. I’d been booked before, plus my prints had been taken during military service. The only other use for that bottle was a sample of my DNA. But that could also be obtained by an official request to the Army. They had snagged a blood specimen from me when I was first inducted, same as any recruit. So what the hell was Martens after?

  Burke might have confessed to his old friend why I’d sought Burke out, and that young Sean might have fathered me three decades ago. Martens and the task force could be checking that evidence for themselves. But if the task force wanted my DNA to find out the truth about Burke and me, why would Burke have given me his swab? Were the two sides operating independently, not sharing information?

  There was another possible reason, besides my parentage. The task force was looking to match my DNA to evidence found at a crime scene. Maybe they didn’t want to wait while the Army processed the request through its endless channels.

  The break-in at Burke’s house? Or somewhere else? I thought back, wondering if I had slipped up somewhere. I couldn’t think of any crime I’d committed that might intersect with the task force’s aims. But then, I’d broken into plenty of places since my return to Seattle. And my crimes hadn’t stopped at B&E, either. Maybe Martens and his team had their sights on nailing me on another charge. Force my cooperation.

  If a federal task force had added me to their list of suspects, I could wind up working for the law whether I liked it or not. That was the best-case scenario. The other would be a long stay in maximum security, maybe right alongside Anatoly Liashko.

  Forty-Six

  Online registration for the night’s fund-raiser for Palmer Stratton, candidate for governor of the great state of Washington, had closed the day before. But a morning call to Stratton’s campaign HQ produced a volunteer who had clearly downed plenty of coffee despite the early hour. He passed me on to a senior coordinator, to whom I breathlessly explained that I’d seen the candidate’s performance in the debates and heartily agreed with his positions and would be delighted to purchase a pair of seats at one of the premier tables at tonight’s little gathering, if any of those might still be available. She didn’t squander a second in taking down my debit card number and held the line until the charge for ten thousand dollars cleared.

  It did, barely. As fast as I’d made my substantial nest egg from
selling my family land and from less legitimate means, it had evaporated.

  Worth it, if my most recent spending spree got me close enough to Stratton to say a few words.

  My next call was to Wren.

  “How do you feel about incredibly overpriced chicken with a side of political speeches?” I said.

  “I get enough punishment on the derby track. Is this our date tonight?”

  “Sort of. A fund-raiser for the governor’s race.”

  She made a humming sound of consideration. “You don’t seem the type of guy to go to partisan rallies.”

  “No.”

  “Am I . . . camouflage?”

  “Yes. But not for anything illegal. I need to speak to the candidate, and this is the fastest way.”

  “You take your activism seriously. This has something to do with your dad, yeah?”

  “It does. Are you up for it?”

  I heard her moving, then the sound of Janelle Monáe singing in the background dimmed.

  “Two conditions,” Wren said. “Tell me why this is so important.”

  “That’s a long story, and I’m late to meet someone up in Everett. I’ll call you after and tell you what’s going on. If you don’t like anything about it, you can bail. No hard feelings.”

  “You have a really weird way of flirting. How dressy is this fund-raiser?”

  I hadn’t even thought about clothes. The blue checked suit I’d acquired from the grumpy Giuseppe hung in my closet, back in its bag. “I’m guessing jackets and ties?”

  Wren laughed. “Why is it guys never know? Doesn’t matter. I have a dress that’s conformist enough for any political stripe.”

  “Was that your second condition?”

  “No. We’ll get into that later. What time does the dinner start?”

  “Six o’clock.”

  “Pick me up at five-thirty.” She gave me her address, a house in Fauntleroy. “And don’t forget to call me. This is a story I have to hear.”

  I’d already told Wren about my relationship to Burke and hinted at the kind of work he did. I could give her the rundown on Liashko and the task force without naming names or putting the investigation at risk.