I chuckled. “I’ve been called worse. What did you say?”
“I wanted to talk to you first, but I didn’t tell him that. I told him I was busy and would get back to him.”
“Good. Did he say what they wanted to talk to you about?”
“Something about important estate issues that have come up. What should I do now?”
I hesitated. It would be interesting to hear what they had to say, even if I wasn’t present. On the other hand, the threat of them manipulating or coercing her in some way wasn’t worth the risk. “Tell him you’d be glad to meet, but only if your lawyer’s present. See what they say. We’ll go from there.”
“He called a couple of hours ago. I can call him back now, if you want.”
I told her to do it, and when she got Melvin Turner’s voice-mail, she left an unambiguous message that was bound to disappoint him.
Hearing that your mother may have been murdered in a most vicious manner is a lot to deal with, particularly for a young, sensitive woman trying to maintain her sobriety, but I decided it was time to level with Angela. She sat down on the mat next to Archie and listened while I laid out what Semyon told me about the Lexus and the implications of that information. When I finished, she leaned forward, hugged her knees, and slowly exhaled. Her face had gone a shade lighter, but her eyes burned with intensity. “What are you going to do now, call the cops?”
I shook my head. “Not yet. All I’ve got is a bunch of dots. I’ve got to connect them before I can do anything definitive. I’ve got a good private investigator helping me with that.”
She leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes as tears started streaming from them. “Everyone kept calling it an accident, and I guess I sort of went along with it.” She sniffed and swiped her cheeks with balled fists. “I feel ashamed now. Deep down I should have known it was no accident.” She looked up at me through wet eyes. “I feel like I let her down. She was an experienced jogger. She wouldn’t have just run in front of some stupid Lexus. I should have told the cops that.”
“You have nothing to be ashamed of, Angela. Don’t forget, you came to me because you were dissatisfied with the situation. That shows you had your doubts. Nothing at all would have happened without the action you took. We’ll get to the bottom of this, I promise.”
She sighed and cast her eyes downward. The room grew silent except for the traffic noise streaming in through an open window facing North Williams. I was about to speak when she pulled out her cell, glanced at it, and broke the silence. “Hey, I’ve got to go. I’m due at a meeting over in Southwest in thirty minutes.” I must have looked puzzled, because she added, “An AA meeting. I’m leading it today. It’ll give me a chance to share some of the feelings this dredged up.” She met my eyes and laughed that buoyant laugh of hers, the first I’d heard that day. “Without spilling the beans, of course.”
“Excellent.” I felt a bit relieved at what appeared to be fortuitous timing.
As I navigated crosstown traffic, I wondered what Turner and Avery were up to. Margaret Wingate’s will was settled, so what did they want with Angela now? How would they react when she tells them I’m in, or else? And how should I play it after she hears back from them? I had extracted a promise from Angela to call me as soon as that happens, and I had an inkling of what they might have in mind. I was anxious to see if I was right.
I thought about Angela, too. I admired the courage of this young woman and the commitment she showed to her art and to her sobriety. I thought about my own commitment. I’d just made her a big promise. A promise I intended to keep, but could I?
Chapter Seventeen
“Dobro pozhalovat,” a voice boomed out from speakers on either side of a makeshift stage. “Welcome.” It was an hour later, and I was standing in the back at the groundbreaking ceremony in Southeast Portland for the new Russian Community Center. I’d seen a notice in the paper and stopped by out of sheer curiosity in hopes of getting a look at Ilya Boyarchenko, who, I read, would keynote the affair. No surprise there. He was bankrolling the new center.
Rick Holtzman, one of Tracey’s cohorts on the City Council, was standing behind the MC and next to another man I guessed was Boyarchenko. The Russian was a heavyset man with broad shoulders and an angular head that seemed at odds with his nearly square body. Holtzman wore a slightly forced, uncomfortable smile. Clearly, was he wasn’t happy standing next to a reputed—but never proven—Mafia boss. Maybe he’d drawn the short straw at City Council. Politics does make for strange bedfellows, after all.
After saying a few words in Russian, then in English, the MC handed the mike over to Holtzman, who talked about the importance of the community center and the dynamism of the Russian community in Portland, a city that valued and celebrated diversity. The crowd—a mix of families, teens, young adults, working people—liked the message and gave Holtzman an enthusiastic round of applause when he finished.
Ilya Boyarchenko took the mike next and began his talk speaking in Russian, which elicited a smattering of applause. He then shifted to English and talked about the growing strength of the Slavic community in Portland—some forty-thousand strong, I learned—and the importance of preserving their language, their culture, and their spiritual life. “This cultural center,” he told the crowd, “will go a long way toward achieving those goals.” When he finished, the applause was polite but well short of the response to Holtzman. The message was clear—we’ll accept your money, but we don’t approve of you.
Semyon Lebedev was right. Ilya Boyarchenko gave the Russians in Portland a bad name.
The speeches were followed by the usual ribbon-cutting and groundbreaking with chrome-plated shovels. Afterwards I stood on the periphery as the crowd cleared. Several people lined up to talk to Boyarchenko, and then finally he started to leave in the company of his wife and two nice looking teens, a boy wearing a Blazer ball cap and a girl wearing a Portland Thorns jersey. I watched them go, and as they reached a silver Mercedes, attended by a driver who looked like he could bench-press the car, a man approached them. He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place him from where I was standing. I moved in a little closer and realized it was Fred Poindexter, the Chairman of the Portland Planning Commission.
The wife and kids got in the Mercedes while Boyarchenko stood nearby and lit up. I moved back into what was left of the crowd so that Poindexter, who glanced around every so often, wouldn’t notice me. The two men talked until Boyarchenko finally tossed his cigarette on the ground, joined his family in the Mercedes, and sped away.
Huh, I thought. I guess it makes sense that the Planning Chief would want to talk to someone who’s donating half a million dollars to what amounts to city infrastructure. But there was something furtive about that conversation. Why did Poindexter wait until Boyarchenko was alone at his car to approach him? And why was he looking around like he was nervous?
I didn’t know, but it made me wonder.
Commuting from Portland to Dundee that Monday morning instead of the other way around seemed weird, but at least the traffic on I-5 going south wasn’t quite as thick. When we arrived at my office, even Archie seemed a little disoriented as he hopped out of the backseat. We went across to the bakery, and I ordered a double cap and a pain au chocolat to go. Might as well start the week off right, I figured. It was a slack day, so I busied myself tallying up billable hours for the last month, a boring task that was mercifully interrupted with a call from Claire fifty minutes later. Ostensibly, the call was to tell me she was leaving for the Gulf Coast to do fieldwork on her project—the impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on coastal wetlands—but she quickly steered the call around to Winona.
“She’s fine,” I said. “I’m giving her lots of space like you recommended.” Before my daughter could reply, I changed the subject by asking about her research, a topic she was passionate about. It worked. I got an update on the impact of cru
de oil on marsh vegetative cover and avoided having to discuss my faltering love life. “Call me when you get down there, and let me know where you’re staying,” I told her, and when we signed off, I looked over at Arch. “Damn, I’m proud of that girl.”
I had reached the halfway mark on billable hours for April when another call came in. “It is going to be even tougher than I thought.”
“What is?” I was irritated, as usual, at Nando’s habit of launching into a subject without any preamble.
“Trying to find an informant in the Boyarchenko organization. It is what you might call a closed system. One possibility, however, is Boyarchenko’s lawyer, a man named Byron Hofstetter. Do you know this man?”
“Wasn’t he the lawyer who kept that strip club out on 82nd from getting shut down?”
Nando chuckled. “Yes, the Lusty Devil Club, which the neighbors were up in arms about.”
“Right. That case went all the way to the Oregon Supreme Court. Didn’t know Hofstetter worked for Boyarchenko.”
“Since the last eight years. I am thinking we might take a hard look at him.”
I knew that “hard look” was code for hacking Hofstetter’s e-mail. Nando used a young freelancer from time to time who was highly adept at this and other digital black arts. I didn’t want to know anything about that, and Nando knew it. The vagueness didn’t salve my conscience, but I needed the information and knew it wouldn’t go beyond me and, of course, would have no evidentiary value. “Uh, yeah, do what it takes. I’m just looking for a connection.”
Call it situational ethics.
“I will see what can be done.” The line went quiet for a few seconds before Nando added, “This fellow, Boyarchenko, has a nasty reputation, Calvin. You are sure you want to rattle the hornets’ nest? I do not have the good feeling about this.”
“Semyon gave me the same warning. Yes, I’m sure. Boyarchenko had to have given the order to send that Lexus straight to the crusher. I want to know why.” After I punched off, I sat there wondering if I was like that frog before the water boils. Turner and Avery had legal and financial resources that could crush me. And Boyarchenko had muscle that could break my knees or worse, much worse.
That afternoon, I finally got a break to pay another visit to the Swanson Motel, hoping to catch the handyman again, the one person I’d uncovered who’d seen the mystery man with Lenny the Fox. He’d used an incoming call as an excuse to end our last conversation, and I was convinced he had more to tell me. Knowing the information wouldn’t come cheap, I stopped at a drive-through ATM on the way out of Dundee and withdrew two hundred dollars in twenties, reminding myself to add this to Angela’s tab. The expenses were piling up. An hour later, I pulled into the back lot of the Swanson and couldn’t believe my luck—his white van was just pulling out. I followed him to a little bar on SE Foster called Henry’s and watched him walk in. When I sat down next to him at the bar a few minutes later, he looked at me through the mirror behind the liquor bottles, then turned. “What the hell now, bub?”
“I’d like to buy your dinner, if you’ll join me”—I nodded toward an empty booth in the back.
He turned back and spoke to me using his reflected image. “Dinner? That’s not good enough. And if we do any more business, I gotta know you’ll keep me out of it.”
I forced a soothing smile. “I know, job security. Same deal as before. I don’t use your name ever. Could be more in it than dinner, but that depends on you.” He sat there for a while then picked up his beer, and I followed his slow amble to the booth. I waited while he drained his glass, wiped his lips with the back of his hand, and held the glass up to alert the waitress.
“I’m still interested in the man you saw that night with the suicide victim.” I placed two twenties on the table. Openers.
He reached out and eased the twenties to his side of the table. “What more can I tell you?”
“You’re sure you can’t remember anything more about this guy?”
He blew out a breath and made a face, as if using his memory was painful. “I told you, all I got was an impression somebody else was driving. I didn’t give a shit what he looked like, you know?” He chuckled. “Now, if it’d been a woman…”
The waitress arrived, and he ordered another beer, a steak sandwich, buffalo wings, and a double batch of cheese fries. I ordered a cup of black coffee, and after the waitress left, said, “Was anyone else around that night? A maid? A working girl? Anyone?”
He looked blank for a few moments, then his rheumy eyes suddenly registered something, a momentary flicker behind the pupils. “There’s a guy might know somethin’. He was around that Thursday night about the right time.” His eyes narrowed down some. “I can tell you how to find ’im, but it’ll cost you three more twenties.”
“Tell me a little more.”
“Name’s Spider-Man.” The chuckle again. “Least, that’s what I call ’im. Don’t know his real name, of course. Don’t know any of the Johns. Comes in twice a week for a quickie. He was around that Thursday night at about the right time. Could’ve seen something.”
An even hundred to talk to Spider-Man. Worth a shot, I decided, and peeled off three more twenties. “So, how do I find Spider-Man?”
He raked the twenties in. “Comes in Mondays and Thursdays at seven, like clockwork. Drives one of those little Italian sport cars, a Spider. Bright red. Can’t miss ’im.
I thanked the handyman, and we ended our session with a handshake just as his food arrived, an event that laid down an aroma of rancid grease. I paid the bill and left him munching his sandwich and fries with a fresh beer at his elbow.
That evening, after we arrived back at Caffeine Central, I weakened, whisked up Archie, and walked over to Winona’s loft. I walked past it once. The porch light was on, although it was still light outside, suggesting she hadn’t returned from Warm Springs. I turned around, tried the bell, and when no one answered, pecked out a text:
Hey, how was the sweat? Missing you a lot. Call. We need to talk.
I wasn’t kidding. We did need to talk. This was getting ridiculous.
Angela checked in with me later that evening. “No, he hasn’t called me back,” she said when I asked her about Melvin Turner. “Maybe he won’t, now that I said I wouldn’t meet without you.” I agreed that was a possibility but suggested we wait another day before deciding what to do next. I hung up, hoping Turner would make contact.
Winona didn’t call that night, which probably explains the weird dream I had. This time I was sitting in a pitch-black room. Out in the hall, I could hear Winona talking, although I couldn’t quite understand what she was saying. I got up and began groping around to find the door, but I couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried. I awoke abruptly, drenched in sweat and full of frustration bordering on anger.
The next morning I was getting into the car, after letting Arch into the backseat, when my cell phone played a digital blues riff. “Good morning, sir, this is Mel Turner,” the voice began. “I’m wondering if you could spare me and Brice Avery some time today? We could come to your office on Couch, if that would be convenient.”
Sir? And how did he know I was in Portland, not Dundee? I glanced at my watch. “Uh, sure. How about nine-thirty?” I gave him the street number. “To what do I owe this honor?”
An amiable chuckle. “We’d like to discuss an offer we’re willing to make to you and your client, Angela Wingate.”
An offer we can’t refuse? I was tempted to say. “Okay, see you then.”
Turner arrived first, dressed in a summer-weight pinstriped suit and paisley tie and carrying a thin leather attaché case. His eyes betrayed a bit of anxiety, and his clean-shaven cherub cheeks reminded me of a ripe peach. I sat on the edge of my desk and offered him a seat in front of me. After looking around, he said, “Our firm does some pro bono work in Portland, mainly for Margaret’s charities. We should com
pare our experiences one of these days.” I pushed my lower lip out and nodded. Of course, we both knew that would never happen.
An awkward silence was broken by Brice Avery’s arrival. He wore chinos, an open-neck, button down shirt, and boat shoes. After apologizing for being late, he said, “Thanks for meeting with us on such short notice, Claxton.” I sat back down on the edge of the desk facing the two of them with my arms crossed. As if sensing I was staking out the high ground as a negotiating tactic, he remained standing, his stern eyes belying the smile on his gray-stubble face.
I got up and sat behind my desk, and Avery sat down as well, ending the dance. “So, gentlemen, what’s on your minds?”
Avery leaned back and steepled his fingers. Turner leaned in. “We understand the shock that Angela has gone through, losing yet another parent. No child should have to go through such an ordeal.” A quick glance at Avery before continuing. “We, ah, think that Margaret Wingate’s will was fair and it certainly represented her last wishes, but we’d like to do more to secure Angela’s future.” He paused there, inviting me to reply, and when I didn’t, he continued. “Of course, we’re not suggesting the use of any company funds.”
I nodded. “The probate judge would have to sign off on that.”
When I didn’t continue to speak, Avery broke the silence. “That’s right. In exchange, we’d like assurances from Angela and you, as her lawyer, that you’ll drop this silliness about challenging the will.”
“Where would these funds come from?”
Avery glanced at Turner, then back at me, and offered up a friendly smile. “I think you can understand that’s something we don’t wish to divulge.”
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