Middle of Nowhere

by Ridley Pearson

  Boldt said.

  “If I had a body like that, I might show it off for a few bucks. I’m built like a truck. So what can I do about it?”

  “You are not!” Boldt objected. “You’re a good-looking woman.”

  “That’s horse shit, L.T.”

  “Lacey Delgato is one thing.” He hesitated, “I’m not having this conversation,” he said vehemently. After a long silence, Gaynes said under her breath,

  “Thank you for saying that, L.T. You’re a peach.”

  “So I’ll make you a deal,” he said.

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  “Shoot.”

  “I’ll handle the bouncer and the bartender if you’ll do the talking with the ladies.” He checked to make sure a cruiser was following, as ordered. “If she’s here, it’s straight into the radio car for a ride downtown. I want her scared.”

  “They’re girls, L.T.” Correcting him. “Bodies as hard as that; they just don’t last all that long.”

  Upon entering Mike’s Pleasure Palace, Boldt shouted to be heard above Don Henley’s grinding rock and roll.

  “These girls don’t often use their real names, even with the help,” Gaynes said, pulling him down to hear.

  “Use the mug shot from BCI.”

  “Unnecessary,” Boldt said, pointing to the stage where pulsing blue light welcomed the next dancer to the platform. Wearing a translucent wet T-shirt and an equally showy, wet white cotton thong, the relatively small-chested Courtney Samway strutted out onto stage, her platinum blond hair showing slightly from beneath a black wig. There was no mistaking her. She didn’t have the meaty frame of a stripper, and the crowd of men seemed to be assessing her until she began to move to the music, at which point all eyes took to the stage.

  Boldt scanned the crowd for Flek. “You see him?”

  “No,” Gaynes replied. “But I’m thinking we might want to hang for a while in case he shows. We approach her too soon we could scare him off.”

  “I’m not hanging around, if that’s what you’re sug-272

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  gesting,” Boldt said. “I want her downtown. I want some answers.”

  She slithered like a snake, wrapping herself around her own frame suggestively. The T-shirt came off somewhere in the process, followed a moment later by the thong. Boldt told himself he wouldn’t have watched if he hadn’t been required to, but in truth there wasn’t a male not watching. She didn’t have a centerfold body, but she was shapely enough.

  “Hair coloring’s a match,” Boldt said, still looking.

  “Thing looks like a sheepskin rug,” Gaynes said.

  “ ’Bout as natural-looking as one of those car seat covers.”

  “You take the dressing room,” Boldt advised Gaynes.

  “I’ll stay out here.” He reminded her: “Radio car’s out front.” Probably hadn’t been helping win Mike any customers. Gaynes never met Samway face to face that night. Following her dance, the woman slipped into a robe and stepped off out front, summoned for a lap dance. Boldt cut the private performance short. Two minutes later Samway was escorted to the backseat of the police cruiser and was headed downtown to Public Safety. M

  Samway occupied the chair inside the interrogation room in her satin robe. Chewing gum kept her jaw pumping. Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Delgato could see this all for herself, since Boldt had summoned her to the 1 A.M. interrogation. The witness had requested M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  a public defender despite the fact she was only in for questioning. Where a public defender appeared, prosecuting attorneys followed; hence Delgato. Daphne too had been rousted. Gaynes watched from the other side of the room’s one-way glass with Delgato. Boldt’s ATeam. All but LaMoia. It hurt Boldt to think about him laid up in the hospital.

  “You talk to us now before your court-appointed attorney arrives,” Daphne told the young woman, “and the lieutenant here forgets about the probation violation of associating with known felons and we forego the urine test to see if you’ve been smoking pot.”

  “I’m sure,” she said.

  “You want to hear it from a deputy prosecuting attorney?” Daphne asked. “I give the signal and she’s in here laying it out for you.”

  “Trust me,” Boldt intervened from the chair next to Daphne. “All we want is a little frank discussion about your roommate.”

  “He saw you on the news at that Denver hotel,” she said ominously while staring at Boldt.

  “Meaning?” Daphne asked.

  Samway said, “Listen, who’s talking to you? I’ve never seen you before. But him?” She eyed Boldt. Boldt wanted Courtney Samway the focus of the discussion, not the other way around. He tried to signal Daphne, but failed.

  Speaking directly to Boldt, Samway said venomously, “You’re the one shut down the program. The one got Davie killed. Abby said you’re a dead man. I heard 274

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  him say it. I don’t need to talk to you—I’m talking to a dead man.”

  Daphne grew several inches as her spine stiffened. Boldt reached out and gently touched her forearm. He said, “Let’s start there, then. Abby was. . . . You and Abby were watching the news on television. You saw me. Here in Seattle?”

  She shied, smelling the trap he laid for her. “I’m not saying nothing.”

  “You see the problem?” Boldt asked her, trying to keep her mind engaged and slightly off her game. “If it isn’t us who catches up to Abby to speak with him . . . let’s say it’s Denver, or Reno or Portland, for that matter. All that the police there see is the sheet, the warrant, the Be On Lookout, the All Points—a guy wanted for questioning in regard to the assault of police officers. You see how that looks to a cop? Like trouble. Big trouble. Serious trouble. The kind of trouble where you shoot first and ask questions later, because this guy is on the sheet for doing cops. Forget about me. Do I look dead to you? It’s Abby—Bryce Abbott Flek—you need to be concerned with here. He’s the one in danger. And honestly? You’re his only hope right now.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “It’s not either. It’s the God-given truth. Matthews and I want him alive. We need him alive because we’re not so convinced what his role is in any of this. We know David called him from Etheredge. So what? Where’s the crime? We need to talk to him, no matter what he believes my role was in his brother’s murder. I wasn’t the M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  one who beat David to death, Courtney. I’m not going to be the next guy lying on a slab. You and Abby watched the news,” he said, “so you know we have a hell of a lot of young officers on the job. Maybe not the best trained at the moment. One of those guys sees Abby out on the street. What do you think’s going to happen? And how are you going to feel when you look back and see you could have prevented it?”

  “Bullshit,” she said, a little more tentatively this time.

  “Where’s he gone, Courtney?” Boldt asked. Daphne said, “You want to be the one who could have helped him, but didn’t?”

  The witness glanced back and forth between her two interrogators, both of whom saw opportunity. Courtney Samway would talk, if pressured correctly. Boldt said, “We’ve confiscated his van, so what’s he driving?”

  Daphne added, “We’ve seen the apartment. Did you know that? Not your apartment—we got it too—I’m talking the rented room in Ballard. So where does Abby have left to go? And how does he get there? He had better go somewhere, because if he’s out on the streets . . . the buses . . . the ferries . . . well, these young officers are out on the street as well. You see where that leaves him, Courtney?”

  Boldt took a wild stab. “Where’s it leave you, Courtney? Where’s it leave you once he knows you’ve been brought in for questioning? No matter what you tell him, the first time he stumbles upon a cop, Abby’s go-276

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  ing to think you set him up. You tell me
: Where does it leave you?”

  Daphne flashed a look at Boldt that suggested he might be stepping on her psychologist toes. She didn’t need him playing psychologist any more than he needed her playing detective.

  “I want a lawyer,” Courtney said now, her lips wet and trembling.

  “One has been appointed,” Boldt said, “and is on the way over here. Count on it.”

  “I want my lawyer now!” Courtney repeated, this time with more of an edge.

  “You don’t have to talk to us, if you don’t want to,”

  Daphne reminded, “but it might be in your best interest. Either way, we can’t leave you alone right now, so you’re stuck with us.”

  “You don’t know him,” she mumbled, the cracks widening.

  “Why don’t you tell us,” Daphne suggested.

  “There’s like a switch in him, you know? I’ve never seen anything like it. When Davie died—”

  Just then, her young attorney burst into the interrogation room, a blur of briefcase and words. “Violation of rights! Protecting my client!”

  Boldt had heard it all too many times before. “We’ll give you five minutes,” he announced.

  Courtney Samway looked over at Daphne, and with a frightened-sounding voice she whispered, “Snookers, the bar. He hangs there.”

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  Snookers was a biker’s bar, a beer and poolhallwith two voluptuous waitresses who wore plastic cowboy hats and tight jeans. The bartender was the size of Sasquatch. When Boldt and Gaynes entered, all but a handful of the twenty or so men in the bar noticed the pair immediately. A half dozen slipped quietly toward the back exit. There, these seven men encountered four patrol officers that Boldt had assigned to watch the back door. Two of the seven escaped. The remaining five were pushed up against a brick wall and searched. Boldt and Gaynes walked past the back pool tables and let the screen door slam shut on their way out. A patrolman informed Boldt, “We lost two of them, Lieutenant. Of what’s left, we got two handguns, a blade, some pot and what looks like cocaine. Only one guy is clean out of all of them.”

  “We’ll take the clean one first,” Boldt informed the man, after studying each face for Flek and not finding him. Addressing the group as a whole, Boldt announced loudly, “We’re Seattle PD. We have a few questions.”

  Gaynes spoke deliberately and slowly to the group.

  “Bryce . . . Abbott . . . Flek.

  Abby.

  Information

  or

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  whereabouts buys you an instant out. David Ansel Flek. Davie. Abby’s brother. Recently deceased. Information buys you an out.”

  Boldt dragged the “clean” suspect away from the others, out of earshot, Gaynes at his side. The officers kept the other suspects engaged to the wall. He said,

  “You get the first shot at a hall pass.”

  “You can’t hold me,” the young man complained.

  “On what charges?” He had some Latino blood in him, maybe some Asian as well. He was short but solid. He wore leather, jeans, and Air Jordans. Gaynes fished out the man’s wallet. “We can run your name though BCI and see if you’ve been a good boy or not. If you’re on parole and any of these others guys turns out to have a record, well, then, that’s a violation, isn’t it?”

  “Do whatever you have to do. But you can’t hold me. And I don’t have shit to say to you.”

  Gaynes stepped up like she was ready to hit him. Boldt signaled her to back off.

  Boldt said, “Who are we interested in over there?”

  indicating the lineup against the wall.

  “Third guy. Black hair. Name of Robert. Knows the one you’re looking at.”

  Gaynes returned the wallet. “We know who you are. We know where to find you. If you’re blowing smoke at us—”

  “No way! He mentioned this guy Abby, okay?” the kid admitted. “Heard him saying something about him.”

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  “Take off,” Boldt said, releasing the kid. The third one from the left, a tall, lanky kid, had junkie’s jaundice and the smell of a boozer. As one of the two caught carrying a piece, Boldt had a noose to hang him. He led the man away from the others and launched into a discussion about unregistered handguns and mandatory prison time. It won the man’s attention.

  “Abby Flek,” Boldt said, adding no editorial.

  “Guy has flipped out.”

  “What was your business with him?”

  “Me? No business, man.”

  Gaynes encouraged a closer intimacy with the brick wall. “Think harder,” she said.

  “No business with him.”

  Gaynes leaned her knee between the man’s legs, and then lifted her leg sharply. “That gun you were carrying is going to cost you a year. The lieutenant here has run out of patience, and so have I. You want the year, you keep telling us you had no business with him, because we’re too busy to give you a second chance. Got it?”

  “Hardware,” the man said.

  “Weapons,” Boldt said.

  “Let’s just say I’m connected, okay?”

  “Let’s just say you’re a collector,” Gaynes corrected.

  “Sound good? Nothing illegal about collecting a few weapons.”

  “Whatever. Abby has lost it, okay? The guy will start 280

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  a fight over anything. He comes to me, I’m not about to say no.”

  “Of course not,” Gaynes said.

  “But I couldn’t say yes either, because . . . my connections,” he said, straining to meet eyes with Gaynes.

  “My collection . . .” he corrected, “. . . I didn’t have what the man was looking to score.”

  “Which was?” Boldt asked.

  “Semi-auto long rod. Russian-built was okay, but he wanted a particular German scope.”

  “A sniper’s rifle?” she asked incredulously.

  “Way out of my league,” the guy said.

  “And then some,” Boldt said, wondering if he was the intended target. He added, “When was this?”

  “Three, maybe four o’clock.”

  “Today?” Boldt gasped. They were only eight hours behind the man.

  “And you referred him to a fellow collector,” Gaynes said, leading him on.

  “What would you have done?”

  “And the name of this individual, this fellow collector?” she said.

  “Macallister,” the guy whispered so quietly that Boldt wasn’t sure it had come from his lips.

  “I know Macallister,” Gaynes told her lieutenant. She slammed the suspect’s groin again and warned,

  “This blows up in our hands and we’re coming after you. Understood?”

  “Yeah, I got it.”

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  or wrong, it’s your ass we’re coming after. And there will be no second chances. So take a moment to contemplate your existence, my friend—to ruminate—because you gotta be good with this, and I’m smelling that this is some bad shit you’re peddling.”

  “Manny Wong,” the man corrected. “Not Macallister, Manny Wong. Down in the District. Most of his stuff is Chinese, but Abby said Chinese was okay as long as he got that German scope.”

  “Don’t know him,” Gaynes warned Boldt. “Never heard of him.”

  “That’s all right,” Boldt answered. “I know someone who knows everyone down there.”

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  The woman reminded Boldt of Orson Welles in a muumuu. She wore a piece of black embroidered silk big enough to wrap a small car. On her shoulders pink hummingbirds flew toward vivid red blossoms. Tiger faces with sequined eyes roared from her ribs. Ivory bone buttons speared through silk loops and strained at her enormous girth. He felt grateful she wore her teeth, for in the past he had found it har
d to understand her pidgin English without them. Her eyes appeared as black half moons beneath the arcing Chinese curve of her painted eyebrows, her face in a permanent blush behind the applied rouge, puffy cheeks reminiscent of Dizzy Gillespie. Mama Lu sat enthroned in a huge rattan chair, a gigantic rising sun woven into the chair back above her, looking like a second head. Two black enameled chests flanked her, their surfaces as lustrous as mirrors. The second-story room where she met them was rather dingy, accessed by a narrow stairway from the butcher shop of the Korean grocery store below, but the room’s contents belonged in a museum collection, as did this woman.

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  “Mr. Both,” she said. She had never pronounced it correctly.

  “Great Lady,” he said, “allow me to introduce one of my detectives, Roberta Gaynes.”

  “Mama Lu,” Gaynes said, using the woman’s street name.

  “Roberta,” Mama Lu returned. To Boldt she said, “I heard of Ya-Moia. Sent small gift to hospital.”

  Boldt imagined something grandiose despite her surface modesty.

  Placing a pudgy, swollen pale hand on her enormous bosom she said, “Heart made sad by this.”

  “It’s why I’ve come,” Boldt explained.

  “Sit,” she instructed.

  “We won’t be staying,” Boldt said, “but thank you.”

  “You must eat,” she said, looking him up and down.

  “You are not eating. Why? A woman, or work?”

  Boldt felt his face flush and wished that Gaynes was not there to witness it. He said quickly, “We’re after the person who did this to LaMoia.”

  “And Mama Lu can help?” the woman inquired hopefully.

  “A gun dealer named Manny Wong. We think he’s had contact with the individual responsible for LaMoia.”

  Gaynes added, “We mean no trouble for Mr. Wong.”

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  switched on in their place. Gaynes took a small step backward.

  “Police always trouble,” Mama Lu informed her. To Boldt she said, “Present company excepted. What is offer?”

  “She’s right,” Boldt said, indicating Gaynes. “No tricks. All we want to do is talk to Manny Wong. Far as I’m concerned, when he walks out of that interview room I forget his name and ever having heard it.”