Past Crimes

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  Hollis took a big swig out of his mug and refilled it from the thermos. “Willard, yes. Hard to say with Jimmy. He doesn’t like people knowing his business any more than your grandfather does. But I think Dono would have mentioned it to me if they had something on. What department did you say your boy Detective Guerin worked out of?”

  “H.A.” Homicide/Assault, downtown.

  “So they’re not letting the East Precinct handle it as an aggravated,” Hollis said.

  “No. It’s attempted murder, straight up.” We both understood the implication. The cops didn’t expect Dono to recover.

  We sat quiet for a moment. The seagulls floated on the air over the breakwater, dipping down with renewed hope to look for small fish each time the surface water rippled in a way I couldn’t perceive.

  “Are you done with the army?” he said.

  “Just on leave. Ten days.” Down to eight now. Better get my ass in gear.

  “And you decided it was time to see Dono. Good.” He flexed his fingers. “Fucking arthritis. So who knew you were coming home?”

  I looked at him. “You’ve been wondering about that, too.”

  “Of course I have.”

  “When did he tell you he’d written to me?” I said.

  Hollis frowned. “Boyo, he didn’t say a fucking thing to me about it.”

  When I was small, Hollis Brant often brought me a gift when he came to the house, a Japanese windup toy or some other exotic item from one of his friends on the freighters, as he called them. As I grew older and started to help the two men with their work, Hollis would slip me a few bucks on the sly with a wink. I knew where Dono hid some of his money and would help myself when I needed it, but I appreciated Hollis’s gesture. I liked him. He might even have liked me, but eventually I realized that the toys and the money were just part of Hollis’s method, being generous and building alliances as an investment for the future. I might be in a position to help him out someday. Bread on the water.

  I wondered how strong the friendship between him and Dono still was, if Dono hadn’t told Hollis that the prodigal grandson was on his way home.

  “Dono must have told somebody I was coming,” I said. “Maybe even when I was going to arrive.”

  “You didn’t tell someone yourself? Not even your young friend—what’s his name?”

  It took me a second to realize whom Hollis meant. “Davey Tolan? No, I haven’t talked to Davey in years.”

  And it hadn’t even occurred to me to call Davey, during the storm of the last day. Hollis was right. A hell of a homecoming.

  “I can’t leave this to the cops,” I said. “What they know about Dono isn’t going to give them a lot of extra motivation.”

  “You want to … ah, deal with this bastard yourself?”

  “Serving him to the cops on a platter will be enough.”

  “I’ll tell you, Van, I’m surprised you’re back,” said Hollis. “Happy, too, don’t get me wrong. But I thought you’d put Seattle behind you. The way you and Dono parted. He hadn’t even mentioned your name to me in God knows how long.”

  “I decided to bury the past.”

  “And this kind of business,” he said, pointing to where the three morons had driven the Ryder van away from the crumpled Charger. “It isn’t your life anymore, is that it?”

  I’d done well in AIT, Advanced Individual Training, during my first months in the army. A recruiter for the Seventy-fifth Regiment came by to talk to a few of us. As part of his sales pitch, he had recited some lines from the Ranger Creed. Mentally alert, physically strong, and morally straight. It was the last bit that had made my ears prick up.

  “No,” I said to Hollis, “it’s not my life now. But I don’t give a damn what anybody else does.”

  He stared at me for a moment, brow still furrowed. Then he sighed. “All right, then. I won’t judge you either. Some of my best friends are citizens. Or so they claim.”

  “Here’s to profit,” I said, quoting one of Hollis’s own lines.

  “Nah. Here’s to Dono.” We drank. Hollis swished the coffee through his teeth like mouthwash before swallowing.

  “Your granddad,” he said “He wasn’t much for the light hand with you. But he did care.”

  “I know.”

  “You may still get your chance,” Hollis continued. He didn’t seem to have heard me. “Your man was always a quick healer. You recall the time? No, certainly not, you were very small. He had dislocated his shoulder somehow, but it didn’t stop him from leading a little discussion we had with the Fitzroys. Nasty pieces of work, those lads, but we showed them something. That was a fine day.” He waved a paw toward the city. “A bed in a hospital. That’s no proper fate for a man.” His empty coffee mug dangled from his finger. From out across the sound, the low horn of a ferry echoed.

  “Showed them,” he said again. And damned if he wasn’t welling up, the tears starting to roll down his ruddy cheeks.

  Hollis could have gotten close enough to Dono, no question. He might have had a little automatic ready. He could have put the muzzle right up against Dono’s head as they walked to the door after a long night of bullshit and booze.

  But even if I could fathom some motive for why Hollis might have wanted to kill his oldest friend, I couldn’t see him as the shooter. Dono was still alive. Hollis would have finished the job.

  I stood up and patted him on the shoulder. He nodded. I stepped out of the cockpit and down to the dock and walked away. When I looked back from the shoreline, he was still sitting there, head down and mourning one of the last of his kind.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  WHEN I GOT BACK to the house, there was a folded note tucked into the doorjamb, just below the splintered holes where I’d torn out the police padlock. The note had been scrawled in blue ballpoint ink on white notepaper with the name and address of a business printed at the top: FRAZIER BROS ELECTRIC. The handwriting was so bad I had to piece together the message word by word.

  Van,

  Missed catching u here. Meet me at Morgen after 6? Things sometimes suck, right?

  —Davey

  Even after I’d left town, I’d kept half an eye on Davey. Old habit. He had his whole life online, naturally. He and his high-school girl, Juliet, had gotten married. I’d seen pictures of Juliet carrying a fat and smiling baby. They all looked happy—and settled, which was a relief.

  I looked at the note again. Davey had pressed so hard while writing that the letters made thin furrows in the paper, like embossing.

  Screw it. As long as I was in town, I might as well tie up all my unfinished business. I could blow off some steam drinking and catching up with Davey. And I could see Dono’s bar again.

  I wondered if Dono’s business partner, Albie Boylan—who actually ran the place—had changed it much. Not likely. The Morgen probably still had a ceiling stained the color of charcoal from decades of cigarette smoke and Albie’s aluminum baseball bat taped up under the cash register, ready to keep the peace.

  That was, I suddenly realized, if Dono still owned the Morgen. Maybe he had sold it off. There was too much about the old man’s life now I didn’t know.

  I took out my keys to unlock the front door. The house keys snagged on the second set, the two smaller keys attached to the chunk of red wood. I looked at them again and remembered where I had seen keys like them before.

  For outboard engines. The larger models, 250 horses or more. And the chunk of wood was to keep them from sinking if they fell in the water.

  Dono had a boat.

  I unlocked the door and went straight to the pantry to open up Dono’s hiding place again.

  Dono’s personal and business files were all upstairs in his desk. I’d seen them the night before. The old man hadn’t gone digital yet, and he was a meticulous record keeper. An hour going through the files could paint me a complete picture of his life as a general contractor and bar owner. But that wasn’t the right paper trail to follow. There was another.

  At
the back of the one-foot-square hole was the small stack of Dono’s fake driver’s licenses. I flipped through them. Two in the same name, one for Washington State and one for California. A second name for Washington, again. And a third for West Virginia, of all places.

  It was common enough for Dono to have false identification. Or at least false names, with verifiable licenses. A few thousand slipped to a DMV employee might do it.

  But none of these names was the one I was looking for. John Terrence Callahan. That was the one name I knew that might have a real address attached to it. Someplace I could search. Assuming that J. T. Callahan still existed.

  Convicted felons can’t do a lot of things. Depending on the laws of the state in question, the felon might lose the right to vote, to hold a professional license, or to serve on a jury. A few people I knew would think earning that last restriction was worth committing a major crime. Felons have trouble getting a passport. And the law might sit up and take notice if a former convict began purchasing unusual equipment like plasma cutters or wireless alarm transmitters.

  That was where J. T. Callahan came in. Like Donovan Shaw, J.T. was sixty-four years old, six foot two, and he worked in construction. He was an occasional reseller of industrial equipment and was certified in multiple services, including a federal license granted by the ATF to purchase and operate Class 1 explosives.

  Not bad for a guy who’d only been walking the earth for seventeen years or so.

  Dono had created Callahan shortly after he got out of County and reclaimed the house and his life. I was eleven. A little young to fathom the workings of my grandfather’s mind, but I think at the start he just wanted to have a passport and a new name close at hand, if ever the time came to disappear.

  Over the years Dono realized that J.T. could serve other purposes as well. Thus the Callahan identity began eking out a living and acquiring the right background. I would bet my entire meager bank account that the old man had kept up the charade.

  Hollis and Willard and Corcoran were a dead end. And I didn’t buy what Dono had told Hollis. Dono wasn’t taking time off. Whatever my grandfather was into, he had been doing it without his old team. If I could trace Callahan’s activities, I might learn what had really been going on.

  The advantage of a complete false history is that it holds up under most scrutiny. The disadvantage is that the identity really exists, even if the man behind it doesn’t. Even a paper life carves paths and patterns that can be followed. J. T. Callahan must have a Social Security number. He must file tax returns. He’d have at least a mailing address, somewhere.

  And if I was right about the outboard keys, Callahan owned a boat, too. I’d start there.

  Dono’s charged cell phone was still in my pocket. I took it out and went to the call log again. Still just the one number, outgoing to Ephraim Ganz’s office the day before Dono was shot. I hit SEND.

  “Ganz and Quinlan,” a husky female voice answered.

  “Mr. Ganz, please. It’s Van Shaw.”

  “Oh, yes. One moment, Mr. Shaw.” A strong note of recognition there. Did she think I was Dono?

  “Van? It’s Ephraim Ganz.” His voice was high-pitched, fast and aggressive. I could picture him clutching the phone. A small man with enough energy for three large ones.

  “Hello, Ephraim. Long time.”

  “You aren’t shitting me. I was just thinking, the last I saw you, you must have been … what, about to graduate high school?”

  “You’ve heard about Dono?”

  “Hell, yes. Cheryl caught the early Sunday news and woke me up. Terrible. I’ve heard about you, too, from my friends at East Precinct. That’s why I told Gloria here to pull me out of meetings if you called. The cops questioned you? Why didn’t you call me?”

  “No need. A neighbor saw me arrive after the shooting. That cleared me.”

  “No need, he says. Listen, if they bring you in again, you call me. First thing. Pretend not to sprechen sie English if you have to.”

  “The detectives are more interested in Dono’s action. You know anything about what he’s been doing?”

  Ganz paused. “I was going to ask you the same question.”

  “Dono and I haven’t spoken since I left.” I gave Ganz a quick run-down on how narrow the time was between my arrival and his shooting. “I spent the morning talking to some of Dono’s old friends, which got me nowhere. I’m starting to think he was practicing to be a hermit. So it’s over to you. Has Dono made a dent in your retainer recently?”

  “He hasn’t needed to avail himself of my services. No arrests or other trouble.”

  “Dono called your office on Saturday.”

  “Yes. Gloria said he left a message on Paul Arronow’s extension, asking Paul to call him back. Paul’s our associate in estate law.”

  “Estate? Like, for Dono’s last will and testament?”

  “Right.”

  “Then if Dono’s reaching out to him, it’s to make a change. Who stands to inherit?”

  Ganz grunted. “It’s you. You didn’t know?”

  “I’ve been gone ten years, Ephraim. Are you telling me Dono never updated his will in all that time?”

  “Your mother, Moira? Dono didn’t change his will when she left. She was going to inherit everything, up until … well, until you came to live with him. Then it became you. And it’s stayed like that.”

  “Until now, maybe.”

  “Maybe,” Ganz admitted. “But don’t jump to conclusions. Maybe he was just adding something. Did he buy a new house or something else big?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  My mother had walked out on Dono. I had, too. And Dono had still considered me his heir?

  I looked at the keys attached to the piece of red driftwood.

  “You have any friends at the state vehicle-license bureau?” I asked Ganz.

  “Huh?”

  “I need a name checked.”

  “Ah. I’ll have someone call you.”

  “Good.”

  “And, Van? If SPD pulls you in again, you call me, understand?” I was already hanging up.

  Too many lines intersecting. Dono asking me back to town. Changing his will at the same time.

  Had he been planning to surprise me with that change? Dono wasn’t the spiteful type. He wasn’t looking to throw his house and his bar in my face, like some sort of piss-ant revenge for my leaving. There must be something else behind it.

  At least one thing was clear. Not good, but clear. If Ganz was right, and my name was still on the line marked “beneficiary,” then I had a bigger problem looming.

  Easy to predict how the cops would assemble the puzzle pieces. Dono had his house in the city. His bar. I stood to inherit property worth somewhere north of a million, maybe two. But Dono was looking to change his will. And he wound up shot the morning I arrived.

  I was about to leap back into the bull’s-eye as prime suspect.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ADDY PROCTOR WAS AT the front desk of the Trauma ICU. She wore a black woolen coat long enough to almost touch her clunky shoes. From behind, her white hair looked like the crest on a cockatoo. I walked up just in time to hear the tail end of her conversation with the nurse making her sign in.

  “We’re all praying for him, dear,” Addy said. She had a beatific smile on her face. “My nephew was a scoundrel, but the good Lord will make sure he recovers.”

  She looked over and saw me standing next to her, grinning.

  “Aunt Addy,” I said.

  “Oh, Van, I’m so happy you’re here.” She ushered me quickly away.

  “Darn good thing you’re family,” I said. “They wouldn’t let you in otherwise.”

  She snorted. “Stupid rule. What if someone has nobody else to watch over them? There are plenty of old farts in my circle who’d rather have their friends than their next of kin in a time of need.”

  As we walked past other rooms, I saw some of the same visitors still here from the day before. There we
re a lot of round-the-clock vigils in Trauma.

  A uniformed cop sat on a chair outside Dono’s room, watching us walk toward him. I introduced myself and Aunt Addy. He nodded in recognition at my name and let us into the room.

  Dono looked the same. Down to the position of his feet under the thin cotton blanket.

  Addy sat in one of the chairs and set her big wicker purse beside her. I stood. We both looked at Dono. The IV tube pulsed almost imperceptibly as the drip moved through it to his arm.

  “I’ve sat with people before,” Addy said. “I like to read to them. Passes the time, at least for me. Do you think he’d mind? Would you?”

  I sat down. “He liked to read.”

  Addy pulled a paperback in a fabric slipcover from her purse, put on a pair of tortoiseshell glasses, and began to read out loud. I couldn’t see the title and didn’t know the book. From the language I could tell it was old, maybe nineteenth century.

  “What is that?” I asked when Addy paused to turn the page.

  “Dickens,” she said. “Our Mutual Friend.”

  “I didn’t understand the part you read about ‘Six Jolly …’”

  “ … ‘Fellowship-Porters,’ ” she said. “It’s the name of a pub.”

  I nodded. A big day for taverns. I wondered what Dono would need me to do to keep the Morgen running while he was laid up. Maybe his partner, Albie Boylan, would know.

  “You read a lot of classic lit?” I asked.

  “I have,” Addy said. “I was a teacher, once upon a time. And a librarian. Back when the card catalogs had actual cards.”

  My phone rang.

  “I’m calling about the name,” said a high male voice in a whispering rush. “You asked our buddy to have me call you?”

  Ganz’s guy from the DMV. Our Mutual Friend, sure enough.

  “John Terrence Callahan,” I said, “or John T., or J.T.”

  I heard fast typing. “There’re a few of those in the state. Date of birth?”

  “Start with the oldest and work up.”

  Heavy exhale. “One in 1936 …”