“Hello, Danny Logan. I’m glad to meet you,” she said, shaking my hand.
“Believe it or not,” I said, “this bench has special meaning for me, too. Six years ago, I spent three weeks with a girl who I’d known in passing in high school five years before that. I had to go away for a bit, and she and I spent some time on our last day together on this very bench. Be six years this Thanksgiving Day.”
“Really? Was it a happy time?”
“It was very happy. We didn’t know what was going to happen between us. Turned out we ended up not getting back together afterwards. I was in the army then, and I had to go one way, and she went another. Our three weeks together was all we had. Then, by chance, we managed to reconnect for one day last week. Last Sunday. And the next day, she died. We buried her yesterday morning.”
“Oh, my,” she said. She considered this for a minute, and then said, “That’s a very sad story, Danny. I’m very sorry for you.”
I nodded. “Thank you.”
“Are you alright?”
“I’ll be okay,” I said, nodding again. “Thanks for asking. I’ve got good friends—people who care about me. I’ll be fine.”
“Well, you look like a very strong, handsome young man,” she said. “I can give you a couple of pieces of advice from an old woman who’s been through the crap, as they say,” she said, “but only if you’re interested in hearing them. I don’t want to barge in where I’m not wanted.”
I smiled. “Feel free, Helen,” I said. “I could use some good advice.”
“First off,” she said, “you’ve heard it before, but time really does help to soothe the pain of passing. When Harold died, it hurt, believe you me. But I had two things working against me that you don’t have to deal with. First, Harold and I were together more than forty years—most of my adult life. He’s all I ever knew. When Harold died, I felt like half of me had just been ripped out. I’d really never even been on my own. It took a long time to get over that. In your case, although you might not feel it now, your recovery will be much easier simply because you weren’t together very long.”
I nodded.
“And second,” she said, “when Harold died, I was sixty-three years old. I suppose I could have remarried, but I’d already had a full life with Harold. I had a history that I was comfortable with, and I didn’t want to add another chapter with someone new. Too damned hard to train one man—I sure didn’t want to have to go through it all over again. Besides, I never was much of a looker—starting over might have been a problem for me. You, on the other hand, you look like a movie star.”
I laughed. “Helen, you’re beautiful now. Fifteen years ago, you must have been a knockout. If we were even close to the same age, I’d be asking you for a date right this second.”
She laughed. “Smart aleck. I was never that smooth with the words, either,” she said. “So you’re what, thirty years old?”
“Twenty-nine,” I said.
“Twenty-nine,” she waved her hand at me dismissively. “You’re still a baby. You’re not even broken in yet. You’re just about the right age to find yourself a nice young woman and settle down—find someone to train you. Your whole life is still in front of you. Trust me, Danny Logan, you’re going to be fine.”
She got up. “I’ve got to go. I have a date every Saturday morning, and I can see he just got here.”
“I thought you said you weren’t interested in a new man?” I asked.
“I said I wasn’t interested in getting remarried. See that old man over there?”
I looked and saw a tall, silver-haired man walking toward us. “Yes,” I said.
“That’s Adam. He meets me here on Saturday mornings, and we feed the geese. We’re not getting married,” she said, “we just fool around. Big difference.”
I laughed.
“Good luck to you, young man. Remember, God built you to face forward, not backward. Your future is in front of you, not behind.”
I smiled. “Thanks for the advice, Helen. It was good advice. You have a nice morning.”
“You too, Danny,” she said, turning to walk off. Suddenly, she stopped and turned back. “Hey, Danny Logan,” she said, “I saw you on the TV news a couple of nights ago. You looked good then, but you’re even more handsome in person.” She waved, then turned around and left.
~~~~
I chuckled to myself. First Toni last night, and now Helen this morning. How could I feel bad?
After she walked away to join Adam, I turned to look south, out over Lake Union. Funny how on the one hand, the view had barely changed at all in six years; yet on the other hand, it was profoundly different. The water looked the same as it did six years ago. The city to the south was the same. I-5 still framed the view on the east, and the houseboats where Sleepless in Seattle was filmed still framed the view on the west.
Yet today, everything was different. Six years ago, I was holding Gina, wondering how I could be so lucky, still unaware that we were not destined for each other. At that moment, six years ago, everything seemed perfect.
Today, not so perfect. More real, more pure, more ups and downs, more joys and hurts, but not perfect. I guess that’s what you get when life happens. You get bashed. You get knocked down. And, if you’re made of the right stuff, you get back up, wiser for the experience. It’s not perfect, but it’s real.
Gina was gone, and I was sad. But, there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. It hurt, but at least according to Helen, one day it wouldn’t. For me, I guess it was time to think about getting back up.
PART 4
Chapter 30
FOUR MONTHS PASSED—four months in which I grew accustomed to the fact that Gina was gone. Toni and Helen had been right—time was beginning to patch over the hurt. I hadn’t had a bad dream in over a month. Christmas 2011 came and went, and now we were four days into the new year. Life fell back into something of a normal rhythm. We’d been able to pick up a half-dozen new cases: mostly simple surveillances plus one skiptrace. They paid a little, but if Angelo Fiore hadn’t called me and told me to keep the balance of his retainer—that I didn’t owe him any kind of refund—we’d have been hurting. I objected when he said this, but he insisted. Oh well, it came at a good time. As it was, I was starting to get a little nervous. I had personal cash reserves, but I wanted to keep them in reserve. One thing I never had to worry about in the army was meeting a payroll. It’s not my favorite part of owning the agency.
In fact, it would be nice to get lucky and stumble onto a “gold mine” case—one that paid so well that I wouldn’t ever have to sweat paying the rent again. I have a few friends who are PIs. One of them did some work for a software company some time ago. He was paid in the form of a stock option because they were tight on cash. Then his client went public. Overnight, he was wealthy. Today, he works only because he likes it. He sure as hell doesn’t need to work. I should be so lucky.
On the good news front, Toni and I were fine again—back to our old selves. We talked and laughed and joked and occasionally hung out a little together. I still didn’t really feel like going out with anybody romantically, so mostly, I just stayed home. Sometimes, Toni would come over, and we’d drink a few beers and listen to music. It was mostly too cold and usually too wet to sit out on the balcony now, so instead we’d just sit around inside and hang out—maybe watch a movie. She continued to go out on dates with the gay football player when he had time, and I continued to tease her about it. She took it well.
Overall, I was content. On Wednesday morning, January the fourth at ten, I sat at my desk, reading the Seattle Times. Outside, it was pouring. Not the usual Seattle drizzle—this was real honest-to-God rain like they get in the Carolinas. Big, heavy, wet drops the size of small water balloons. A couple of direct hits, and you were soaked. It was cool—probably mid-thirties, and it was blustery. All in all, a good day to be indoors. I sipped my coffee and looked outside and watched the rain.
Toni knocked on my door and walke
d in. She sat in one of the chairs, looked at me, and said nothing at first.
“What?” I said. “What do you want?”
“How are you doing?” she asked.
I looked at her, confused. “I’m doing fine. Why? What do you mean, how am I doing?”
“I mean how you are doing getting over Gina Fiore.”
“I’m over it,” I said. “It’s history.”
“You’re not seeing anyone,” she said. It was a statement, not a question.
“You know I’m not seeing anyone,” I said. “Why? Do you want to go out on a date? What’s this all about?”
She ignored me. “Are you still having the dreams?”
I looked at her, and then smiled and said, “Toni, you know the only person I dream about nowadays is you. There’s usually a fireplace.” I stared off into the distance, like I was recalling the dream. “You’re wearing this short, see-through little sexy thing—” I paused and stared at the wall, as if I had a picture in my mind’s eye. “My God!”
“Freeze the picture, you jerk,” she said, laughing. “That’s as close as you’re going to get.” She got up and started to walk out.
“Wait a minute,” I called out to her. “Don’t you want to hear about the rug? There’s this bearskin rug in front of the fireplace!”
She laughed as she left my office. Does this make me sexist? I don’t know.
From down the hall, I heard her call out, “Read the newspaper, moron.”
Read the paper? What did she mean by that? That’s what I’d been doing. I looked at the Seattle Times on my desk and picked it up. The paper was dominated by coverage of the New Hampshire primary. The Iowa caucus had been held the day before, and the results were spread all over the front page—something that interested me not at all. I churned through the front section, then tossed it aside when I was finished. Nothing interesting there.
I started reading the second section—local news—and almost immediately stopped. “Wow!” I said out loud. The front-page article of the second section was headlined “IRS DROPS CHARGES AGAINST FIORE.” The article went on to explain how, after a four-year investigation, the IRS agreed to a small monetary adjustment in the prior years, but that all criminal charges had been dropped. Apparently, the IRS now felt that there was not sufficient evidence that Mr. Fiore had committed a crime. All that the IRS felt he was guilty of now was misclassifying revenue numbers. They wanted this fixed, but that was it. This was good news. This would have made Gina very happy.
I hopped out of my chair and walked next door to Toni’s office.
“This is good news,” I said happily.
“Good news?” she said, questioning. “What article did you read?”
“About the IRS dropping their tax evasion charges against Angelo.”
She looked at me, and then said, “Give me that.” She reached for the paper. She turned to the next page and handed it back. “Read that,” she said, pointing.
The article:
CHARGES DROPPED AGAINST CHICAGO
MOBSTER IN FIORE CASE
Robert Miller, U.S. Attorney in Seattle, announced today that all charges against known Chicago mobster Francisco “Frankie the Boot” Rossi in connection with the murder of Gina Fiore have been dropped. Citing insufficient evidence to continue the case, Miller said that Rossi was to be released immediately. . .
I stopped reading.
“Holy shit!” I read some more, and then said, “Holy shit!” again. My vocabulary seemed to have shrunk. “Insufficient evidence?” I said, incredulously. “Insufficient evidence? Jesus Christ! There were thirty people standing right there! Twenty of ’em were Feds, for shit’s sake! What the fuck? This bastard’s just going to walk?”
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I stared at the paper for several long moments without saying anything. Slowly, I turned and walked back to my office. I walked inside, closed the door, and sat at my desk. I spun the chair around so that I could look outside at the rain.
No justice at all, it seemed. Frank Rossi released because of “lack of evidence.” I was stunned. I sat there and stared outside for ten solid minutes, reliving the events of that morning, looking for answers and finding none.
~~~~
My phone rang, breaking my contemplation. I picked it up, and Toni said, brusquely, “Come out here, Danny.”
The tone of her voice told me she was serious, so I snapped out of my funk and hustled outside to the lobby. Toni was there, along with two men in long, gray raincoats.
“Mr. Logan,” one of them said, “you may remember me. I’m Special Agent Regis Jackson, U.S. DEA Seattle. This is Special Agent Mike Hamilton.”
I looked at him. “Sorry,” I said, “hard to recognize you guys when you’re not fucking up an operation and getting someone killed. Funny you should show up today.”
He stared straight at me for a few seconds. “Let me guess,” he said, “you’ve been reading the newspaper.”
“That’s right,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief. “How could the U.S. Attorney drop charges against Frank Rossi? Insufficient evidence? Holy Christ! The son of a bitch was surrounded by Feds when he shot Gina! You yourself were standing right there, not eight feet away. What would he have had to do to actually get indicted, drag her to the U.S. Attorney’s office and shoot her in the goddamned lobby?”
“I understand your frustration,” Jackson said, “but we’re here this morning to explain things. Is there a place where we can talk privately?”
“Our conference room,” I said. “But excuse me if I don’t trust you guys completely. I want my partner here to be with us.”
He nodded. “We met Miss Blair on the way in,” Jackson said. “Suit yourself.”
I led everyone back to the conference room.
Toni said, “May I offer you gentlemen a cup of coffee? Bottled water?”
We all asked for coffee. “Do you need help?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Got it.”
When she came back, Jackson started.
“I need to explain something to you that’s confidential—we’d have to deny it if it ever leaked out. Still, you need to know.”
“Go ahead,” I said. “I’m all ears.”
“Sometime near the end of last July, we were approached by Gina Fiore with an idea,” he said. “She wanted to make a trade. Gina’s idea was essentially to use her position within the Calabria family as an inducement to get the Mendez brothers to travel from Tijuana to the United States for a meeting where they could be arrested on American soil. Gina figured that the opportunity for the United States to arrest one or both leaders of the Tijuana-Mendez cartel would be highly coveted by the Department of Justice. Both of these men were on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. Gina designed an entire operation around this concept and presented it to us.”
I was stunned. Jackson continued.
“I ran her idea past my superiors, and they were indeed impressed. Surprisingly, they agreed within a week. The Mendez brothers were such a notorious, high-value target that their potential capture—especially in a presidential election year—really seemed to get their attention.
“Although we didn’t know it, Gina had actually started working this plan more than three months prior to the time she ever contacted us, probably in April of last year. I guess she wanted to move the operation beyond the hypothetical stage before she presented it to us.
“Initially, she needed a contact within the cartel. Where do you go to establish such a contact if you’re a young woman, an accountant at that, with no contacts with a Mexican drug cartel? She’d already studied up on the cartel operations in the United States—marijuana-growing operations, in particular. She knew that Washington State is a hotbed for this type of activity. So she came up with the idea that, since she was young and good-looking, she could hang out in a popular Mexican bar and hopefully locate someone involved in the cartel drug trade. Essentially, she went fishing and used herself as the bait. It was a lon
g shot, but by using what amounts to good acting and brilliant undercover detective work, combined with a fair measure of luck, she ferreted out none other than Eduardo Salazar at Ramon’s Cantina. She flirted with him, dangled herself in front of him, and cozied up to him. Finally, one night, she promised him a home run but instead she slipped him a couple of Quaaludes when he wasn’t looking. He fell fast asleep.”
“And while he slept,” I said, “she copied his notebook with her cell phone.”
“She told you, then,” Jackson said. “I suspected she had.”
I nodded.
“Well, that’s right. She copied his notebook. That notebook contained GPS coordinates—actually latitude and longitude—of forty separate marijuana grows here in the state of Washington—complete with sketches. Salazar didn’t know it yet, but with this information, Gina had him nailed to the cross. In early July, she explained to Mr. Salazar who she was and the nature of her Chicago relatives. She told him that her family wanted to create a joint venture with the Tijuana-Mendez cartel that would allow them to move the marijuana being grown here more profitably. Initially, Mr. Salazar’s ego wouldn’t accept her in this new position. He couldn’t wrap his head around it, so he just blew her off. I guess he wasn’t a very big thinker. Anyway, Gina responded by anonymously turning in one of Salazar’s plantations to our office as a way to turn up the pressure on him. It also had the effect of establishing future legitimacy with us, although we had no idea what was going on at the time. She had someone other than herself make the call to us on an untraceable cell phone, so we didn’t even know whom the tipster was; but we checked it out and got a large bust as a result. We were happy.
“This same scenario repeated itself three more times over the next month and a half before the light finally went on in Salazar’s pea brain, and he made the connection—he realized that Gina was the one turning in the fields using his own data against him because he had refused to work with her and make the connection with the cartel that she wanted. Things started happening fast. Salazar exploded and began searching for Gina. Gina was a step ahead of him, though. She’d gone into hiding a week after the last bust, just in case. And, at about that time, she talked to us and proved that she was the one providing the tips. Our top brass was already inclined to give this a shot, but now that they were really convinced of her legitimacy, they gave the green light on the operation to set up and arrest the Mendez brothers.”
Angel Dance (Danny Logan Mystery #1) Page 35