M.D. Grayson - Danny Logan 05 - Blue Molly

by M. D. Grayson

  I found this to be a little amusing, since—like I said—at that particular moment, no one was moving. I suppose I shouldn’t have laughed out loud, though. I’m pretty sure that’s what got me and Doc arrested.

  Chapter 2

  Ever watch a Super Bowl parade from the back of a squad car doing, maybe, three miles an hour? I don’t recommend it. We crawled along through the middle of seven hundred thousand screaming Seahawks fans. It was a real hoot having everyone peer into the car as we crept past. They all got a close-up look at the dastardly criminal in the backseat. Our ultimate destination was an alley behind the police department three miles away. We pulled in an hour later.

  My uniformed driver, with a name tag reading Malkovich, and his associate, Sutton, were kind enough to lead me through a stout metal door into a large room with lights so bright I had to blink. Almost immediately, I noticed a familiar odor, like a mixture of urine and vomit and feet. I couldn’t tell the source, but the smell was unmistakable. The room was full of chrome-and-vinyl chairs, the kind you see at the DMV—long rows of seats welded together so that no one can pick one up and throw it. A television was mounted to the wall in a corner, tuned to a station showing the parade. A handful of people were waiting: waiting to be processed in or waiting for loved ones to be processed out. An intimidating sergeant, who I think was a little bigger than I am, sat behind a glass wall at the head of the room. Aside from casting an evil eye on everyone the police hauled through the metal door, her main job seemed to be to keep watch over a set of double doors on the other side of the room that led somewhere into the building’s innards. If you met with her approval, the sergeant’d push a hidden button, and a buzzer went off, the doors unlocked and swung open, and you were cleared to pass.

  Officer Malkovich, the senior of my two captors, checked in with the sergeant while Sutton kept a firm grip on my shoulder, my arms still handcuffed behind my back. I guess I expected the first step in the process of clearing up this little misunderstanding was that I’d be taken to an interrogation room where the cuffs would be removed and I’d be questioned by someone of authority. There, they’d figure out that Malkovich and Sutton had made a grievous mistake by arresting yours truly for “disturbing the peace,” when it was obvious to anyone who’d been there that all I’d done was come to the aid of a couple of helpless citizens under attack by criminal elements. I was the one “undisturbing” the peace—smoothing things out, rescuing the needy, and putting things back to rights. The sooner they understood this, the sooner I’d be released, most likely with their thanks for saving the innocent couple and their humble apologies for throwing my sorry butt into jail. That’s what I hoped and expected. That’s not exactly the way it turned out, though.

  Something must have gotten crossed up somewhere because, to my dismay, they just flat skipped over the “thanks and apologies” part altogether. Instead, the desk sergeant glanced over at me and gave me a stern look. Then she pressed her button, the double doors buzzed, and the Malkovich/Sutton team led me straight through to begin my booking.

  My first stop was an intake desk, which was manned (womanned?) by a female officer who sat on a swivel chair, her back to us as she replaced a file into a short metal cabinet behind her desk. She heard us approach. “Empty your pockets,” she said, before she even started to turn my way. She had the bored sound of somebody charged with doing a simple task over and over again, all the while wishing she were somewhere else. She slammed the file drawer closed and turned around to look up at me. She was medium height, thin, with dark hair and pretty dark eyes, about my age. Her name tag read “Morrison.” I gave her a smile and said, “Sorry, Officer Morrison.” I did a little turn so that she could see my hands still cuffed behind my back. I lifted my arms as high as I could. “I’m afraid in my present condition, you’re going to have to turn me upside down and shake me in order to empty my pockets.”

  Officer Morrison stared at me, clearly unimpressed by my little joke. Then she turned and looked up at Malkovich. “Do you mind?”

  He looked at her, a blank expression on his face.

  So she clarified for him. “Move … his … cuffs … to … the … front. Please. Geez.”

  This apparently got through. He nodded and scrambled to comply. Once cuffed in front, I reached into my pockets (still difficult even with the cuffs in front). I pulled out my keys, my wallet, and forty-three cents in change I’d gotten at the bar before the disagreement started. I’d already been relieved of my SureFire pocketknife by my captors. In the process of clearing my pockets, I exposed my (empty) waist holster.

  Officer Morrison watched this process, then she looked at my wallet: my driver’s license, my PI license, and my concealed carry permit. She looked up at Malkovich. “Where’s his sidearm?”

  Sidearm? I was impressed. Most civilians would have simply said “gun” or maybe “handgun” if they were trying to be precise. Sidearm is what we were taught in the army. There, we referred to personal firearms, broadly, as either sidearms or rifles. Guns were something the artillery people played with.

  The officers looked at each other, unable to answer her question. So I helped. “It’s a 1911, and it’s secured in my Jeep back at the bar.” I gave a sideways nod to Malkovich and Sutton. “These guys never had access to it.”

  “Why’s it in your Jeep?”

  “Because it’s against the law for a civilian to carry a firearm into a bar in Washington State. My partner and I disarmed before we entered.”

  She nodded and made a notation on her form.

  While she was doing this, I spoke up. “Officer, would you mind if I ask you a question?”

  “Go ahead,” she said, without looking up.

  “Are you former military?”

  She paused to scrutinize me, then said, “United States Army. Tenth Mountain Division. First Brigade.”

  I smiled. “I thought so. I spent a few years with the 101st and then I transferred to sixth MPs.”

  “CID?”

  I nodded. “Yep. Fort Lewis.”

  She stood up. “You were an army cop?”

  “Three years.”

  She looked me in the eye for a second, then she said, “Well, it’s nice to meet a fellow soldier.” She handed my paperwork to one of my guardians. “Officers,” she said, addressing Malkovich and Sutton, “given this man’s service to his nation, let’s skip the body-cavity search.” She looked at me, still no smile. “Just this one time. Take him over to get his picture taken.”

  I couldn’t believe it: what a grouch.

  * * * *

  Thirty minutes later, I sat by myself in an empty holding cell on a wooden bench that was bolted to the floor. Now I know where the smell in the waiting room was coming from: standard-issue civilian jail. Nothing you could see—the room looked clean enough. But the smell was there nonetheless, as much a permanent fixture as the thick, gloppy paint on the walls, the fluorescent lights inset into cages in the ceiling, and the shiny light-gray linoleum floor tiles. I’d spent enough time in jails on the good side of the bars to be familiar with the nasty smell. I held my arm up and breathed through my sleeve, searching for relief but not finding much.

  After leaving the lovely Officer Morrison, I’d had my picture taken and been fingerprinted. I’d been given access to a telephone, so I called my partner Antoinette “Toni” Blair and asked her to come rescue me. When she said “from where,” I had no choice but to fess up and admit I was in jail. She didn’t sound too pleased; this was not good. Besides being my number-one business associate, Toni Blair was also my roommate and if all went well, she was destined to be much more. If there’s such a thing as soul mates, she’s mine. For this and several other reasons, it’s not okay to have her pissed at me.

  I was about to start developing a Toni strategy when I saw two guards accompanying Doc walk toward my cell. They slid the cell door open and Doc stepped through. The guard removed Doc’s cuffs and closed the door. Joaquin Kiahtel—Doc—is my oldest friend in
the world not counting the guys I knew in school, who I guess are more what you’d call “distant” friends, and also not counting the guys I served with in the infantry before I was an army cop. Those guys hold a special place, but I have to admit that I don’t keep in as close contact as I should. I met Doc when I was at Fort Lewis. I helped him through a couple of rough patches when we were both still enlisted, and we’ve been friends ever since. After Toni, he was the next person I hired when I formed Logan Private Investigations in 2008. Doc’s Native American—a full-blooded member of the Mescalero-Chiricahua Apache tribe in New Mexico. Officially, he’s our company’s head of security, a job for which he has formidable skills.

  I looked up at him from the wooden bench. “Dude.”

  He surveyed the small cell, then nodded. “Dude.” He wrinkled his nose. “Smells like FAN in here.” FAN is a particularly colorful military acronym used to describe the smell that lingers around the places where GIs bunk.

  I chuckled. “No shit. Don’t breathe through your mouth.”

  He nodded.

  “You call Pri?” I asked. Dr. Prita Dekhlikiseh is Doc’s girlfriend.

  “She was with a patient. I left a message for her to call Toni’s cell. I figured you’d call her.” I nodded. Pri is a trauma physician at Harborview Medical Center. Like Doc, she’s also Apache, although she’s from a western tribe: the San Carlos Apache in Arizona. She and Doc met when he got his head bashed on one of our cases. They’ve been inseparable since then.

  “Good. They’ll get things arranged—get us out of here.”

  A minute later, the guards reappeared, this time escorting the man we’d defended in the bar. He was led in after his cuffs were removed. His left eye was swollen about halfway shut and was starting to turn black-and-blue. The guards slid the door closed behind him.

  “Welcome to the party,” I said. “That’s a first-class shiner you’ve got going there.”

  He looked around the cell before turning to me. “A day of firsts.”

  I smiled. “How’s that?”

  “First … shiner, as you put it. First bar fight—first fight of any type for that matter. First time arrested.”

  I stood up and held out my hand. “Well, that being the case, let me congratulate you. You went three for three today.”

  “Excellent,” he said, smiling. “Now I can cross ’em off my bucket list.”

  I nodded. “Seriously—you did a helluva job. For your first fight, you were no pushover. I’m Danny Logan. This guy here is my buddy Doc Kiahtel.”

  He shook my hand, then Doc’s, as he introduced himself. “Mike Lyon.” Mike was medium height, just a little stocky, midfifties. He had a friendly demeanor. He sat down beside us, then looked around and made a nasty face. “Man, it smells horrible in here.”

  I nodded. “It sure does. Take short breaths. You’ll get used to it.”

  “Take your word for it.” He looked at me, then at Doc. “Guys,” he said, “I owe you two a huge thanks. You saved our butts back there.”

  “No problem. We seem to attract trouble.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Doc said.

  “Especially him.” I smiled and nodded to Doc. He gave me a small grin. We’d been in tough fixes together before.

  “Are you guys in law enforcement somehow?” Mike asked. “I mean, the way you handled yourselves in there, it was pretty impressive.”

  I nodded. “Sort of—used to be, anyway. We’re both ex-military, now private investigators.”

  “Hmm,” he said. He thought for a second, then added, “Well, I’m really sorry you got arrested in the process of helping my wife and me. Hopefully, it won’t cause you any long-term troubles.”

  I shrugged. “We’ll be fine. Speaking of your wife, what happened to her? She get busted, too?”

  He shook his head. “She kind of started the whole thing, but she never did any of the actual fighting, so they let her go.”

  “She started it?”

  He smiled. “Yeah. Can you believe that? Those idiots started saying things and, at first, we ignored them. Finally, though, Sylvia got mad.” He chuckled. “I guess her boiling point’s a little lower than mine. Anyway, she yelled something at ’em, and then one of ’em jumped up and started yelling back. Then I had to jump up, you guys came over, and the rest is history. Like I said, a day of firsts.” He paused, then said, “Speaking of firsts, I sure hope she’s able to bail me out of here soon.”

  “Let’s hope,” I said. “Who were those guys, anyway?”

  “Bunch of local thugs. Russian immigrants, I think. We’ve seen them before hanging out at Occidental Park, right by our shop. We own the Lyon Building on the corner of Main and Occidental in Pioneer Square, on the Occidental Mall and across from the park. The building’s been in my family since it was new back in 1890.”

  “Long time.”

  “Yeah, it sure is.”

  “So what’d they want? The Russians?”

  He paused and then he said, “I wouldn’t normally just blurt out my problems to a stranger, but—”

  I smiled. “Go ahead. We seem to have a few minutes here.”

  “True.” He collected his thoughts for a few seconds, then he started. “So my wife runs the Sylvia Lyon Gallery right there on the corner of our building. She’s what you might call our anchor tenant. About four months ago—I think it was just before Halloween—this sharp-looking lawyer stopped by and said he had an anonymous client who was interested in buying our building—gave us a written offer, even. And it was a good offer at that, close to my idea of market value. But I explained the history of the building, told him how it got rebuilt after the big fire back in 1889, and said we weren’t interested in selling. He was nice. He thanked us and left, and I thought that was it. Then, not long afterward, things started happening.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Little things, at least at first. For instance, we’ve never had taggers in our area, at least nothing serious, but they started coming around right after we said weren’t interested in selling. It’s still going on, and whoever’s doing it is persistent. They spray-paint obscenities on the walls, doors, windows, you name it. Next day, I get it cleaned up. A few days later, they’re back. Then I get it cleaned up again. And so on.”

  “Widespread or just your building?” I asked.

  “That’s the hell of it. It was just us. Then, after that, we started seeing broken glass on the sidewalk. I’d get it cleaned up, then there’s more. And after that, the trash started getting knocked over regularly. Not just a little trash can, mind you, but the whole friggin’ Dumpster knocked right on its side.”

  “Any idea who’s doing it?”

  He nodded. “Hell, yeah. It’s the same Russian thugs you met this afternoon.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “No question. There’ve been run-ins with our tenants.”

  I shrugged. “Sounds like you need to call the police, then.”

  “We did. They came out. They looked around, took some pictures of the graffiti on the wall. Filled out a report. But in the end, they said it was most likely kids, said kids were causing these kinds of problems all over town. I thought this was a bullshit excuse—pardon my language—because if it was kids, how come ours was the only building in the area that was getting hit? We never even see any kids around, unless you count those across the street in the park—and most of them are in strollers, for Christ’s sake. So then the police said maybe the other buildings have better security. This is complete BS. Then, I don’t know, maybe a month or so after that started, the same lawyer came by again. He raised his offer twenty percent. Twenty percent! Now he’s quite a bit higher than what I thought the building was worth. But still, I can’t sell the building for any price.” He shrugged. “It just wouldn’t be right. So we gave him the same answer.”

  “So then, in December, we started getting complaints from our tenants about being hassled by the Russians directly. They were doing things like
blocking their entries, hanging out in big groups in front of their stores, intimidating their customers. Last month right after New Year’s, three of our tenants said they’d had a terrible Christmas season and were going to close. We had no choice but to let them off for the remainder of their leases because their complaints were legit. So now, counting the gallery, there are only four tenants left on the ground floor. We have three upstairs floors plus a basement, but the upstairs hasn’t had a tenant for I don’t know … decades, and we rent the basements at a discount to the tenants above them on the ground floor, but only about half want ’em. Fortunately, the building’s free and clear and we don’t need the upstairs or the basements to make it, but that said, with an old building like ours, maintenance alone is a killer, not to mention utilities and property taxes, and it’s hard to make ends meet. We need to keep the ground floor full. As things are now, we’re writing checks every month.”

  I shrugged again. “So call the police back. Tell them what’s going on.”

  He shook his head. “We did. We called a bunch of times. They said unless they could actually catch someone harassing us or vandalizing the building, they wouldn’t have enough evidence to arrest anyone. We’d call when one of our tenants complained, but the guys would be gone by the time the police showed up. Bottom line is the police haven’t been able to catch anybody. So then at the end of last month, the lawyer comes for the third time. Raised his offer another ten percent. Said it was his final offer.”

  “I said, ‘Good. Now you can leave us alone.’” Mike shook his head. “But it didn’t work—none of the harassment stopped. I’ll tell you, we’re about at our wit’s end.”

  I took a deep breath. “And you didn’t have any trouble before the lawyer showed up in October? No tagging, no vandalism, nothing like that?”

  He shook his head “Nothing. Ever. And that’s why we don’t think it’s just unrelated random acts of stupidity. We believe that all this crap and the guys doing it are related to the offer. It’s damn sure not because the other buildings have better security.”