More Perfect Union (9780061760228)

by Jance, Judith A.

  Pete recognized my voice instantly. “Hello, Mr. Beaumont. What can I do for you?”

  “What time do you get off, Pete?” I asked him.

  “Eleven o’clock,” he replied.

  “How about making a limo run around ten-thirty. I’ve got some guests here who need to be hand-delivered.”

  “Sorry, Mr. Beaumont,” he apologized cheerfully. “No can do. The Bentley threw a rod coming back from the airport tonight. We don’t have a replacement vehicle until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest. Would you like me to call a cab?”

  I turned around and looked at Derrick and Merrilee Jackson. They were sitting in my window seat, necking up a storm. I didn’t much want to turn them loose in a cab in their current condition. Seattle still has enough of a small-town mentality to be scandalized by the comings and goings of movie people, stars especially. There had already been some unfortunate gossip about Derrick Parker’s public antics, for which Cassie Young held me totally responsible. I had more faith in Pete’s discretion than I did in some late-night cabbie’s, but there wasn’t much choice.

  “You do that,” I said. “Have the cab here just before you get off.”

  Parker was looking at me balefully over Merrilee’s shoulder when I hung up the phone. “Some friend you turned out to be,” he grumbled. “We just got here and already you’re trying to throw us out.”

  “Look, Derrick, a few minutes ago I learned that I have to be back on the set at six tomorrow morning.”

  Parker poured himself another drink and offered one to Merrilee. She tossed down two fingers of Glenlivet as though she’d been weaned on it.

  “Me, too,” Parker sighed. “Isn’t that a pisser! It was all scheduled to be over today. I mean, that’s what the party’s supposed to be for. Too bad.” He dropped heavily back against the window. The drink in his hand sloshed precariously, but it didn’t spill.

  I glanced at the clock. It was only ten, but I picked up the phone and dialed Pete again. “Go ahead and call that cab right now, Pete.” I told him. “The party’s over.”

  Ignoring Derrick’s noisy protest that it was his very last one, I relieved him of the remaining half-bottle of Glenlivet and then escorted the two of them downstairs. Merrilee was a happy drunk, and leaving was fine with her. Derrick turned morose.

  “Spoilsport,” he grumbled. “We were just starting to have fun. Besides, those makeup people can work miracles.”

  “You’ll thank me tomorrow when Cassie Young doesn’t string you up by your thumbs,” I told him.

  As the elevator door opened into the lobby, we were greeted by the sound of a raised voice.

  “If I wanted a goddamned cab to pick my mother up at the airport, I wouldn’t be living in a luxury high rise! I made that limo reservation over a week ago. The concierge assured me it would be no problem.”

  Pete Duvall was doing his best to be polite. The man who was berating him was someone I had never seen before.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Green,” Pete said. “As I was trying to explain, the Bentley was out of order with a fuel-pump problem last week. We got it out of the shop day before yesterday, but tonight it threw a rod. We should be able to have a substitute here by early afternoon, a Caddy probably, but your mother’s plane reservation is too early for that.”

  Mr. Green bristled. “You know, when they rented me this place, they told me that the Bentley was one of the amenities. It was in all the ads, remember? The property manager is going to hear about this. And so are the owners. Personally. I’ll see to it.”

  Pete gave me a veiled look. “I’m sure they will,” he said mildly.

  In actual fact, I had already heard far more about the ancient Bentley than I wanted. It had been a pet project of one of the syndicate’s five principals. The proposal had sounded fine when it was first suggested, but it had turned into a major headache once the Bentley actually arrived on the scene. The car spent far more time in the shop than it did on the road.

  A cab pulled up out front and honked. Happy to be rescued from the irate Mr. Green, Pete hurried to the door. “Here’s your cab, Mr. Beaumont.”

  He helped me shepherd Derrick and Merrilee into the cab. By the time we got back inside the lobby, Mr. Green had disappeared into the elevator. I watched the digits as the elevator monitor ticked off the floors of the building and stopped on seventeen.

  “I take it Mr. Green is new to the building. I’ve never seen him before.”

  Pete nodded. “He’s only been here a few weeks.”

  “He’s not the one who works across the alley in the Labor Temple, is he?”

  “I think so,” Pete replied. “The concierge told me he’s a big-time mucky-muck with one of the unions.”

  The elevator returned. With a good-night wave to Pete, I got inside. Once more I felt the aching throb in my foot. As soon as I was inside my apartment, I stripped off my clothes. Within minutes I was in my private Jacuzzi soaking away the day’s problems. Not even early-bird Peters could be counted on to call at five A.M. I managed to fumble around and reset the alarm on my clock radio before I stretched out naked across my king-sized bed. I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

  When the alarm went off the next morning, the first thing I did was grope for the telephone and dial the Sheraton. I asked for Derrick Parker’s room. The phone rang several times before anybody answered. Derrick sounded as though someone had pounded him into the ground.

  “Up and at ’em,” I told him, imitating Peters’ brisk, early-morning manner.

  “We…I just got to bed,” Derrick croaked.

  “Too bad,” I said. “I’m picking you up in twenty minutes. You’d better roust your friend out of there. She’s got to work today too, you know.”

  For an answer, Derrick slammed the phone down in my ear. Being the one making the wake-up calls for a change made me feel terribly self-righteous. I got to the Sheraton in time to see Derrick hustle Merrilee Jackson into a cab with a quick peck on the cheek. I wondered if she’d have time to get home and change into uniform before she had to report for duty.

  Derrick was pretty hung over. He weaseled a couple of aspirin out of Wanda, the morning waitress at the Doghouse, and when the food came, he barely picked at it. He seemed unusually subdued.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked him finally.

  He shook his head. “My conscience is bothering me. Groupies are one thing, but Merrilee’s really a nice kid. I shouldn’t have taken advantage of her that way.”

  I tried not to laugh aloud. The headlines on the National Enquirer never hint that movie stars might have attacks of conscience the morning after a romantic conquest, although AIDS has made old-fashioned one-night stands an endangered species.

  “You don’t strike me as the type for morning-after reservations,” I said with a chuckle. “Besides, you’re not that much older than she is. I’m sure Merrilee Jackson is perfectly capable of taking care of herself.”

  Parker brightened a little at that. He gave me a sardonic grin. “You know, you may be right. She was packing condoms in her purse.”

  I choked on a mouthful of coffee and spattered my clean tie. They don’t seem to make women exactly the way they used to. For the most part, it’s probably a good thing.

  We got to Lake Union Drydock by a quarter to six. Unfortunately, someone hadn’t negotiated an extension of the parking barricades for the last half-day of shooting.

  Parking places are always at a premium in that Eastlake neighborhood. With both the weekday working people and the movie folks competing for space, it was almost impossible to park the car. We finally found a spot and walked back to the set at a respectable five after six.

  The drydock was a whole lot more crowded than it had been on the weekend. The shipyard workers were all hanging around idle, swilling down free canteen coffee and doughnuts. I saw Woody Carroll just inside the gate with his own cup of coffee.

  “What’s going on?”

  Woody shook his head in disbelief. “Nobod
y’s working. Goldfarb’s paying extra to keep the sandblaster turned off until they finish up. Too much noise, he says.”

  Captain Powell had been right about the king’s ransom, then. If Goldfarb was paying wages to keep unionized drydock workers standing around on the job with their hands in their pockets, then it was indeed costing money. Lots of it.

  Cassie Young was waiting in ambush with both hands on her hips. She didn’t appear to be overjoyed to see us. “If it isn’t the gold-dust twins,” she remarked sarcastically. “Makeup’s waiting for you, Derrick.” He took off without a word. “So you decided to come back after all?” she said to me.

  “I didn’t have a choice.”

  She shrugged. “It’s a good thing. Mr. Goldfarb wants to talk to you. He’s out on the houseboat dock.”

  So Goldfarb was going to chew me out, too. Some days are like that. He was sitting up in the director’s boom overlooking the houseboats when I got there. I waited until they lowered him to the ground.

  “I understand you wanted to see me, Mr. Goldfarb?”

  Instead of climbing my frame, he clapped one arm around my shoulder. “I’m glad to see you, Detective Beaumont. You were absolutely right about that scene with the little kid. I saw the rushes late last night. It just didn’t work. Too melodramatic. We’re going to shoot it again today, the whole scene. Now tell me, just exactly how would you do it?”

  Wonders will never cease. Sam “The Movie Man” Goldfarb’s sudden change of heart left me completely bewildered, but then I don’t suffer from an overdose of artistic temperament. In fact, there isn’t an artistic bone in my body.

  Artistic or not, we did it my way, the whole scene, from beginning to end. Derrick Parker’s gun stayed in its holster. When one stuntman finally tackled the other, it was a full body blow that sent them both crashing onto the deck of one of the houseboats. They rolled under the table where the unsuspecting family was eating a picnic dinner, but no one got hurt. The little kid didn’t get shot and die.

  Fight scenes are incredibly complicated and time-consuming to map out. Choreographing, they call it, and I can see why. It’s very much like an elaborate dance. Everything has to come together in total synchronization. We worked on that scene all morning long, first one segment and then another. For the first time, I had some inkling of how the final product would look. Not only that, I finally felt as though I was making a contribution, doing what Captain Powell had asked me to do.

  For a change, the cop didn’t look stupid.

  And I saved a little kid’s life, even if it was only make-believe.

  Protecting the lives of innocent people is what I get paid for, really. At least that’s what it says in the manual.

  CHAPTER

  7

  I left the houseboat dock about noon. As far as I could see, Death in Drydock was pretty much in the can, but I had still not been officially dismissed. I headed for the coffee station where I found Woody Carroll seated on a folding chair leaning back against the building. He was drinking coffee from a styrofoam cup and holding a newspaper in his lap. Several members of the Lake Union Drydock crew were gathered around and involved in a heated debate.

  “I’d never let my wife work at a job like that. Never in a million years.” The comment came from a long-haired type in grubby overalls.

  Several of the group nodded in agreement while another hooted with laughter. “Come on, George, admit it. You couldn’t stand it if your old lady made more money than you, that’s all.”

  “It’s not that,” George insisted. “It’s too damn dangerous for everyone else on the job. Women aren’t strong enough. They got no business goin’ where they’re not wanted.”

  I edged my way over to where Woody was sitting. “What are they talking about?” I asked.

  Wordlessly, he handed me the newspaper, opened to the front page. The picture that met my eyes was a real gut-wrencher. It was one of a construction worker tumbling head over heels past the face of an unfinished building. The headline across the page told it all: CONSTRUCTION WORKER PLUNGES 43 STORIES.

  “It was a woman?” I asked.

  Woody nodded. “Read it,” he said.

  I did.

  “A 28-year-old Seattle-area construction worker fell to her death early yesterday during her fourth day on the job at Masters Plaza, a building under construction at Second and Union.

  “Angie Dixon of Bothell, an apprentice ironworker, apparently became entangled in a welding lead and fell from the 43rd story of the new building, which is scheduled for completion late next year. Ms. Dixon was pronounced dead at the scene by King County’s medical examiner, Dr. Howard Baker.

  “One of the victim’s fellow crew members, journeyman ironworker Harry Campbell, said he had sent Ms. Dixon to bring a welding lead. When she failed to return, he went looking for her in time to see her clinging to a welding hose outside the building. He was attempting to reach her when she fell.

  “Mr. Raymond Dixon, the dead woman’s father, said his daughter had only recently decided to break into the construction trade. He said she had previously worked in the union’s bookkeeping department as a secretary and was frustrated by consistently low wages and boredom.

  “Masters and Rogers, the Canadian developers of Masters Plaza, have been recording the emergence of the building with a series of time-lapse photographs. One of them, released exclusively to the Seattle Times today, happened to capture the woman’s fatal plunge.

  “Darren Gibson, local spokesperson for Masters and Rogers Developers, said a crew of ironworkers and operating engineers were working overtime both Saturday and Sunday in an effort to keep the building’s completion deadline on schedule.”

  I didn’t read any more. I threw the paper back in Woody Carroll’s lap. “Those sorry bastards,” I muttered. “They’ll do anything to sell newspapers.”

  The debate was still swirling around me. “If she’da had more upper-body strength, she probably coulda hung onto that welding lead long enough for somebody to drag her back inside, know what I mean?” one man was saying.

  “No way,” the long-haired George responded. “He would have been killed, too.”

  Just then there was a sharp blast from the Lake Union Drydock whistle. To a man the workers got to their feet. “I guess that means we can get to work now,” George said. He sauntered away, leading a group that headed in the direction of the drydocked minesweeper. There weren’t any women in that particular crew. It didn’t surprise me a bit.

  Woody Carroll had pulled out a pencil and was making a series of calculations in the margin of the newspaper. “How tall do you suppose forty-three stories are?” he asked me.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. In a commercial building each story is probably ten feet or so, give or take. And the lobby level is often taller than that, say fifteen feet, somewhere around there. Why? What are you doing?”

  For a moment Woody didn’t answer me, but concentrated on what he was doing, his brows knit in deep furrows. Finally he glanced up at me. “She must have been doing about a hundred fourteen miles an hour when she hit the ground.”

  “A hundred and fourteen?” I asked. “That’s pretty damn fast. I’ve been a cop for a long time, and I’ve pulled my share of pulverized automobile victims from wrecked cars. At fifty-five it’s bad enough. I’m glad I wasn’t there to scrape her off the sidewalk.”

  Woody nodded. “Me, too,” he said.

  I poured myself another cup of coffee. Math has never been my strong suit. It took me a minute or two to realize that Woody Carroll, without the benefit of so much as a pocket calculator, had just solved a fairly complicated mathematical problem.

  “How’d you do that, by the way? You never struck me as a mathematician.”

  Woody grinned. “Snuck that one in on you, didn’t I. It’s simple. I thought I told you, I was a bombardier in the Pacific during World War II. I never got beyond geometry in high school, but the Air Force gave me a crash course after I enlisted. I cut my teeth on t
hose Norden bomb sights. Did I ever tell you about that?”

  “As a matter of fact, you didn’t.”

  Woody was just getting ready to launch into one of his long-winded stories, when someone came looking for him. “Hey, Woody, they need you to help direct trucks in and out so they can load up and get out of our way.”

  Carroll got up and handed me the paper. “See you later,” he said. “It’s been a pleasure working with you, Detective Beaumont.”

  Left standing there alone, I didn’t want to look at the newspaper in my hand, but I was drawn to it nevertheless. The picture repulsed me. The very idea repulsed me. I suspected that someone had made a nice piece of change, selling the developers’ fortuitous snapshot of Angie Dixon’s death to the newspapers. The editor who used it and the person who provided it were both scumbags in my book—but, inarguably, the picture would sell newspapers.

  After all, look who was reading it. I was. Reluctantly. Furtively. As though hoping I wouldn’t be caught. I usually make it a point not to read newspapers, especially in public.

  The article went on to discuss Seattle’s poor showing in the construction industry’s accident statistics, how the city was tenth in the nation for number of construction deaths per billion dollars’ worth of new construction. There was even a quote, attributed to Martin Green, Executive Director of Ironworkers Local 165, saying that part of the problem was due to a lack of building inspections by the state.

  Martin Green. The name leaped out at me. I wondered if it wasn’t the same irate Mr. Green from the lobby of Belltown Terrace. Probably.

  I sat down and read the entire article again, and then, out of boredom, I read the whole paper. On the back of the front page of the last section, just before the want ads, was a much smaller article, a brief obituary about Logan Tyree, the victim of a boating accident, whose body had been pulled from Lake Union on Saturday afternoon. That one told me nothing I didn’t already know.

  I was almost finished with the crossword puzzle when Cassie Young came looking for me.