More Perfect Union (9780061760228)

by Jance, Judith A.

  “Sure,” I said. “Let’s get going.”

  We set off walking at a pretty good clip, but I had trouble keeping up. Jimmy kept bounding ahead, then he’d rush back to hurry me along. Watching him, I had an attack of guilty conscience, but I pushed it out of my mind. He was such a guileless innocent—it had been all too easy to con Linda Decker’s phone number out of him. Anybody could have gotten it from him, if they’d only bothered to ask.

  Of course, my guilty conscience wasn’t so serious that I pulled the notation with Linda’s phone number on it out of my notebook and threw it away. After all, as long as I had the information, I could just as well use it.

  “Is Linda in…trouble?” he asked suddenly.

  The question caught me off guard. I didn’t know if he was asking me if she was pregnant or if he meant something else.

  “What makes you say that?” I asked.

  “Because those men were detectives. Just like on ‘Miami Vice.’ That’s my favorite. What’s yours?”

  I don’t watch television, but I didn’t want to explain that to Jimmy Rising. “Mine, too,” I answered.

  “Who do you like the most?”

  That was a stumper. He had me dead to rights. “I like ’em all,” I waffled.

  “Oh,” he said, and we continued walking in silence.

  When I unlocked the car door and let him into the Porsche, he was ecstatic. “I’ve…never been in a car this…nice,” he said. “Are you sure you don’t…mind?”

  “I don’t mind,” I said.

  “But doesn’t it…cost a lot of money? Mama’s always…saying that. Cars cost…money.” Reverently he touched the smooth leather seat. “Is this brand-new?” he asked.

  “No,” I answered.

  We headed back down toward I-90. Jimmy was fascinated by the buttons and knobs. He turned the radio on full blast, moved the seat back and forth, rolled his window up and down. He had a great time.

  It was well after two when we turned off 15th onto Armory Way and stopped in the parking lot of the Northwest Center for the Retarded. A woman walked out of one building and headed down a shaded walkway toward another. Jimmy leaped out of the car and bounded after her. “Miss Carson, Miss Carson. I’m here,” he shouted.

  Miss Carson stopped in mid-stride, turned, and came back toward us. Even from a distance I could see she was willowy blonde. I turned off the motor, telling myself that Jimmy Rising would probably need some help explaining why he was so late.

  He came rushing headlong back to the car, dragging Miss Carson by one hand. “He’s the one,” he said, pointing at me. “He even knew how…to get here. I didn’t have to…tell him.”

  Close up, Miss Carson was still blonde and still willowy. She had almond-shaped green eyes, a fair complexion, and a dazzling smile. She held out her hand. “Thank you so much for giving Jimmy a ride. That was very kind of you. He told me he missed the bus.” She turned to Jimmy. “Did you tell him thank you?”

  Suddenly shy, Jimmy Rising ducked his head and stepped back a step. “Thanks,” he mumbled.

  “I was glad to do it.”

  Miss Carson smiled at him. “You go on to work now, Jimmy. The others are just going on break. I want to talk to Mr….”

  “Beaumont,” I supplied.

  “To Mr. Beaumont,” she added.

  Jimmy hurried away without a backward glance, and Miss Carson turned to me. The smile had been replaced by a look of concern.

  “I’m Sandy Carson,” she said. “I run the micrographics department. Where did you find him? We called his mother, Leona, but she couldn’t leave work to go look for him.”

  Briefly, I told Sandy Carson everything I knew about Jimmy Rising missing the bus, about his being upset because Linda Decker had left town without taking him with her.

  “No wonder he got rattled,” Miss Carson said when I finished. “His sister’s really special to him. Are you a friend of the family? Do you happen to know his mother?”

  I shook my head, not wanting to admit to Sandy that I was a total stranger who had wandered onto the Rising porch in the course of a police investigation.

  “It’s too bad Linda couldn’t take him,” Sandy said. “He’d be a lot better off with her. His mother’s about at the end of her rope.” She glanced down at her watch. “I’d better get going,” she said. “They’ll be tearing the place apart. Thanks again,” she added. “Coming here is terribly important to people like Jimmy. It’s more than just a job, you know. It’s their whole life.”

  With that, she turned and walked away, still blonde and still willowy, disappearing behind the same door that had swallowed Jimmy Rising.

  I couldn’t help wondering if Jimmy Rising ever noticed that about her, or if to him she was simply Miss Carson from micrographics.

  Either way, it was sad as hell for Jimmy Rising and not so sad for J.P. Beaumont.

  CHAPTER

  10

  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—the telephone is a homicide detective’s most valuable tool. If we venture into areas where court orders are required, telephone-company people can be hard-nosed as hell. Outside those sticky areas, though, they are worth their weight in gold.

  Using the telephone over the years, I’ve established working relationships with any number of people I never see, people I know by voice on a first-name basis but wouldn’t recognize if I ran into them in the grocery store.

  Gloria Hutchins is one of those people. I wouldn’t know her from Adam if I met her on the street, but if I heard her speak, I’d know her anywhere. Gloria is the gravelly-voiced lady in the security department at Pacific Northwest Bell who handles requests for information from law-enforcement officers.

  When I got back to Belltown Terrace late that afternoon, I took out my notebook, opened it to the page with Linda Decker’s new phone number on it, and dialed Gloria Hutchins’ number. I didn’t have to look it up. That’s one I know by heart.

  “Hi, Gloria,” I said casually. “Detective Beaumont here. How’s it going?”

  There was a warm greeting in her low voice when she answered. “Why, hello there, Beau. Long time no see. Where’ve you been, on vacation?”

  “No such luck,” I responded. “I’ve been locked up on a special assignment.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “I’ve got a telephone number, but I need an address.”

  “Case number?” Gloria asked.

  I just happened to have one. I had jotted down the boat-fire case number from Jim Harrison’s file folder at Harbor Station. I gave Gloria the case number and Linda Decker’s phone number.

  “Things are really popping around here right now,” Gloria said. “It’s going to be awhile before I can get to this. What’s your number?”

  The problem was, I was calling her from home. I didn’t much want to give her that number for a callback. That would look bad. Instead, I gave her my extension at work. “I’ll be leaving here in a few minutes,” I told her. “Just give the address to whoever answers. Tell them it’s for me.”

  “Will do,” Gloria said. “Anything else?”

  “Nope. That’s it for now. Thanks.”

  I hung up and turned to a stack of unopened mail that had accumulated on the table beside my chair. The first three envelopes were bills, but between the bills and the gaudy collection of junk mail addressed to “Resident” was a handwritten envelope with no return address. I slit it open and scanned down the scrawled page to the signature on the bottom—Martin Green.

  Letting the letter drop back on the table, I went to pour myself a MacNaughton’s. If I was going to be forced to endure a tirade about the Bentley, at least I could do it in comfort.

  And tirade it was. Mr. Green informed that he was most unhappy with the lack of availability of the Bentley, especially since he had reserved it well in advance. He went on to say that the Bentley was one of the advertised amenities which had attracted him to the building in the first place. Since I was the only member of the
real-estate syndicate who was readily available, he said he hoped we could get together to resolve the situation amicably. If not, he was prepared to take us to the Better Business Bureau.

  I finished drinking the MacNaughton’s and reading the letter at approximately the same time. I had wanted an excuse to talk to Martin Green. Now I had one, although it could hardly be called an engraved invitation. I retied my tie, grabbed my jacket off the dining-room chair, and retrieved my shoes from their place next to the front door. This felt like one of those situations where casual attire would be a distinct disadvantage. Somebody told me once that in winning by intimidation, you have to dress the part.

  Secured-building etiquette requires that you call before you knock on someone’s door. According to directory assistance, Martin Green had an unlisted telephone number. I went down to the garage and dialed his code on the security phone. A woman answered and I gave her my name. There was a good deal of background noise, and she evidently couldn’t hear me very well.

  “Who?” she demanded.

  “My name is Beaumont,” I repeated.

  “There are too many people here. It’s too noisy. Come on up. Apartment 1704.”

  The door to 1704 stood slightly ajar and the sound of voices told me a party of some kind was in progress. I’m not sure what I expected. For me the word “ironworker” conjures up a macho image of men in khaki work shirts and hard hats swilling beer and telling dirty jokes. Martin Green’s party was nothing like that. The room was full of gray-suited bean-counter types and their female escorts who drank champagne from dainty crystal champagne flutes and nibbled bite-sized canapés.

  A silver-haired lady in a pearl-gray dress met me at the door. “I’m Martin’s mother.” She beamed at me. “I’m playing hostess tonight. Won’t you come in? What would you like to drink?”

  “I just stopped by to see Martin for a few minutes,” I told her. “Maybe it would be better if I came back another time.”

  She shook her head. “Oh, no. Don’t do that. I’m sure he’d want to see you. He left just a moment ago to take some of his guests down to show them the recreation floor, you know, the pool and the Jacuzzi and all that. They’ll be back in a few minutes if you don’t mind waiting.”

  I allowed myself to be ushered inside. Almost instantly a glass of champagne appeared in my hand. The room was crowded and stuffy despite the fact that the heat-pump air-conditioning was going full blast. There were far too many people crammed in the relatively small living room. I made my way to the far side, hoping to escape the crush and also to gain a vantage point from which to watch the proceedings.

  The 04 units in Belltown Terrace all have balconies which look out on the city. There was a lone man standing outside on the balcony peering out at the rank upon rank of downtown skyscrapers standing stiffly at attention against a pale blue August sky. Here and there hammerhead cranes served as lonely sentinels marking the emergence of yet more new buildings.

  Another group of people came into the room, and those already inside pressed back. Feeling claustrophobic, I slid open the door and escaped onto the balcony. The lone man there glanced at me briefly, then continued to stare off into the distance. In his late thirties or early forties, he was reasonably well-built. The fabric of his jacket bunched tightly over muscular arms. He stood with one foot on the lower crossbar, his elbows resting on the upper railing. The drink in his hand wasn’t champagne.

  He said nothing, and I didn’t either. Instead, I moved to the railing as well, and looked where he was looking—straight up Second Avenue toward the point where the raw skeleton of Masters Plaza climbed skyward. Swirling his drink, he gave me another sidelong glance as I stepped to the railing beside him, and then he drained his glass.

  “It’s bad luck to have a party like this the day after somebody went in the hole.”

  It was the first time I had ever heard that particular expression, but it wasn’t hard to grasp the meaning. He was talking about Angie Dixon falling to her death. From the grim set of his mouth I could see it was gnawing at him. He assumed it was bothering me as well.

  “Did you know her?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  He shook his head balefully. “It always hurts to lose a hand,” he added. “No matter how long a guy stays in this business it never gets any easier.”

  His fingers tightened around his empty glass. For a moment, I thought he was going to crush it bare-handed. At last he opened his fist, letting the glass lay in his open palm. For the first time I noticed the callouses, the work-roughened texture of his skin. The rest of the men at Martin Green’s party may have been bean-counting accountant types with Harvard MBAs, but the guy on the balcony seemed to be an ordinary Joe Blow, a regular working stiff. I wondered if, like me, he had wandered uninvited into the wrong party.

  A waitress stepped out on the balcony carrying a tray of champagne glasses. I took one, but my companion ordered Scotch—neat. No rocks, no ice, no soda. As the waitress walked away, he reached up and yanked savagely on the knot of his tie, pulling it loose from the base of his Adam’s apple.

  “I hate these goddamned monkey suits,” he complained, “but we have to wear ’em whenever the visiting dignitaries come to call.”

  “What visiting dignitaries?” I asked.

  He glanced at me wearily. “You’re not one of them, then?” he asked, nodding toward the roomful of bean-counters.

  I shook my head in answer. “I’m a neighbor from the building,” I explained. “I stopped by to talk to Martin. I didn’t mean to crash his party.”

  He frowned. “But you know about…” He jerked his head in the direction of Masters Plaza.

  “I read the papers,” I said. The young woman returned with his Scotch. He accepted it gratefully and took a swift gulp. I waited until the woman had gone back inside and slid the door shut behind her before I spoke again. “You were saying about the accident…”

  He turned away from me, once more leaning over the balcony. “Me and my big mouth,” he said. “I was talking out of turn.”

  “My name’s Beaumont. I didn’t catch yours.”

  “Kaplan,” he answered, offering me his hand. “Don Kaplan.”

  “What do you do?”

  He laughed bitterly. “Me? I’m just a broken-down rod-buster who went bad.”

  “Rod-buster?” I asked.

  “An ironworker,” he explained. “Rebar—reinforcing steel—as opposed to structural. If my back hadn’t given out on me, I’d probably still be tying rods on the I-90 bridge. As it is, they kicked me upstairs. I’m a business agent now.”

  A burst of laughter inside the room behind us. “And what’s this all about?” I asked.

  Lifting his glass to his lips, Don Kaplan paused before he took a drink. “VIP’s from International out pressing the flesh.” There was an unmistakable trace of sarcasm in his voice.

  Before he could say anything more, the door slid open behind us. “There you are, Don. I’ve been looking all over for you.” Martin Green stepped onto the balcony behind us, leading a trio made up of two men and an accompanying sweet young thing. All three were laughing uproariously.

  “Here’s Don. You three will be riding with him. You know how to get into the parking garage at Columbia Center, don’t you, Don?”

  Don Kaplan nodded shortly, as though he didn’t much relish the ride.

  “And then if you’ll drop them back off at the Sorrento after dinner.”

  “No problem,” Don mumbled.

  Green turned to me with a puzzled expression on his face. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced,” he said, extending his hand.

  “My name’s Beaumont.” I reached into my breast pocket and extracted the envelope. “I didn’t mean to crash your party. I came by to talk to you about this. The lady at the door mistook me for one of your guests.”

  Martin Green laughed. “That’s my mother all right, but this really isn’t a very good time for me. We have a dinner reservation downtown
in a little while. Could we make an appointment for tomorrow or the next day?”

  The charming smile never left Green’s face as he took me by the elbow and guided me unerringly through his guests to the front door where his mother was still holding court. It was one of the smoothest bum’s rushes I’ve ever experienced. Smooth as glass and absolutely effective.

  “What time tomorrow?” I asked.

  “Nine? Nine-thirty? Whatever’s good for you.”

  “Nine-thirty,” I said. “Where?”

  “Do you know where my office is next door in the Labor Temple?” he asked.

  “I’m sure I can find it.”

  “Good,” he said. “I’ll see you then.” With that he closed the door and left me standing in the hallway. Here’s your hat; what’s your hurry.

  I had no more than gotten back to my apartment when the phone rang. The last person I expected to hear from was Marilyn Sykes, the Mercer Island Chief of Police. She and I had met several months earlier and had become friends. She was single and so was I. On occasion things came up where one of us needed to have an escort and we had called on each other to pinch-hit. We had good times when we were out together, with no pressure for our relationship to be either more or less than it was. We had only one hard-and-fast rule between us—no talking shop.

  “How about a hot date?” she asked.

  I laughed. “With you?” Our rare dates were fun but hardly hot.

  “I know this is late notice. I was supposed to be out of town today and now I’m not. The Mercer Island Chamber of Commerce is doing its big benefit dinner tonight. Would you consider coming along and bailing me out of hot water? I really should put in an appearance.”

  “Sure,” I said. “What time?”

  “It’s supposed to have started at six, but if we’re a little late, it won’t matter.”

  Had the Bentley been working, I would have had Pete drive me over to Mercer Island to pick her up—just to make a splash. As it was, I took the Porsche.