The First Victim lbadm-6

by Ridley Pearson

  They were escorted through the impossibly cramped butcher department where a bone-thin grandmother wielded a Chinese knife like an axe into a side of beef. Wizened and otherwise frail looking, she had a smile that flooded them with kindness, and her eyes flirted.

  ‘‘I think she likes you,’’ LaMoia said as they climbed noisy wooden stairs through a dark hallway.

  ‘‘I hope she does,’’ Boldt replied, unprepared for what he saw next. Mama Lu was the size of Orson Welles. She wore a bright red housedress with gorgeous black hair braided down to her waist. Surrounded by piles of books and a single black rotary dial telephone, she occupied a wingback chair under the floral shade of a standing lamp that fit her more like a commercial hair dryer. Yellowing roller shades were pulled to block any sun, and a persistent air conditioner struggled in the one window that remained free of a covering, offering a limited view of Elliott Bay and the islands beyond.

  Mama Lu reached into a glass of water with fingers as fast as a frog’s tongue and had her teeth in before her guests had introduced themselves. When she spoke, the windy baritone emanated from somewhere beneath the substantial bosom that hung off her like the continental shelf. By the sound of her, she had smoked for a long, long time. Maybe still did, unless the green oxygen bottle standing in the corner was more than decoration.

  ‘‘You honor me with this visit,’’ she said in passable English.

  ‘‘It is said,’’ Boldt began, ‘‘that Miss Lu’s family is very large indeed: mother to many, friend to all. You have made substantial contributions to our Police Athletic League, to the firemen and to the hospitals, and for this the city and its people are extremely grateful.’’

  ‘‘We are all of one family, yes?’’

  ‘‘I wish more were as thoughtful of the family as you, Great Lady.’’

  ‘‘Ya-Moia, you are friend to Peggy Wan.’’

  ‘‘Yes, Miss Lu.’’

  ‘‘She say you honest man. This man with you, Mr. Both, he honest man?’’

  ‘‘As honest and as good a man as any man I know.’’

  ‘‘That says much, Ya-Moia.’’

  LaMoia bowed slightly.

  ‘‘Tell me about investigation, Mr. Both,’’ she said. There was no mention of which investigation.

  ‘‘Chinese immigrants are being treated like dogs, shipped here in huge metal boxes, like kennels, without water, without food. It is inhuman and it must stop.’’

  ‘‘When a person runs from a monster, he is prepared to suffer.’’

  ‘‘But these people pay for this.’’

  ‘‘My grandfather and I rode in the bottom of a freighter without sunshine, without fresh air for over a month. My grandfather paid much money for this. Things not so different today. My people have been running from the Red Chinese for many generations now.’’

  ‘‘People enter this great country in many ways, some legal, some not,’’ Boldt said. ‘‘I am not here to judge that. But three women died in that container. Young women. Their lives ahead of them. Everyone involved is going to jail. Everyone. They will end up in metal boxes just like their victims. Those who cooperate with the police will receive the lightest sentences.’’

  Mama Lu did not move, did not twitch. She sat like a piece of stone in her padded throne, all levity, all kindness gone from her face. ‘‘Yes,’’ she said deliberately slowly, ‘‘I agree.’’

  Boldt was surprised by this, and spoke what his mind had already prepared to say. ‘‘The young women who survived will not cooperate with us, will not share any information with us.’’

  ‘‘They scared of you. With good reason, I might add. Police at home not like police here. But there are others. These children, their families, in both countries, will suffer if they cooperate.’’

  ‘‘And your family.’’

  ‘‘You give me far too much credit, Mr. Both,’’ she said, her accent suddenly lessened, her voice softer yet more severe, her hard eyes fixed on Boldt and not releasing him. ‘‘I have no influence over these children.’’ She struggled with a deep breath and said, ‘‘Three died. Yes. Very sad. But tell me this please: How many die if they stay behind?’’

  ‘‘I’m only responsible for Seattle, Great Lady,’’ Boldt announced.

  ‘‘I will make inquiries,’’ she said, nodding her large head once again. ‘‘Let an old lady see what she can find out.’’

  ‘‘The ship responsible,’’ Boldt said, ‘‘the captain would be a good place to start.’’

  ‘‘You travel in the dark, Mr. Both. Move slowly. The dark holds many unseen dangers.’’

  ‘‘The dark eventually gives way to the light.’’

  ‘‘Not always. Ask Officer Tidwell. But I will help you. In return, you will tell me of progress of investigation, will keep my good name

  out of press. So tired of the lies.’’

  ‘‘We’re all tired of the lies.’’

  ‘‘Chinese blood moves in my veins, Mr. Both. These three were my sisters, my children.’’

  ‘‘Your customers?’’ he dared to ask.

  She grinned. ‘‘You bite hand that feeds you?’’

  ‘‘When I’m hungry enough,’’ he answered.

  She lifted her soft pudgy hand and held it for a moment as if expecting he might kiss it. Then she waved, dismissing them.

  Boldt stood, and LaMoia along with him.

  LaMoia said, ‘‘I thank you, Miss Lu.’’

  ‘‘You be nice Peggy Wan, Ya-Moia. She my niece.’’ Directing her attention back to Boldt, she said, ‘‘Move slowly. The dark holds many challenges. Maybe I offer some light.’’

  ‘‘Thank you.’’

  ‘‘You will visit whenever you like, whenever you have something to tell me. You always welcome.’’

  Boldt caught himself in a bow, lifted his head and grinned at her.

  Back on the street and well away from the Korean grocery LaMoia

  said, ‘‘Are you crazy, Sarge? You basically accused her.’’

  ‘‘I communicated my suspicions.’’

  ‘‘Oh, you communicated all right.’’

  ‘‘If she’s smart, she gives them up. They’ll never bring her into it, not with her reach. They wouldn’t last a week in lock-up. She gives us this operation, and she skates. What was that about Tidwell?’’

  LaMoia warned, ‘‘You remember Tidwell. Organized Crime?’’

  ‘‘Retired?’’

  ‘‘Retired! He went out for a morning jog, came back on a stretcher. Every damn bone broken. Claimed he’d been hit by a car. Car with four legs is more like it. Left the department on a medical disability ’cause he can’t walk right.’’

  ‘‘Mama Lu?’’

  ‘‘Remember that semi with the Mexicans in the back? Dead of fumes? Word was Mama Lu had a piece of that trucking company. That was Tidwell’s baby until his unfortunate accident.’’

  ‘‘Are you trying to warn me, John?’’

  ‘‘She was, that’s for sure,’’ he said emphatically, eyes wide. The leather soles of his ostrich boots slapped the sidewalk loudly with each long stride. He said to Boldt, ‘‘I’m just trying to tell you to listen up. Either that, or I’d up my Blue Cross if I was you.’’

  CHAPTER 8

  Melissa accepted the digital camera from Stevie along with two very small tape cartridges and an extra battery. They talked in the corner of KSTV’s news studio while all around the crew prepared for the live broadcast of News Four at Five. As Stevie handed her the camera bag she felt compelled to caution Melissa. ‘‘This is not a license to take matters into your own hands.’’

  ‘‘I understand.’’

  ‘‘Don’t be so glib about it.’’

  ‘‘I understand that you have to say that. You have to protect yourself and the station.’’

  ‘‘It’s not that at all. It’s you I’m trying to protect.’’

  ‘‘Your nurturing instinct?’’ Melissa asked.

  ‘‘You’re to clea
r everything with me ahead of time.’’

  ‘‘Of course I am.’’

  ‘‘I’m not kidding, damn it!’’

  ‘‘Ms. McNeal?’’ the floor director called out. ‘‘Two minutes.’’

  Stevie dismissed the person with a brutal wave. She looked at Melissa and saw trouble. ‘‘You’ve got something going, don’t you? I know that look.’’

  Melissa shook her head.

  ‘‘What were you saying about the car wash?’’ Stevie asked.

  ‘‘Nothing but a hunch. A picture’s worth a thousand words, and I’ve got some good pictures. You’ll see.’’

  ‘‘When?’’ she persisted.

  ‘‘At the pay phone, I overheard him mention the graveyard,’’ Melissa whispered.

  Stevie suffered a bout of chills. ‘‘Who him? What graveyard?’’

  ‘‘Ms. McNeal?’’ the floor director called out.

  ‘‘I’m coming!’’ Stevie snapped. When she turned around, Melissa was already leaving the studio. Stevie knew that the thing to do was to go after her, to stop her. Melissa suffered from professional tunnel vision. ‘‘Wait!’’ she called out.

  ‘‘Sixty seconds!’’ the floor director announced.

  ‘‘I’ll call you tonight,’’ Melissa mouthed silently, holding her hand to her ear as to a telephone.

  ‘‘You call me!’’ Stevie demanded, still tempted to abandon the anchor desk and stop her Little Sister. ‘‘I’m going to wait up for that call!’’

  An intern held the double doors open for Melissa, who looked back one final time and smiled at Stevie. Again she held her hand to her ear: She would call.

  ‘‘Thirty seconds! Places, please.’’

  Stevie moved reluctantly toward the anchor desk, the pit in her stomach growing ever deeper. If she hadn’t had the interview with the head of the INS lined up, she might have bailed. As it was, she climbed into her anchor chair and reviewed the script while the sound-man wired her. She had a sinking feeling about Melissa that she couldn’t shake: It felt more like a farewell than a good-bye.

  The temperature of the studio hovered in the mid-fifties, a concession to the computerized electronics. The floor director reading the shooting script was dressed in a cotton cardigan. Behind the anchor desk things were a little hotter because an intern had delivered Stevie’s latte? with a teaspoon of real sugar instead of sugar substitute. Stevie slid the mug aside combatively and studied her own script one last time. No matter how many times this team prepared for a broadcast, nerves were always taut. News Four at Five’s continuing efforts to keep the number one Nielsen rating in the race for local news viewers had a way of turning up the heat.

  Stevie’s male co-anchor, William Cutler, was more intent on his appearance in the monitor than on the script. Billy-Bob, as Stevie referred to him, spent his time at ribbon-cutting ceremonies and lunchtime speaker appearances-appreciating the fees for these extracurricular activities quite a bit more than the news.

  She checked herself one last time in the monitor. At thirty-seven, she knew the camera still flattered her. Her hair was highlighted and cut shoulder length, her camisole cut a little low, a little bare, a little tasteless, but just right for the producers and their precious ratings. Those ratings justified a contract that included a Town Car and driver to shuttle her to and from her all-expenses-paid five-bedroom co-op apartment. A promotional arrangement with Nordstrom provided her with a wardrobe, all for a five-second credit in the closing scroll. The creamy pale skin of her surgically enhanced cleavage and the ease with which she carried herself had won her a description of ‘‘overtly sexual,’’ by Newsweek in an article about the decline of standards in local news broadcasts. Whatever the criticism, the ratings remained superb. Only Billy-Bob’s libido threatened to bring them down. There were rumors of high school girls, drugs and all-night parties. If Billy-Bob didn’t keep it zipped, N4@5 was in trouble.

  ‘‘Fifteen seconds,’’ announced the floor director standing between the two robotic cameras, headphone wires trailing. She held a hand-scrawled notice to remind both anchors of an insert-‘‘page B-36’’- that was not part of their preprinted scripts.

  ‘‘Hair!’’ William Cutler shouted as he preened.

  The studio coiffeuse bounded up on stage as the floor director continued the count. ‘‘Ten seconds!’’ The hairdresser, who carried a sheen of perspiration on her upper lip, dragged a brush carefully across Cutler’s lacquered coif and toyed with an escaped lock.

  ‘‘You idiot! What are you, a dog groomer? Give me that!’’ Cutler stole the brush away from her and laid the lock down.

  ‘‘Nine. . clear the set. . eight. .’’ the floor director droned, not the slightest hint of concern in her voice. Pros, every one of them.

  The hairdresser stepped off camera as a snarling Cutler inspected himself in the monitor once again. He threw the brush off set at the young hairdresser.

  ‘‘Four.. three.. two..’’

  Stevie’s face lit up as she faced the camera. She typically lived for this moment: Hundreds of thousands of viewers hanging on her every word, but Melissa’s earlier zealousness negated the usual thrill. The prerecorded voice said into her ear, ‘‘And now, Seattle’s most watched news team, Stevie McNeal and William Cutler and News Four at Five.’’

  Stevie read from the scrolling text, her smile picture perfect, her tone slightly hoarse and sensual, her eyes soft and locked onto camera two. Sadly, the news was ‘‘there to fill the time between the ads.’’ A mentor had explained that to her when she had been coming up in New York, hoping to make the jump from on-camera reporter to anchor.

  Sources close to the illegal alien investigation resulting from a shipping container being fished from Puget Sound say that detectives from the homicide squad of the Seattle Police Department have now questioned at least one of the detainees who survived the passage. The interrogation is said to have revolved around a failed attempt at a plea bargain agreement, that left police with few, if any leads.

  File footage rolled of the container’s recovery and the blanketed women being led to emergency vehicles.

  In related news, the preliminary autopsy of the first of three women who died in the crossing is said to suggest that the victim died of natural causes, namely malnutrition and dehydration, though it appears uncertain these conditions were anything but the result of negligence on the part of the ship’s captain. Identifying the ship involved in the transport of that container and the ship’s captain are believed to now be the target of the ongoing investigation.

  News Four at Five will carry a live interview with Adam Talmadge, regional director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, later in this broadcast.

  William Cutler and his brazen voice took over, reporting a homicide in Madrona that afternoon. Some poor kid’s lights had been dimmed over a parking space dispute. They alternated the anchor work on the more gruesome and hopeless stories. She tried to leave the out-andout bleeders for Billy-Bob. But when the illegals had washed ashore in a sewage-encrusted container, abandoned there by some greedy son-of-a-bitch, she held on to it. All the stations, radio and TV, were still leading with it. The nationals were interested, spurred on by the feed of Stevie’s first reporting of the story. It was hot. She was hot because of it. And when something started burning hot, you fed the fire with any fuel available. If not exactly in execution, she and Melissa agreed in concept: This was one story that had to be told. And it had to be kept alive to be told. Pending a coup by the city’s prosecuting attorney, who hoped to hold the detainees as material witnesses to a homicide, the illegals were rumored to be scheduled for deportation, to return to whatever lives they’d fled. Out of sight was out of mind. Stevie considered it her job to keep the story current and in front of viewers while Melissa sought out the possible connections to the people responsible. In the business of reporting corruption, disease and death, the opportunity to investigate and expose a criminal ring that exploited human beings was a rare op
portunity. For once her work could count for something more than filling time between ads. But for that to happen she had to keep the public’s attention riveted to this story. She embraced this as a personal challenge.

  Following a lead by Billy-Bob, Stevie read six more lines from the TelePrompTer-a crack house catching fire-and then settled back into her swivel chair as a taped report took over.

  The floor director signaled camera three, lifting a hand like a race car flagman. That hand dropped and Stevie recited from the scrolling script.

  Stay with News Four at Five for an exclusive interview with

  Adam Talmadge, Northwest regional director of the INS, based

  here in Seattle, as we continue our investigation into the trade in illegal immigrants in High Seas, High Stakes. Back after

  this break.

  The TV screen went to ads. Third-quarter revenues were up 31 percent. Stevie knew the numbers.

  ‘‘Clear!’’ shouted the floor director. ‘‘Stevie, living room! William, camera two in sixty.’’

  Adam Talmadge wore a dark suit, a white button-down shirt and a blue tie bearing red eagle heads. His wingtips were resoled but well shined. He had most of his hair, a light gray curly nap cut close to his scalp, dramatic black eyebrows and clear blue irises like fresh ice or taxidermy glass. His face filled with a reserved but friendly caution as he shook hands with Stevie. His eyes did not stray to her anatomy for even an instant, as some men’s did, and she ascertained immediately that he was well versed in media performance. She had little doubt that by agreeing to the interview, Talmadge brought his own agenda. She had, in fact, requested that this interview be with Coughlie, who presently occupied a formed-fiberglass seat off-camera, but Talmadge had accepted for himself.

  ‘‘All set?’’ Stevie asked her guest.

  ‘‘My pleasure,’’ he said.

  The floor director’s arm prepared to flag her, and chopped with authority.

  ‘‘News Four at Five is pleased to welcome Adam Talmadge, Northwest regional director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service based here in Seattle. Welcome.’’