Family Values

by Ford, G. M.

  “That why you called me?” I asked. “To share this shit?”

  “I called you because I’m up in the air over this damn thing.” He shuffled around in a tight circle. “I’m not used to shit like this.”

  “More than a little out of character for Rebecca, don’t you think?”

  “Penitentiary’s full of people did things out of character,” he snapped.

  “Somebody tried to kill her last night.”

  He shook his comb-over. “DA’s calling last night a suicide attempt.”

  “My ass.”

  In this part of the world the DA was actually the PA, or prosecuting attorney, but old habits die hard. Everybody still uses DA. A toothsome clotheshorse named Paul Woodward had held down the job for the past seven years or so. All show, no go. Only thing Woodward knew for sure was where the camera was.

  Eagen jammed his hands into his coat pockets. Looked me hard in the eye. “Woodward’s playing this thing real close to the vest. SPD’s not in the loop.”

  “I met a couple of his minions last night.”

  “From what I hear, the investigation’s been active for a while now. What started it was that Kevin Delaney filed another appeal. Wanted his genetic material retested by an independent lab. The court said he had that right, so they went looking for his file and couldn’t find it. None of the precincts had it. According to records, the files were all at the medical examiner’s office. So they start going through every felony case she’s handled for the past five years and find a bunch of other files have somehow grown legs and walked off. Total of five whole case files have apparently disappeared. If this shit holds water, there’ll be enough reasonable doubt floating around to raise the Titanic. There’s multiple murder convictions at risk here, man.”

  “I need to know which files are missing.”

  He was making faces before the words were out of my mouth. “No way I can be seen working on this.” He shooed the thought away like a fly. “All the ducks are lined up on this one. The mayor, the commissioner, the AG, the DA, all of ’em. Full cover-your-ass mode. Nary the cheek in sight. Anything I do, I’ll have to do on the sly, which will take longer and just naturally be less reliable.”

  I held up a hand. “Let’s assume that Rebecca is being set up.”

  He winced and rolled his eyes. “I’m not much on conspiracies, man.” He waved a disgusted hand. “Coincidences neither. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s generally a duck.” He pinned me with an angry glare. “Somebody wanting to fuck with you—that I could see. Easy. But not her. She don’t have that knack for making enemies like you do.”

  “It’s genetic,” I allowed.

  He shook his head. “The brass is right about you. You’re just the kind of asshole who’s not gonna leave this to the authorities.” His thin face took on a pained expression. “I’ll help if I can, but it’s gotta be big-time under the radar. I get caught sticking my nose in this, my ass is grass.”

  I kept my mouth shut. The cop part of him was telling him she was guilty as charged. Another part of him thought maybe the whole thing just didn’t smell right. Way I figured it, ambivalent allies were better than no allies at all, so I just stood there and listened to the carcinogenic waves lapping the mud.

  He checked his watch. “I’ve got a meeting,” he said. “I’ll see what I can find out, but don’t hold your breath.” He dug around in his pants pocket. Came out with a wrinkled piece of paper and handed it to me. Phone number. “It’s a throwaway,” he said. “Buy yourself a gross of them. You need me, call that number and give me the numbers of your whole batch. Then trash the one you used and keep trashing them every time.”

  I nodded.

  He turned his collar up, poked his nose into the wind, and sloshed off down the riverbank.

  Looking for a shortcut to my car, I mamboed into a narrow alley that ran between a razor-wired storage yard and The Ludlow Lumber Company. I was busy checking my phone for messages, so I got a dozen paces into the alley before I looked up and saw the truck. UPS. Big Brown. “The World Is Our Parking Lot,” jammed hard against the brick building on the right, making it so I was going to have to turn sideways and inch my way past on the driver’s side.

  I took another step and . . . bingo! It hit me like a pie in the face. One of those times when you wonder how you could have been so goddamn stupid, even though you long since knew the answer to that question. The truck. Those huge brown pachyderms that park wherever the hell they want—there was no truck! Last night at Rebecca’s joint. Those two guys in UPS uniforms. There was no UPS truck! The only other car in the lot was that black van, and United Parcel Service doesn’t deliver things in murdered-out Dodge vans.

  I felt like smacking myself in the side of the head but resisted the impulse. Instead, I closed my eyes and tried to conjure their faces. White guys. Both over six feet tall. One was darker than the other, with hairy legs and a big Fu Manchu mustache. The other guy was a complete blank to me. Everything else was wind, water, and gas.

  My shortcut turned out to be wishful thinking. Took me a full twenty minutes of bobbing and weaving around chain-link fences to make it back to my car. By the time I hauled myself up into the seat, I’d broken into a full sweat and was pretty much out of gas. My body felt like I’d been threshed and baled.

  I drove to the Walgreens on Rainier Avenue South. I used the ATM, so I could pay in cash, and then bought myself half a dozen disposable phones. The kind where you don’t have to sign up for a plan. Took me the better part of thirty minutes to get six different numbers set up and running, at which point I stepped out onto the sidewalk, found the piece of paper in my pocket, and used one of them to call the number Eagen had given me. It went right to voicemail. I recited the phone numbers of the other five disposables, hung up, walked over to the nearest storm drain, removed and pocketed the SIM card before I dropped the phone onto the pavement, stomped it to rubble, and then kicked the remains down the drain.

  I climbed into the car, threw the bag of phones on the passenger seat, and fought the building traffic all the way over the hill and down into Madison Park.

  The contractors had the front door back in place and were in the process of replacing the kitchen window. Boris, the foreman, handed me a new set of door keys and assured me that they’d stay at it until the place was buttoned up tight, which, as nearly as he could tell, was likely to be sometime tomorrow afternoon. I thanked him and headed for the master bedroom, where I gathered up an armload of Rebecca’s clothes, shoes, and anything else I could think of. Realizing there was no way I could carry all of it to my car, I lumbered back into the kitchen, found a big plastic bag under the sink, and stuffed it all inside.

  I had the bag thrown over my shoulder like a deranged Father Christmas and was easing out through the freshly painted doorway when I nearly ran headlong into a millennial in a tight blue suit coming the other way.

  “Oh . . . excuse me,” he mumbled.

  He had one of those modern escaped-mental-patient hairdos. Everything gelled straight up, like he’d been left hanging by his feet overnight.

  “What can I do for you?” I asked.

  He pulled a folder out from under his arm. “I’m from the property management company.” He made an expansive gesture. “We manage this property for the Lakefront Village Condo Association. And you would be?”

  “I would be a friend of the owner.”

  He pulled some sort of form from the folder. “I’m here to deliver this,” he said, pushing it toward me.

  “What’s that?” I asked without extending a hand.

  “A notification,” he said.

  “Of what?”

  “That we . . . the company, that is . . . considering”—he checked the form—“considering that the company considers Rebecca Duvall to be in violation of the bylaws of the association—”

  I took a step forward and got right into his wheelhouse. “What bylaws are those?” I asked.

  He began to
stammer. “Her . . . the . . . she . . . there’s a personal conduct clause.”

  “This property management company of yours.”

  “What about it?”

  “How’s the medical insurance?” I asked, taking another step forward, chest bumping him down off the porch.

  He stumbled backward and began to scuttle up the sidewalk like a beached crab.

  His mouth opened a couple of times, but nothing came out. I stood on the porch and watched until he was out of sight, then fumed my way back to the parking lot.

  I’d no sooner buckled up and started the car again when my phone began chirping like a crazed canary. I fished it out of my pocket and pushed buttons until I figured out it was a text. All it said was: HARBORVIEW HOSPITAL. I groaned out loud, flipped the phone onto the passenger seat, and dropped the car into gear.

  Sometimes you just know. It’s not like the sight of police cars at Harborview is unusual or anything. Quite the contrary. Harborview is the primary trauma center for the area. You get shot seven times holding up a Circle K, they send you to Harborview. You extrude yourself through the windshield of a smart car, they send you to Harborview. There are cop cars parked all over the place, all the time.

  But something about the haphazard cluster around the front entrance, doors flung open, light bars painting the front of the building blue and red. Something sent my stomach tumbling in the direction of my shoes. Whatever was going on, was going on inside the building, and it wasn’t good.

  I wedged my car into the fire lane, jumped out, and ran for the door. I made it down the elevator and as far as the ICU waiting room before a pair of SPD uniforms stepped into my path and brought me to a screeching halt. Through the small window in the door, I could see officers sweeping the area, zigzagging back and forth between the rooms, assault rifles thrust before them like spears.

  “This area’s closed,” the one on the left said.

  The other one held out a gloved hand. “Lemme see some ID.”

  That’s when the first cop tried to move me over toward the corner and out of the doorway. I was reaching for my wallet when he slipped an arm around my waist and, as luck would have it, put his big hand squarely on the Walther semiautomatic tucked in my belt.

  In a single motion, he jerked the gun from my waistband and slammed me face-first into the wall. I put my hands on top of my head and left them there. I was pretty sure the cold, hard thing pressing against the back of my head wasn’t a fountain pen.

  “Spread ’em! Spread ’em!” one of them screamed in my ear while the other used the side of his foot to kick my legs apart.

  “I’ve got a license for that piece,” I said.

  “Shut up,” the cop bellowed in my ear.

  “It’s in my wallet over there on the floor.”

  “I told you to shut up.”

  “In the folding money section,” I added.

  “Gimme your hands . . . one at a time.”

  When I left them laced on top of my head, he grabbed my right hand and wrenched it down behind my back like he was trying to break it off. Same with the left. The handcuffs were cold. The hookup was tight enough to stop the flow of blood. They forced me to my knees. “Don’t move,” one of them yelled.

  “What’s going on here, officers?” a third voice piped in.

  “Need you to keep back, doctor. Tactical’s still clearing the unit.”

  “But I know this man,” the voice said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I know this man.”

  I looked back over my shoulder. It was the ICU doctor from last night.

  “He was carrying a gun.”

  “For which I have a permit in my wallet,” I said.

  “Weeeell?” the doctor said.

  They took their sweet-ass time about it. They found my carry permit, read it thirty or forty times, and then called it in just to make sure it wasn’t bogus. Then they checked to see if I perchance had any outstanding warrants. Their disappointment was palpable. Only then did they bother to unhook me from the handcuffs and give me back my gun.

  I was about to get shitty with them, but the doctor read my mind. He put one of those big hands on my shoulder and steered me down the hallway to the nurses’ station.

  “What’s going on in there?” I asked. “Is it—”

  “No,” he said quickly. “Not Ms. Duvall.”

  Felt like somebody’d lifted a Subaru off my chest.

  “She woke up. We moved her up to the fourth floor.”

  “Well . . . what’s all that SWAT team crap about?”

  “Someone attacked an ICU patient. Killed her, I’m afraid. And severely injured one of our orderlies in the process.”

  The great weight returned to my chest. “‘Her,’ you said?”

  “Yes . . . why?”

  “What happened?”

  “As nearly as the police can tell, two men entered her room and turned off her ventilator.” He heaved a sigh, then shook his head. “Apparently one of our orderlies responded to the ventilator alarm and was stabbed several times. He’s in surgery right now.”

  My body was vibrating like a tuning fork. I tried to keep the question nonchalant.

  “What room was she in?”

  “The murdered woman?”

  I nodded. I had that picture of Rebecca being wheeled out of the ICU welded in my brain somewhere. I could envision the oxygen mask and all those tubes coming out of her face. Her own mother wouldn’t have recognized her under all that medical paraphernalia. My guess was that the intruders had the same problem.

  “Why . . . number three.” He picked up on my vibe. “Oh . . . I see where you’re going. Yes . . . quite a coincidence,” he said with a grim smile. “Quite fortunate your friend woke up when she did.”

  “Fortunate,” I repeated. “Yeah . . . very fortunate.”

  She was asleep, and I was thankful. I hadn’t decided whether to tell her what I was thinking or wait until she was on her feet and out of here, which would have been tough, because she always knew when I was holding something back. It was like she had some kind of Leo bullshit radar. No matter how I sliced it, it looked to me as if somebody was determined to kill her. First time, they tried to make it look like a suicide. Second time, they didn’t give a shit how it looked as long as she ended up dead.

  Had to have something to do with the missing files that got her suspended. Somebody didn’t want her around to dispute the accusations. If I hadn’t shown up last night, her suicide would have sealed her guilt. Nobody would have bothered looking any further. She got caught. She couldn’t face it. She opted out. End o’ story. Bunch of jerks get a get-out-of-jail-free card and life in Amazonville goes on.

  Now . . . Now it was another matter. If they’d tried to kill her twice, there was no reason to assume they wouldn’t try again. On the contrary: I figured you could pretty much make book on the fact that these people weren’t going away anytime soon. First thing I needed to deal with was how to keep her safe.

  For about three seconds, I considered going to the cops. Then I had a spasm of lucidity. There was no way they were going to believe what I was thinking, and, even if they did, all they’d do was put somebody on her door for a couple of days, and then, before you knew it, Officer Friendly was gonna be needed someplace else, and we’d be back where we’d started.

  No . . . I needed somebody I could trust, and, due to a misspent youth that had lasted well into middle age, I had a real good idea where to find just such a person.

  I eased myself out the door and walked down to the fourth-floor waiting area. The place was deserted. Nothing but me and three dozen dog-eared magazines. I picked a chair where I could see the door to Rebecca’s room. I sat there with my phone in my hand, trying to come up with a viable alternative to making the call I was thinking about making. Nothing came to mind.

  It wasn’t a number I kept stored on my phone. Despite the fact that I’d known him for most of my life, Joey Ortega wasn’t someone whose personal
cell phone number I wanted to have in my possession when the roll was called up yonder, so I kept it spread out over several old business cards in my wallet. Two numbers here, one there, three on the next. Lay the cards out in reverse alphabetical order and you had Joey’s number.

  I hadn’t needed his services for a number of years, and we sure didn’t run in the same social circles, but Joey and I were joined in a way that people with the same last names often aren’t. Joey’s father, Frankie Ortega, had been my father’s chief leg breaker and bagman for thirty-five years.

  Joey Ortega and I used to play in my father’s backyard on summer days while Frankie and my old man hatched their schemes inside the house. We even double-dated a couple of times. The toothsome Lombardi sisters, Connie and Donna.

  Unlike me, however, Joey had followed in his father’s footsteps. While Frankie had handled his own wet work, Joey outsourced. All Joey did these days was manage a dozen strip clubs and casinos scattered around the Pacific Northwest. At least that’s what he told the cops and the IRS. Truth be told, he had his finger in every illegal enterprise in the region. Women, illegal gambling, fake green cards, dope . . . you name it, and Joey was getting his cut.

  I spread the business cards out on the chair seat next to me, shuffled them around a bit, and dialed the number. Somebody picked up but didn’t say anything.

  “I need to talk to Joey,” I said.

  Nothing.

  “Tell him it’s Leo.”

  I heard the sound of someone walking away from the phone. Then nothing for a minute or two, then, “Been a long time.”

  “Too long,” I said.

  We did this dance every time I called.

  “To what do I owe the honor?” he asked.

  “I’ve got a big problem,” I said.

  “Tell me about it.”

  I did. Everything I knew so far.

  “Takes big stones to walk into a hospital in broad daylight and off somebody.”