Nothing Left to Lose

by Dick Lilly

  “He did? Cool!”

  “That’s what I like about you, Theresa. Suitable admiration for the skills of the perp.”

  “But you don’t want me to tail him.”

  “No, no. Everything else. We want friends, foes and especially a list of his clients going back as far as you can but at least the past five years. Other business and political connections beyond what’s in the Public Disclosure Commission files, campaigns where he’s been in the background, reported or rumored to be an informal advisor, not on the books, that kind of thing. His whole network.”

  “Because?”

  “Because as far as I can tell the cops aren’t doing it. They see murder and that means forensics, looking for connections with known criminals, watching the suspect’s movements, the usual. But look at Barclay. He’s a businessman who spends his days with corporate types and politicians. Great opportunities for bribery and influence peddling, and that’s just it. Barclay’s a white collar criminal if he’s a criminal at all. So what – or who – from that world connects with the murder of two goons on a sister ship to his boat? Who in Barclay’s world is a criminal you wouldn’t think is a criminal? What did he, or she, and maybe Barclay do that’s so important they’d kill to keep it hidden?”

  “Nice of you not to be sexist about killers.”

  “I try.”

  “You’re a nice man, Eric. A few faults maybe, but a nice man.”

  “Like I said, I try.”

  “Just one question. How come you didn’t ask me yesterday when we had coffee? We talked about Barclay for half an hour.”

  “Today I’m pissed at Harms, that’s most of it. We’ve been friends since the fraternity at the U, but sometimes we’re oil and water, cop and journalist. Declare a truce later over a few beers. Anyway, I want to get this story ahead of everybody. Barclay’s involvement, if I’m right, makes it just huge. But Harms . . . I talked to him again this morning. There’s no sense of urgency. They’ve decided Barclay’s a smuggler and sooner or later they’ll get him. They’re probably right. I think Barclay’s a smuggler, too, although I suppose there’s an outside chance that somebody, knowing about Carl and Sally’s frequent weekend trips to South Pender, operated the smuggling boat shadowing their trips without Barclay’s knowledge. That sounds pretty farfetched, though, doesn’t it? Either way, this isn’t some foot soldier selling Mexican heroin slipped in from the Yakima Valley. He’s a big shot. Fills his time with major corporate clients, no one else, no drug dealers, nothing criminally connected at all that Bobby can find. He looks completely clean, so whatever’s going down has to go back to someone on his client list. It’s somebody he knows, probably has known for some time, my theory, anyway. And now, all of a sudden, it’s gotten real serious and it looks like Barclay’s into something where people get killed. I think there’s something big out there, or a Mr. or Ms. Big – not to be sexist, like you said – and I’d sure like to find out first. Makes a great story.”

  “The investigative reporter’s love of the hunt, then. Luckily, I have time to start tomorrow.” Conciliatory.

  “Perfect. And there’s an extra.” Ouch. That sounded clumsy.

  “And what would that be?” Sounding amused. Aha, here comes the punch line.

  “Buy yourself a new dress, print up some phony business cards, management consultant or something, and start attending those political events and fundraisers where the people in Barclay’s world hang out. The Coalition for Environmental Action fundraiser at the Westin tomorrow night would be a good place to start, and not likely sold out. The dress is on me. I mean on the company. Put it on your expenses.”

  “How gallant. What a charming offer. As I said Eric, you are a nice man with faults.”

  Falconer thought about sad songs and bourbon, maybe some Jacques Brel or Leonard Cohen, but it was only noon.

  Chapter 15, Old Wood

  Thursday June 12, 5 p.m.

  “I want you to bring the girl to Seattle.” The girl. Not Michelle.

  “I don’t think that’s a particularly good idea, Victor, and I say that as a friend, not just as your lawyer.”

  Victor Wallingford and Todd Mundy sat across from each other at the coffee table in Wallingford’s office on the top floor of a six-story brick building just north of Pioneer Square. Sitting off to one side, Adrian Topping thumbed through a magazine, apparently uninterested in the argument. Around them, the office walls were dark with pictures of heavy-browed men in waistcoats, the early architects of the Wallingford empire, their faces framed by bushy sideburns. Scattered among them were sepia-toned photos of logging crews posing seriously atop massive logs that dwarfed them, logs so huge a railroad car could carry only one.

  A quick stroll around the room and you had a history of Northwest logging: eight-,ten-, twelve-foot diameter firs hundreds of years old felled to frame and finish Seattle’s 19th-Century mansions on Capitol Hill and First Hill, even more shipped to San Francisco and cities in the East. The less perfect finishing grades trimmed Seattle and Portland’s craftsman-style bungalows, nowadays the treasured possessions of the 21st Century’s professional class. In Wallingford’s office the same time-darkened fir circled the room as wainscoting and framed the windows and doors. On the floor, laid down when the family timber business built its headquarters on Western Avenue after the 1889 fire leveled Pioneer Square, clear, straight-grained Douglas fir, recently sanded and varnished, glowed richly golden in the late afternoon light. Surrounded by old photos and old woodwork, Victor nested, embraced by 150 years of family success and power.

  “Jesus, Mundy, that’s trite, ‘as a friend, not as your lawyer.’” Wallingford sat lengthwise on the same brown leather couch his father used, feet up, tie undone, staring at the smoke from his cigar as it rose into a shaft of sunlight. “So what would my lawyer say, this lawyer, anyway?”

  Topping looked over his magazine at the lawyer, nodding with the slightest smile, silently encouraging him.

  “This exasperated lawyer would say that there’s a significant personal and financial risk to you and your family, to your personal reputation and to your family name which you value very, very highly, and that this risk remains low and manageable as long as Michelle Adams remains in San Diego. At this point she knows only me, the agent of her unknown benefactor for the past three years, a mystery man.” He chuckled at the thought, the image so distant from the reality: a dough-faced balding man in pin stripes and a bow tie. “A mystery man whose checks are automatically deposited every month and who has established a college fund for her 10-year-old son. I think you should keep it that way. Stay invisible, an impersonal, unknown source of money. Put the boy through college and take some satisfaction from doing a good thing.”

  Topping broadened his smile, got up and took a cigar from the ivory-inlaid box on Wallingford’s desk. Mundy went on, pushing to make his case.

  “The risk increases exponentially if I do what you want and bring her to Seattle to meet you and do whatever else it is you plan. There’s a financial risk, of course. I don’t know what your real relationship is to her. In your secretive way you’ve managed – I find this hard to believe even though it’s you – to keep me in the dark the whole time. Nevertheless, I can guess at one or two intriguing possibilities, in neither of which are you particularly heroic. Bottom line, though, is that you’ve already established a financial relationship. That opens the door. What are the odds she could become a gold digger, seeking publicity and noisily suing you for more support? You don’t need that. Peggy and Amanda don’t need that.”

  “Then there’s the other thing you’ve got to consider. Even if Michelle Adams turns out to be a demure, polite, grateful guest who doesn’t sue you because she’s eternally happy with her thousand a month and her kid’s college fund, she’s a door to your past. And that would be hard for Peggy, or any wife, not to open, whatever the truth is. I don’t see any of the options here increasing trust and openness between husband and wife, father and daughter. My a
dvice is keep hidden what you’ve hidden so far, Victor.”

  Wallingford put his feet on the floor and picked up one of the brandy snifters from the coffee table. Holding it under his nose, eyes closed, he inhaled the sweet cognac vapors. Topping lit his cigar. Mundy waited.

  “Yes, Mundy, you’re a middleman, agent for a mystery benefactor. And I’m a middleman, too, protecting the identity and interests of someone else. Nothing I could have told you about it. Can’t tell you now. Under the circumstances, I am grateful for the role you’ve played, and for your discretion – as my lawyer.” Wallingford laughed, inhaled again from the snifter. “Now this person, the real secret benefactor, wants the woman brought to Seattle for his or her own reasons. I assume for a meeting.” A drag on the cigar, slow release of smoke, which joined the cloud above them. “At last, it would seem.”

  Victor walked over to the windows behind his desk and looked out at the bay over the tops of the cars rushing northward on the Alaskan Way Viaduct. “I have the same suspicions about the past and possible relationships among these people that you have projected on me – wrongly, I should say, though I can, I think, forgive the insult since at that moment you were speaking ‘as my lawyer.’” Wallingford turned toward Mundy and made quotation marks in the air, almost comically, snifter in one hand, cigar in the other. He laughed again. Topping joined in, amused at Wallingford’s conjuring of a mythical benefactor.

  “But it’s none of our business, is it?” said Victor. Head back, he blew smoke upward.

  “What if she won’t come?”

  “Offer her a ‘bonus.’ Threaten to cut off her stipend. Take away the boy’s college fund. Figure it out. You’re close to her. I wouldn’t be surprised if you get a little on those trips to San Diego.”

  “You’re an insulting and cold-blooded bastard, Victor. There are people for whom money doesn’t sing as sweetly as it does for you. And for you, sometimes I think it’s the only voice you hear.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. You’ve left out power. Don’t forget about power.” Both men laughed, joined by Topping, unwinding the tension between them.

  “Where and when, then?”

  “Fourth of July weekend. Bring ’em up a few days early, put them in the Olympic . . . No, the Edgewater. That’ll put ’em practically right under the fireworks, be a thrill for the kid.”

  “You want the kid, too?”

  “I’m sure that’s what our mystery patron would want. Hire a nanny or somebody like that who can double as a tour guide, or do it yourself. Give her a few hundred for shopping . . . And buy the kid a bike. He can ride up and down the trail at Myrtle Edwards Park. It’s only a couple blocks from the hotel. Buy her one, too. They can ride together.”

  Chapter 16, Frat Boys

  Thursday, June 12, 7 p.m.

  Topping, tall and tanned with a full head of sun-blonde hair, wearing white slacks and a steel gray raw silk blazer looked every inch the Hollywood mogul drug money allowed him to be. Mundy gone, Topping took the chair across from Wallingford, shaking his head in exasperation with Victor. One-time college roommates, they had a long history, reaching from fraternity hijinks through shady property deals hidden in the complexity of Wallingford Evergreen’s operations to, now, after Topping’s business pulled him into deals with a couple of otherwise legitimate looking guys with one foot in the L.A. drug world, expansion into big-time crime. It always worked out the same: Topping with the scheme, Victor with the capital and an insatiable drive for more.

  Topping poured himself more cognac, thoughtfully swirled it in the snifter, finally looked up. “I agree with your lawyer, Victor. Bringing Michelle Adams to Seattle is a dumb idea, maybe one of your dumbest, and in the years we’ve known each other, I’ve seen a few flamers, and you know I’ve covered for you a few times. Whatever your scheme, Mundy’s right about the possible collateral damage to your family and your reputation. And much as I admire the clever bullshit you gave Mundy about being somebody else’s middle man, acting for some secret benefactor or parent, it won’t stand up in the real world for a single news cycle.”

  “Thanks, Adrian. It’s always nice to have your opinion.” Wallingford’s reply was sharp with sarcasm. “I know what I’m doing.”

  “I wouldn’t say you don’t. I just share Mundy’s view that you haven’t weighed all the risks and I’m reminding you that both of us remember times when you’ve gone off half cocked. And, sorry, that’s not a pun about your sexual prowess. It’s the real risk here. You bring a good looking woman in her mid thirties up her with her son and put them on public display – I assume that’ll be part of what you’re planning – what do you expect people will think? None of the options are any good: she’s your mistress, the boy’s your son by her, she’s your daughter. And that’s it, isn’t it, Victor? She’s your daughter. Or you think she is.”

  “Maybe she’s yours, Adrian.”

  “Sorry, Victor. I never screwed Maureen Collins.”

  “So you say, Adrian. Maybe you’re lying. You’re the one who’s a secretive bastard.”

  “And you’re the one who’s bragged about screwing her, you and maybe a couple other guys. So the baby Mo gave up in ’73 is your daughter.” Adrian paused and then rubbed it in: “Or one of those other guy’s kid.”

  “You think I’d leave that to chance?”

  “And?”

  “I know. We did the DNA thing.”

  “How’d you manage that?”

  “Mundy got a cigarette butt or something on one of his trips.”

  “So, is she?”

  “Sorry, Adrian, but that’s going to be my secret for a while longer, maybe a lot longer.

  “So she isn’t.”

  “You’ll see.”

  “OK, be a shit, Victor. For you, that’s not new. But we are both at risk here and you should know it. The more visible you are, the more the papers write about you, the more chance somebody sees how much Carl Barclay is your man, and the more chance they connect you with his ‘death boat,’ the more chance we’re both screwed. I don’t need to go on, do I? Why the fuck are you doing this?”

  “For 35 years Collins has kept it a secret that she got pregnant in college and gave up the baby. Kill her politically if that came out, wouldn’t it? I could use that.”

  “Whether or not the abandoned kid is your daughter?”

  “Doesn’t matter to me.”

  Topping downed a swallow of his cognac. He couldn’t honestly at this point say he liked his old college buddy. Maybe, if he were honest, he’d admit he hadn’t liked Victor at all for some time now. “You really hate Maureen Collins, don’t you?”

  “Why wouldn’t I? When she was Attorney General she cost me millions in lawsuits over stupid environmental rules. Didn’t matter to her I was already fucked in the dot-com bust.”

  “And then there’s the past, isn’t there? Whatever it was happened between you and her in the fall of ’72.”

  Wallingford looked at his watch. “Let’s go to dinner, Adrian.”

  Chapter 17, Justice Center

  Friday, June 13, 10 a.m.

  At a few minutes before 10 Friday morning Falconer went through the irritation of emptying his pockets and stepping through the metal detector to get into the city’s euphemistically named Justice Center, a building that housed police headquarters and the municipal courts. Great idea. Add them together and you get justice. Maybe, maybe not, Falconer thought.

  Falconer worked at patience as he waited while the screeners figured out how to deal with the TV crew ahead of him. After a conference featuring shrugs and facial expressions that said “I don’t know,” the security clerks sent the station’s camera and the cameraman’s belt pack of batteries, a microphone and spare video cassettes through the X-ray machine. No guns found and asses covered, they finally waved Falconer through.

  As Falconer remembered, it was to search the locals for guns and not post-9/11 terrorism fears that brought metal detectors to the Seattle and King County cour
thouses. Back in the early 90s, way before terrorism worries started costing money and peace of mind, the machines were installed after an unhinged husband shot his wife in a county courtroom during a divorce hearing. The magnetic sensors and bag searches were routine now, part of the amorphous background anxiety for people regularly injected with fear they might be the next random civilian victims of America’s enemies. No matter that the chances were way better of getting shot in a gangbangers’ crossfire while waiting for a bus on a South End street. It was only June and for the year Falconerblog had already carried three stories of teen-on-teen gang murders complete with wounded bystanders. Cheery thoughts, Falconer mused, as he rode the elevator to the tenth-floor courtrooms.

  Camera on its tripod, the reporter pacing, holding his microphone in one hand and loops of wire in the other like a singer counting to the downbeat, one TV crew was already in position, waiting to capture the embarrassment of the famous families. A P-I reporter Falconer knew sat on one of the black vinyl benches reading the Times’ sports section. Eight or ten other people in twos and threes spaced themselves among the concrete columns along the center of the broad foyer, courtrooms on the left as Falconer walked from the elevators. On his right, the building’s west side, a double wall of floor to ceiling windows insulated the hall but drew in light, presenting a panoramic view of the harbor and the container cranes surrounded by thousands of blue and orange, green and gray containers, stacked waiting for ships.

  None of the unlucky teenagers and none of their parents were around. Not much chance, except for the governor, that they’d come by and do interviews. And not much chance even if she did that Maureen Collins would say anything new. Every reporter likely to show up could have written her lines before leaving the office: “Will’s a good boy and when we get to the bottom of this you’ll see he had nothing to do with the drugs found at the Roberts’ house. Meanwhile, we’re doing everything we can to cooperate with the investigation.”