by Dick Lilly
“Point taken. Nice desert boots, by the way. You get those in Iraq? They look just like the ones your boss Paul Bremner always wore on TV news escorting junketing senators like John McCain around.”
“Not my boss and not quite the same. I got ’em here. They’re made for construction workers. What I like are the steel toes. You need those sometimes, like in case you drop something on your foot.”
Chapter 27, San Diego
Monday, June 16, 6 p.m.
“So this means it’s time to pay the piper, right, Mr. Mundy?”
“I suppose, yes, you could put it that way.”
Michelle Adams and Todd Mundy were in Adams’ ground floor apartment out by San Diego State, not exactly high rent. There were bars on the windows except for the patio door that led to a walled yard where dust coated the few spiny-looking plants. The sliding door was double glazed with tempered wire glass, installed only because Michelle agreed to pay half, an expense made bearable by the money she got from the mystery man or woman Mundy served. At least the reinforced glass and two dead bolts stopped the break-ins and now, Manuel, her 10-year-old son, was finally becoming less fearful.
Michelle paced, waving a bottle of Pacifico to punctuate her points, or stopping when her thoughts ran down to sit heavily on the couch. She wore a white scoop neck top and black cotton pants. The blue blazer she wore at work was discarded on the back of the couch. The lawyer sat at her small dining table, briefcase open in front of him, a glass of water handy. It was almost dusk and still 90 outside, 95 in the tiny room. A portable fan moved air around. This wasn’t a neighborhood cooled by breezes from the bay.
“Well, it’s not a surprise, is it? As they say, there ain’t no free lunch. Past couple of years, I’ve been figuring sooner or later the other shoe would drop. There’d be something I had to do for the money. Hardly a day I haven’t wondered about it, wondering who’s giving me and Manuel a thousand a month, plus money for his college education you say is put away somewhere.”
“It’s nothing you need to worry about. The college he enrolls in will be able to draw on it. You’ll be given instructions when the time comes.”
“Thanks a lot, Mr. Mundy. I’ll just go on feeling like a pawn in somebody else’s game. Story of my life, isn’t it? Mom pops me out at San Diego General and disappears. I’m adopted into working-class poverty by a shipyard worker and his wife and he’s dead of mystery lung cancer – oh, and of course it’s not work related – before I’m five. Going on second generation of single mom’s here, Mundy. I suppose I should be grateful for the allowance since that fucking TV station still only pays me twenty-eight five for being ‘assistant news producer,’ no raises for five years, either, since my job is non union. Yes, Mr. Mundy, I should be grateful.
“But now you think about this.” Michelle waived the bottle, now almost empty. “Who’s putting up this money? Almost certainly my birth mother or the guy who impregnated her, maybe someone acting on their behalf. Who else would care enough about me and their grandson to send money but not care enough to meet me, hug me, love me? How cruel is that, Mr. Mundy?” Her eyes filled with tears and she stepped into the kitchen to wipe her eyes with a paper towel, taking her time to open the refrigerator for another beer so the lawyer wouldn’t notice how close she was to breaking down.
Calmer, she sat on the couch. “I’m not a fool, Mr. Mundy. I’ve been looking for my birth mother since I was in high school. I think you know who she is and I have your phone number but I’ve never called ’cause I know you won’t tell me who pays you. We’ve been through that. I’ve been through your company’s website a dozen times looking for client names that might mean something. I even flew up to Seattle a couple years ago – you didn’t know that, did you? – and asked around. It’s gotta mean something that you’re from Seattle. She’s there, isn’t she?”
Mundy sat passive, silent, feigning indifference, pissed at the sweat soaking his shirt. He wasn’t going to smell great when he got on the plane and with his luck this would be the time he’d be seated next to a firm-bodied forty-something divorcee. By that standard, Adams was not much to look at, a little plump, heavy breasted, bra manufacturing a cleavage. Pretty face though, and despite his lack of interest, Mundy could imagine the striking teenager she had been. And she was probably right, too, about the mom or somebody being from Seattle and he wondered for the hundredth time who, among the women Victor knew, might be the mother. Or if Victor was directly involved, if the angry, ranting woman scraping by in this San Diego dump was Victor’s daughter with a right to a share in the family’s several hundred millions.
“I even spent five hundred dollars to hire a private detective – what a waste! He couldn’t find a trace of my mother but I learned a lot about lawyers. Their clients are as hidden as they want to be. Records sealed by attorney-client privilege, just like my birth records, impenetrable to me.” Michelle was standing over him and Mundy wondered for a second if she was going to hit him with the beer bottle. “Look at you Mundy! You know who my mom is – or you probably do. That’s more than I know and she gave birth to me!”
Michelle lowered the bottle and set it on the table, looked around for her cigarettes, found them and lit one. More in sorrow now than in anger, she said, “Do you have any idea what it’s like not to know who your mother is, to wonder every day of your life why she did this to you, left you alone, brought you into the world without a past? I cry for my son, Mundy, his family history is nothing, it begins with my adoption and his whole connection to the fabric of life is nothing but stupid, pathetic, lonely me. No, you don’t have a clue, do you? Look at you. Sitting there with your hands folded smiling sweetly like you do every time you come here, sweat beading up on your bald head – I bet you don’t like that.” She laughed, pleased that she could be cruel in return for the torment Mundy brought.
“I should hate you. I do a little bit. But I really hate the person hiding behind you, whoever you’re doing this for, someone who knows where I came from, how I came to be conceived and born and then dropped here – ejected – was it from your client’s womb? – into a doctor’s hands and passed like a little pink football to a lonely needy couple. Thank God for their kindness and now Darlene is dead and I don’t even have her and your client knows that because you watch me for her and probably write reports. How fucking sterile, you ‘write reports.’ She knows I am alone now and she still won’t come to me and let me touch her face and hug her. That is so cruel. How could she do this? I hate that person!”
Beer spittle from her outburst landed on Mundy’s head and he fished in his pocket for a handkerchief. He wouldn’t let himself make eye contact with Adams, who stood across the table from him, anger in her eyes.
“How could she give me up, just walk away from her own newborn child? I couldn’t do it. I found that out.” Michelle dropped her voice to a whisper, quietly opening a door to her soul. “Before he was born I thought about giving up Manuel. Rationally, objectively – if there were such a thing – it would have been better. I was a waitress going to community college and a part-time, unpaid intern at the station, knocked up with no money. But late in my pregnancy I decided not to give him up and when he was born I knew in an instant I never could have. I think giving him up after he was born would have been worse than an abortion. I don’t know, but it seems like it. The emptiness would have been worse, I know that. But I kept him and that didn’t happen. He’s my real, smart, kind little boy and despite how hard it’s been – you know, the single mom thing, Mundy. . .” She said his name with a sneer. “Despite that I have been happy every moment of my life since Manuel was born.”
The cigarette smoldered in the ashtray. Michelle took a long pull on her beer as though she needed the alcohol. Mundy didn’t move or speak. He stared at his hands folded in front of him. He had nothing, not one word, to offer her. His job was just to send Victor’s money every month, keeping secret everything else he knew, as little as that was. Today his job was to fly here an
d hand her plane tickets for Seattle and a hotel reservation and tell her that her benefactor insisted she come and that it would be important but he couldn’t tell her anything about it or what would happen in Seattle when she got there. He didn’t know. He’d delivered the message, handed her the tickets, declined a beer, apologized for not knowing more, shrugged, tried to play the messenger, blameless.
Michelle retreated to the couch. “I hate that person, Mr. Mundy, whoever you work for. Somehow I don’t think it’s my mom. No, if she knew about me, all the things I’m sure you tell your client, I know she’d come to me. No, I could never hate my mom. Not when I meet her. I dream about meeting my mom, Mr. Mundy and when I dream I meet her I always love her because it wasn’t her fault that she left me. It was her parents or a stinking boyfriend who date raped her in the back of a car or an older married man who led her on who made her give me up to keep his secret. I want to find my mom, Mr. Mundy. That would be a dream come true . . .” She hesitated, afraid to believe that the future could be any different from the arid past.
“Wouldn’t it?” she asked in a voice pleading for reassurance.
Mundy had to answer. “Yes, it would. I hope for you it happens.” Small connection made, both paused.
Adams stubbed out her cigarette and stared though the patio door at the darkening yard. The coach would be bringing Manuel home soon.
“So your client – patron or patroness – says I have to come to Seattle on July first. For what? No explanation. More mystery. I don’t trust that person, Mr. Mundy. Why should I?
“Look at this place, Mundy. Ever wonder why I’m still in the same grubby apartment you found me in three years ago, why with a thousand a month under the table from you I didn’t move?”
Breaking the connection, Mundy just shrugged. “No? Not very curious are you? Well, think about it. It’s simple. You and your client could cut off my – what should we call it, allowance? – any time. Maybe you will next month if I don’t use those plane tickets sitting on the table in front of you. How do I protect myself from that? I save. I save, Mr. Mundy. Every month, I save more than half of what I get from you and your boss so Manuel and I will never be as poor as we were before you showed up and I can get him through high school by myself and to the community college and if there’s a scholarship maybe even a better school.
“Mundy.” She made his name sound like something with a foul smell. “I just want to tell you and your client to go fuck yourselves but I will crawl across broken glass for my son so you tell me what it is we’re supposed to do in Seattle for four days and we’ll come along and make like the household help, folks who know their place and say yes, sir, and yes, ma’am.” She slammed the empty bottle down on the table in front of the lawyer. “Count on me, motherfucker.”
Chapter 28, Bird Watching
Monday, June 16, 8 p.m.
“That wasn’t cool, Eric, you being at Barclay’s this morning when our people arrived.”
Bobby Harms’ bright white smile was hidden behind tight lips. They were on the Starlight deck, the space between Falconer’s penthouse and his office, open beers on the food-stained wooden table between them, the evening sun still warm, but the mood was not genial.
“What’s the problem, Bobby? You’re the one who said I could interview her.”
“Yeah, you can interview any goddam citizen you want and I can’t stop you unless I lock them up. But messing with evidence is another thing.” Harms had his elbows on the table. He leaned aggressively toward Falconer, strands of his black hair dropping onto his forehead like a prep school kid’s. His tie was undone, blue blazer draped over the back of the chair next to him. He wore chinos and a blue-striped shirt with a spread collar.
“What evidence? What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Don’t play dumb on me, Eric.”
“Let me pose that question again: What the fuck evidence are you talking about?” Falconer, barefooted, wore khaki cargo shorts and a gray tee shirt. Until Bobby came by, he thought it had been a pleasant sunny afternoon and evening, weather that Seattle seemed to steal from San Diego for a couple months each summer.
“The books. Sally’s books. The Barclay Associates’ financial records. The ones we found you photocopying this morning. All that information is evidence and if we’d got there first you never would have seen it. Because it’s evidence.”
“Oh, and what are you looking for?”
“Asshole.”
In the brief stalemate they both drank. The northerly that keeps Ballard cooler than the rest of the city on summer days rattled the bamboo in Falconer’s planters. A half dozen seagulls flew by at eye level.
“In the evening like this most of them fly west out to the sound.”
“I didn’t come here to watch birds, Falconer. I’m serious. You could compromise this investigation. Suppose we have to use this stuff in court. The defense attorneys will make a big deal out of it that you, a private citizen, had access to the books before we did. Anything that raises questions in jurors’ minds works against us, you know that.”
“A nice lecture, Bobby, but farfetched. Sally can vouch for the authenticity of anything that ends up in court. Besides, you don’t have a suspect yet. Sorry for the phrase, but ‘you haven’t a clue.’”
Harms fumed but stayed quiet, drinking his beer and staring over the lower buildings across Ballard Avenue at the boats and boat sheds across Salmon bay. Finally, he said, “We’re looking at the clients in Barclay’s records.”
“You should’ve done that before he was killed.”
“We were planning to. Doing the paperwork to get the subpoenas but, as it turns out, just not in time. Of course, it might be a dead end. Sorry, no pun intended. I mean, might be nothing there. We’ll see. I’m supposed to get a report tomorrow afternoon.”
“Want a sneak preview?”
“You are such a shit.” Harms laughed. “What have you got?”
“Well, I can tell you who’s paid him the most over the past few years. Sally ran me some numbers before your troops arrived to confiscate my Xeroxes.
“Give.”
“Barclay’s main client, the one he spends most of his personal time on, is Wallingford Evergreen, the holding company run by Victor Wallingford, scion of the pioneer timber family. His personal rate for Wallingford is $425 per hour, more than $200 above what he charges any other client, and last year he billed $662,600 plus expenses. There are a lot of long days and travel time, apparently every minute Barclay’s on a plane gets included. On top of that, Barclay Associates was paid approximately $320,000 for services billed to Wallingford Evergreen subsidiaries and related companies by Barclay and other members of the firm. With the expenses, it just tops $1.2 million.”
Harms responded with a long whistle. “Sure makes me feel like I chose the wrong profession. You, too. What could anyone possibly do that’d be worth $425 an hour?”
“Putting that in perspective. . .”
“I thought I just did.” Harms broadened his smile.
Falconer ignored him. “Putting that in perspective, the firm’s next-best client brings in only about $250,000, Sally says. And she admits that she and Carl both saw Wallingford Evergreen as a cash cow from which they could milk funds for retirement.”
“Not a crime. What’s your point?”
“Given the money and time Barclay had tied up in Wallingford Evergreen, I’d look at Victor Wallingford and other high ups in his companies for possible involvement in the smuggling operation, whatever the contraband, and Barclay’s murder.”
Harms smiled, but added a cynical curl at the corner of his mouth. “Nice package, Eric. Wrapped in ribbon, decorative bow, the whole bit. I can see we’re back to your white-collar smugglers. Just tell me how it connects with the dead Carl Barclay. Who in your scenario wants him offed?”
“Don’t be so fucking obtuse, Bobby. Dead he can’t talk to you, and someday he might have, so the big boss, whoever he is, would be happy to see him
gone.”
The Harms smile came on at full wattage. “Generally, yes, you’re right. We’re going to look at the clients, talk to them, see if we can find a trail, shake some trees, see if anything falls out. But, no, until we have something to go on we’re not wearing out a lot of shoe leather on Victor Wallingford or anybody else. Sitting in stuffy rooms bleary-eyed in front of computers is more like it. Today’s cop routine.”
Into Harms’ restored geniality, Falconer probed. “Anything on the boats?”
“Nada. Prints, yes. But a lot of them. We’ll I.D. the ones we can, make a list. You know, see if it corresponds to anything. They found a few scattered prints on the dinghy. Nothing at all on the oars. I think by that point, if not before, our perp was wearing gloves. Microscopic bits of leather on the oar handles. I’m sure we’ll trace that to a breed of cattle raised only on Sardinia and for a century made into supple driving gloves by a family with a little shop on a back street near the Duomo in Milan where everybody with a new Maseratti always goes and last year they sold a pair to this guy from Seattle who paid with a credit card so we can track him down – just like on TV.” They laughed at this fantasy for quite a while and companionably drank beer.
“Changing the subject . . ,” said Falconer.
“I’m ready for that.”
“There’s probably a lot of talk around the department about Will Collins and those other bigwigs’ kids getting arrested for partying, so you know about that right?”
“It’s a source of great amusement among us protectors of the populace. A lot of guys lost cases in Roberts’ courtroom when he was starting in municipal and then superior court, before they put him on the federal bench. Seemed like the liberal bastard had a thousand reasons not to admit prosecution exhibits. Guys used to joke that we’d better call Judge Roberts to come bag the evidence for us so he’d have to admit it during the trial. We had the impression he didn’t like cops.”