Last Ditch (2 page)

"No,
I
didn't"

"And
why
was that? Hadn't the judge retained you to provide him with that very
piece of
information?"

"The
judge
didn't need a private detective," I said. "He needed a pimp."

"Your
Honor," Hennessey bellowed. Even while springing to his feet in protest
he
still managed to button the single button on his suit coat. Muscle
memory, I
figured.

Hennessey
ranted; Stillman did her best to appear appalled; Judge Downs had my
answer
stricken from the record and gave me the gavel shaking of a lifetime.
As for me
... I tried to look chastened.

NINE
DAYS AFTER
I gave the judge his money back, at seven-thirty on a Saturday morning,
I
groped for the ringing phone, knocked it over onto the floor where it
ricocheted
off the oak planks and disappeared under the bed. I had to find the
cord and
drag the whole thing up over the covers like a stubborn puppy. I heard
a dial
tone, but the damn thing was still ringing. Rebecca elbowed me hard in
the
other ear.

"It's
the
doorbell," she moaned.

Even
in my
dream state, there was no doubt about what I was looking at through the
crack
in the door. Two cops. Detectives. Not local. Detective Gregory
Balderama and
Detective Sergeant Vince Wales. Tacoma PD. Balderama was younger. Under
forty
with a thick head of carefully coiffed black hair. He stood on the
porch,
shifting his weight from foot to foot. Wales was old school. Wrinkled.
Fifty or so. No more than five years from a pension. Once we agreed on
who we
all were, he thrust a photograph under my nose.

"You
know
this person, Waterman?"

It
was a woman.
Maybe forty years old with a thick neck and dirty blonde hair. A head
shot. In
this case, a shot of a head that had been shot in the head. Twice. Once
just
under the right eye and once, it looked like, in the right ear. A
symmetrical
pool of dark liquid fanned out around her wide face like a pagan
headdress.

"I
don't
think so," I said.

Balderama
stepped forward with another picture.

"What
about this one?"

It
looked to be
a hundred pounds of raw beef liver in a blue dress. I pushed his arm
away and
turned my head.

"Jesus
Christ" I complained. "What the hell was that?"

"Whatever
it was, was carrying your business card," he said. He pulled a plastic
bag
from his coat pocket. Sure enough, one of my cards rested on the bottom
of the
bag.

I
pointed at
the photo. "Lemme see that" I said.

I
held it by
the edges, as if something might get on my hands. It was hard to tell
that it
had ever been human. The skull had been pounded flat. The arms were
splayed at
impossible angles and the shinbone on the left leg was visible in two
places.

"Jesus
Christ" I said again.

Sergeant
Wales
filled me in. The deceased were found in the basement of an abandoned
building
in downtown Tacoma.
The first woman had been shot three times. Two in the head. One in the
upper
right chest. The second woman had been beaten to death. The ME thought
baseball
bats. From the imbedded fragments taken from the body, at least two
separate
bats. One steel, one aluminum. The ME said even her toes had been
pulverized.

"No
ID on
either of them?"

"Just
your
card, Waterman."

I
shrugged.
"Wish I could help."

Balderama
took
over. "The medical examiner says she was Hispanic. Probably South
American. Somewhere between eighteen and twenty-five. A hundred ten
pounds. No
vaccination marks. Maybe an illegal alien ..." He stopped when the
photograph slipped from my hand and floated to the ground.

"Come
in," I said, when I could speak again. "Give me a few minutes to get
dressed."

An
hour later,
Rebecca came padding through the living room in her bare feet,
following the
smell of coffee back toward the kitchen. As Wales and Balderama stood
and
mumbled introductions, Duvall picked the pictures up from the coffee
table. Wales
tried to stop her, but it was too late.

"Small
caliber. Probably a twenty-two," she said. "The ear wound was
point-blank. Classic wise guy pattern."

She
winced
slightly at the second photo. "Cripes," she said. "Somebody use
the poor thing for a pinata, or what?"

Her
exit left
the cops openmouthed. I gave 'em a break.

"She's
a
pathologist for the county ME," I said.

When
they could
breathe again, we got back to work.

From
what Wales
and Balderama told me later, they went from my house right to the
shelter. The
other woman's name was Jill Clark. She was a volunteer. A couple of
days later,
when the Seattle Times ran a different picture of her, I realized that
she was
one of the women who'd been in the room while I interviewed Felicia
Mendoza.

The
two women
had gone to a movie together. The seven o'clock showing of My Best
Friend's
Wedding at the Uptown Cinema. A sixteen-year-old usher named Shantiqua
Harris
remembered seeing the women leave together at the end of the show.
Shantiqua
had noticed how protective Jill Clark seemed to be of the smaller woman
and had
wondered if they were lesbians. That was the last time either woman was
seen
alive. Two kids looking for a lost kitty found the bodies.

Wales
and Balderama interviewed
the rest of
the shelter staff and the doctor who had examined her. They interviewed
both
Felicia Mendoza's priest and her attorney. Then they consulted their
direct
superior, took three deep breaths, said three Hail Marys and requested
a Murder
One warrant for Washington State Supreme Court justice Douglas J.
Brennan.

Local
legal
wisdom made the case against the judge to be pretty much a dead heat. A
mountain of circumstantial evidence and hearsay, all pointing at His
Honor, but
nothing to connect the judge directly to the murders. When the judge
hired Dan
Hennessey, most legal pundits figured he had better than a fifty-fifty
chance
of walking. Apparently, however, the judge was not similarly convinced.

STILLMAN
FINISHED UP for me. "And after telling the police your story, the rest,
as
they say, was history. Is that correct, Mr. Waterman?"

"Yes,
it
is," I said. "Until ..."

"Until
what, Mr. Waterman?"

"Until
about six weeks ago, when one of my ..." I groped for a word. "...
contacts told me that somebody had a contract out on my life."

"And
you
believed this person?"

"Absolutely."

FRANKIE
ORTIZ
SITTING at my backyard patio table drinking iced cappuccino with
Rebecca was
the equivalent of Charlie Manson sipping tea in the Rose Garden with
Hillary
Clinton. Frankie was a little guy. No more than five-six or so. I'd
always thought
he looked like the old-time bandleader Cab Calloway. Thick, processed
hair
combed straight back. A bold, wide mouth accented by a pencil-thin
mustache
which clung precisely to the outline of his prominent upper lip. He had
a
penchant for lightcolored suits and two-tone shoes. Frankie worked for
Tim
Flood.

Tim
Flood and
my father had started out together working for Dave Beck and the
Teamsters. At
the time, their official title had been "labor organizers."
Revisionist history now labeled them as thugs, but neither of them
minded. My
father had parlayed his local notoriety into eleven terms on the
Seattle City
Council. He'd run for mayor four times, suffering a narrow defeat on
each
occasion. Tim Rood had gone on to become Seattle's
homegrown version of organized crime. Tim Flood had his fingers in
every pie.
My old man had his relatives in every city and county department. The
way I
figured it, six of one, half a dozen of the other.

Rebecca
was
beaming. "Oh, Leo . . . Mr. Ortiz tells the most outrageous stories,"
she said.' "I can't believe it."

"I'll
bet," I said.

I
figured
Frankie was probably skipping the one about how he'd shot Sal Abbruzio
in the
spine for skimming the numbers take. And you sure wouldn't want to tell
the one
about cutting off Nicky Knight's fingers in the back booth at Vito's.
Especially not the part about Big Hazel freshening their drinks between
fingers. Not before dark anyway.

"Frankie,"
I said, and offered my hand. He took it

I
dragged a
chair over next to Rebecca and put a hand on her knee. She crossed her
legs and
gave my hand a pat.

Frankie
took a
sip of his cappuccino. "You know, the kid's gonna graduate this
June," he said. "June eighth."

The
kid was
Tim's granddaughter Caroline Nobel. A few years back, I'd gotten her
out of a nasty
situation involving some dangerous tree huggers who thought they could
save the
planet by blowing things up.

"Gonna
be
a schoolteacher," he said.

"Great."

"I
think
it's what's keepin' the old man alive. He ain't been outta the house in
years,
but he says we're goin' to the ceremony. His doctors are shittin'
bricks. Say
it'll kill him."

"How
is
the old man? He still lucid?"

Frankie
smiled.
"Depends on who he's talkin to. Caroline comes around, they have a hell
of
a time, laughin' and carryin' on. His doctors try to talk to him, all
of a
sudden he thinks he's friggin' Cleopatra."

Another
four
minutes of mindless small talk and Rebecca finally picked up the vibe.
Frankie
was old school. Nothing personal, but Frankie Ortiz didn't do business
in front
of women. She shot me a pitying look and got to her feet "If you
gentlemen
will excuse me, I best go inside before I get the vapors."

Frankie
rose
and shook her hand in thanks. He stayed on his feet until she closed
the French
doors behind her and then sat back down.

"Nice
girl, Leo. You're a lucky guy."

"Thanks,
Frankie. You just stop by to shoot the breeze, or did you have
something a
little more substantial you wanted to discuss?"

I
think he was
surprised at how polite I was. Usually he likes to dance around a bit,
at which
point I usually get impatient and impolite, and then the whole thing
goes to
shit Today he got right to it.

"Got
a
call from a guy we know in Vegas," he said. "A
macher
."
He said it right, with the back-of-the-throat noise.
"You know what a
macher
is,
Leo?"

A
macher
was a maker. A big shot A guy who
could make things happen. I knew the breed well. My old man had been a
macher
.

"Yeah,
I
know what it means," I said.

"So
the
guy says to me, he says, 'Hey Frankie, didn't you tell me about some
private
dickhead guy named Waterson or something who helped you and Tim out
that one
time wid the kid?' "

Frankie
looked
up at me to see if I was paying attention. I was.

"So
I says
to him, 'Yeah, that's right, why?' And he says, there's a couple of
dweezels
been losing big lately out at the south end of the strip, tellin' the
workin'
girls the dough they're pissin' away is no problem 'cause there's more
where
that came from. Say they're headed up north to pop a Seattle
private dick named Waterville
or some such shit. My friend says he thought maybe we'd like to know.
From what
he hears, these bozos been tellin the honeys that they crewed for this
same
party a while back. He asks me if we know anything about what's goin'
on."
Frankie made a face. "And I ask him, 'Hey . . . what the fuck are you
callin' us for? The friggin' newspaper knows more about the shit goin'
on
around here these days than Tim and I do;, we're strictly legit Only
staff
Tim's got anymore are the nurses in charge of wiping his wrinkled ass,
for
Christ sake. We're not exactly still in business, if you know what I'm
talkin
about' "He sounded almost wistful. Almost.

"You
trust
this Vegas guy?" I asked.

He
tilted his
head and pursed his lips. "I don't trust anybody, Leo," he said.
"But I was you, I'd watch my ass."

"AND
THAT,
OF course, explains why you were wearing a bulletproof vest," Paula
Stillman prodded. It was a smart move. Most citizens don't jog in a
Kevlar vest
or carry a nine-millimeter automatic, with two extra clips taped to
their chests.
Tends to chafe. Stillman knew she could count on the defense to bring
it up, so
she did it herself. Hennessey would sure as hell try to show that my
state of
paranoia was somehow responsible for the gunplay rather than the two
professional shooters the judge had hired to put me out of my misery.

*
    
*
    
*

ABOUT
TWO
MINUTES after Frankie said his good-byes, I'd called the cops.
Balderama and Wales
had sympathized and offered twenty-four-hour police protection, but I
knew what
that meant Two weeks down the road, they'd need the manpower for
something
else, offer us the services of a retired school crossing guard, and
we'd be
right back where we started. Rebecca and I talked it over and decided
that we
weren't going to let anybody bring our lives to a grinding halt. The
way we
figured it, if we stopped our lives, the judge won. The way I figured
it if I
let scumbags like the judge run me around, I might as well find a new
line of
work. Like selling Amway maybe.