THE FOURTH WATCH (21 page)

"Its okay," I said, ''I didn't ask you to keep
it quiet or anything. If you said something to anyone, just say
so."

"Well I haven't. Mr. Knight, it's only been 24
hours."

''I know. I mentioned our conversation to Ted
Whorley yesterday. I told him that we threw a few scenarios around,
one of which was the possibility that someone was using the Loading
Dock's international organization for something other than company
business. He didn't disagree. I didn't get into the details with
him. I spoke to him generally and I didn't mention any of the names
you gave me."

"Mr. Knight, to be honest with you, I don't
really care what you told Teddy about anything, and, quite frankly,
I don't see ... "

"Well, here's the thing. I'm now going to ask
you not to mention any of this to anyone. If there's something
going on with one of these guys I don't want to tip them, I just
want to show up and feel them out unrehearsed, if you know what I
mean."

''That's okay with me."

"Good. So here is what I need your help on.
You've got these guys schedules right?"

"Yes I do. I don't follow their every move, of
course. They're professionals and they have a job to do, but all
the buyers let us know what their schedules look like for the
upcoming month. And of course we sometimes send them here and there
when we're targeting product and so forth."

"Okay. I want to know who is going to be where.
Then I'm going to want to talk to them all, kind of rapid fire.
Minimize the chitchat between them. We'll pick a guy to start with
when we know where he is going to be. I'll get myself over there
and then you can call and let him know I'm going to drop by to make
sure that he sees me. We'll chat, and I'll move on to the next guy.
Maybe I'll spook someone."

"My, my, Mr. Knight, such intrigue!"

''Not really. I'm just poking
around."

''Nevertheless, I'd be delighted to help, what
can I do?"

"Can you get the schedules, while I have you on
the phone?"

"Can you hang on a second?"

"Sure.”

He was back in a moment. "Alright, let's see.
What are we looking at for dates?"

I had my calendar in front of me. The next week
was booked. I had various motions and hearings scheduled on Monday.
Tuesday was a duty day. I had an auto accident client coming on
Thursday. Wednesday I'd be in the office preparing for a trial I
had coming up on Friday. I had spent a lot of time on this Whorley
case over the past few weeks and, even with my sporadic dance card,
I was starting to feel the crunch. Saturday would be the sixteenth
of September. If I traveled on Saturday, and moved two appointments
from that next week, into the following one, I'd have a clear four
or five days for my whirlwind tour. "Where is everyone going to be
that week starting on Monday, September 18th?"

"Let me see here," Archer said. I could hear
him folding back pages. "You know what?” He said, “that might just
work out okay for you," he said. The two Pac-Rim guys, Waters and
Talbot, are going to be with product going through customs in
Seattle, and the others will be in Taipei- that's Taiwan- at a
textile show. Well, truth to tell, Ray will be holdin' down the
fort, but Ernie and Linn will have to make appearances. All the
players will be at the show. We set up a booth, kiss the suppliers
asses, that kind of thing. Don't seem right, what with us doin' the
buyin' and them doin' the sellin', but you got to keep the bastards
happy! 'Course they'll all have booths too. A textile love-in! Have
you got a passport and all that?"

"I've got a passport. But don't I need a visa
or something?"

"Yeah, but I can take care of that for you.
I'll just call the embassy and tell them we're sending our lawyer
over on business. If you get your passport to me, I can probably
get it done without you even going in."

"Sounds like a plan," I said. I could feel the
juice flowing. All of a sudden I felt like I was doing something,
in the middle of something, tracking a killer.

''I'll set it up with the guys in a way that
they think. they're meeting with some kind of licensing attorney.
Last minute customs snafu or something, I'll work it out. Then you
can play it any way you want when you get there. In Taipei you can
just drop by the booth at the show. I'll just make sure that they
know you're coming so they'll be there. I'll leave it vague.
Customs again. These guys are used to bureaucrats complicating
their lives."

"Good."

"Yeah, its great," he said.

I laughed with him. "So, okay, what do I do
about the passport?"

''Depends how nervous you are. You can just
stick it in the mail to me, or you can drop it by. I'll deal with
it. Why don't you give me a call back once you get your flights and
all that set up and we can take it from there."

"I'll do that," I said, "and, listen, I
appreciate your cooperation."

"Don't mention it. Like I said, if we got a rat
here, I'd like to flush him out before I pack it in."

*****

I HUNG UP AND CALLED
the airlines and booked myself on a Northwest
flight, nonstop out of Boston on September 16 at 4:26 PM arriving
Seattle 7:18PM local time. I used my American Express Card to pay,
and held my breath while she punched it in. I knew I was paid up,
but I had not always lived up to my agreement to clear everything
off at the end of each month. In the past they have made me pay for
my sins by making me call and grovel before authorizing a charge.
Apparently I had been forgiven my most recent transgressions,
because the woman on the other end of the line robotically recited
my flights back to me with a confirmation number. I jotted them
down on my desk blotter. My computer-age friends would ridicule me
for not using the Internet for this task, but I am still a little
uneasy with the idea of broadcasting my credit card information
into cyberspace. I have enough trouble with the charges
I
put on my card. I
don't need a web-buddy whacking his johnson on my nickel at some
porno site. I'm probably paranoid, but there it is.

Emboldened by my success, I booked the next leg
from Seattle to Taipei. It left Monday night, the nine-hour flight
would arrive Wednesday morning. I was crossing an international
dateline and losing a day. I would get it back on the leg home I
was assured, which would leave Taiwan's Chiang Kai-shek Airport
Wednesday night, fly for eleven hours and arrive at Chicago's
O'Hare Airport on Wednesday afternoon. I'd jump back to Boston from
the Midwest. I was hoping that I was leaving myself enough time to
do what I had to do at all these places. I didn't have a clue what
I was going to do for lodging in Taipei. I made a mental note to
have Archer get me a room. Even though I wasn't staying over, I'd
need a place to crash for a few hours. I hadn't budgeted much sleep
into this trip. I figured I'd get some shut-eye on the
flights.

As far as Seattle went, I had a friend from law
school that lived and worked as a newspaper reporter in the city.
We were fairly close back then, and had stayed in touch over the
years. We talked on the phone a few times each year. I figured I'd
rely on him to book me a good hotel. I looked his number up in my
Rolodex and called him next. He was not in but his answering
machine informed me of all the ways I could track him down. It gave
me a pager number, a cell phone number and an e-mail address. Must
be a lot of competition for stories. I dialed his pager, punched in
my number and hung up the phone.

Louis Smyth worked for a left wing rag that
until not long ago had been published underground. He was a liberal
bordering on anarchist/communist in law school, and had drifted
further left since graduation. As near as I could tell he had never
used his law degree for anything, except as a foundation for his
columns, which he filled with First Amendment slogans aimed at
inciting the unwashed masses to revolution. It was often difficult
to determine where the revolt was going, but that did not deter
Louis. He was very smart, a gifted writer and filthy rich. He did
not find his wealth, which he inherited from a grandfather that had
wrung it out of the hides of peasants toiling in the tunnels of his
South African diamond mines, to be inconsistent with his
proletariat longings for the rest of mankind. After all, it
afforded him the freedom to shake the leg irons of injustice at the
rest of the world from whatever seedy pulpit that would have him.
If he had been less of a radical, he could have been an outstanding
investigative reporter. He was fearless and tireless in pursuit of
his stories, but his message was often dismissed because of the
wrapper it came in. He had found a calling reporting on the
exploitation of illegal immigrants that had sold their souls for
the chance to come to America. He had had a few successes exposing
sweatshops that worked immigrant women and children 14 hours a day
in tinderbox warehouses along the waterfront. His stories had
focused in two illegal immigrant populations: Central Americans and
the Chinese. Considering that these people were often smuggled into
the country, I was hoping that Louis might be able to give me some
perspective on how things moved illegally into Seattle from the Far
East.

It took about twenty minutes for my phone to
ring. He must have recognized the number because when I answered
the phone he said, "Is this the office of the Fascist Pig Lawyer
that lines his pockets by giving the false hope of justice to the
downtrodden?"

"Yes," I said. "Is this the phony radical that
incites others to riot while sitting at home counting the millions
he inherited from slave owning relatives?"

"None other," he roared. "Michael my boy how
the hell are you?"

"Well, I'm good, and I'm contemplating a visit
to your fair city."

''How enchanting! Business or
pleasure?"

"Business. "

"Do tell?"

"And I'm looking for a place to stay and
information on illegal commodities traffic."

He was quiet for a moment and when he spoke
again I could tell that a little of the humor had drained out of
his voice. "What kind of commodities?

''I don't know." I gave him a thumbnail sketch
of events so far. I told him about my client and how it all started
and about The Loading Dock and my suspicions. He listened to it all
quietly, grunting occasionally. I told him my plan and gave him my
itinerary. ''I'm not sure anything illegal is going on," I told
him. "I'm just pulling on the string to see where it leads me, but
there is something very wrong about all of this."

"Well, this is all very, very interesting. I
can't wait to get into it with you. I insist you stay with me
during you visit." The humor was back in his voice.

"That's nice of you," I said, "but to be
honest, I'm a little too set in my ways to move in with a herd of
drugged out leftovers from the Height-Asbury Movement. I get a
little antsy around people that don't wash, and make bombs out of
lawn fertilizer in their spare time. If its all the same to you,
just book me into a Hilton or Marriott."

"I'll also look around at this Loading Dock
operation," he said, ignoring me and my criticism of his proffered
accommodations ,''I know some customs people I can talk to. Find
out if there is anyone interested in what they're up to over there.
Hey, remember though, if there is a story here, it's
mine."

"Well, I suppose that would be one way of
making sure it never gets told. Have you bury it in one of your
rags that no one reads."

He railed at me in mock disgust. "My work is
art - and political prophecy. It matters not who reads it today,
for tomorrow truth seekers with find the seeds of the movement in
it. The movement that merged the classes into one workers
paradise."

"Tomorrows truth seekers will find fish guts in
it is what they'll find," I told him.

"Your shallowness is revolting. Your skepticism
is maddening! Nevertheless I'll pick you up at the airport on
Saturday night and take you to dinner."

''I'll require utensils to eat
with."

"And you shall have them, my boy."

14

AT TWO-THIRTY THAT
afternoon I got the Jeep out of hock from the
parking garage across from my office and headed for my appointment
with the Whorley clan. I went north on Main and left, up the hill
to Harvard, then west, on Highland Street. When I was a kid, this
area was home to thieves, hookers, drug dealers and all nature of
societal miscreants. Weather beaten three-deckers served host to
head shops and sex cribs. In those days, an enterprising teenager
from the suburbs could get a nickel bag of Acapulco Gold, a Gerry
Garcia T-shirt and a blow job for twenty bucks, and still have bus
fair back to the burbs. Now the street is lined with upscale
restaurants, art galleries and imported cigar emporiums. The whores
have moved down into Main South, the drugs are available everywhere
and the market for tie-dyed T-shirts has dried up.

I crossed over Park Ave., and took Pleasant
Street at Newton Square up the hill toward the airport, cutting
across what is known as the city's West Side. I went up through
Tatnuck Square, with its quaint coffee shops and swank clothing
stores and turned north at the airport toward Paxton. About a
quarter mile out Olean I forked right onto Baron Ridge. The first
clue that I had ventured into an enclave of the rich and famous was
that there were about ten heavily wooded football fields between
driveways. Number 8 was on the right, the entrance straddled by two
stone pillars about eight feet tall. The left one had the ornate,
wrought-iron street number affixed to it. A large, black, iron gate
was attached to the right pillar and rusted open. Field stone walls
ran away from the pillars in either direction along the street.
They were old farmer's walls, or perhaps ancient Indian Tribal
boundaries.