J. Jance - A more perfect union

I nodded. "That's the one."

Ames shook his head in disgust. "You drink too much and you work too hard. Definitely type-A behavior, Beau. Typical type A. Heart attack material. You'd best mend your ways, or you won't be around long enough to enjoy your money."

Our conversation probably would have deteriorated further into an all-out quarrel if the phone hadn't rung just then. It was Linda Decker.

"I talked to Sandy Carson," she said. "She told me she gave you the tapes. Did you look at them? Did they help?"

She sounded so eager it was hard to answer her. "We looked at them all right," I said slowly, playing for time, scrambling for the right thing to say.

I was hedging. I didn't want to have to tell Linda Decker that the information she had guarded with her life, the information that had cost her Logan Tyree, her mother, and maybe her brother, was essentially worthless. It's one thing to pay a price. It's something else to discover that the price was meaningless.

"We're still evaluating the information," I said at last.

She sighed. I could sense her disappointment. "What are you doing now?" she asked.

I glanced down at the drink in my hand and found myself wondering exactly how many MacNaughton's there had been in the course of the evening. I couldn't remember exactly, and now, suddenly it seemed important, not because of Ames but because of me. Maybe Ralph Ames was right to be worried.

"Just taking it easy," I said in answer to Linda's question.

"I don't mean right this minute," Linda Decker responded. "I mean what are you going to do next?"

"We're following up on the disappearance of Wayne Martinson."

"Wayne? Do you think he was involved?"

"Maybe, maybe not," I replied. "And then tomorrow we'll have a look at the pictures of Masters Plaza, to see if those tell us anything."

"That's all?"

"For right now." I heard Linda Decker's sharp intake of breath. For the loved ones, the ones left grieving and waiting, I'm sure the way cops have to work must seem incredibly cumbersome, agonizingly slow.

It's true. It is.

There was nothing more I could or would tell Linda Decker right then, so I changed the subject. "How's Jimmy?" I asked.

There was a long pause before she answered. "I don't know," she said softly. "He may not make it through the night, but at least the sons of bitches didn't get the tapes," she added fiercely. "Thank God for that."

"That's right," I agreed as consolingly as I could manage. "At least they didn't get the tapes."

I put down the phone and sat there looking at it. For a time I forgot I wasn't alone in the room.

"Who was that?" Ames asked.

The sound of his voice startled me, and I jumped. All the potential rancor in our previous discussion faded from mind. It never occurred to me to tell Ralph Ames to mind his own business.

"Linda," I answered. "Linda Decker, wondering how things are going."

"And the tapes?" he pressed.

I shook my head. "They're nothing really, justsome accountant's tapes. Angie Dixon, the woman who fell off the building, insisted that they were part of a long-term swindle inside the union-bribes, kickbacks, that kind of thing. The problem is, we've only got the tapes, not the journal entries. Without those, we can't prove a thing."

"What are you going to do about it?" Ames asked.

Pointedly placing my empty glass on the table, I looked Ralph Ames in the eye. "Sleep on it," I said. "Go to bed and see if any bright ideas surface in my subconscious."

Of course, when I finally did manage to wrestle my nighttime demons into submission, I was too exhausted for any inspiration to pay me a nocturnal visit. There were dreams-disjointed, fragmented, ugly dreams in which I almost but not quite found something that didn't want to be found.

There were no flashes of psychic brilliance, no illuminating insights into the problem at hand. When the alarm went off at six the next morning I woke up with a throbbing hangover, no closer to solving the problem than I had been the night before when I fell into bed in a booze-induced stupor.

Hung over or not, I knew as soon as I opened my eyes that something was different. For the first time in weeks, the sky outside my bedroom window was gray instead of blue. Seattle's cool cloud cover was back, announcing that summer had just about run its course. I went out on the balcony. A cool freshening breeze was blowing in off Puget Sound. Sniffing it cleared my head and made me feel better.

Let it rain, I thought. Labor Day or not, Bumbershoot or not, let it rain. I'm ready.

Dressing quickly, I skipped out of the house without bothering to make coffee or waken Ames. I made my way down Second with the other early-morning pedestrian commuters. They were smiling and nodding at one another in greeting. The heat was leaving, the sun was going back where it belonged, and real Seattlites were happy to have their customary weather back.

It was only five to seven when I got to Second and Union, but Paul Kramer was already pacing anxiously back and forth by the empty, drought-dried fountain next to the Arcade Building. Manny Davis, more relaxed, lounged easily against one wall watching Paul Kramer's impatient antics with some amusement.

When he saw me at last, Kramer breathed an exaggerated sigh of relief, turned on his heel, and headed into the building. Manny waited until I reached him. "I figured you'd be on time. Kramer's got no faith."

"He's got all kinds of faith," I corrected, "in all the wrong things."

The temporary Seattle headquarters for Masters and Rogers Developers was on the third floor of the Arcade Building in two small but posh offices that had been sublet from someone else. The woman at the front desk would have made a terrific ice princess. Flawlessly made up. Coldly beautiful. No smile. No discernible sense of humor.

"Mr. Gibson has someone with him just now. May I ask what this is concerning?"

"It's police business, Miss," Manny offered. From the daggered look she gave him, Miss wasn't a term she found endearing.

She sat up straighter in her chair. "Mr. Gibson is meeting with some prospective tenants at the moment. He flew back from Toronto late last night especially for this meeting. I'm sure he'll be glad to talk to you once it's over, but I couldn't possibly interrupt him. It may take several hours. They're on a tour of the building right now."

"Several hours!" Kramer yelped as though he'd been shot. The probability was high that the Masters Plaza pictures would reveal nothing new, yield nothing we hadn't already learned from other sources, but Kramer was young and impatient. He needed to feel like he was doing something, getting somewhere. "We'll wait," he said stubbornly. "However long it takes, we'll wait."

He settled heavily into a chair next to a potted palm. Manny joined him and picked up a recent copy of Forbes that was sitting on an end table next to him.

The receptionist shrugged with studied disinterest and turned back to her computer keyboard. "Suit yourselves," she said.

I've seen this kind of corporate guardian angel all too often. They regard themselves as the keepers of all comings and goings. Over the years I've learned you have to get around women like that, because you sure as hell aren't going to get through them.

I made a point of looking at the clock on the receptionist's desk, turning the face toward me so I could see it. "You can wait if you want to," I said over my shoulder to Kramer and Manny. "I've got better things to do." Without saying anything more, I made my way out of the office. When I stopped at the elevator, I glanced back. Paul Kramer was glaring sourly at me through the glass, muttering something to Manny. Suspicions confirmed, probably. Smiling, I gave them a breezy wave and disappeared into the elevator.