J. Jance - A more perfect union

"Are you aware they're trying to shoot a movie here this afternoon?"

"What of it?" he asked. "I'm a police officer."

"So am I, Detective Kramer. Like it or not, my current assignment is to help these folks get their movie finished."

He stared at me, his long look critical and appraising before he finally replied. "And my assignment is to find out how this dead bastard in the water got that way. That's just what I'm going to do. Get off my back, Beaumont. I'm not in the habit of taking advice from playboy cops."

With that, he stalked away. I stood there in a fury after he left, with explosions of light blurring my vision and blood pounding in my temples.

Playboy cop my ass! I was aware that there had been some idle comment around the department about my change in lifestyle. The red Porsche 928 and my penthouse condo in Belltown Terrace had been the subject of mostly congenial ribbing, especially on the fifth floor where some of the guys regularly asked me if I was still on the take. There may have been more serious gritching going on behind my back, but Kramer was the first one ever to tackle me about it head-on.

I wanted to wring his neck. Unfortunately, Kramer is built like a Marine, with a thick neck that goes straight from his chin to his broad shoulders with barely an indentation. Ripped as I was, though, I think I could have handled him.

Officer Jackson got out of the patrol car and came over to me while I was still fuming. "I've called Harbor Patrol," she said. "They say it'll be awhile. There's been an accident in the locks."

My legs still quivered as misdirected adrenaline burned off through my system. I had to really concentrate before Merrilee Jackson's spoken words penetrated the fog of anger and made any sense.

The Hiram Chittenden Locks form a narrow bottleneck between Lake Union and Shilshole Bay. The lake is freshwater and the bay is salt, a part of Puget Sound. The locks raise and lower boats to allow access between the two bodies of water. On sunny summer days, mobs of amateur water-jockeys and serious drinkers simultaneously attempt to maneuver their boats through the locks. It can be tricky under the best of circumstances, because currents in the locks behave far more like those in rivers than they do those in lakes. Which is how Seattle ends up with weekend watercraft traffic jams that can rival any freeway.

If that was what this was, we could be in for a long wait. "Great," I muttered. "That's just great."

As Officer Jackson headed toward the dock once more, Cassie Young came up to me in a blind panic. "Why's that guy fastening tape to our boom?" she asked. "What's going on?"

"We've got a hotshot detective here who thinks the sun rises and sets in his ass."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Cassie demanded.

"That he needs to be taken down a peg or two." I left her standing there fuming and went looking for Woody Carroll. I found him in the midst of the bunch of milling reporters.

"Where's the nearest phone?" I asked.

"That one I used, down on the wingwall." He pointed, but that phone was already well inside Paul Kramer's barricade of Day-Glo tape.

"That one won't work. Are they any others?"

Woody shrugged. "Go on into the administration building. The girl in there will let you use one."

As I walked toward the office I remembered Ralph Ames, my attorney in Arizona, complaining that what I really needed was a car telephone in the 928. Ames is a gadget nut, especially when it comes to telephones. For the first time, I thought maybe he might be right about a car phone.

The "girl" in the Lake Union Drydock office was probably pushing sixty-five. "It's not long distance, is it?" she asked in response to my request for a phone.

I shook my head and she pointed me toward a conference room where a high-tech pushbutton phone sat on a battered wooden desk. I went so far as to pick up the receiver and punch the first three digits of Sergeant Watkins' home phone number. Then, stopping in mid-dial, I stood there holding the phone.

The socialization of little boys includes very strong interdictions against carrying tales. My first lesson came when I was five. I've never forgotten it. My mother's alteration shop in Ballard was next door to a bakery owned by a friendly old man. One afternoon I overheard several older boys bragging about how a whole group of them would go into the store at once. One or two would occupy the baker's attention while others smuggled doughnuts out from under his nose.

Offended by their blatant dishonesty, I told my mother who in turn told the baker. He caught them in the act the very next day. Two days later, the older kids waylaid me in the alley behind the shops. I don't know how they found out, but they accused me of being a tattletale and a sissy. They dumped me out of my Radio Flyer wagon and proceeded to beat the holy crap out of me. When it was over, my shirt was so badly torn it had to be thrown away before my mother saw it. I cleaned myself up as best I could, and when my mother asked what happened, I told her I tipped over in the wagon.

But I had learned my lesson. Permanently. And some forty years later, that lesson was still there, its taste as strong and bitter in my mouth as the dirt and blood from that long-ago alley.

I put down the phone without ever finishing dialing Watty's number. I'd take care of Paul Kramer myself, one way or the other.

"Nobody home?" the receptionist asked as I came back past her desk.

I shook my head. "Nope. I'll try again later," I said.

The aid car was just leaving as I walked back outside. I waved them down. "The lady's all right?" I asked.

The driver nodded. "Like you said, she just fainted. No big deal."

His partner leaned forward and grinned. "Yeah, we'll be happy to come back and administer first aid to her anytime."

Maybe Derrick Parker didn't like her much, but Hannah Boyer was obviously a hit with Seattle's Medic One.

By the time I collared Manny, my temper was fairly well back under control. "If that asshole Kramer wants a search, let's give him one, but let's get it over with now while we wait for Harbor Patrol to show up."

So for the next forty-five minutes, while we waited the arrival of the police boat, we diligently combed every inch of the area Kramer had cordoned off. It didn't take long, and it wasn't tough, either. The creosoted wooden planks yielded nothing useful. The whole dock was clean as a whistle. By the time Harbor Patrol got there, even Kramer was ready to admit defeat.

Harbor Patrol Three arrived along with two Seattle P.D. old-timers, Jim Harrison and Ken Lee, both of whom are contemporaries of mine. They brought their thirty-eight-foot Modu-Tech alongside the dock and gently eased in close enough to reach the corpse with a body hook.

That particular piece of police equipment is very much like a ten-foot-long question mark. The long handle has foam floats to help keep it on the surface of the water. Despite its name, the implement is neither pointed nor sharp. The curve at the end, formed by one continuous U-shaped piece of tubing, is about the size of a basketball hoop.

Harrison gently maneuvered the metal half-circle around the midsection of the corpse and pulled it toward the boat while Ken Lee untied the body basket from where it was stowed on top of the cabin. The basket, a man-sized frame of galvanized tubing lined with small-mesh chicken wire, was dropped into the water and positioned under the corpse. Once the body was tied in place, they hefted it into the boat.

All this was done with absolutely no discussion. Lee and Harrison worked together quickly and efficiently, the way good partners are supposed to.

Only when they were finished and had covered the body with a disposable paper blanket did Harrison look up. "Sorry it took so long for us to get here, Manny," he said. "We were stuck in the locks. Do you want him here on the dock, or should we take him back to Harbor Station?"