J. Jance - A more perfect union

"I'll bet you're right, Peters. I wonder if Davis and Kramer have made the connection?"

"Kramer?" Peters asked. "Paul Kramer from robbery?"

Wanting to avoid going into detail about my hassle with Kramer, I had neglected to tell Peters the names of the homicide detectives assigned to the case. It was nobody's business but my own, one I didn't care to advertise.

"That's him all right," I said. "What about him?"

"He's a first-class son of a bitch," Peters growled. "When I was still in robbery, he almost caused me to quit the force. What's he doing working in homicide?"

Knowing I wasn't the only one bothered by Paul Kramer made me feel less like the Lone Ranger. "He transferred up just in the last couple of weeks. What's his problem?"

Peters paused for a moment. "Paul Kramer wants to be Chief of Police someday, Beau, and he doesn't give a shit who he has to step on to get there."

Suddenly, Detective Kramer's action made a hell of a lot more sense to me. "Thanks for the info, Peters," I said. "I'll bear that in mind."

"You want me to call Manny and tell him about that boat?"

I thought about that for a minute. And I thought about the guy in my building as well, the one who worked for the ironworkers' local. "No," I said finally. "I don't think so. If this Kramer character is so goddamned smart, let him figure it out for himself. If it looks like they're going to miss it altogether, then we can tell them. For all we know, somebody from Harbor Patrol has probably already passed the word."

"Just the same," Peters said. "I think I'll call the library and check out that story on the boat. I'd like to know more. For me."

I didn't try to stop him. I was still so delighted to see Peters showing an interest in the world outside the confines of his hospital room that I refused to discourage him in any way. Besides, I wanted to know myself. After all, I'm a detective. I've been one of those a helluva lot longer than I've been a technical advisor.

When I hung up the phone, I played back the messages on my machine. There was one message from Peters asking me to call him back, and four from Heather asking if I would please, please, please, please take them to Bumbershoot. The brat. She knows she has me wrapped around her little finger. I erased the messages and decided not to tell Peters that Heather had done her best to beat him to the punch.

I went slinking onto the set a little after eight. I thought I could sneak in unobtrusively. No way. Cassie Young caught sight of me and lit into me before I was within ten feet of her.

"Where the hell did you and Derrick go last night? He's late this morning, too. We're waiting to film the last fight sequence, the one between Derrick and the banker, and he shows up looking like something the cat dragged in."

"I didn't do it," I said. "I'm innocent. Parker was in perfectly good shape when I dropped him off at the Sheraton last night."

She glared at me and sniffed. "As if you'd know good shape when you saw it." With that, Cassie Young turned on her heel and marched away. Woody Carroll eased up behind me. He was holding a styrofoam cup of steaming coffee.

"She's not having a very good day," he said. Woody Carroll had truly mastered the fine art of understatement.

I glanced enviously at his cup. "Where'd you get that?" I asked.

He nodded toward a table near the stairs leading up to the locker room. "They've got coffee and doughnuts over there. You look like you could use some."

"Thanks," I said, but I was getting tired of all the editorial comment, of everyone implying that I looked like I'd been run over by a truck. I did look like it, actually, but it had far more to do with working an eighteen-hour day than it did with anything I'd done after Goldfarb had finally closed up shop.

Woody followed me to the table where I helped myself to two fat doughnuts and a cup of thick, black coffee. "Is she always like that?" he asked.

"Who?" I returned.

"That woman-what's her name?"

"You mean Cassie Young?"

Woody nodded.

"As far as I can tell," I told him. "I've known her exactly two weeks, and she's been on a rampage the whole time."

"That reminds me," Woody said. "Speaking of unreasonable people. Yesterday, when all those reporters were here, one of them wanted to talk to you. Insisted on it. Said he knew you, that you and he were old friends."

"Let me guess. His name was Maxwell Cole."

"So you do know him. I've read his column in the paper a couple of times. I guess I should have let him come to talk to you. I thought he was just giving me the business."

"He was. Max and I are old acquaintances. Fraternity brothers, not old friends. He was giving you that line so you'd let him on the set."

"You don't mind that I didn't let him through?" Woody asked, still unsure of my reaction.

"Not at all."

"He said he wanted you to introduce him to some of the movie people so he could do a story about a real murder showing up at the same time they're filming a fake one."

"If Maxwell Cole wants to be introduced to Cassie Young or Sam ‘The Movie Man' Goldfarb, he'll have to get somebody else to do the honors."

Woody looked at me closely. "You don't like Cole much, do you."

"You could say that," I replied.

I couldn't believe that worthless asshole Cole would try to pass himself off as a bosom buddy of mine, but then, after all these years, nothing Max does should surprise me. Once an asshole, always an asshole.

The film crew had moved away from the wingwall area to another part of the drydock. They were out on a long, narrow wharf where a series of moored houseboats would provide the basis for a crashing climax in which Derrick Parker was supposed to track down the crooked banker, the real-estate developer's killer.

Houseboats had been collected from all over the city. There was to be a carefully orchestrated fight in which the stuntmen for both stars, Parker's and the movie's heavy, were to leap from boat to boat in a climactic chase scene.

Once more I had tried, unsuccessfully, to include a hint of realism in the process. The scene had been written to include two gun-toting characters, a good guy and a bad guy, crashing through groups of innocent bystanders. At one point in the script, they were to barge through a deckside family dinner, fatally wounding a child in a barrage of cross fire. In the real world that's called reckless endangerment. Cops who do it don't stay cops very long.

I had done battle over this segment when I first saw the script, and now I thought it worthy of one last-ditch effort.

I tracked Cassie Young down during a break in the filming. "Why does the little kid have to get shot?" I asked. "Police officers can't do that. They can't go shooting their way through groups of civilians that way. It's a joke."

"It's no joke, Mr. Beaumont," Cassie retorted, pointedly dropping the word "Detective." I had been summarily demoted. "We're making a movie here. We want people to care about what happens."

"And you don't give a shit if it's accurate or not."

She smiled sweetly. "That's right. Accuracy doesn't sell tickets. Emotions do."

Her remark made me wish that I had introduced Maxwell Cole to Cassie Young. They were two of a kind, a matched set, only he sold newspapers instead of movie tickets.

I made one final attempt. "But your cops look like jerks," I protested.

Cassie crossed her arms and looked up at me. "So?" she said.

The implication was absolutely clear. In Cassie Young's book, cops were jerks. At least the drydock cops would be generic. There was nothing whatever to connect them to Seattle P.D. Except me.

"I'm going home," I said.

"Can't stand the heat?" she asked demurely.

"Won't," I replied. "There's a big difference."

I left Lake Union Drydock, but I didn't go home. There wasn't a cat to kick, and in my frame of mind, I was mad enough to break up furniture. Instead, I made my way up Eastlake all the way around to the other side of Gasworks Park where I paced back and forth along the water until my blood pressure returned to normal. I started for home, but when I drove past the entrance to Harbor Station, something made me turn in. Force of habit, I suppose.