Kevin Sampsell - Portland Noir

I don’t see Ella, but one of the baristas catches my eye. Zeke. He frowns, but finds a thin smile as I step up to the counter and surprise myself by ordering a small cappuccino.

“Dry or wet?”

RJ would approve of the question. “Dry.”

He takes my three bucks and gives me back a dime. The same at Uncommon Cup would be forty cents less, but then Ruby Jane isn’t paying for chi-chi recent construction and eight hundred square feet of Swedish furniture.

Unlike R &B, the espresso machine is fully automated, bean to brew. A half-minute of grinding, bubbling, and hissing, then Zeke sets a to-go cup in front of me. Guess he doesn’t want me hanging around. I take a sip. It’s fine.

“Where’s your girlfriend?”

He looks confused a moment, then recognition hits him. “You mean my sister?”

“Ella is your sister?”

“You thought she was my girlfriend?” His laugh is scornful. Last night he was the idiot; this morning I am.

“Either way, is she here?”

“I haven’t seen her.”

“You mind if I ask you some questions?”

“I don’t know anything about the broken windows.”

“What about this?” I show him the matchbox and he sniffs.

“I don’t know why we have those. We’re nonsmoking.”

“Ella’s not nonsmoking.”

“It’s still a stupid thing to spend money on. This isn’t a bowling alley.”

Color dots his cheeks. He’s clearly not on board with the Leggett legs matchboxes. But when I tell him where this one came from, his face goes carefully blank. “That could be any-one’s.”

“I’m sure.”

“We give them away.”

“What size do you wear anyway? Jacket-wise, I mean.”

I give him a hard stare, but he meets it without expression. I hear movement and a pair of women in hand-woven cotton blouses approach the counter, their salty hair pulled back with contrived insouciance. They smell like skin cream. There are two other baristas, but Zeke says, “Excuse me. I need to help these ladies.”

Chalk that one up to fumble-tongued luck. It never occurred to me to check the jacket’s size. Some investigator. But it’s still in my car, and upon inspection I can see it’ll never contain Zeke’s beefy shoulders. Probably fit Ella just fine though.

I return to Uncommon Cup. Ruby Jane is working the counter, so I show her the jacket. “Would you wear this?”

She shrugs. “Maybe, though it’s a men’s cut and I prefer my clothing not to hang in tatters. Why?”

“I’m still working things out. Do you mind if I use your computer?”

She directs me to her little office in the back. Within a few minutes I learn that the owner of record of Hot Leggett’s Café is Leggett Partners LLC-company officers, Ella and Zeke-while the business license for the Red and Black is held by one George Called Bingham, whatever the hell kind of middle name that is. No wonder he’s an anarchist. Leggett Partners owns a scattering of small businesses and mixed-use buildings around Southeast Portland, a humble empire. That gives me an idea, but it turns out R &B’s building is owned by a real estate holding firm out of L.A. It will take more digging to discover what connection, if any, exists between the holding company and the crowd here in Portland. I have one more thought and check on the Starbucks landlord. Not Leggett Partners, not the L.A. company, but a branch of the Schnitzner family, which seems to control half the commercial real estate in Portland. It’s hard for me to think they’d give a wet fart about the Red and Black.

Up front again, I ask Ruby Jane if I can borrow her car. Too many people know mine. I can tell she enjoys the idea that her old beater Toyota might be party to a caper. She tosses me her keys and a few minutes later I’m rolling past Hot Leggett’s. Zeke is still inside, working the counter. I loop through Ladd’s and return to Hawthorne a couple of blocks up. There’s a space on the street in front of an Ethiopian restaurant, close enough to see who comes and goes from Hot Leggett’s, not so close I’m likely to be noticed. Of course, with my recent track record, I probably shouldn’t get too cocky.

This stretch of Hawthorne isn’t as busy as the run nearer to 39th, but in recent years as more shops and restaurants have gone in, foot traffic has increased. Hot Leggett’s is getting its share, as well as the froufrou ice cream shop and the furniture boutique adjoining. A loading zone in front of the boutique allows me an unobstructed view. On the backseat, I find a two-week-old edition of the Mercury , Portland’s hipster alt weekly, and settle in for a wait.

An hour into my vigil, the paper’s snark exhausted, a white Prius stops in the loading zone. Ella jumps out and trots around to the passenger side, gesticulating toward the café. I start the car. As she climbs back into the Prius, I hear her shout, “Hurry the hell up, idiot!”

Zeke storms out of the café, carrying a nylon duffel bag in one hand and flipping Ella off with the other. He gets behind the wheel, and an instant later bounces Ella’s head off her headrest as he peels out. I keep a couple of cars between us as we head down to Powell and then across the Ross Island Bridge. Traffic bunches us up through the south edge of downtown until the Sunset Highway, but they don’t seem to notice me. Ten minutes later we take the Sylvan exit, make a couple of turns, then park in the lot outside an anonymous office building. Three stories of glass and stucco hunkered below an ivy-clad hill. I wait until they’re inside, then head for the foyer. No sign of them, but a quick scan of the building directory gives me a pretty good idea of where they’ve gone.

Suite 210, Mutual Assurance of Oregon.

Mutual Assurance is a single large room, a cube farm. From the landing, I can see the front desk through glass double doors, no receptionist. A sign on the counter next to a telephone reads, Press 1 for deliveries . I don’t plan on making a delivery, though if my guess about what’s in Zeke’s bag is correct, I might make a pickup.

I hesitate, then figure I got nothing to lose and push through the doors. It’s hard for me to picture Ella Leggett with her orange hair and tattoo in this leaden space. The air is heavy and cold, the sounds of white-collar work deadened by the B-flat hum of fluorescent lights and acoustic ceiling tiles. At first, I don’t see the siblings, but then I glimpse their heads moving among the cubicles off to my left, a third figure-a man-with them. I tack right, keeping them in sight as I mosey along the outside wall with forced nonchalance. I pass a number of occupied cubes, but no one speaks to me-well-trained to avoid questions or, heaven forbid, confrontations.

The trio stops at a cube, huddles together to confer. I watch, hands folded in front of me. A woman catches my eye from a nearby cubicle, and I stare back until she drops her gaze. Maybe she’s afraid I’m there to downsize her.

After a moment Ella raises her voice, but all I can make out is a petulant squeak. Zeke throws up his hands, semaphore for Calm the hell down . When the three return the way they came, I scoot up the passageway between cubicles from the opposite end, stop when I see the nameplate affixed to cube wall fabric. N. Hamilton, Adjuster.

The camera, long lens attached, rests on the desk. My first instinct is to grab the whole rig, but then I realize there’s no need for felony theft when a misdemeanor will do. I slip into the cubicle and open the back of the camera, pop out the CompactFlash card. When I step back into passage, hands in my pockets, the man I assume is Hamilton is coming toward me.

“Can I help you?” Definitely the adjuster’s voice from the phone. He’s an unremarkable specimen, round head, brown sidecar hair, suspicious eyes.