Robert Crais - Indigo Slam

I left the cemetery and drove south along the lake. It was a lovely afternoon, and the lake was flat. People rollerbladed along the water and sunbathed on short strips of beach, and none of them were bummed because they had just visited a woman's grave.

I turned west at Seward Park and stopped at a red light next to a woman in a green Toyota. I smiled at her, and she smiled back. Friendly. Then I glanced in the mirror and saw a black Lexus two cars behind. It looked like the Lexus from the mausoleum, but I couldn't get a clear enough look at it to be sure. I said, 'Come on, Cole, you've got to be kidding. First LA and now Seattle?'

The woman in the green Toyota was staring at me. I looked away, embarrassed. 'Get a grip, Cole. Now you're talking to yourself.'

I snuck another glance, and now she locked her door.

The light changed and the Lexus stayed behind me, but two blocks later I slowed, and the Lexus sped by. A guy with a blond buzz cut was driving and a dark man who looked about as big as a Kodiak bear was in the passenger seat. Neither of them looked at me. I said, 'You see? It was nothing.'

The woman in the green Toyota passed me, too. Fast.

I parked a block and a half from the New World main gate at eighteen minutes before five. At five, employees started filtering out both on foot and in cars; at six minutes after, Wilson Brownell nosed out of the lot in a small yellow Plymouth hatchback. I let him get one block ahead, then I pulled out after him. He went west across the Duwamish directly to his apartment and parked at the curb in sight of the C-Span Lady's window. I pulled into the mouth of an alley a block away and waited for him to go into his building, but he didn't. He locked his car, then walked north to the next corner and disappeared. I left the car blocking the alley, trotted after him, and made it to the corner in time to see him go into a place called Lou's Bar. There was a case of beer and damn near a dozen bottles of booze in his apartment, but I guess he wanted to stop off for a couple before he went home for the serious drinking. Or maybe he just didn't want to be alone.

Wilson Brownell watched the bartender pour Popov vodka over ice as I entered. I waited for the bartender to finish and move away, then I took the stool next to Brownell. Two women were hunched together over a little table in the shadows, and three of us were at the bar, but the third guy was facedown on the wood. Brownell saw me and said, 'Jesus Christ.'

I looked serene. 'No, but we're often confused.'

'I got nothing to say to you.' Brownell tried to get up, but I hooked one of his feet behind the stool and pushed down hard on his shoulder, digging my thumb into the pressure point at the front of his neck. I didn't like being tough, but I was willing to if that's what it took to find Clark Hewitt and get his butt home to his kids. No one in the bar seemed to give a damn. He said, 'Ow. My goddamned neck.'

'Relax and I'll let go. If you try to get up, I'll knock you on your ass.'

He stopped trying to get up and I released the pressure.

As soon as I let go, he took a belt of the Popov. 'Goddamn. That hurt.'

I took out my wallet and opened it to the license. 'A fifteen-year-old girl who told me that her name was Teresa Haines gave me two hundred dollars to find her father.'

Brownell took another belt of the vodka.

'I have come up here at my own expense because Teresa, whose name I now discover is really Hewitt, and her two younger siblings have a missing father who has apparently abandoned them.'

Another belt.

'I have discovered that Clark Haines, whose name is also Hewitt, is a drug addict. I have discovered that Mr. Hewitt has come to Seattle, has spent time with his old friend, Mr. Brownell, but that Mr. Brownell doesn't give enough of a damn about these minor children to cooperate in helping me find their father.' I put away the wallet, then took out the picture of Brownell and Clark and their wives and put that on the bar.

The picture was creased from having been in my pocket. Brownell's jaw tightened. 'You went into my home.'

'Yes.'

His jaw flexed some more, then he picked up the picture and put it in his own pocket. He had more of the vodka, and I saw that his hand was shaking. 'You don't know a goddamn thing about anything.' His voice was soft and far away.

'I know Clark was with you.'

He shook his head, and the soft voice came again. 'You're in somethin' now you don't know anything about. If you're smart, you'll just go home.'

'So tell me and I'll go.'

He shook his head and tried to lift the Popov, but his hand was shaking too badly. I didn't think it was shaking from the booze. 'I can't help you and I got nothing to tell you.' He blinked hard, almost as if he were blinking back tears. 'I love Clark, you see? But there ain't nothing I can do. I don't know where he went and you shouldn't be asking about him. I'm sorry about his children, but there ain't nothing I can do about that. Not one goddamned thing.' Brownell's hand shook so badly that the Popov splashed out the glass.

'Jesus Christ, Brownell. What in hell's got you so scared?'

The bar door opened and the blond guy from the Lexus came in. He was maybe six-two, with hard shoulders and sharp features and ice blue eyes that looked at you without blinking. He stepped out of the door to make room for his friend, and the friend needed all the room he could get: He was a huge man, maybe six-five, with great sloping shoulders, an enormous protruding gut, and the kind of waddle serious powerlifters get. His thighs were as thick as a couple of twenty gallon garbage cans. The buzz cut was wearing a blue sport coat over a yellow T-shirt and jeans, but his friend was decked out in a truly bad islander shirt, baggy shorts, and high-top Keds. The big guy had a great dopey grin on his face, and he was slurping on a yellow sucker. The buzz cut said, 'Willie.'

Wilson Brownell said, 'Oh, shit.' He knocked over his stool as he lurched from the bar, then hurried through a door in the rear. Gone. The bartender didn't look. The women didn't look. The guy sleeping on the bar stayed down.

The buzz cut and his friend came over. 'You are coming with us.' The buzz cut spoke the words with a careful, starched pronunciation that made me think of Arnold Schwarzenegger, only the accent was Russian.

'Sez who?' I can slay 'em with these comebacks.

The weightlifter reached under his shirt and came out with a Sig automatic. 'You'll come or we will shoot you.' He said it in a normal speaking voice, as if he didn't give a damn who heard. Another Russian.

I said, 'Have you guys been following me from Los Angeles?'

The weightlifter shoved me, and it felt like getting blindsided by a backhoe. 'Shut up. Walk.'

I shut up. I walked.

Maybe Wilson Brownell was right. Maybe I was in something deeper than I realized, and now it was too late to get out.

Isn't hindsight wonderful?

The buzz cut held the door as the lifter walked me out, then followed behind us. The big guy let the gun dangle along his leg but made no effort to hide it. A woman with two kids came out of a bakery across the street, saw the gun, then grabbed her kids and stumbled back into the bakery. I said, 'Don't you guys know it's illegal to walk around with that thing?'

The big guy said, 'This is America. In America, you can do what you want.'

'I'd put it away if I were you. The cops will be here in seconds.' Maybe I could scare him into letting me go.

He made a little gesture with the gun, as if it were the gun shrugging, not him. 'Let them come.' Guess not.

'Who are you guys?'

The buzz cut shook his head. 'Nobody.'

'Where are we going?'

'To the car.' Everybody's a comedian.