Moments later, the maitre d“ and two waiters showed up again to escort the protesting Mimi and Buster out of the place. The bar patrons got quiet long enough to watch the excitement, but the volume went back up as soon as the elevator door closed behind them.
“Sorry about that,” the bartender said, setting another drink in front of me. “This one’s on the house.” She stood there waiting while I took the first sip. “What’s your name?” she asked.
“Beaumont,” I said. “J. P. Beaumont. What’s yours?”
“Darlene,” she answered. “Is it true what you told him, that you own part of that building?”
“That’s right,” I said. “What about you? Does this joint belong to you?”
“You’d better believe it,” she said with a grin.
First liar doesn’t stand a chance.
CHAPTER 9
Most people despise alarm clocks with abiding passions. I don’t have to-I have a telephone. I also have a collection of early-bird friends who think that as long as they’re up, everyone else should be, too.
The phone beside my bed jangled me awake, and I groped for it blindly.
“He did it again!” Peters announced when I finally fumbled the receiver to my ear. “That big bozo did it again.”
People who’ve been up for hours always expect me to come up to speed instantly. “Who did what?” I mumbled.
“Your old friend Maxwell Cole. He’s running off at the pen again or the word processor or whatever they use these days.”
Maxwell Cole is no friend of mine. Never as been. We met in college when we had the misfortune of being in the same fraternity at the University of Washington. He’s been a thorn in my side ever since. Currently, he’s a thrice weekly columnist for the local morning paper, the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
Because of our respective jobs, we frequently stumble into each other. When that happens, you can count on the two of us being on opposite sides of any given issue.
His crime column, “City Beat,” burns me up every time I read it, so I don’t read it. At least I try not to, but there are some people, like Peters for instance, who feel compelled to bring it to my attention anyway. I’ve learned to put up with it the same way I used to choke down my mother’s occasional doses of castor oil when I was a kid.
I propped a pillow up behind me and peered at the clock. Seven-thirty. Plenty of time.
“What is it now?” I asked.
“The headline says, ”Murder Moves Uptown.“ ”
I was gradually coming to my senses. “Sounds catchy,” I said. “Maybe somebody should set it to music.”
“You won’t think it’s so funny when you hear what it’s about,” Peters growled. “How does Dr. Frederick Nielsen grab you?”
“Not by name! He didn’t put the name in there, did he?”
“He sure as hell did. Want me to read it to you?”
“That asshole! That goddamned stupid son of a bitch!”
“Do you want me to read it to you or not?”
“You could just as well.”
”A little over a year ago, area dentist Dr. Frederick Nielsen closed his Pioneer Square office and moved uptown. He told his old neighbors that he was sick and tired of his patients being hassled by drunks and panhandlers and petty criminals. He said he was moving his practice to a nicer neighborhood in the Denny Regrade."
”Dr. Nielsen’s patients won’t have to worry about petty crime anymore, because their dentist died Saturday afternoon, brutally murdered in his recently refurbished office on the ground floor of one of Seattle’s newer high-rise condominiums “
”I can’t help wondering why Seattle P.D. has been keeping such a tight lid on this case. Maybe they don’t want people to know that it’s possible to be murdered in broad daylight in one of Seattle‘s posher downtown settings. After all, letting word out could be bad for business. Certainly it’s bad for developers and real estate magnates who are trying to sell the idea of downtown living to a largely indifferent suburban public."
”Those suburbanites have every right to be indifferent. Why should they leave relatively crime-free neighborhoods in the north end or on the east side and come downtown where murders are almost routine?
”For years the Seattle homicide toll has been about one a week. Fifty-two a year. It would be interesting to know exactly how many of those occur in the downtown core.
”Seattle P.D. does acknowledge that Dr. Nielsen’s death is number thirty-one for this year. In case you don’t want to do the math yourself, that means we’re currently running five ahead of this time last year.
”If murders are up that much, it seems reasonable that the police department would be doing something definitive about it. Are they? Not as far as I can tell.
”A check with the Seattle P.D. media relations office revealed that only two homicide detectives are assigned to and actively working on the case of Dr. Frederick Nielsen. Those two, Detectives J. P. Beaumont and Allen Lindstrom, may be long-term homicide veterans, but they do not constitute the Seattle Police Department’s mounting a major, concerted effort to solve this case. Arlo Hamilton, Seattle P.D. public information officer, stated that so far there are no leads in Dr. Nielsen’s case. Not any. None.
“ ”Remember, I’m not talking here about a couple of nameless, drug-crazed addicts duking it out in a darkened alley between Pike and Pine at one o’clock in the morning. This is the bloody midday slaughter of a Seattle businessman who died in his downtown office at one o’clock on a sunny Saturday afternoon."
”Broad daylight, folks."
”And there aren’t any leads?"
”Come, come now, Seattle P.D. Certainly you can do better than that. Certainly you can afford to put more manpower into this case than just two measly detectives.
”It’s ironic that Dr. Nielsen moved out of Pioneer Square to escape petty crime. Obviously it didn’t work. Crime-major, not petty- came right along with him, loaded into the moving van along with his office equipment and furniture."
”Dr. Nielsen tried a geographical cure for crime. Geographical cures usually don’t work because they never deal with the underlying problem. In this case the bottom line is that crime is rampant in our city streets.
”I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I do have a suggestion or two. Maybe all the people who are planning to take a drive downtown to look at condominiums next weekend should call their real estate agents and cancel."
”After all, if the mayor and the city council and the police department can’t make downtown Seattle safe to live in, if a law-abiding dentist can’t work there in his own office on a Saturday afternoon without putting his life in jeopardy, then maybe it’s time for people to vote with their feet, their moving vans, and their checkbooks."
”The mayor’s office is busy promoting his In-Town-Living campaign. Maybe he should rename it. In-Town-Dying would be more to the point.“”
“That’s it?” I asked, when Peters stopped reading.
“Isn’t that enough? Why did he mention Nielsen by name? He claims to have talked to Arlo Hamilton. If that’s the truth, you can bet Max knew good and well that no next of kin notification had been made.”
“He did it to show off,” I told Peters. “To prove to himself and to us that he could do it with or without our help. And because he’s a first-class asshole.”
“What if the wife sees this article before your appointment this morning? Will she still show up?”
“That remains to be seen.” I didn’t say that LeAnn Nielsen’s appearance had never been a foregone conclusion. Now it was little more than a remote possibility.
“Speaking of which, I’d better hit the trail. Al doesn’t know we have an appointment at nine o’clock over in Madrona. I’d better get on the horn and tell him. By the way, were you able to come up with anything else on that Martin guy?”
“No such luck. Amy says she’s sorry but the name was all she could get.”