Indigo Slam

I brought the remains of my beer out onto the deck and listened to the breeze ruffling the leaves and to the shush of the cars down in the canyon and to the silence in my home. The cat came out and sat with me. I said, 'Lucy will be here soon. You'd best get used to it.'

He rubbed his head against my leg and purred.

It hadn't been such a bad day, after all.

CHAPTER 13

I woke the next morning telling myself that I should take a free day and relax. After all, I was officially unemployed, and when you get beat up by Russian weightlifters in Seattle you deserve time off. Teri and Charles and Winona were no longer my responsibility, and Clark had been warned, so there you go. Portrait of the detective with time on his hands. Unemployment had its advantages.

I fed the cat, then worked my way through forty minutes of tae kwon do katas in the hot morning sun and considered my options: I could run along the Pacific Coast Highway with Joe Pike or drive up to the Antelope Valley to pick fresh peaches or lay on the deck all day eating venison sandwiches and reading the new Dean Koontz. These all seemed like ideal ways to spend a day, but by nine that morning I had shaved, showered, and made my way down the mountains to the Beverly Hills Public Library to learn what I could about the Markov brothers, and what Clark did to get them so pissed off.

Being unemployed is easier said than done.

The Beverly Hills Library is one of the more wonderful libraries in the city. It is clean and neat and Spanish in its architecture, smack in the heart of BH between the Beverly Hills Police Department and the BH City Hall. A slim woman with very short hair showed me how to use their on-line search service and helped me connect with the Seattle Times. I downloaded every article they had about the Markov brothers and Vasily Markov's prosecution and subsequent sentencing, and when I printed the download it came to eighty-six pages. What's a day at the beach when you can spend your time reading about the Russian mob?

It was a crowded morning with no free tables, so I sat at a table opposite a couple of young women who looked about right for UCLA. I smiled at them when I sat, and they smiled back. One of them was tall and blond, with blue glitter nail polish and short, ropy hair. The other was short and dark and might've been Persian. Her nail polish was black. The blonde whispered something to her friend when I sat, and they giggled. I said, 'No giggling.'

The blonde frowned at me. 'No one was talking to you.'

'My mistake.'

The first headline read: MOB BOSS INDICTED ON 39 COUNTS. The basic story was as Reed Jasper described: Vasily Markov headed an organization of Russian emigres who had long been suspected of involvement in counterfeiting, black marketeering, smuggling, extortion, and murder, but that it wasn't until 'an insider in Markov's counterfeiting ring' turned state's evidence that the grand jury could get an indictment. That insider was Clark Hewitt.

The blonde and her friend giggled again, but when I glanced over they pretended to be studying.

The articles described Hewitt as a professional printer who had been 'coerced' by Markov into printing counterfeit U.S. dollars for export to the former Soviet Union. No mention was made of Clark's family, and no mention was made that Markov suspected that Clark had been skimming and had targeted him for death. Other than minor details, there was nothing new or revealing in the first seventy-four of the eighty-six pages, and I was beginning to feel that I would've been better off reading the Koontz.

More whispering, more giggling.

I glanced over. Fast. 'Caught you.'

The blonde blinked at me with innocent eyes. 'Now that you've caught us, what're you going to do with us?'

I turned red and continued skimming. Flirting can be an ugly business. Especially when your girlfriend is soon to move in.

The blonde leaned toward me and looked at the downloads. 'Why are you reading about criminals?'

'Term paper.'

'You're not writing a term paper.'

'You're right. I'm with the library police, and I'm about to bust you for unlawful flirting.'

Her friend said, 'You started it.'

Three pages later I came to an article that wasn't about Markov, though the headline read MARKOV ONLY THE LATEST. It was a sidebar article about counterfeiting in the Pacific Northwest, and its star subject wasn't Clark Hewitt. I sat up straight and I read the name twice, the second time aloud. 'Wilson Brownell.'

The blond girl said, 'Excuse me?'

I raised a hand and kept reading.

The article labeled Wilson Brownell as ' Seattle 's Master Printer' and described Brownell as a key figure in a funny-money ring operating in the late sixties and early seventies. The article said that Brownell had put together a printing operation in his garage and had developed a coffee-based aging process that enabled him to turn out fake currency that, except for the quality of the paper, was almost indistinguishable from the real thing. They estimated that he had placed almost ten million fake dollars into circulation before, in an attempt to acquire actual government currency paper, Brownell met with an undercover Treasury agent whom he believed to be a European paper supplier. The article finished by saying that Brownell had served eight years of a twenty-year federal sentence, was paroled, and was reputed to be living in the Seattle area, though he could not be reached for comment.

I pushed back from the table, crossed my arms, and stared at the articles. The blond girl was concerned. 'Is everything all right?'

I shook my head, went back on-line, and tried to pull up more stories about Brownell, but none were available. Too far back.

I thanked the librarian for her help, said good-bye to the tag team from UCLA, then drove to my office and phoned the North Hollywood Division of LAPD. A woman's voice answered on the third ring. 'North Hollywood detectives.'

'Lou Poitras, please.'

'Who's calling?'

'The world's greatest detective.'

She laughed. 'Sorry, bud. You're talking to the world's greatest.' These cops are something.

'Tell him J. Edgar Hoover.'

She laughed again and told me to hold on.

I hung for maybe forty seconds, then Lou Poitras came on the line. 'It's gotta be you. No one else would have the balls.'

'Hi, Louis. I need to find out about a guy in Seattle named Wilson Brownell. Got time to make the call for me?'

'No.' He hung up. I never met a cop who didn't think he was a riot.

I called back and the same woman answered.

I said, 'This time tell him I've got pictures of the goat.'

She said, 'You sure you wouldn't rather talk to me? I'll bet I could help you.'

'I'd rather talk to you, but Poitras owes me money and this is how he works it off.'

'Hold on.'

Poitras came on maybe ten seconds later and sounded tired. 'Christ, I guess it's go along or have my lines tied up the rest of the day. Beverly 's in love with you.'

I could hear Beverly shriek in the background. 'Jesus, Sarge, don't tell him that!'

Poitras said, 'What's the guy's name again?'

I spelled it for him. Lou Poitras is a detective sergeant at North Hollywood Division, married, three kids, the youngest of whom is my godchild. He's been pumping iron six mornings every week for as long as I've known him, and he is roughly the size of a Lincoln Continental. I'm pretty sure he could lift one.

Poitras said, 'You know, the taxpayers probably don't like funding your research.'

'At least they're getting something for their money.'

Poitras didn't say anything.

'Sorry, Lou. Just kidding.' Sometimes these cops are sensitive. 'Brownell did time on a federal beef, but now he's out. I need to know if he's keeping clean or if the feds think he's into something.'