“Sure,” she said. “Why not? But not in here. There’s an espresso cart down on the street.”
A few minutes later we found ourselves huddled under the building overhang on Third Avenue, drinking lattes and trying to stay out of a chill wind while Sue Danielson inhaled deeply on one of her Virginia Slims.
“What did you want to talk about, Beau?” she asked.
“Tell me exactly what the schools said when you talked to them.”
“You want me to tell you what they said, or do you want my gut instinct?”
“Both.”
She shrugged. “All right. You heard what I said upstairs, and that’s the official line, but I think they’re lying through their teeth. That’s instinct, pure and simple. In each case, I didn’t get an answer from the little lowly clerk who first took my call. In each case, I got passed on upstairs more than once before someone told me that no, they could neither confirm nor deny that person’s presence. My impression, and it’s nothing more than that, is that those people are actually there and enrolled in each of the schools, but they are absolutely under wraps and with some kind of flag on their records that dictates special handling. Bottom line, it sounds almost like some kind of witness-protection arrangement, except no one here at the department is willing to say so.”
I nodded. That assessment sounded almost plausible. We stood there for a few moments in contemplative silence.
“Supposing that’s true,” I said finally, “what does it take to pull three or four fast-living, souped-up, hell-bent-for-election gang-type kids out of their home turf and get them back in school, any kind of school?”
Sue Danielson looked at me thoughtfully through an eddying plume of smoke. “Are you asking me?”
“You bet I’m asking you. You’ve got teenagers, don’t you?”
“A club,” she answered.
“You mean like Kiwanis or Rotary?”
She smiled. “No sir. I mean club as in baseball bat. A club and a miracle. In that order. Now I’d better get my ass moving and head for Garfield.”
I smiled as I watched her go. Kramer may have given her an assignment designed to keep her away from traipsing after the student loans, but by accident he was sending her on another errand for which Sue Danielson was eminently qualified. If anyone could get usable information from an adolescent paperboy at Garfield High School, Detective Sue Danielson was definitely it.
CHAPTER 12
I took what was left of my latte, bought one for Big Al, and went back up to the fifth floor. Big Al makes fun of the numerous outdoor espresso carts that have sprung up like so many weeds all over downtown Seattle. He may joke about them, but he didn’t turn down the latte.
“What’s happening?” he asked.
On Captain Powell’s orders, Big Al had been locked out of the official task force meeting. I knew it was bothering him.
“Nothing much to report,” I told him. “Sue Danielson’s on her way to interview a paperboy who may or may not have seen suspicious vehicles in the Weston neighborhood over the past few days. Kramer’s pissed that we moved Junior Weston to another location without his express knowledge and permission. That’s about it.”
“Hell with him,” Big Al muttered, then sipped his latte in brooding silence.
“Hey, by the way. Thanks for dragging me out of the sack this morning. If you hadn’t, I would have missed the meeting completely, but I didn’t think you were going to be here at all today. Aren’t you supposed to be home? I distinctly remember hearing Captain Powell say something about administrative leave.”
“You’re right. I’m supposed to be home,” he concurred, “but I can’t take it. The only thing worse than being here doing nothing is being home doing nothing. At least here I have some idea of what’s going on. At home, I’m completely in the dark. Not only that, Molly’s in a real state over all this. I don’t know what to do with her. She’s always been the strong one, you know, thick-skinned and tough. When she bursts into tears every time I look at her, it drives me straight up the wall.”
Truth be known, looking at Allen Lindstrom’s haggard face was probably pretty hard on Molly as well. No doubt she was just as happy to have him out of the house as he was to be gone.
For a while, the two of us sat there quietly in our dingy little cubicle. A ring of latte had slopped out of the cup onto Big Al’s desk top. Idly he ran one finger through the sticky stuff, leaving behind a blurred, milky finger painting on the worn laminate.
“They’re saying Ben went bad,” Al said eventually.
He left the words hanging in the air between us like an ominous cloud while he waited for me to say it wasn’t so, to give him the comfort of a heartfelt denial. Unfortunately, I had seen copies of Ben Weston’s loan applications with my own two eyes. I had also read through the voluminous rap sheets on Ben’s nefarious cosigners.
“The jury’s still out on that,” I said noncommittally. “We’ll have to wait and see.”
Big Al slammed his massive fist onto the desk top while the paper cup with what was left of his latte danced wildly in place, spilling another ring of coffee.
“The hell we will!” he thundered. “Ben Weston’s never going to get his shot at due process. He’ll never have his day in court, but he’ll be tried and convicted in the media anyway. You know that as well as I do. Once somebody gets labeled a bad cop, that reputation sticks. It never goes away, no matter what, not even when you’re six feet under!”
He paused for a moment while the voices of detectives in nearby cubicles fell silent. Big Al Lindstrom wasn’t the only one thinking those thoughts, but he was the only one voicing them. Aware that other people were listening, Al did his best to regain control.
“Think about it,” he said, lowering his voice, forcing himself to speak calmly. “What if Ben didn’t really break any rules? What if he just bent them real good? You said last night that Sue Danielson was checking with the various schools to find out whether or not those kids were actually enrolled. What did she find out?”
Big Al was clutching at straws. I didn’t blame him, but I couldn’t encourage him either.
“Nothing,” I told him. “Not a damn thing. She ran into all kinds of bureaucratic tangles with each of the three registrars’ offices. No one would tell her anything, one way or the other. They all said she’d have to have a court order if she wanted more information.”
“So let’s get one.”
“Did you say ”let’s‘? How often do I have to tell you? It’s not up to me, Al. That’s not my end of the investigation, and it sure as hell isn’t yours, either.“
“Let me loose for half an hour in those goddamned administration buildings. I’ll bet money I could find out.”
“No doubt you could, but my advice is don’t. Leave it be. You were given strict orders to butt out, and that’s what you’d better do.”
“Since when did you become such an observer of rules and regulations, Detective Beaumont? Who appointed you guardian of the world?”
“You’re my partner, Al. I don’t want to see you do something stupid.”
He thought about that for a moment or two and finally nodded. “Thanks,” he said bleakly. “I guess.”
Allen Lindstrom shoved a roll of black electrical tape across the top of his desk and rolled it onto mine. “Here,” he said, “put some of this on your badge.”
I tore off a hunk of tape, stuck it across the face of my badge, and then passed the roll back to him. Big Al stood up, pocketed the tape, picked up his latte, and wiped up the remaining spillage from his desk with a hankie.
“Where are you going?”
“Out,” he said. “My main job here today is as a dispenser of black tape for the fifth floor. It’s not much, but it sure as hell beats staying at home.”
What he said sounded innocuous enough, but I didn’t quite believe that was the whole story. “Stay out of trouble, Al,” I cautioned.