Dismissed With Prejudice (9780061760631) (15 page)

“Kurobashi's wife—” I stopped and corrected myself. “Kurobashi's widow is named Machiko. I have no idea what her maiden name was, but she did mention that she was originally from Nagasaki.”

“I see,” Winter said, nodding thoughtfully. “So the sword could have been hers all along. Do you suppose she'd be interested in selling it?”

I remembered what Machiko had said about wanting the sword back, wanting it for Kimi.

“I wouldn't know about that,” I said. “Once she gets it back, I believe her intention is to give it to Kimiko, her daughter, although it may not be that
important to Kimi. According to her, she never saw the sword before the night of her father's death, never even knew it existed.”

“Strange, wouldn't you say?” Winter asked.

“What do you mean?” I asked, although I had already reached the same conclusion myself.

“Why keep it hidden all this time? Even from close family members.” Winter shook his head before adding, “Not only that, Ralph mentioned something about the Kurobashi family being in dire financial straits, that they were being forced to file bankruptcy proceedings. Keeping the sword hidden doesn't make sense when you consider how much the sword would have brought if they had sold it.”

“How much would that be?” I asked.

Winter took a slow sip of wine before he answered. “It could be as much as several million,” he said deliberately. “Especially if some of the museums get into a bidding war over it. But you still haven't told me how the sword came to be in this country in the first place.”

“I don't know,” I replied. “We'll need to ask Machiko about that.”

“Where is she?”

“Over in eastern Washington.”

“Do you think it would be possible for me to talk to her?” Winter looked at me appraisingly. “After all, if the mother does decide to put the sword on the market, I'd very much like to be involved. I can assure you, it would be beneficial for all concerned.”

What he said made sense. Any way you sliced it, Machiko and Kimi Kurobashi were probably going to be in a bind for money. If they did decide to sell the sword, simply being represented by Sotheby's, one of the world's biggest and most respected dealers in fine arts, would automatically up the ante.

“I'll speak with her about it,” I said. “She may be interested, but I don't know.”

I picked up my fork and tried again. Winter paused with his own fork halfway to his mouth, watching my struggle. “What did you do, slam your hand in a door?” he asked.

“You must be psychic,” I said, and let it go at that.

Before Ames had a chance to get in his two cents worth about my hand, Andrew Halvorsen rescued me from the table with a perfectly timed telephone call.

“They caught him,” he announced triumphantly. “I just got word from a detective back in Schaumburg, Illinois.”

“Caught who?”

“David Lions. He tried to buy a television set at a place called Woodfield Mall. They say it's close to the airport. The Visa people alerted the store as soon as they called in for credit approval. Lions made a run for it, but a security guard happened to be walking past in the mall. Lions practically fell into his arms.”

“A television set?” I asked. “What the hell would he want with a television set?”

“Beats me. It was one of those big-screen color jobs, too. At least that's what the dick from Schaumburg told me. He called a few minutes ago looking for a rap sheet. I told him we didn't have one.”

My first thought was for Dana Lions, David Lions' daughter, waiting at home in Kalama. By now her father had probably already called, asking her to post his bail.

“Have you talked to the daughter yet?” I asked.

Halvorsen paused. “No, not yet. I thought I'd let you do that since you were the one who talked to her to begin with.”

“Gee thanks,” I muttered. “That's big of you.”

Minutes later, I was on the phone with Dana Lions, giving her the bad news. She took it stoically, like someone who has been through it all before, like someone far too familiar with the ropes when it comes to bailing a family member out of scrapes with the law.

“Thanks for calling and letting me know, Detective Beaumont. I'll phone back there right away and see what's what.”

I was still sitting beside the telephone looking at my hand and feeling it throb when the phone rang. It was Dana Lions. Again.

“It's not my dad,” she said, relief bubbling in her voice. “They arrested somebody else.”

“Somebody else? Who?”

“I don't know, but the man they arrested is black. My father definitely isn't black.”

“But he was using your father's credit card?”

“That's right. The guy finally admitted that he bought the card from someone selling stolen cards at the United Terminal in O'Hare. I don't understand, Detective Beaumont. What does it all mean?”

I had a pretty good idea what it meant, but I didn't want to go into it right then. Dana Lions was still nurturing a small spark of hope for her father. I refused to douse it with bad news until absolutely necessary.

“You'll let me know if you hear from him?” I asked.

“Sure will,” she said.

I considered calling Halvorsen back to let him know what Dana had learned, but I decided against it. My hand was still throbbing like mad. Instead of having another drink of any kind, I took the aspirin Dr. Blair had recommended.

By this time, Ames and Winters had left the dining room and returned to the kitchen. Despite his silk shirt, Winters was soon up to his elbows in soap suds as he tackled the trail of cooking pots Ames had left in his wake.

They were both talking and scrubbing away, happy as two little clams. They didn't look as though they needed or wanted any help. I thanked Ames for dinner, wished them both a good night, and excused myself. Before I crawled into bed, I called Machiko Kurobashi at Honeydale Farm.

I more than half expected her to be in bed
asleep, but she listened carefully to my halting explanation of who Archie Winter was and what he wanted. When I finished, her response wasn't what I expected, either.

“Have him call,” she answered gravely. “We talk.”

“I'll do that,” I said.

Padding barefoot back down the hall to the almost clean kitchen, I handed a scrap of paper to Archie Winter. “Here's Mrs. Kurobashi's number,” I said. “I told her what you wanted, and she said you're welcome to call.”

With that, I returned to the bedroom and crawled into bed.

I
MAY HAVE BEEN IN BED, BUT
I
HARDLY
slept. I lay there listening to the droning voices of Ames and Winter. At one Winter left to return to his hotel. At two, Ames turned off the music and went to bed in the guest room. By four in the morning, the throbbing in my hand had me wide awake and pacing the floor, wondering if I could last the five interminable hours until Dr. Blair's office opened. During that dark time, the long hours between then and sunrise, I managed to convince myself that the good doctor's telephone diagnosis of sub-whatever was incorrect and that I was really developing a bad case of blood poisoning.

Early morning is a good time for really creative worrying. I never did go back to sleep.

I was sitting alone at the dining room table and drinking my third cup of coffee when the phone rang at seven. It was Ron Peters, calling for the first time since he and Amy had left to go on their honeymoon. Amy had insisted that the girls and their baby-sitter, Mrs. Edwards, go along on the trip. She said that since they were all going to live
together as a family, a trip to the Oregon Coast would be a good way of getting started. That wasn't my idea of a perfect honeymoon, but from the animated sound of Peters' voice, they were having a great time.

“Did I wake you?” Peters asked.

“No. I was already up and drinking coffee.”

“I should have called earlier—in the week, I mean—but we've been having too much fun. By the way, how are the fingers? Heather wanted me to ask. She's been worried sick about it.”

Heather knew about my fingers, too? Did every goddamned person in the whole world know about my fingers but me?

“They're giving me a little bit of trouble,” I admitted reluctantly. “As a matter of fact, I have an appointment to see the doctor today.”

“I hope it's nothing serious,” Peters said.

“Naw,” I replied, with as much casual unconcern as I could muster despite the hours of worry. “I'm sure it isn't. When are you coming home?”

“Saturday night at the latest,” he replied. “The girls have to be back in school by Monday. We've kept them out a full week as it is. It'll take all day Sunday to get squared away, to get ready for work and school.”

“Call me when you get in.”

“Will do. Anything doing at work?” Peters asked.

Ron Peters had been kicked upstairs. His new position in the media relations department had
him rubbing shoulders with nothing but polished brass, big shots, and members of the press. I could hear the frustration in his voice and knew he missed the real world of the fifth floor and the easy camaraderie that goes along with being a detective.

“We're working the Kurobashi case,” I said.

“I read about that one,” Peters returned. “It was big enough that it made the regional section of the
Oregonian
. It sounds interesting.”

For the next few minutes I forgot about my fingers while Peters and I discussed the case. Talking things over with him always helps clarify my own thinking. He agreed with my conclusion that things didn't look very good for David Lions.

“Have you talked to anyone who's working on the Lions case in Illinois?” Peters asked.

“Not yet, but that's good suggestion. I should do it now. Call Schaumburg before the rates change.”

“I'll let you go then,” Peters said. “Take care of yourself, and those fingers too. Heather feels terrible about it, even though we've all told her it was an accident. She's afraid you're mad at her.”

“Tell her not to worry. She's still my favorite toothless kid.”

Peters laughed. “Right. I'll do that.”

Minutes later I was talking to a lieutenant named Alvin Grant in the Detective Division of the Schaumburg, Illinois, police department. He knew all about the phony David Lions.

“He's gone. His lawyer came in and bailed him out.”

“Did he tell you how he came to have the card?” I asked.

“Sure. Said he bought it for fifty bucks from some dude at the airport.”

“Did he say what this guy looked like?”

“It wasn't the real David Lions, if that's what you're thinking,” Grant said. “We talked to Dana Lions and got a complete description of her father. I talked to a Detective Halvorsen from out there in your neck of the woods as well. Believe me, this character isn't your David Lions. No way.”

“What did he look like?”

“The one who sold the card? Fairly tall, good-looking, dark. Wore gloves.” From Grant's description the guy sounded a whole lot like Pamela Kinder's self-styled God's gift to women.

“While he was in custody, we managed to convince the little puke that he needed to do a composite drawing of the guy who unloaded the card,” Grant continued. “He had to finish before we let him out. I offered to FAX it to Halvorsen, but he said the resolution on their machine isn't very good. So I'm sending it Fed Ex. He said you might want a copy as well.”

“I do,” I said. “Send it the same way. To my attention at Seattle P.D. They'll see that I get it.”

On my way to Dr. Blair's office, I called Big Al on the car phone to tell him I'd be late. At 8:15, a full forty-five minutes early, I was sitting in the
waiting room of Orthopedic Associates, conscious of nothing but the throbbing pain under my bandage. A brusque, businesslike nurse took me into a treatment room at 8:55 and expertly removed the bandages and splints, clicking her tongue in disapproval at the grimy condition of the bandage.

She left the room briefly, and for the first time, I got a look at my fingers. They were ugly, more purple than black and blue, and wildly swollen. The nails were blackened by the pools of blood trapped beneath them. The nurse came back in and caught me examining my nails.

“Pretty bad, aren't they? Wait a few days until the swelling goes down. They'll look like a matched set of pancake turners.”

There's nothing like a little cheer and comfort from a lady in white.

When Dr. Blair finally appeared, he looked a whole lot more like Santa Claus than some of the department store models I've seen lately, but personality-wise, he was anything but jolly, and certainly no better than his surly nurse. He studied my fingers through thick bifocals.

“What's the matter with them?” I asked.

“Nondisplaced ungual tuft fractures,” he said.

“What's that?”

He looked up at me, briefly meeting my gaze. “They're broken,” he said with no trace of a smile. He turned to the nurse. “Bring me a paper clip, would you please?”

“A paper clip?” I yelped. That didn't sound very medicinal to me. “What are you going to do?”

“Drill 'em,” he relied casually. “Like I told you on the phone. It's the blood under your nails that's causing the pain.”

He turned to a small cupboard beside me, reached into a drawer, and brought out a cigarette lighter.

“What's that for?” I asked warily.

Dr. Blair didn't answer. The nurse returned to the treatment room and silently handed him a paper clip. He straightened it with utmost concentration. Once it was flat, he held it with a hemostat and began heating the straightened end with the lighter. When the end of the paper clip was glowing red hot, he took hold of my hand and pressed the hot metal to one of my blackened nails. I winced, expecting some pain while the paper clip sank easily through the nail as though it were melting plastic.

When the hole went all the way through, the trapped blood squirted into the air. “It doesn't hurt because the blood cushions the pain,” he explained.

I couldn't help wishing he had told me that
before
the operation rather than after it. I may be a homicide detective, and legend has it that homicide detectives are all tough macho types, but I was feeling more than a little queasy by the time he finished burning through the third nail.

When he was done with the last one, Dr. Blair
retrieved the splints and began to rebandage my hand. “Just how much do you drink, Detective Beaumont?” he asked.

“I beg your pardon?”

“How much?”

“No more than anybody else.”

“When I talked to you on the phone last night, you sounded as though you had never heard that these hematomas needed to be drilled. And a few minutes ago, you seemed surprised to find out that the fingers were broken. We went over all of that Sunday night. In fact, I gave you a piece of paper, a form with written follow-up instructions on it.”

“I don't remember seeing it,” I said.

“You stuck it in the pocket of your tux.”

I remembered the tux then, a rental that had been returned with the other wedding party duds on Monday morning. The Belltown Terrace concierge had handled the transaction.

“No wonder I couldn't find it,” I said. “The paper must have gotten sent back to the rental company.”

Dr. Blair wasn't paying much attention to my excuses. Finished with the bandage, he said, “Take off your shirt, loosen your belt, and lie down here on the table. I want to check something.”

“Look,” I objected, “I broke my fingers, not my ribs.”

But you don't argue with doctors, or at least I don't. Obligingly, I lay down on the table and he poked me in the gut.

“Did you know your liver is enlarged?” he asked after a few moments of prodding.

“My what?”

“Your liver's down three centimeters. How long's it been like that?”

“I never knew it was,” I said.

“You don't have a regular doctor?” he asked again.

“No.”

He picked up a pad of paper and jotted a name and phone number on it. “This fellow's an internist who works right here in the building. His name is Dr. Wang. Go see him. Today. He'll need to do a complete workup on you. In the meantime, how long ago did you have a tetanus shot?”

“I don't remember.”

“If you don't remember, it's been too long. I'll send the nurse back in to give you one, and then you go on upstairs to see Wang. I'll call ahead and make sure they work you in.”

I sat still long enough for the shot, but I didn't go see Dr. Wang. Instead, I went out to the parking garage, sat in my car, and brooded. I've never liked being
told
what to do, and Dr. Herman Blair was one bossy son of a bitch. I was offended by the way he had treated me. He had acted as though my forgetting his damned follow-up form was some sort of major crime.

I was offended, but worried too. More pissed than worried. Where the hell did some goddamned finger doctor get off telling me that my liver was
enlarged? Enlarged liver? Me? Bullshit! Except for my hand, I was healthy as a horse.

And even as I sat there, I began to notice that my hand didn't hurt nearly as much as it had. Ugly as it had looked, Dr. Blair's drilling and blasting must have done some good. In fact, now that I thought about it, my whole hand was feeling much better.

And so, thumbing my nose at Dr. Blair, and to prove both to him and to myself that he was dead wrong, I started the car and drove to work. Let Dr. Blair put that in his pipe and smoke it.

Big Al was on his phone and waiting on hold when I came into our cubicle.

“What'd the doc say?” he asked. “How're the fingers?”

“They're broken,” I said.

He looked at me and shook his head. “I knew that, for Chrissake! The doc told us that in the emergency room the other night. What the hell do you think I am, deaf or just plain stupid?”

I sat down at the desk and thumbed through the collection of inter-office junk mail that had collected in the in basket during my absence. Whoever Al was waiting for came back on the phone. While that person talked, Big Al nodded from time to time. Eventually he scribbled a note on a piece of paper and pushed it across the desk to me. On it were printed the letters MS.

I looked at the note and tried to make sense of it. Ms. who? The note meant nothing to me. Finally Al hung up the phone.

“What's this?” I asked.

“That's what's the matter with Bernice Oliver's husband. MS—multiple sclerosis. He's had it for years, and he's gradually getting more and more crippled up.”

“Who were you talking to?”

“Some lady at RFLink. Mrs. Motormouth. I called to find out when Mrs. Oliver left there, and this woman was an hour-long fountain of information. She's been with Blakeslee for years. She told me that Mrs. Oliver gave her two weeks notice the same day Tadeo Kurobashi got his walking papers. It evidently created quite a stir around there at the time. Interesting, don't you think?”

“It's something to check into. What about DataDump?”

“They weren't open last night, either, and there's no answer on the phone this morning. What say we drive out there right now and have a look-see?”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said.

DataDump was located in a tired one-story building off N.W. 65th on Cleopatra Avenue. From the looks of it, the building contained both business and living quarters. The door was locked. An orange-and-black closed sign was tucked in the corner of one window.

We looked around for vehicles, expecting to see DataDump's mobile shredder parked somewhere nearby, but there was no sign of it. In fact, there were no visible vehicles of any kind parked near the modest storefront building. Inside, however,
we could hear the steady patter of a droning television game show.

There was a bell beside the door. Big Al rang it with a heavy hand. We waited a minute or so before he rang it again, even more insistently. This time, the television set switched off and the curtain behind the front window rustled as someone peeked out at us.

A moment later, the door was flung open. “Who are you and what do you want?”

The woman at the door was probably only in her thirties, but she looked world-weary and bedraggled. Her long hair was lanky and unkempt with a streak of gray running through it that was far too plain to be a dye job. She wore a faded bathrobe and scruffy slippers. Her mouth had a hopeless downturned cast to it. “Can't you read the sign? It says we're closed.”