More Perfect Union (9780061760228) (22 page)

I was still holding the second accounting ledger in my hand. Opening it, I paged through it, noting the precise dollar amounts with single-digit numbers following.

“As near as we can tell, there are only nine
people actively involved,” Green explained. “At least, that's how many identifying numbers are in the book.”

The phone rang and Green snatched it up. “Don?” He stopped abruptly and frowned. “I thought I said to hold all my calls, that I didn't want to be disturbed.” He hesitated. “All right. That's different. Put him through. Hello, Frank. How's it going? I'm having a meeting here, so make it quick.”

There was another pause, a much longer one, but while Martin Green listened, his face broke into a wide grin. “I'll be damned,” he said. “Good for you. I knew you could pull it off. Give me your number and I'll get back to you once the crowd thins out. I think I can make it up there tomorrow.”

He jotted a number down on a piece of paper then hung up the phone and sat there looking smug. “We got him,” he announced.

“Got who?”

“Martinson. Frank Daniels, my private eye, found him hiding out over in Victoria. He's willing to talk terms.”

“Terms? What kind of terms?”

“Money terms, Detective Beaumont. If we had wanted him in jail, I could have turned you guys loose on him, but that's not the point. I want the names of everyone else who's involved. I want
them
in jail. And even if Martinson goes to prison too, he'll have a little nest egg waiting for
him when he gets out. International will see to it.”

“Wait just a goddamned minute here!” I interjected, not wanting to believe my ears. “You mean to tell me you're going to pay Martinson off in return for squealing on his buddies? You're going to let the ringleader off scot-free?”

“He's not the ringleader,” Green assured me. “That's why we went after him in particular. He's the weak link in the chain. They needed him, and he needed money. One of his kids was sick, died eventually, to the tune of some fifty grand after the insurance had paid everything it would pay. That's how they suckered him in, I'm sure. He was up to his eyeballs in debt, his marriage was in trouble. They made him an offer he couldn't refuse.

“Unfortunately, he's a whole lot better at being an accountant than he is at being a crook. He couldn't stand not keeping meticulous records, even if it meant having two separate ledgers.”

Green reached for the phone again. “Kim? Call Chrysler Air Service and see how soon I can get a charter plane to go from here to Victoria. And by the way, where's Don? I thought you said he was still here.” Green paused. “What do you mean, he left? Just like that?”

Green slammed the phone into its cradle, shoved his chair against the wall getting out of it, and raced to the window where he stood
looking down at Broad. “I'll be damned,” he said.

I hurried to his side. “What is it? What's going on?”

“Don was on his way in here when Kim told him about Martinson, that Frank had caught up with him. Kim said he mumbled something about getting a briefcase from his car and left. Look, that's him now, getting in that white T-Bird over there. He didn't forget something; he's leaving.”

I looked down across Broad through sheets of pouring rain where a dead gas station had been converted into a temporary parking lot. Don Kaplan was indeed climbing into a white T-Bird.

“You must be right about him,” Green said grimly. “If he wasn't involved, he wouldn't take off like this.”

“Let's go get him,” I said, turning away from the window.

But I was too late. Nobody needed any urging from me. Kramer and Manny were already headed out the door, and I was left bringing up the rear.

T
he good news was it was five o'clock. That was the bad news as well—rush hour, Friday. Seattle's rain-soaked pavements were slick as glass with the oily buildup that comes from more than a month without rain. The roar of traffic was punctuated by the sound of squealing tires as frustrated drivers tried to gain traction on steep, rain-glazed, hillside streets.

From Martin Green's window I had seen Don Kaplan's late-model white T-Bird turn right up First Avenue—a big mistake on his part. Instead of a free-moving thoroughfare, First Avenue between Broad and Denny had slowed to a commuter's-nightmare parking lot. Kaplan pulled into traffic, that was about all. He traveled only a few car lengths before he too was stopped cold. Nothing was moving.

Manny, Kramer, and I raced out of the union office, crashed down the stairs, and stopped on
the sidewalk long enough to look up the street.

“That's him,” I said, pointing. “The white T-Bird in the left-hand lane.” Unfortunately, the light on Denny changed. Kaplan's car inched forward.

“Come on,” Kramer yelled, heading in the opposite direction. “Let's go get the car.”

Manny took off after him, but I didn't. This was my neighborhood, my block. There are times when a car can be far more of a hindrance than a help. Wincing at the sharp pain in my heel, I headed up First on foot. In the snarl of traffic I figured I had a better chance of catching him that way than Manny and Kramer did in a vehicle.

And it almost worked. Kaplan's turbo coupe was stuck in a long line of idling vehicles waiting for the light to change on Denny a block and a half away. I was only three car lengths away and closing fast when Kaplan leaned over and caught sight of me in his rearview mirror. I doubt he recognized me. He was probably looking for any sign of pursuit. A man in a sports jacket jogging up First Avenue in the rain was a dead giveaway.

Laying on the horn, Kaplan muscled the T-Bird across the right-hand lane of vehicles and darted up the short half-block of Warren that reaches across Denny. At the corner of First and Warren I paused for a moment, undecided. Should I continue on foot or wait long enough to signal Kramer and Manny? The problem was,
once Kaplan turned right on Denny, he'd have a clear shot at doubling back down Second, Third, or Fifth and eluding us completely.

Hearing the piercing screech of a siren, I turned and looked back. Kramer and Manny were just then turning off Clay onto First. They were on their way, but even with the help of sirens and lights, covering those two and a half blocks would take time—time we didn't have. They would be too late. Kaplan would be long gone.

I couldn't wait. With a burst of speed that surprised me, I sprinted up Warren after him. He was there, less than a tantalizing half-block away, his right-hand turn signal blinking steadily as he waited for a break in traffic.

I snorted and would have laughed aloud but I was running too hard. Driving habits are like that—so ingrained, so automatic, that even driving a getaway car a crook still uses his directional signals.

I was only thirty or forty feet away when he spotted me again and floorboarded it. He plunged into traffic on Denny while the rear of the T-Bird skidded crazily from side to side.

What happened next happened with blinding speed. A driver from the other direction, alarmed by Kaplan's skidding, stepped on his brakes and slid into somebody else. In the fender-crunching melee that followed, two more cars were caught and accordion-pleated. The fourth, an ancient Chrysler Imperial driven by a
Mohawked teenager, successfully avoided hitting the other three only to slide sideways into the right-hand lane. The Imperial nailed Kaplan's left fender in a glancing blow that sent the T-Bird spinning up onto the sidewalk.

When the skidding stopped, the street was littered with wreckage and debris. There was a moment of stark silence and then, somewhere, a horn blared.

The Imperial, barely dented, had ended up closest to me, coming to rest with its nose against a fire hydrant which promptly spewed a geyser of water straight up into the air. The driver, unable to open the door, scrambled frantically through the broken window, cutting his hands in the process.

“I couldn't help it,” he cried hysterically, running up to me. “My dad's going to kill me, but it wasn't my fault.”

His mouth was bleeding, and there was a long jagged cut on one side of his head. I caught him by the shoulders and eased him down on the curb.

“Sit here,” I ordered. “Don't move around until after the medics get a look at you.”

He sat there, but he wouldn't let go of my hands. “It wasn't my fault,” he insisted. “You saw it, didn't you? Will you tell my folks that I couldn't help it?”

“Yes, I will.”

That seemed to satisfy him. He let go of my hand and I turned to look for Kaplan. He was
gone. The crippled T-Bird, looking like it had been smashed in a garbage compactor, was still sitting half on, half off the sidewalk. Its left rear tire was flat and the driver's door gone. Kaplan was nowhere in sight.

I looked around for help, but it was hopeless. Denny was totally impassible. Kramer and Manny would never make it through the snarl of wrecks in time to be of much help. It was up to me. But at least now Kaplan and I were even. We were both on foot.

At the corner of Second Avenue, I paused to catch my breath and peer up the street. Second is a vast expanse of boulevard and sidewalk that seems to end abruptly in an elbow of skyscrapers a mile away. Through the rain I could see both sides of the street for blocks. There were people gathered here and there at bus stops, but no one was running. Don Kaplan was nowhere in sight.

I looked up Denny just in time to catch sight of him crossing Third in a crowd of pedestrians heading for Seattle Center. Once more I started after him. My breath was already coming in short gasps. The incline there seems benign enough when you're riding in a car, but on foot it's steep. And the blocks are long. And it was crowded.

Labor Day revelers had finally decided against letting the weather spoil Bumbershoot. Finished with work, they were coming out in force, milling up Broad and Denny in a slow-
moving forest of open umbrellas that hampered both vision and speed.

Cops learn to think like crooks. I knew instinctively what Kaplan had in mind. Once he was safely inside the gates of Seattle Center, it would be all too easy for him to blend into the crowd and disappear. He was just leaving the ticket booth when I reached the main gate area. Here the crowd was denser, more so now that some people had turned away from the gate to watch the collection of emergency vehicles screaming in frustration as they attempted to reach the accident scene two blocks away.

I tried to force my way through the crowd. “What's the big hurry, Bud?” a man demanded as I pushed past him. “Where's the fire?”

Without answering, I kept on shoving, while fifteen feet and fifty people away, Don Kaplan handed over his ticket and slipped quickly through the gate.

Slowly the crowd gave way, letting me pass. I finally reached the gate and could see Kaplan inside the grounds. He was easy to spot. Except for me, he was the only person there without a raincoat or umbrella. I saw him dash past the fountain with its huge joke of ugly orange statuary near the bottom of the Space Needle.

A woman barred my way. “Ticket, please,” she said.

Reaching for my ID, I was already launching into an explanation when she caught sight of the Bumbershoot stamp on my hand, the one
Heather had insisted on getting as we left the grounds earlier that day.

“Oh,” the woman said. “I didn't know you'd already been inside. Go ahead.”

Grateful for small blessings, I darted past her and through the gate. The grounds of Seattle Center were far different from what they'd been earlier in the day. It was more crowded now, although still not as bad as it would have been in good weather. Kaplan had a good lead on me. Just as I cleared the gate, he disappeared around the bumper-car ride some fifty yards or so ahead.

I wanted to catch up, but I didn't want to alert him, to let him know I was still on his trail. I hurried up the outdoor corridor between the Science Center and the miniature golf course, using the golf concession to conceal my movements. I came out by an open-air stage where a noisy band was risking electrocution blasting heavily amplified rock music into the pouring rain.

If Kaplan had turned into the Center House, I would have lost him entirely. Instead, he turned up through the food concession area with its outdoor booths and grazing throngs. I followed as quickly as I could. I figured he was heading for one of the other entrances where he'd be able to get back off the grounds and maybe call a taxi. I had to catch him before then.

I was closing the distance when suddenly he stopped and turned. Some sixth sense must have warned him. An electric arc of recognition
passed between us. He broke and ran.

There was no longer any pretense of stalking him. I still couldn't draw my weapon, though, not in that crowd. My only hope was in actual physical contact. I ran, if you could call it that, pushing and jostling my way through resisting lines of people waiting outside the various booths.

Luckily for me, Kaplan wasn't thinking straight. Desperate to get away, he headed for the relatively open ground by the International Fountain with me in hot pursuit. He would have been better off sticking to the crowds. People around us were becoming aware that something was wrong. They moved aside and cleared a path, giving me the final edge I needed.

As he started by the fountain, I dove for him and caught him by the knees, bringing him down with the kind of flying tackle I hadn't attempted since high school football. He landed on top of me, smashing my face into the muddy grass. My nose started to bleed. Again.

He got up, kicking me in the head, and scrambling away across the rough paving brick that surrounds the fountain. When I got up, he was teetering on the fountain's concrete wall. With dogged determination I went after him again.

By now several uniformed security guards, alerted by the crowd, were converging on the fountain. “Break it up,” one of them shouted. I paused long enough to look at my reinforcements. When I did, Kaplan made a break for it
and disappeared over the edge of the fountain. I dived in after him.

The fountain has steep sides that drop off abruptly above the border of rugged white rocks. The surface was wet and slick. I tried to stand up, but a sudden burst of water threw me off balance and sent me flying toward Kaplan. I crashed into him and caught him in a crushing bear hug. We both went down, rolling over and over down the incline as the symphonic music around us hit a crescendo. We landed on the rocks, with Kaplan on the bottom.

“Hands up,” someone shouted over the music. “Get off him and get your hands up.”

“It's all right,” I said, standing up, dripping blood and gasping for breath. “It's okay, you guys. I'm a cop. Help me get him out of here.”

One of the security guards had splashed down into the fountain beside me. I knew him. He was an off-duty patrolman from the David Sector in downtown Seattle. He recognized me as well. “Hey, Beaumont, what's going on?”

“Help me move him out of the fountain, then call dispatch. Have them tell Detectives Kramer and Davis where I am. Tell them I've got him. And get Medic One here too, on the double. This guy may be hurt.”

Together the patrolman and I lifted Kaplan and carried him out of the fountain. We lay him flat on the grass. His eyes were open, but glazed with pain. He made no effort to move or get up. I knelt down beside him. “Are you all right?” I
asked. “Can you move your fingers?”

He wiggled them and nodded.

“And your feet?”

He nodded again.

“It's over,” I told him. “You guys are out of business.”

“Damn,” Kaplan murmured and closed his eyes.

The Medic One unit showed up minutes later and loaded Kaplan on a stretcher. They were just getting ready to haul him away when Paul Kramer and Manny Davis arrived on the scene. Someone had thrown a blanket over my shoulders, and I was standing there wet and shivering.

“Where is he?” Kramer asked.

“Kaplan?” I nodded toward the Medic One unit. “He's in there,” I answered.

True to form, Kramer headed for the van. He didn't give a shit about whether or not I was hurt. He wanted to be sure Don Kaplan was locked up securely enough that he couldn't get loose.

Manny Davis came over to me then. “Are you all right, Beau?” he asked.

And that was the difference between them. Manny cared. Kramer didn't. It was as simple as that. The son of a bitch might very well end up as police chief some day. God knows he's ruthless enough.

I hope to hell I never have to work for him.