The Art of Deception (4 page)

He dragged a salmon in front of him with the knife’s sharpened tip. “If it is Mary-Ann,” he said matter-of-factly, “then all the more reason you’d better talk to Neal. Anna’s afraid of heights.”

“Acrophobic?”

“Whatever.”

She made note of the phobia on the page of her notepad.

As it rained harder, she again almost pulled up the jacket’s hood but decided against it once more. Rain drizzled down both their faces. His eyes hardened, making him seem much older than his twenty years.

“So what do we do next?” he asked.

“You tell us if Mary-Ann shows back up.” She passed him a business card that carried the office number and wrote La-Moia’s extension on the back. “I’m concerned I may have given you the wrong impression, Mr. Walker. About this being MaryAnn. I apologize for that. I don’t want you doing something stupid—harming Mr. Neal in some way. All for nothing.”

“People get what they give in this world. It’s no concern of yours.”

“Sure it is. It’s every concern of mine.” She added, “Could you give me a phone number? Residential. Something other than work.”

“I told you, after Neal got into her head … I don’t have a phone.”

“An address?”

“I’m kind of between places right now, okay?”

“This is pretty miserable weather, this time of year.”

“There’s ways around it.”

“So this is where I reach you,” she said, looking around. “What’s your work schedule right now?”

He ignored the question. “I asked what’s next, in terms of if I don’t happen to call you, if Anna doesn’t happen to show back up.”

“We’re attempting to identify the body.”

“And I should be part of that.”

She heard herself say, “We could arrange for you to view the body, but there’s absolutely no requirement for you to do so at this time. Mr. Neal could do it, if you’d prefer.”

Walker read meaning into her statement. “That help you get him? Watching him look at her? Something like that?”

“I’m not going to speculate on where the lead detective might take this. I am not the lead detective.”

“You are as far as I’m concerned,” he said.

Matthews wished she could start again.

He said, “If Neal looks at that body, then I want to be there. I got any kind of rights like that, me being her brother and all?”

“None whatsoever,” she said, unsure herself. “It’s all up to the lead detective.”

“Yeah? Well, you tell him I want to be there.”

“I’ll pass it along.”

“You do that,” he said, hoisting the next fish on the tip of the knife to its place of evisceration. “You help me, I’ll help you.”

Lou Boldt had an ordinary look that few would expect in a cop. Fewer would expect the traits that accounted for a homicide clearance rate that shattered every SPD record: an enduring patience and an empathy with the victim that had gained such legendary proportions that the man made the law enforcement lecture circuit a second source of income. His heightened sense of hearing not only kindled a love of bebop jazz but also could discern the most subtle nuance in the voice of a suspect or a witness in the throes of a lie. His rise through the ranks had been predictable, though far from supercharged. He got the job done and seemed to enjoy himself in the process. He shunned exposure in the press, and yet notoriety proved inescapable. The only sergeant to decline consideration for a lieutenant’s shield five years running, he had remained in that position for more than a decade, succumbing to promotion only when family finances necessitated. He walked with something of an exaggerated stoop—typically lost in thought. A family man, he’d come to fatherhood somewhat late in life. Whenever he attended preschool parent functions, he found himself with little to talk about. Dead bodies, murder, and assault made him a reluctant conversationalist. It was while at one such function that his wife, Liz, had introduced him to Susan Hebringer.

Hebringer, who had last been seen downtown, had now been missing for several weeks, following on the distant heels of one
Patricia Randolf, who’d disappeared nearly two months earlier. Both missing, and now presumed dead. The case was eating a hole in Boldt’s stomach to go along with other such scars—his medals were empty bottles of Maalox liquid, discarded like the bodies of victims whose deaths he hoped to solve. Thankless work, but a job he wouldn’t trade. The Susan Hebringer case was an exception—it put a voice to the face, a child watching the back door for mommy—it put Boldt on notice, serving up a reminder of the randomness of it all. It could have been Liz. It could have been him and his two children staring at that back door, waiting. The ghost of Susan Hebringer, a woman he’d met only briefly, but a friend of his family, had come to own him.

Boldt’s relationship with Mama Lu, on the other hand, had begun with an illegal immigrant scam involving shipping containers, and it had developed over time into a professional association of sorts, in which she acted as an unpaid informer in exchange for later favors. Boldt understood perfectly well that such relationships were two-way, and he believed that his current visit to Mama Lu signaled traffic flow in the reverse direction—she needed a favor, and he was obliged to do his best to deliver. Tonight he knew only that her inquiry involved a death and that like it or not, if he could help, he would. If not, he would do his best to appease her.

Boldt knew from prior visits to the Korean grocery that he needed to clear himself with the first of the two Samoans, a thick-necked, squinting structure of a human being dressed in black. It felt vaguely humiliating for a twenty-odd-year homicide veteran to seek the approval of a bodyguard, but Boldt came to get the job done, not pee on a fire hydrant, so he flashed the man his shield, playing along, and announced—he did not
ask,
his one concession—that he was there to see the venerable Great Lady.

Thick with the smell of pickled ginger and sesame, the grocery’s
interior made him suddenly hungry. An elderly Korean man with few teeth, a chapped grin, and expectancy in his arched eyebrows welcomed Boldt from behind a deli counter that offered mostly unrecognizable cuts of meat, fish, and poultry. Fish heads and chicken feet quickly killed Boldt’s appetite.

Canned goods and sundries reached floor to ceiling, enhancing the narrowness of the aisles—a claustrophobic’s nightmare. Two ceiling fans spun lazily, a dusty cobweb trailing from a paddle like a biplane banner at the beach. Boldt climbed the steep stairs, cautious of a trick left knee, the sweet pungency of chai overtaking the ginger. Oddly out-of-tune Chinese string music grated on his musician’s ear. Of all the affronts to the senses, this dissonance proved the most difficult to take.

A Buddha of a woman, Mama Lu occupied an ornately inlaid black lacquer chair like a queen on a throne, so wide and vast of flesh as to fill out a muumuu like a sleeping bag in a stuff sack. Her eyes shone like tiny black stones in a balloon of a face accented by generous swipes of rouge, implying cheekbones now submerged in an overindulgence at the soup bowl. Her lips gleamed a sickening fire-engine red, a color echoed in an application to her blunt fingernails, one of which, her index finger, curled to invite Boldt closer.

“Mr. Both,” she said, having never gotten his name right in the several years they’d been associated.

“Great Lady.”

“You like some soup?”

“Thank you.” He had learned long ago not to refuse. A female attendant of seventeen or eighteen, a petite thing with a wasp waist who wore embroidered silk from neck to ankle, delivered a small table before him. She averted her face, avoiding his eyes as he sat.

Mama Lu chewed on a string of Chinese words, and the girl
took off in a flash to points unseen. The place was a rabbit warren.

“You mentioned a death, Great Lady.” He tried to push her, knowing she might drag this out for over an hour. He didn’t have an hour. Neither did Susan Hebringer. Mama Lu smiled, but said nothing in reply.

There was only the music as they awaited delivery of the steaming bowls, also black lacquer. A wonton dish with streams of egg swirled in a dark broth. The Chinese spoon, flat on the bottom and wide at the mouth, allowed the soup to quickly cool. Mama Lu concealed a burp that she clearly savored.

“Greatest detective ever work this city.”

“You must need an awfully big favor,” he said.

“Do I exaggerate?”

“Always.”

“My heritage.” A face-consuming grin. “Please excuse.”

“You are a friend to this city, Great Lady. You give much back. Others should follow your example.”

“You humor me.”

“I honor you,” he said. “You are a dear and noble friend.”

“Since when you running for office?”

“I’m just trying to stay above water these days.”

“Soup make you feel better. You tell Mama Lu what troubles you.”

Boldt took a spoonful. The soup defined depth and character. “The two women who’ve gone missing,” he said, feeling no need to fill in the blanks—the whole city knew about Hebringer and Randolf. “My wife and I knew one of the women.”

Mama Lu grimaced and after a long moment nodded.

Boldt ate more and requested a second bowl, winning great favor with her. If he could have raised a burp, she might have adopted him. “You should write a cookbook sometime,” he said.

She said, “You busy man, Mr. Both. Forgive an old woman her selfishness.”

“I am always at your service, Great Lady.” Protocol was not to be dismissed. Boldt let her have her self-deprecating moment but waited for her to reveal the true nature of her summons. The second bowl of soup proved even tastier than the first.

“You familiar with water main break, Mr. Both?”

“I might have missed that, Great Lady.”

“Yesterday night.”

“I caught the rain. We had a couple of assaults overnight. A huge trash spill in the bay. I think I missed the water main.”

“Lucky you. Not so lucky for second cousin.”

Here it came—the reason for his soup. Her cousin. A euphemism for anyone of Asian descent for whom the Great Lady felt morally or physically responsible. Over the years, Boldt had learned some of the code. Not all, not by any stretch. “Do you mind if I take notes?”

She gestured for him to do so. Boldt pulled out the worn notebook, taller than it was wide. It fit into his hand like a cross to the devout.

She said, “Billy Chen. His mother sister to my cousin’s husband.” She smiled. All an invention on her part. “Work road crew, here in city. Good boy, Billy Chen.”

“And how was Billy unlucky?” Boldt said.

“Billy dead,” she said.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said. “How did it happen?” And then it registered, though too late. The sinkhole on Third Avenue. Interpreting “yesterday night” had left him on the wrong date, and it took him a moment to back up the calendar, to relocate himself. The sinkhole raised a red flag only because of its location. The only two reliable witnesses in the Susan Hebringer disappearance had put her last-seen nearby on Columbia Street, once on First Avenue, and a few minutes later crossing
Second heading east, uphill. Randolf was believed to have been in this same area at the time of her disappearance. Shop owners had been questioned, bus drivers, pamphlets distributed—and to date, not a single other lead had come. Then that immense sinkhole. And now a dead body. He sat up, his pulse quicker, pen ready.

“Billy working broken water main. Your people say he drown fixing it—that he no good at job. Medical examiner office. Mama Lu, not think so, Mr. Both. Billy Chen no good worker? Want better job done. Much grief, Billy brings us all. Mama Lu have no answer. Turn to good friend for answer.”

“Where exactly was the body found?” Boldt said.

“Do I ask you to do my cooking for me? Run grocery?”

Boldt grinned. She intended for him to start from the start. This woman didn’t run a grocery, she ran Seattle’s Asian economy. Who was she kidding?

He said, “The medical examiner, Doc Dixon, is a close friend. He can be trusted. He’s very good at his job. If he says Billy Chen drowned, then I’m sure that’s right. I don’t know the particulars, but if Doc Dixon—”

“You will know particulars, yes, Mr. Both? If not accident, you investigate. Yes? As favor to good friend.”

“We—my department—are only authorized to investigate deaths ruled suspicious causes, Great Lady. I can certainly look into this … accident, or whatever it was … no problem. But unless there is a determination of suspicious causes, my hands are tied.”

“But you untie as favor to friend.”

“I can work after hours. Maybe take some lost time. I just wanted you to understand it may go a little slowly.”

“I no understand.”

“I’m very busy right now. The family might prefer a private investigator, someone who can tackle this full-time.” He
couldn’t believe he was recommending they use a PI. He hoped he’d worded this carefully enough. He didn’t want to offend the likes of Mama Lu. Not now. Not ever.

“Chen family prefers you, Mr. Both.” She set her spoon down and gently pushed at the small table before her. She meant she preferred him. As she dabbed her chin with the generous linen napkin, the wisp of silk swept through the room and the bowl of soup disappeared. A magician at work.

As close to a direct order as he was going to get. The choice was now his. “Let me see what Dixie, the ME, has to say about it.” Boldt nudged his table. Same reaction: bowl gone; table dry; table removed from in front of him.

“You like fortune cookie?” she said.

“No, thank you.”

“You no like fortune cookie?”

“We make or break our own fortunes. I don’t need a cookie interfering.”

“But taste so good,” she said, crunching down on hers and raining crumbs into folds. She smiled. Thankfully she had her teeth in.

“Billy Chen,” Boldt said, making sure he had the name right. “C-h-e-n.”

But he was thinking about both Hebringer and Randolf having last been seen in the same general area when Mama Lu said, “Little birdie tell me Cherry and Third part of old underground city. How you know what kill Billy until you look?”

“The Underground extends up there?” Boldt asked, adrenaline warming him. In the late 1800s, Seattle had been rebuilt following a colossal fire. The reconstruction, made in large part because of tidal flooding, developed a city on top of a city—enormous retaining walls built around each of twenty city blocks and streets between them built up with soil and rock sometimes as high as thirty feet. A good deal of the original city now lay
underground. He’d done the tour once—it was a world unto itself down there: antique storefronts, stuff wreathed in darkness for more than a century, some of it frozen in time, some intruded upon by shop owners desperate for storage.