Past Crimes (10 page)

W
ILLARD WAS STANDING JUST
outside the entryway of Corcoran’s apartment building. He was smoking. The orange dot at the end of his cigarette bobbed up and down in the early-morning shadows. Dressed in his long coat, he looked like one of the building’s support columns.

“Willie,” I said. The orange dot jumped a little.

“Fuck,” Willard said in his buffalo voice. “You snuck up on me.”

But I hadn’t. I’d just been walking, having parked a couple of blocks away. If Willard was keeping watch, he’d lost a few steps.

“You got another?” I asked. My head still hurt. One part hangover, two parts the knot behind my ear that the burglar had given me.

Willard grunted. “Don’t remember you smoking.”

“Army,” I said. I caught a flash of teeth as Willard smiled, quick and flat.

“Me, too,” he said. “Different war but same deal.” He reached into his coat pocket and brought out a crumpled pack of Camels—and he tapped a stick out and offered it to me. The pack was completely covered by his shovel-blade hand.

There was a lighter in the pocket of the barn jacket I’d taken off Dono’s coatrack. I lit the cigarette with it. I hadn’t smoked in six months, and the first long draw tasted horrible and perfect at the same time.

“Dono?” Willard said.

I shook my head. Nothing new. “Is Jimmy coming down or are we going up?” I asked. It had taken me a few extra minutes to find the right block. Hollis might have beaten me here and told Willard and Corcoran I was on the way.

“Up. Once we’re done,” Willard said. “Jimmy’s wife don’t like smoking in her place, not even on the balcony.”

The ash fell off my cigarette. “Corcoran’s married?”

“Oh, yeah. Kids, too. Not his.”

“You’re shitting me.” The idea of Jimmy Corcoran raising stepkids was about the same level of smart as asking a guy who’d pounded a case of Red Bull to hold your nitroglycerin.

Willard took a last drag, down to the filter, and dropped the butt to step on it. He looked at the pack in his hand for a minute and then put it in his pocket.

“Screw it,” he said. “We only got an hour till the wife comes back. Let’s go upstairs.”

I stubbed out my half-finished stick on the nearest column. Maybe I’d light it up again in another six months. But probably not.

Bad Man Willard, banished from the goddamn building just to have a smoke. And the wife wasn’t even
home
.

Sharing an elevator with Willard was like being in a horse trailer with a Clydesdale. He pushed the button marked 8, and the doors closed. The elevator walls were green silk. Next to each numbered button on the panel was a tiny brass plaque inscribed with Asian characters.

“Is Corcoran’s wife Thai?” I said, guessing at the characters.

Willard exhaled, just enough to be a sigh. “Cambodian. Whole block is Cambodian.”

I wouldn’t have thought Corcoran that open-minded. Last I remembered, he was still referring to everyone west of the Pacific Ocean as Chinamen.

Willard must have caught the vibe of my surprise, because he raised his eyebrows. “Better’n being alone, kid.”

We stepped out of the elevator into a narrow pink hallway, and I
let Willard lead us midway down to a pink door with the number 87 in brass under the peephole. Willard knocked and tried to open the door, but it was locked. There was a sound of fast movement from inside.

“It’s me. And Van,” said Willard, and the door opened a crack to show Corcoran’s glaring eye and half his bald skull.

I smiled. “I’ll have the Kung Pao chicken and two egg rolls.”

“Asshole,” he said. He stepped aside, and Willard and I walked in.

The place looked like a two-bedroom, tidy but tight. An eight-by-eight dining area with a small circular table was on our left and a counter on the right, partly separating the entryway from a compact kitchen. The living room had a lot of plants crammed into it and wide brown awning stripes on the wallpaper. The only thing in the whole place that looked like it might belong to Corcoran was an easy chair in cracked and stained brown leather.

“Sit down over there,” he said, gesturing to a low couch next to the ancient chair.

An intercom on the wall beeped. Corcoran pressed a button on it.

“—me, Jimmy,” said Hollis’s voice under the static whine. Corcoran pressed another button and buzzed Hollis in.

I took out the surveillance bug that I’d pocketed before the cops arrived and tossed it on the dining-room table. It landed on its side, the little receiver pointed out toward us like a mouth ready to whistle. Corcoran and Willard looked at it.

I raised my finger to my lips—don’t talk—and showed Corcoran the note I had written on a page torn from Dono’s notebook before leaving the house:

“
When was the last time you swept your home?”

Corcoran sneered, which was probably a reflex for him, but his forehead wrinkled with uncertainty. He handed the note to Willard just as Hollis came hurriedly up to the still-open door.

Hollis peered around Willard’s broad back, his face bright pink. “Got here fast as I could,” he said, clipping the words to rush to the next breath. He shut the door behind him. “What’s on?”

I mimed silence again and pointed to the bug on the table. Hollis
looked at it quizzically. Corcoran stepped over to the table to pick it up. He turned it over, poking at the inner workings with a yellowed fingernail. I pulled out a chair from the table and sat.

After a moment Corcoran set the bug down and shuffled quickly to the back of the apartment, returning with a large gray plastic toolbox. He reached for a remote control and turned on the plasma television. Trumpets suddenly blared over a frenzied commercial for a Ford dealership. Corcoran opened the toolbox and took out what I recognized as an old-school cell-phone scanner. He began fiddling with it, untangling its wires from a mess of other junk.

While Corcoran worked, Hollis went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. He found a sixer of beer and brought it back to the table, handing a can to Willard as he passed. Corcoran ignored us, walking around the room, holding the scanner close to the electrical outlets and the walls.

“Check the air vents, too,” I said under the noise of the TV. Corcoran frowned, but he made sure to pass the scanner near each grate before moving off into other rooms along the hall.

Hollis sat down next to me, offering a beer. I shook my head. Willard finally moved, into the living room. He eased his bulk into Corcoran’s leather chair.

Hollis leaned in to whisper in my ear. “What the fuck’s going on?”

“We might be wired,” I murmured back. I tapped the bug with my finger.

“Christ Jesus,” Hollis said, blanching. “Is it feds?”

I shook my head no. Hollis continued to stare at the bug. Corcoran reentered the room with a screwdriver and started removing one of the vent grates. He was totally focused on the task, and I saw a bit of sweat on the side of his bald head.

“Okay,” said Corcoran finally, “enough.” He sat on the back of the couch and dropped the screwdriver into the toolbox. He looked flushed, like he’d just run a mile.

Willard turned off the TV with the remote. “You all right?” he said to Corcoran.

Corcoran motioned, and Hollis tossed him a beer. Corcoran popped it and took a long pull. “Fuck it,” he said after a breath. He stood and picked up the bug off the table again. “This was at Dono’s place?”

I nodded. “One in almost every room.”

He grunted. “Do you know how long they were there?”

“No,” I said. “What can you tell me about it?”

“All kinds of shit about how it’s made,” he said. “But that’s not what you care about. You understand how it works?”

“Yeah,” I said.

Hollis shifted in his seat. “Well, I fucking sure don’t,” he said. “Someone catch me up here, damn it.”

I pointed at the little black snout of the receiver in Corcoran’s hand. “These were hidden behind the vents,” I said. “They pick up any noise in the room and automatically call a preset number, which records everything.”

Corcoran belched softly. “The guy on the other end can dial in from anywhere and listen to the recordings. Just like voice mail.”

We all looked at the device on the table again. Like it was a dead scorpion, something that had once been dangerous.

“How did you find the damned thing?” Hollis said.

I told them how I’d been cold-cocked by the intruder the night before. The story cheered Corcoran right up.

“The guy who hit me left three bugs behind when he ran away,” I said. “I held on to this one.”

“If it was me,” Corcoran said, “I’d have finished the job. Tied you up. Or just stomped on your head one more time.”

Hollis scratched the side of his neck absentmindedly. “The guy who shot Dono didn’t stick around to finish
him
off either. Do you think it’s the same guy?”

“The guy who hit me was small, with white hair,” I said.

Corcoran grinned. “An old midget threw soldier boy a beating.”

“This guy was good enough to fastball Dono’s alarm system. And he built these bugs by hand.”

“These ain’t exactly state-of-the-art shit,” Corcoran said. He picked
up the bug again. “It’s decent work, I’ll say that much. This receiver is about as good as you can buy. I’d have used a smart phone instead of these old clamshell parts.”

“There can’t be too many small old men in Seattle who specialize in B&E and bugging,” I said. “You know anybody who matches that skill set?”

“I know a couple who work local, who might be up to this,” Corcoran said. “One’s Chinese or Jap or something like that—”

“The guy who hit me was white, from what little I saw of him.”

“Then you’re out of luck.’ Cause the second guy I know is black and too damn old to be jumping out of windows. Like fourscore and seven.”

I tapped the bug in Corcoran’s hands. “Can you trace the number it’s calling?” I asked him.

He smirked. “If it’s preset in the phone? Please.”

“I want to know everything about the account the number is attached to. What’s the number, who set it up, when they’ve used it. The whole history. Especially if you can get access to the voice-mail recordings.”

Corcoran shrugged. “That’s not tech. That’s phone-company records.”

“Out of your reach?” I asked.

“Who said that? I didn’t fucking say that.” Corcoran tossed the bug back onto the table and began rummaging in his toolbox. “Getting the number’s nothing. I can have that in two minutes. The rest of it—” He shrugged. “Depends on which phone company holds the account. If it’s one of the big American companies, I could maybe try to get in touch with people who work for them. Data engineers, people like that.”

I understood what he meant. Hacking into phone accounts from the outside was tough. It was a lot easier if you knew a company employee with the right access who might be willing to enhance his hourly wage by taking five minutes to look up information on your behalf. Corcoran may not know those employees himself, but he could ask around. The power of networking.

“But if it’s some rinky-dink private business, then I doubt we’ll get
very far,” Corcoran finished. He had fished an older-model cell phone out from the toolbox and was disassembling it.

“I’ll deal with that if I have to. But I need to learn whatever we can fast. Like tomorrow.”

“I’ll have to spread some money around,” Corcoran said. He began attaching the circuit board of the bug to the screen components of the second cell phone with narrow-gauge wires.

“How much money?” I said.

He glared at me. “Did I put my hand out? Fuck you.” He went back to concentrating on the phones. “Punk,” he muttered.

I needed Corcoran. But I was angry and tired and close to slapping the wire cutters out of his hand.

Willard saw it on my face. “You’re thinking about Spokane,” he said to Corcoran.

“Course I am. Nobody has to fucking remind me,” Corcoran said.

Hollis looked between them. “What’s Spokane?”

Corcoran’s lip curled. “You tell them,” he said to Willard. “I’m fucking busy.”

“Jimmy was in with a couple of guys on a grocery-store job,” Willard said. “In Spokane.”

“I got that much,” Hollis said, taking a swig of beer.

Willard ignored him. “Dono knew one of the guys. I don’t know if he’d worked with him or just by reputation. Either way it wasn’t good. He told Jimmy that he should leave it alone.”

“But …” said Hollis, letting the word trail off.

Willard nodded. We all knew the probability of Corcoran taking anyone’s advice.

“So Jimmy and the two guys drive to Spokane and break into the store,” Willard said.

“
I
broke in,” said Corcoran. “
They
sat in the car with their thumbs in their asses.”

“Jimmy breaks in,” Willard said, “and the first thing the two idiots do is go straight to the safe and try opening it with a maul and sledge.”

“Every motherfucking alarm on the block went off,” Corcoran said.
Unable to keep quiet while reliving the memory. “And they were gone. Dead run, slammed right into me, scattered my shit everywhere. Out the door, into their car, fucking gone. And me still throwing my gear into my bag.”

“What did you do?” I said to Corcoran.

“I was trying to figure out just how many levels of dead I was. And then here comes Dono. Roaring up in his car. He tells me to get in, and I wasn’t so punchy that I didn’t recognize the fucking hand of God reaching down when I saw it. I got in.”

“He followed you,” I said.

Corcoran snorted. “For three hundred miles, he followed us. Just shows what morons those two were. Your grandfather hauled my ass right out of the fire. We were back in Seattle before dawn.”

Hollis crushed his beer can with one thick paw. “So you owe the man.”

Corcoran shrugged and turned his attention back to the cell phone. “Nothing I can do about the bullet in Dono’s head,” he said. “But I’ll help catch the fucker who put it there.”

He pressed a couple of buttons on the cell phone, and the screen lit up with ten green digits. The phone number of the burglar’s account. Somewhere in its digital web, there was a recording of Dono’s last conscious moments.