Tipping the Valet Page 5

  Sergei smiled, a maneuver that tilted his scar in a quirky way. This was all very promising.

  Chapter Seven

  VIC KILLED HIS LIGHTS AND slowly patrolled the area. This was perfect. He was in Ballard, a Seattle neighborhood that a hundred years ago had been a Scandinavian town of shingle mills and fishing boats, and that now sported masses of high-rise condos and chic little clubs, restaurants, and shops.

  But the old Ballard lingered along the edge of Salmon Bay, and at this time of night this little remaining slice of working waterfront was pretty much deserted and poorly lit.

  Vic found the Mercedes, a shiny red presence sitting in solitary splendor as if it had been Photoshopped into its surroundings, in a gravel parking lot near the waterfront on the other side of the old Burlington Northern railroad track, tucked behind a cinderblock building that housed a marine electrical company and next to a little creosoted wharf where an Alaska crabber was moored.

  Okay, so maybe alone he couldn’t get it stored safely away, but he could sure as hell move it somewhere else and pick it up later at his convenience when Chip was available or whatever. If he had to, he could even take the bus back from the storage unit. This was a very sweet car.

  With his lights back on, Vic drove his own car back to Ballard Avenue, a busy venue at this time of night, and angle-parked on a quaint street outside a French restaurant. He set out on foot to the Mercedes.

  Vic was feeling pretty good. He’d been depressed, thinking Chip’s hospital stay would really slow things down and mess up their deadline, but now Vic congratulated himself on his resourcefulness. Compared to those thuggy chop-shop losers in their stupid track suits, he was a smooth criminal genius.

  He walked carefully over to the car, rolling along on the balls of his feet to keep the sound of the gravel down, and then walked up to the passenger door with his duplicate key. Right before he did, he noticed the windows seemed all steamed up, and right after he actually opened the door and prepared to slide behind the wheel, he noticed the soles of a pair of female naked feet about a foot and a half apart, that were firmly pressed against the rear passenger-side window.

  Then he heard a woman’s frightened voice whimpering, “Oh my God!” and a man’s angry voice snarling, “What the hell!”

  Vic stood there for a second. Standing there was a stupid thing to do, he later realized, but he was in a state of shock. Time seemed to stand still as he watched the man pull himself off the woman, and fumble with a belt. Behind him, Vic got a vague impression of a chubby woman with a partially buttoned blouse and a lacy bra around her neck covering her face with her hands. He also found himself thinking that he should have thought longer and harder about why a car would be parked here all by itself at night away from any possible place its owner would want to be at.

  By the time Vic had taken all this in, the guy was out of the car. He seemed to roll and eject himself out of the rear passenger door like a trained paratrooper. Vic came to his senses, turned and ran. The man in the car, short and muscular, was in pursuit, tugging on his zipper.

  Some time later, after Vic had been tackled; after he had felt himself being flipped over on his back; after he had received a punch to the face; after he had been relieved to hear the woman say, “Justin, stop it. We have to get out of here”; after he had denied vehemently between blows that he was a private detective, while she continued whimpering, “Oh my God,” over and over again; and after he had been kicked a few times in the kidneys and left to lie in the fetal position in the gravel as the car took off, Vic reflected that he was pretty damn lucky. They hadn’t stopped to ask him how come he had a key to their car.

  ———

  ROGER Benson was eating a ham sandwich in front of his computer when his wife, Ingrid, came into his office. Tyler’s mother was a tall, blond, well-groomed woman with a solid jaw and piercing blue eyes. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  Ingrid had been so down on him since last night at Alba, he’d been kind of hiding out in his office whenever she was home.

  “Oh, I’m working on my website,” he said, twirling around in his office chair.

  Ingrid executed the eye roll that was becoming a bad habit. “Whatever. Did you tell Samantha she could have the credit card back?”

  “I told her to ask you.”

  “The correct answer was no,” said Ingrid. “We cannot use the credit card,” said Ingrid. “We have to try and pay off that credit card. The only money we can use is my salary. Or what’s left of it after we make payments on the credit card.”

  “It’s going to be okay,” said Roger. He rose and walked toward her, and gave her a warm smile. “I’m putting together a pitch for Scott Duckworth.” He put his arms around her.

  In an extremely deft maneuver that Ingrid had never performed before, shimmying her shoulders and doing something with her elbows, she managed to unwrap his arms smartly from her torso. He found them dangling limply at his sides.

  “Don’t touch me,” she said, wheeling away and leaving the room.

  Roger sighed. Fate had sent Tyler to Alba to cross paths with Scott. It was even an Italian restaurant. How significant was that! But it had all gone so badly. First Tyler had manhandled him out of there. His own son! Just for wearing slippers! And then someone had tried to assassinate Scott that same night! You’d think that would make Scott realize the only people he could trust were his old associates.

  It could still work out. Roger went to his laptop’s Sent file to refresh his memory about the message he’d sent to the Scott and Carla Duckworth Foundation’s “Contact Us” link before he’d decided to go casually run into Scott at Alba. Things had been kind of a blur that evening.

  “Hey Scott,” it read.

  Remember me? Roger Benson? I understand you’ll be at Alba tonight. What a coincidence! So will I. I’m really excited about seeing you again after all these years. In fact, I’ve been waiting a long time for our paths to cross again. I’ll never forget my experience at DuckSoft and I’d love to talk to you about how my life worked out. You were a key part of it all. And there’s also something really important I’d like to communicate to you about how we could be intertwined again and your possible future. Here’s a hint: think “taking out.”

  Say, does Helene Applegate still work for you? She was a great gal! So loyal and kind. And such a sweet face. I must admit—I had a HUGE crush on her. Whoever snagged her is one lucky guy. What a woman! If you know where she is these days, could you send me her contact details?

  Well Scott, I’m off to meet you now. Think of it as a rendezvous with destiny.

  Best Regards, Roger Benson

  Roger was somewhat taken aback. He’d forgotten he’d put that stuff in there about Helene. Thank God there weren’t a bunch of typos. He must have been sober enough to spell-check. But that “think ‘taking out’” line was really a kind of clunky teaser for a pitch to get help launching the Ricotteria concept. He hoped he’d hear from Scott soon. It was natural he hadn’t had time to reply. After all, someone had just tried to kill him. He was probably pretty distracted right now. He’d probably get in touch soon. And maybe he’d even tell him where to find Helene.

  ———

  VOLODYA Zelenko and Sergei Lagunov were headed north along a curving wooded stretch of old Highway 99 at about eighty miles an hour, on their way to Dmytro’s house as he had requested, when Sergei heard the sirens. Volodya presumably couldn’t hear them because he was singing at the top of his lungs.

  Sergei, noticing back at Donna’s that Volodya was fairly drunk, had suggested they take some side roads to approach Dmytro’s house for their meeting, but Volodya had taken no notice.

  Now, Sergei punched Volodya’s arm. “Cops!” he shouted. “Listen! You should have taken those side roads like I said.”

  Volodya stopped singing, said, “No problem,” and steered off the highway onto a side road with squealing brakes.

  “If they pull you over, they might search us,” said S
ergei. “You still have that gun?”

  “I have to keep driving. I can’t get another DUI,” said Volodya. “My cousin will kill me.”

  “The gun you killed Old Pasha with?” continued Sergei. The sirens were getting closer. Sergei was thinking quickly. He wasn’t the driver. They couldn’t do anything to him. But they still might search him.

  Sergei had two objectives in mind. Get out of here before the cops came and wondered who he was. And make it to that appointment with Volodya’s cousin Dmytro. He’d been waiting to have a talk with him for some time. It would be better without Volodya.

  “Give me that gun,” he said. “Let me run for it. They can only get you for being drunk. You don’t want to be found with that gun!”

  Volodya, crinkling his eyes and trying to navigate in the dark, seemed not to hear him. They turned a corner. It was now clear that the sirens were behind them on this side road.

  Sergei yelled, “I don’t want you to get busted. I’m younger and fitter. If you don’t give me the gun, they’ll arrest you and put you in jail. Me, they might just deport. No big deal.”

  Before Volodya had a chance to mull this over, Sergei shoved Volodya and cranked the steering wheel off the road, pointing the car into a ditch. The car landed nose down, the windows surrounded by dense branches of alder trees. Volodya’s head hit the windshield and the horn started to sound.

  Sergei reached over into Volodya’s jacket and pulled out the .22. Then he leapt out of the car and thrashed through some shrubbery. He had expected to end up in some forested area, but was astonished to see himself standing in what appeared to be a large, scrubby yard of poorly tended lawn with a plastic children’s wading pool, a rusted lawnmower, and some tricycles strewn around. Across the lawn he saw a ranch style house with a satellite dish on the roof, a carport with a green Ford pickup truck, a collection of junker cars, and a listing shed. He was also disconcerted to see a large dog dish.

  From the other side of the shrubbery he’d just blasted through, Sergei now heard the siren give its last scream, and the crackle of a police radio. A light went on the house. Sergei now took off across the lawn and neatly vaulted a chain-link fence, landing in a neighboring yard. There was an unlocked older Toyota pickup truck sitting right there in the driveway. He was in luck. These were a lot easier to hotwire than old Fords. Sergei got behind the wheel, spent about forty seconds fiddling around under the dash, and was soon back on the road.

  Chapter Eight

  PRETTY STRAIGHTFORWARD,” SAID Lukowski. “He was shot in the head at very close range. Cheap .22 pistol.” That morning, Lukowski and his partner MacNab, both Seattle homicide detectives, had gone to the Smethursts’ soon after the body had been discovered. Caroline Smethurst had been, naturally, pretty hysterical, and there was a big dog jumping up on everyone, and a spoiled-brat kid, and eventually the husband Gary arrived from work. The Smethursts explained that the last time the car had not been in their garage and was unattended had been the night before, when the couple had been at Alba, having an aborted anniversary dinner.

  Now, the two detectives were on night shift in their joint cubicle eating a quick takeout teriyaki chicken, and Lukowski was bringing MacNab, who had spent the afternoon in court on the witness stand, up to speed on the coroner’s report.

  Lukowski, tall and thin, with prematurely gray hair, and wearing a dark suit, picked carefully through the meal with wooden chopsticks, avoiding the rice. He had gained five pounds this month, and he was trying to cut down on carbs. MacNab, shorter, rounder, and older, with thinning hair and an orange-looking sports jacket, had stirred his portion together with his plastic fork and was leaning over the little cardboard serving dish and shoveling it in in a workmanlike manner. “What can they tell us about him before he got shot?” asked MacNab.

  “Well-nourished Caucasian male. About sixty-five. A lot of gold dental work. They think it might not have been done in this country. A couple of nasty scars on the torso. Look like they might have been made with a knife. A while ago. Smoker. Clogged arteries. And he’d packed away a lot of booze by the time he got killed. His liver looked like Swiss cheese.”

  “Doesn’t fit any of the missing persons we checked out,” said MacNab. Recently disappeared local white males had included an elderly man who had wandered away from a nursing home, a vegan college student who had told friends he intended to go into the wilderness and live off the land, and a thirty-seven-year-old self-employed housepainter who was getting leaned on for ten thousand dollars’ worth of back child support payments. “It might be hard to ID him.”

  Lukowski handed over some glossy color photos. “Maybe it won’t,” he said. “The guy was covered in tattoos. But we’ll start with releasing an artist’s sketch to the media.”

  MacNab took a look at the shots. “That’s some pretty ugly ink,” he commented. Indeed, the blue tattoos looked smudgy. “Look at this. A couple of kitty-cats and a rose. And a couple of stars on his knees.”

  “Keep going,” said Lukowski.

  MacNab riffled through the shots. A couple of menacing floating eyes, barbed wire, a dagger.

  “I don’t care how many guys have tattoos these days,” said MacNab. “It just doesn’t seem like a manly thing to do—decorate yourself like that.” He frowned and reexamined the floating eyes. “This looks kinda familiar.” MacNab started tapping away at his computer.

  “Hey,” he said. “I was right. Those are classic Russian mafia tattoos. It says so right here on Wikipedia.”

  “Maybe Auto Theft knows who this guy is,” said Lukowski. “Russians love to steal cars. Maybe they end up shooting each other, too.”

  “Try the auto guys up in Everett, too,” said MacNab. “They got a ton of Russian chop-shops up there.”

  Lukowski looked down at the valet tag on his desk, the one that had been placed on Smethurst’s key chain at Alba. “But let’s make sure Smethurst is totally cleared. I can’t imagine for a minute he’s got anything to do with this, but let’s cross him off the list right away.”

  “Any word yet if the bullet in tattoo guy’s forehead matches the ones that shot up Duckworth’s car?” asked MacNab. “It’s pretty weird—a body and a shooting the same night in the same place.”

  “I talked to Debbie Myers in Crimes Against Persons. She’s working that Duckworth case. They got the bullet out of the valet who took it for Duckworth. She says they’re still digging bullets out of the vehicle.”

  MacNab nodded. “Anything on the suitcase?”

  “No tags or airline baggage-handling barcodes or anything. The suitcase is a pretty ordinary Samsonite suitcase. Black nylon. Macy’s sells about a jillion of them.”

  “How come luggage always seems to be on sale at Macy’s?” said MacNab. “It’s never not on sale.”

  Lukowski shrugged. “Beats me. Anyway, it also seems that the gray Audi is covered in prints. So maybe we can get a break from that. There are some really clear ones around the trunk area.”

  ———

  AFTER alighting from the truck a few blocks from Dmytro Zelenko’s circular driveway, Sergei Lagunov tucked his black shirt into his trousers and brushed off the shoulders, lapels, and knees of his suit, then ran a hand over his hair. He hoped there weren’t any leaves or twigs sticking to him.

  On the ride over, he had thought about what he would tell Dmytro about his cousin when they met, and what he would omit. One thing he would certainly omit for now was what had happened to Old Pasha. That little episode had given him a keen insight into Volodya’s character. Whatever other shortcomings he may have had, he wasn’t afraid to kill.

  Dmytro answered the door with one hand on the collar of a frisky-looking Rottweiler. Sergei hoped the old guy could control this animal better than he controlled his cousin.

  “You wanted to see me?” said Sergei.

  “Yes. Please come in. But where’s Volodya?”

  “I think maybe he’s in jail,” said Sergei, managing to give the impression he was sorry to
pass along news of this development but felt it his duty to do so. “He was drunk and the police pulled us over in his car. I wanted to protect him from any serious trouble. He had a gun on him and I took it away with me, and escaped.”

  Dmytro nodded. “I see. Where’s the gun now?” he asked.

  Sergei smiled. “I got rid of it during my escape. In case I was caught and it was traced to Volodya. I doubt he’s allowed to carry a gun. Didn’t he do some time?”

  Dmytro pushed the door closed and locked it.

  An elderly female voice called out from somewhere in the house. “Dmytro? Is my ride here?”

  Outside, Sergei heard a car pull up.

  A pale old woman with her hair arranged in a wispy bun appeared in the foyer. She wore a drab floral-print housedress, and carried a cracked plastic handbag in one hand and a huge Bible with Post-it notes sticking out of it in the other. She wasn’t fresh off the boat, thought Sergei, because she wasn’t wearing a scarf on her head, but that’s about all that had changed. He acknowledged her with a polite nod.

  Dmytro spoke briefly to her in Ukrainian, then turned to Sergei. “Go on into the living room and sit down. My mother is going out. Her ride seems to have just arrived. I’ll see her out.”

  Sergei looked down at the Rottweiler, and held out his hand. The dog licked it and padded away. Sergei followed it into the living room where another one lay in front of the fireplace. The second animal stared at Sergei with a bored expression, then put its head down on the carpet.

  Dmytro bustled back into the room, self-possessed once again. “You want a drink?” He strode over to a well-stocked bar.

  “Sure. You got any cognac?”

  Dmytro poured himself a shot of vodka and handed a cognac to Sergei in a balloon-shaped glass. “I appreciate your helping out. You’re sure that gun is lost?”

  “Absolutely,” said Sergei. “I threw it off a bridge.”