Читать книгу Inside Passage - Burt Weissbourd - Страница 11

Six

Corey Logan. The woman was like some kind of obscure offshore virus, an incorrigible, possibly lethal infection. And now she was moving freely, zigzagging dangerously close to a sensitive, sterilized zone. Nick ran his thumb down the back of his lustrous black hair. It hung a quarter inch over his collar, a nod to another time. He touched it when he worried.

As a child, Nikos Sisinis was bold as a lion. On the streets of Athens he was a champion, a king. His father, an audacious con man, said his son had the “gift.” That is to say, at the farmers market or in the lobby of the Royal Olympic Hotel, Nikos didn’t miss a thing. In the alleyways the touts whispered that the kid was even smarter than his dad, who could multiply six numbers by six numbers in his head. For this boy, all things seemed possible.

Nikos’ mother, a gypsy, died when he was seven. Four years later his father was killed, and eleven year old Nikos was sent to live with his father’s uncle, the Sisinis family patriarch, in Seattle. Uncle Antoniou owned a Greek restaurant on a seedy stretch of Second Avenue. Antoniou “Tony” Sisinis was a scrawny guy with fish breath. And Uncle Tony hated gypsies, especially half-breeds. He had no use for wide-eyed young Nikos except for base unpaid labor and for sex. The youngster slept on a cot in the basement dreading his great uncle’s footfalls on the stairs. The young lion understood that his vile great uncle was what he had, his prospective adoptive parent, his sole connection to this new place. And he had to learn English, become a U.S. citizen. He would put Uncle “Tony” out of his mind, bide his time. He could do that.

Before he turned thirteen, Nikos Sisinis was having feelings he didn’t understand and couldn’t control. At thirteen, he put a lug wrench through the windshield of his great uncle’s prized possession, a ’59 Mustang—three times—before admitting to himself that he had developed a weakness, an embarrassing, emasculating flaw. His weakness—his Achilles heel, as he saw it—took the form of unexpected, crippling anxiety attacks. And they were happening more often. Blindsiding him—a worrisome problem suddenly escalating to paralyzing anxiety. And when the anxiety came on, he was useless. Undone. Nikos, the ferocious Greek bull, morphed—in a heartbeat—to pissant pantywaist, raging lion to plaintive pussy, worrying obsessively about what could go wrong, playing and replaying endless bad outcomes in his mind. The thing was, to get where he was going—and he had his eye on real money, the big con—there would always be things to worry about. He had to take risks, he knew that much. So worrying about it was a curse. Here he was, Ares, the fucking God of war, unmanned.

Surveying his uncle’s mangled Mustang, Nikos knew he had to fix this right away, or one day soon he would do something weird. That night, he waited for Uncle Antoniou to close the restaurant. Even then he knew to be discreet and assiduous. No one ever found Antoniou Sisinis. Nikos’ times of unrelenting anxiety came less often, but they still came.

For the next three years he lived with his second cousins, marking time. He went to school and worked at the restaurant at night, waiting for his unmanly episodes to finally end. It was the end of the sixties, a con artist’s candy store, and, for Nikos, proof positive that this was the land of opportunity. At seventeen, he was tired of waiting. Nikos ran away to L.A. where he changed his name to Nick Season. He finished high school then community college. For money, he went with older women. During these years he began to carefully manage one worry at a time. For the popular young gigolo, it was a revelation—if he removed a worrisome problem, took it off the table, one of his episodes was that much less likely.

At twenty-three, Nick passed the LAPD tests and became a Los Angeles police officer. In time he was working undercover. He liked this work, and he was good at it. The way he put it to himself, he was a bad guy pretending to be a good guy pretending to be a bad guy. As he charted a course through the LAPD, he perfected his worry-managing skills. The key, he was learning, was to rend the worry from his life. Cut it out root and branch.

As Nick successfully managed his worries, he gradually regained his childhood poise and confidence. With time and practice, he was able to present himself as he wanted to be seen. The persona he artfully assembled was thoughtful and sincere. Above all, he shrewdly exploited his “gift.” He worked to see what others actually wanted, and whenever possible, he gave it to them. By the time he turned thirty, he was well liked and a backstairs political influence inside the LAPD. At night, he went to law school. At thirty-four, Nick sold the Russian diamonds for fifteen million dollars. He was ready to return to Seattle.

Back in Seattle, Nick made detective. He finished law school, where his ruthless edge was honed razor sharp. Privately managing his most worrisome problems became easier for him at forty in the King County prosecutor’s office, and, finally, routine at his high-profile Seattle practice of union-side labor law. When a thorny problem with his cousin Al was quickly resolved, fifty two year old Nick was reminded that it paid to eliminate a worry early on.

Nick ran his thumb down the back of his razor-cut hair, still worrying about Corey Logan.

Corey was drinking coffee at the plank table in front of her hearth, distracted. All weekend she’d had no call back from Billy. Her phone startled her.

“Corey?”

It was Sally, their CPS caseworker. Monday morning, 8:00 a.m. This couldn’t be good. “What’s up?”

“Billy’s run off again. I got the message when I came in. He has been gone three nights. Do you know where he is?”

“No idea.” Her trepidation was rising relentlessly, an incoming tide. “I was hoping to see him with you Wednesday, like you said.”

“Can you find him?”

“I can try.” She closed her eyes.

“Call me, anytime.” She gave Corey a home number. “One more thing, I got a message to call your PO, Dick Jensen. You know what that’s about?”

“No.”

“You okay there?”

“No problems I know of.” What was happening?

“Good. Find Billy. It’s important.”

“I’ll call you.” She broke the connection, tense.

Corey put down her coffee mug and hurried into her jacket. It would be windy on the ferry deck. She tried his cell phone again. Maybe he had turned it off or thrown it away. Near the sink, she found two Pepcid for her churning stomach.

She was zipping up her windbreaker when the picture window behind her exploded into her living room. She threw herself face down on the floor amid shards of broken glass. When she looked up, she saw Lester leaning through her broken window. The lizard bastard had smashed it with the heavy brass handle of his cane.

“Cat got your tongue?” he asked. When she didn’t answer him, he offered, “goddamned cat must have gone right through your cheap, plate-glass window.” Lester made a throaty sound, then he went around and opened the front door. Once inside, he took oversized photos from a large manila envelope and set them on her table. She rose warily to one knee, carefully sweeping aside broken glass. “Your kid’s fucked,” he said, oblivious to her glare.

She stood warily, eyeing this maniac as she slowly walked toward the table. On her table he had spread out pictures of Billy: with an older boy at his stash; with a baggie; dividing it up; putting the smaller baggies in envelopes; Billy and his girlfriend smoking a joint in a car; Billy and his friends getting stoned in some backyard.

She stared at the pictures: one, then another. She went for them.

The brass handle of the cane almost took her fingers off.

Corey faced him. “Are you crazy?” When he didn’t respond, she added, “Why in hell are you here?”

“Off the radar screen.”

“I am off the radar screen.”

“Out of the country. Tomorrow.”

What? “Out of the country?”

Lester tapped his cane on the floor, impatient.

“And if I don’t?”

“Billy does his time. Felony drug time. Runs in your sorry family.”

They knew just what button to push to make her jump out of her skin. “If you ever do that, I’ll tell about you and Nick—”

“If you told your lies—” Lester stepped closer, and she felt the cane, hard, against the back of her knees. She buckled, stifling a scream. “If you ever did that—” He looked down at her. His watery eyes were dead. “First, we would explain that you were a pathological liar. A lying convicted felon with no evidence.” He leaned in, looming over her. “Then, sometime later—maybe a week, maybe a year—Billy would become invisible, like his dad.”

She was underwater. No, it was a black viscous liquid, like oil. Corey closed her eyes until she could breathe again. Then she stood, facing him. “Why are you doing this to us now? Why can’t you just leave us alone? I keep to myself. I haven’t said word one.”

“You’re a thorn.” He stepped closer, his breath warm on her face. “If you’re gone, I can pretend you’re dead.”

Okay, Lester was a troll who liked swinging cats around by their tails. But Nick had sent him here. Was Nick just trying to frighten her? “You think you can threaten me anytime, and I’ll just do whatever you say?”

“Yeah, I think that.”

She let it go. This was scaring her. “What about Billy?”

“He’s the carrot and the stick. If you follow the program then he follows you. When I’m satisfied. Say a month from now. That’s lucky seven for a whipped bitch like you.”

Corey closed her eyes, then opened them. “And if he won’t go?”

Lester made his churlish throaty sound. “We want him to go, he goes.”

What had she done? Why was this happening? All she could think to do was find Billy. “Before I leave, I have to see him.”

Lester wrote an address on the back of a picture, then handed it to her. “Nick’s got a guy at the county prosecutor’s office.” He had her full attention. “If you’re not gone tonight,” he waved a gloved hand over the photos, “Billy’s arrested before noon. At school.” Lester’s lips turned up, let’s drown the cat. “One more thing. Dick Jensen is expecting you this morning at 10:00 a.m. He’s heard you have consorted with known offenders. He’s heard you left the jurisdiction without permission. He says you missed a meeting. He asked me if you have a firearm. I said I’d let him know. These are all violations.”

As always, Lester had saved the worst for last. He was telling her he owned her probation officer, and Jensen could send her back to jail. Jensen had surely called Sally to say that she wasn’t complying with the terms of her release. She wanted to scratch out Lester’s watery, raisin eyes. When she didn’t, Corey felt the blackness coming on. She fought back. “Goddamn you,” she hissed. “You’re—”

He ignored her. “Like I said, this is a sweet deal for you. You get to be with your son. If it was up to me, I’d see the both of you back in jail.” Lester buttoned his threadbare suit and muttered, mostly to himself. “Up to me, I’d unleash the fucking dogs of war.”

Her probation officer had a desk in a corner office. Corey waited on a chair in the hall. She watched him talking on the phone. Dick Jensen was at least sixty and round-faced. Even on the phone he had these ways of asserting himself when he didn’t need to.

She was surprised when he came out of his office and motioned her to follow him. It was a little two-fingered summons. “Where’d you park?” he asked over his shoulder.

“The lot in back.”

They went down the stairs to the parking lot. “Which is your car?”

She pointed out the black pickup.

“Keys?” He held out his hand.

“Why?”

“Vehicle search.”

“Fine.” She set the keys in his palm and watched him open her truck.

He checked the back, under the seats, then the glove compartment. She was right there, making sure he didn’t plant anything. That’s when she saw him pull an ID card she had never seen from her glove compartment. He hadn’t put it there either. No, damnit, Lester had. This morning. Jensen showed it to her. It had her picture, but the name was Marsha Dunston. She didn’t recognize the address.

“Where’d you get this?” he asked.

She was trying to stay calm. False ID was a violation of the terms of her probation. “I’ve never seen this in my life. Never.”

“Be careful what you say. You’re in enough trouble already.”

“What trouble?”

“You missed a meeting.” He opened his pocket calendar to show her an apparent appointment, circled in red.

“How did they get to you?” she asked.

“I beg your pardon, lady?”

“Lester Burell planted that fake ID. You know him? Big guy with a cane. And I didn’t know anything about any meeting.” She sighed. This wasn’t working. His face was getting red. “Just get it over with.”

“No problem. You’re not complying with the terms of your probation.” He turned and gave her another two-fingered summons, then walked back toward his corner office.

Abe had been treating Nan Larsen, a real estate agent, for almost a year. She suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder, which often made her irritable. Today, she was carrying a large bag. She opened it and proudly took out a vanity license plate. It said NOMODOE. Abe was listening to her slowly say “no more dough” when there was a knock on his office door. His brow furrowed as the office door swung open and Corey Logan marched in.

“I need your help,” she said. “With Billy.” And who was this woman? And what was that? A fucking license plate? “Right away.”

“What?”

“They’re setting me up,” Corey explained. “They’re saying I violated the terms of my probation.”

“Who is this?” Nan asked. “This is my hour.”

Corey shot her a look.

Dr. Stein stood up and started talking, kind of formal. “I’m with a patient now.” He looked at his calendar. “Can this wait until one o’clock?”

She checked her watch—11:30 a.m. Was he kidding? She had to find Billy and leave tonight. “NOMODOE can wait until one. I’m not going back to jail.”

“I’m sorry,“ he said. “Could you please wait twenty minutes, or come back later? I can see you for five minutes at eleven fifty or for fifty minutes at one.”

She didn’t know this person. “This was a bad idea,” Corey said, and she walked out the door.

In the hallway Corey closed her eyes. Her head was spinning. She was lucky, she decided, that he was busy. What was she thinking? That he would help her? All she wanted was for him to be there if Billy got in trouble. Maybe talk with him. She had made up her mind. She had to leave Seattle. Jensen was under Nick’s thumb, and he could send her back to jail. With the false ID, an apparent missed appointment, her so-called “attitude problems,” and whatever else Lester would provide him, it was more than enough. Jensen had told her to come in again in two days. If she was still here, he would cut her off at the knees.

She would find Billy this afternoon, explain what she had to do. And what he had to do. They would stay in touch by phone. She didn’t think Nick would bother him, and in a month they would be together. Billy would hate the idea of leaving, she knew that. Still, she had to give him the bad news today—whenever, wherever, she found him. Damn. She had lost half an hour coming here. And how had she been so wrong about Dr. Stein? She thought he liked her or at least wanted to help her. So why wasn’t he there for her the one time he could really help?

She walked out of the waiting room and down the stairs. How could a guy face that sweet-and-sour smell every working day? Corey went out the front door, steaming. At the pet store she stopped to look at this great big turtle in the window, wondering how she had ever become so stupid about men.

Abe showed Nan out at 11:50 a.m. Over time he had been able to help her be more comfortable with who she was. Days like today he caught himself wondering if that was a good thing. Abe grumbled, a gravelly sound, trying to clear his head. He had handled Corey Logan badly. He knew that, but Nan was a patient, and her needs had to be respected too. The problem was that Corey didn’t understand how a therapist worked, how at certain times he had to be distant, neutral. When she came back, he would explain how awkward it was for him to be talking with both of them at the same time. He would explain why it was inappropriate for him to talk to her when he was with a patient. It was certainly uncomfortable for Nan.

He heard a noise in the waiting room and opened the door, hoping that Corey was there. She wasn’t. What was there was a very large turtle. A note was taped to its shell. It read: “Hi, my name is NOMOHARDTIME. I can wait as long as you like.” Shit.

The address Lester had given her was on Federal Avenue. It was a three-story gray house with white trim and a white wrap-around porch. There was a black iron fence in front of a four-foot hedge separating the house from the street. At the gate there was an intercom. Corey wondered how Billy had ever come to be at such a fancy old home. On a school day, no less. Still, she was sure she would find him here. Lester had said she would.

The western edge of Volunteer Park backed up against the big houses on Federal. She went into the park, climbed a chain link fence, and dropped down into the landscaped backyard. There was a statue with water pouring out of its mouth into a pond with big stones, like this was Italy or France. She knew this yard. Yeah, Lester’s dope-smoking photos. She crept to the back of the house, and looked through the kitchen window. Someone had left a plate in the sink. There were small daylight windows into the basement. She knelt and cupped her hands together to see inside. There he was, half-naked, asleep on an oversized couch amid soda cans, pizza boxes, and clothes strewn on the carpeted rec room floor.

The window was cracked open an inch or two, and Corey was through it in seconds. Inside, she shook Billy’s bare arm. He raised his hands in front of his face: a frightened, self-protective gesture. When she let go, he rubbed his eyes.

“Why are you here?”

“We have to talk. Now.”

He sat up. “I don’t want to talk. I want you to leave me alone. Okay? I’m doing good. I don’t want your trouble.”

“You’re already in it. Nothing I can do. I’m leaving tonight. On the boat. If I don’t, they’ll send me back to jail. And, even worse, they’ll send you to jail.” She threw the pictures in his lap. “What are you thinking? What are you doing?”

Billy looked at the pictures, one by one. “Who did this?”

“The same man who put me in jail, who do you think? For christsakes, who do you think is supplying your weed?”

“An older kid, at the foster house.”

She shook her head. “He works for these people. They tell him what to do. They set you up. Do you see that?”

Billy fingered the pictures. “Oh man. Shit…it’s because of you, isn’t it?”

“Yes—” And that would haunt her. But right now it wasn’t the point. “Billy, you’re their best way at me, like it or not. So you have to be smart about this. What are you doing? Selling dope to rich kids? Staying at their houses?”

“You can lighten up, you know. Their houses are better than any other place I can hang out.”

“I’m sorry. I really am, but right now we don’t have time to work this out. Here’s the deal. I’m going to get set up in Canada. You have to come join me in a month.”

“And if I don’t?”

“It’s not up to you.” She pointed at the pictures. They still scared her. “Billy, they know you’re here. They gave me this address. These pictures could send you back to juvie, or worse. Don’t make it any easier for them. What you have to do is go back to the foster home, work it out with Sally. I’ll call you every night. Where’s the cell phone?”

Billy took it from a pocket in his Chargers jacket, lying on the floor.

She waited until she had his eyes. Their problems were real. “Turn it on, okay?”

He did. “I don’t want to leave here. Things are finally good for me. There’s a girl I like—”

“And you’re running away from your foster care, and you’re not showing up at school, and you’re dealing dope, and you’re ignoring messages from your mom.” Corey sat beside him. “I’m going to fix this. I don’t know how. But I’m going to fix it.” She let that sink in. “For now you have to stay clean for a month. You can still see your friends, but your dope-dealing days are over. Those pictures are a warning. These people can hurt you. Please be careful.” She massaged his neck. He moved away. “Let’s call Sally.”

“I’ll clean up. No drugs. I’ll even listen to Sally. But I’m not moving to Canada. Unh-unh. I don’t even want to leave Seattle.”

“Billy, this is like getting cancer. I don’t expect you to want any part of it.” She didn’t expect him to understand it either, a thing so perverse and humiliating. Corey closed her eyes, rubbed the back of her own neck. “There’s no choice—you’re going.”

He turned away, faced the back of the couch.

She tried to imagine how it would feel to start over in Canada at fifteen, on the run. Nothing about it felt good.

Billy spoke to the back of the couch. “Jesus, mom. Why is this happening? Why? I mean, can’t we do anything?”

“I don’t know why it’s happening now. And believe me, I don’t know what else we can do.” She hated her answer. Her face was drawn. “Your dad died because he underestimated what this man was capable of.”

He turned around. “I don’t need to know who he is, I understand that. But I need something…I dunno…something.” He sat up. “Like why he hates us. Can you tell me that?”

“I can tell you what I think. A lot of it comes from your dad.”

He nodded. “Okay.”

“It’s hard to explain. I thought about it a lot, though, at night in prison, when I couldn’t sleep.” She took a beat, aware that her explanation was important to him. “I know this is kind of round about, but…to start, I want you to imagine a very, very smart man. The thing is, he has no conscience. The way your dad put it—‘a part’s missing’. And he’s totally, totally ambitious. Unstoppable. Picture some kind of rapidly evolving creature—a predator—a predator who can be one thing while he’s doing another without anyone ever knowing it.”

“That’s too weird.”

“Yes, I know” She pressed thumb and forefinger to the bridge of her nose. “But please hear me out.” She lowered her hand. “You can’t understand this guy in any of the normal ways. The next piece—and this is important—this man can fool anyone. On the surface he’s charming, smart, fair, sincere…you can’t imagine. And in some ways he is that person. But what you have to remember—always—is that when he smiles, even when he cries, he’s on task, after something. He’s a savage predator with a great big brain.”

Billy’s face was grim. “Like psycho?”

“Not exactly. He knows what’s real. The thing is that no one knows what’s real about him. He’s very, very careful, what you’d call a control freak. I think that if you cross him, or even worry him, he hunts you down quietly…patiently.”

“Which is why he has these pictures.” He pushed them off the couch. “And knows all about me.”

“I think so, yes.”

“But why us?”

“Your dad figured out something he had done years ago. He tied this guy to a murdered Russian gangster, a gangster who had stolen millions of state-owned Russian rough diamonds. Your dad told me the bare bones of the story. To make a long story short, the same guy that’s after us, he got away with millions in rough diamonds, and he got away with murder.” She watched Billy stewing. She didn’t blame him. “That’s how he got his start, and now people believe he’s this big upstanding success. He sees me as his weakness, his Achilles heel. And it makes him crazy. He can’t stand that I know what he did, what he really is. He just can’t stand it.”

“Why didn’t he kill you too?”

“He tried, in prison. I think that was part of his plan all along. Think how carefully he orchestrated everything that happened. He made it look like your dad disappeared with stolen drug money, and I was left holding the bag on a drug deal gone bad. That elaborate smoke screen doesn’t work if I’m dead. No, he waited until I was in prison…waited until no one would connect my death with your dad’s so-called disappearance. Only the murder-for-hire didn’t work, and then I threatened to expose him if anything else happened to you or to me. I wrote down what little I knew, what I suspected, and he backed off. Until I got out, it was a stand off. Now, I don’t know, something changed and I don’t even know why. I don’t…” Her voice trailed off.

Billy ran both hands through his long hair. “Can we go to the police?”

“With what? We have no evidence. None. Without your dad, we can’t tie him to anything. And remember, he’s this big shot. They’d believe him when he said I was just a crazy ex-con.” She touched his arm. More than anything Corey wanted to be a mother who solved problems for her son. Instead, she kept causing them…awful problems that no fifteen year old should ever have to face…problems that left her teenaged son helpless and unable to move forward with his life…and she had saved the worst for last. “And if I ever did that, he’d find some way to hurt you.”

Abe was on hold for Dick Jensen.

“Jensen,” a raspy voice said.

“Mr. Jensen. This is Dr. Abe Stein. You called about one of your supervisees, Corey Logan.”

“Yeah. You doing the eval?”

“I am.”

“So you know, she already missed a meeting with me,” Jensen said. “She just didn’t show.”

“That doesn’t sound like Corey,” Abe reflected. “She’s been punctual whenever we’ve had a meeting.”

“Doctor, I found a false ID in her vehicle. I got a witness that swears she left the jurisdiction. I wouldn’t be surprised…she just takes off.”

“Why would she do that? She wants her boy back.”

“Why? Who cares why?” Jensen asked, impatient. “Prisons are full of people who made bad decisions.”

What? “She says she was framed. She says she’s being set up again.”

“Doc, how long you been working with felons?”

“Six, seven years.”

“I been doing it more than twenty. Why is it I never get a guilty one?”

“I think you should give her a chance,” Abe persisted. “She’s a good mother and she wants her son back. She’s motivated—”

“She stabbed someone inside with a pencil.”

“Self-defense.”

“Think about this,” Jensen said, flat. “It’s my nuts if she pencils you.”

“You’re wrong about this—” He heard a click. Dick Jensen was gone.

Abe dialed Corey’s cell phone. He left a message to call, anytime.

The Bremerton ferry pushed past the southern shore of Bainbridge Island, and the Jenny Ann rocked on its strong, rolling wake. Corey hardly noticed. She was below, stowing whatever she couldn’t leave behind. Sally had come through. She had spoken to the foster mother at Billy’s group home and organized it so that he could go back. Corey thought he would keep his cell phone on. At least she had gotten through to him; he understood that their trouble was real. Billy was, she reminded herself, a Logan, and Logans knew when to hunker down.

She would head north to the San Juan Islands, then on to the Gulf Islands in Canada. On the trip, she would have time to think—think about what to do, where to go, what to tell Billy. She had promised him that she would make things work for him. She would keep her promise, though she didn’t know yet how she would do that. It would be hard to come back. Ever. If she left the country, she would be in violation of the terms of her probation. She looked for the pair of eagles that nested behind her cabin. She found the male, perched atop a fir tree overseeing their nest. Corey watched it, aware that the life she had always hoped for was fading away.

She checked her cell phone for messages, hoping for a message from Billy or Sally. No, there were two messages, though, both from the disappointing Dr. Stein. She called him back, and got his answering service, of course. “This is Corey Logan returning his calls…yes…tell him I said goodbye. I’m leaving town…yeah, tell him turtles like frozen beef hearts, the mini cubes.”

Fifteen minutes later she was cruising between the fish farms, north, past Fort Ward. She would push on tonight until she was tired, not so wound up anyway. Tomorrow, she would cross the Strait of Juan de Fuca on her way to Canada. Corey opened a wheelhouse window. She wanted to feel the breeze on her face. The sea breeze and the smells of Puget Sound were things she could count on.

Her cell phone rang. She checked the incoming number, Dr. Abe Stein. She had nothing left to say. Corey let it ring.