Blue Molly (Danny Logan Mystery #5) (3 page)

After leaving the lovely Officer Morrison, I’d had my picture taken and been fingerprinted. I’d been given access to a telephone, so I called my partner Antoinette “Toni” Blair and asked her to come rescue me. When she said “from where,” I had no choice but to fess up and admit I was in jail. She didn’t sound too pleased; this was not good. Besides being my number-one business associate, Toni Blair was also my roommate and if all went well, she was destined to be much more. If there’s such a thing as soul mates, she’s mine. For this and several other reasons, it’s not okay to have her pissed at me.

I was about to start developing a Toni strategy when I saw two guards accompanying Doc walk toward my cell. They slid the cell door open and Doc stepped through. The guard removed Doc’s cuffs and closed the door. Joaquin Kiahtel—Doc—is my oldest friend in the world not counting the guys I knew in school, who I guess are more what you’d call “distant” friends, and also not counting the guys I served with in the infantry before I was an army cop. Those guys hold a special place, but I have to admit that I don’t keep in as close contact as I should. I met Doc when I was at Fort Lewis. I helped him through a couple of rough patches when we were both still enlisted, and we’ve been friends ever since. After Toni, he was the next person I hired when I formed Logan Private Investigations in 2008. Doc’s Native American—a full-blooded member of the Mescalero-Chiricahua Apache tribe in New Mexico. Officially, he’s our company’s head of security, a job for which he has formidable skills.

I looked up at him from the wooden bench. “Dude.”

He surveyed the small cell, then nodded. “Dude.” He wrinkled his nose. “Smells like FAN in here.” FAN is a particularly colorful military acronym used to describe the smell that lingers around the places where GIs bunk.

I chuckled. “No shit. Don’t breathe through your mouth.”

He nodded.

“You call Pri?” I asked. Dr. Prita Dekhlikiseh is Doc’s girlfriend.

“She was with a patient. I left a message for her to call Toni’s cell. I figured you’d call her.” I nodded. Pri is a trauma physician at Harborview Medical Center. Like Doc, she’s also Apache, although she’s from a western tribe: the San Carlos Apache in Arizona. She and Doc met when he got his head bashed on one of our cases. They’ve been inseparable since then.

“Good. They’ll get things arranged—get us out of here.”

A minute later, the guards reappeared, this time escorting the man we’d defended in the bar. He was led in after his cuffs were removed. His left eye was swollen about halfway shut and was starting to turn black-and-blue. The guards slid the door closed behind him.

“Welcome to the party,” I said. “That’s a first-class shiner you’ve got going there.”

He looked around the cell before turning to me. “A day of firsts.”

I smiled. “How’s that?”

“First . . . shiner, as you put it. First bar fight—first fight of any type for that matter. First time arrested.”

I stood up and held out my hand. “Well, that being the case, let me congratulate you. You went three for three today.”

“Excellent,” he said, smiling. “Now I can cross ’em off my bucket list.”

I nodded. “Seriously—you did a helluva job. For your first fight, you were no pushover. I’m Danny Logan. This guy here is my buddy Doc Kiahtel.”

He shook my hand, then Doc’s, as he introduced himself. “Mike Lyon.” Mike was medium height, just a little stocky, midfifties. He had a friendly demeanor. He sat down beside us, then looked around and made a nasty face. “Man, it smells horrible in here.”

I nodded. “It sure does. Take short breaths. You’ll get used to it.”

“Take your word for it.” He looked at me, then at Doc. “Guys,” he said, “I owe you two a huge thanks. You saved our butts back there.”

“No problem. We seem to attract trouble.”

“Speak for yourself,” Doc said.

“Especially him.” I smiled and nodded to Doc. He gave me a small grin. We’d been in tough fixes together before.

“Are you guys in law enforcement somehow?” Mike asked. “I mean, the way you handled yourselves in there, it was pretty impressive.”

I nodded. “Sort of—used to be, anyway. We’re both ex-military, now private investigators.”

“Hmm,” he said. He thought for a second, then added, “Well, I’m really sorry you got arrested in the process of helping my wife and me. Hopefully, it won’t cause you any long-term troubles.”

I shrugged. “We’ll be fine. Speaking of your wife, what happened to her? She get busted, too?”

He shook his head. “She kind of started the whole thing, but she never did any of the actual fighting, so they let her go.”

“She started it?”

He smiled. “Yeah. Can you believe that? Those idiots started saying things and, at first, we ignored them. Finally, though, Sylvia got mad.” He chuckled. “I guess her boiling point’s a little lower than mine. Anyway, she yelled something at ’em, and then one of ’em jumped up and started yelling back. Then I had to jump up, you guys came over, and the rest is history. Like I said, a day of firsts.” He paused, then said, “Speaking of firsts, I sure hope she’s able to bail me out of here soon.”

“Let’s hope,” I said. “Who were those guys, anyway?”

“Bunch of local thugs. Russian immigrants, I think. We’ve seen them before hanging out at Occidental Park, right by our shop. We own the Lyon Building on the corner of Main and Occidental in Pioneer Square, on the Occidental Mall and across from the park. The building’s been in my family since it was new back in 1890.”

“Long time.”

“Yeah, it sure is.”

“So what’d they want? The Russians?”

He paused and then he said, “I wouldn’t normally just blurt out my problems to a stranger, but—”

I smiled. “Go ahead. We seem to have a few minutes here.”

“True.” He collected his thoughts for a few seconds, then he started. “So my wife runs the Sylvia Lyon Gallery right there on the corner of our building. She’s what you might call our anchor tenant. About four months ago—I think it was just before Halloween—this sharp-looking lawyer stopped by and said he had an anonymous client who was interested in buying our building—gave us a written offer, even. And it was a good offer at that, close to my idea of market value. But I explained the history of the building, told him how it got rebuilt after the big fire back in 1889, and said we weren’t interested in selling. He was nice. He thanked us and left, and I thought that was it. Then, not long afterward, things started happening.”

“What kind of things?”

“Little things, at least at first. For instance, we’ve never had taggers in our area, at least nothing serious, but they started coming around right after we said weren’t interested in selling. It’s still going on, and whoever’s doing it is persistent. They spray-paint obscenities on the walls, doors, windows, you name it. Next day, I get it cleaned up. A few days later, they’re back. Then I get it cleaned up again. And so on.”

“Widespread or just your building?” I asked.

“That’s the hell of it. It was just us. Then, after that, we started seeing broken glass on the sidewalk. I’d get it cleaned up, then there’s more. And after that, the trash started getting knocked over regularly. Not just a little trash can, mind you, but the whole friggin’ Dumpster knocked right on its side.”

“Any idea who’s doing it?”

He nodded. “Hell, yeah. It’s the same Russian thugs you met this afternoon.”

“You sure about that?”

“No question. There’ve been run-ins with our tenants.”

I shrugged. “Sounds like you need to call the police, then.”

“We did. They came out. They looked around, took some pictures of the graffiti on the wall. Filled out a report. But in the end, they said it was most likely kids, said kids were causing these kinds of problems all over town. I thought this was a bullshit excuse—pardon my language—because if it was kids, how come ours was the only building in the area that was getting hit? We never even
see
any kids around, unless you count those across the street in the park—and most of them are in strollers, for Christ’s sake. So then the police said maybe the other buildings have better security. This is complete BS. Then, I don’t know, maybe a month or so after that started, the same lawyer came by again. He raised his offer twenty percent. Twenty percent! Now he’s quite a bit higher than what I thought the building was worth. But still, I can’t sell the building for any price.” He shrugged. “It just wouldn’t be right. So we gave him the same answer.”

“So then, in December, we started getting complaints from our tenants about being hassled by the Russians directly. They were doing things like blocking their entries, hanging out in big groups in front of their stores, intimidating their customers. Last month right after New Year’s, three of our tenants said they’d had a terrible Christmas season and were going to close. We had no choice but to let them off for the remainder of their leases because their complaints were legit. So now, counting the gallery, there are only four tenants left on the ground floor. We have three upstairs floors plus a basement, but the upstairs hasn’t had a tenant for I don’t know . . . decades, and we rent the basements at a discount to the tenants above them on the ground floor, but only about half want ’em. Fortunately, the building’s free and clear and we don’t need the upstairs or the basements to make it, but that said, with an old building like ours, maintenance alone is a killer, not to mention utilities and property taxes, and it’s hard to make ends meet. We need to keep the ground floor full. As things are now, we’re writing checks every month.”

I shrugged again. “So call the police back. Tell them what’s going on.”

He shook his head. “We did. We called a bunch of times. They said unless they could actually catch someone harassing us or vandalizing the building, they wouldn’t have enough evidence to arrest anyone. We’d call when one of our tenants complained, but the guys would be gone by the time the police showed up. Bottom line is the police haven’t been able to catch anybody. So then at the end of last month, the lawyer comes for the third time. Raised his offer another ten percent. Said it was his final offer.”

“I said, ‘Good. Now you can leave us alone.’” Mike shook his head. “But it didn’t work—none of the harassment stopped. I’ll tell you, we’re about at our wit’s end.”

I took a deep breath. “And you didn’t have any trouble before the lawyer showed up in October? No tagging, no vandalism, nothing like that?”

He shook his head “Nothing. Ever. And that’s why we don’t think it’s just unrelated random acts of stupidity. We believe that all this crap and the guys doing it are related to the offer. It’s damn sure not because the other buildings have better security.”

I nodded. “You think they’re trying to force you out.”

“Yeah, we do. It’s gotten so bad that, lately, they’ve started following us. Back and forth to our car, to the bakery, even to lunch today at Merchants. They don’t even try to hide. Course they’ve never actually
done
anything to us until today. But if they’re going to go from tagging to vandalism to harassment to attacking us—and if the police aren’t going to be able to help, well, we can’t stand up to that. Honestly, we’re afraid of them. We’ve got a young girl who’s an employee and she’s scared, too. She’s good, and we don’t want to lose her.”

“Mike,” I said, “I hate to have to tell you this, but that’s all the more reason to call the police again. I might know someone around here you can talk to, maybe get a more sympathetic ear.”

He smiled. “I’m afraid I’m starting to wear out my welcome.” He was quiet for a moment, then he said, “Is this the kind of thing your company works on?”

“Let me think for a second.” I leaned back against the cell wall and considered Mike’s predicament. Although it was different from our normal assignments, a few ideas ran through my head: video surveillance, investigation into the bidder, that sort of thing. In my business, one thing has a way of leading to another. It’s possible that we might be able to uncover something that might help. A minute later, I leaned forward and nodded slowly. “Perhaps. There might be something we can do to help out. But I’d need to run it past our group. Besides the two of us here, there are three more. Let me talk to them and see what they think.”

He nodded. “That’d be fantastic.”

* * * *

After what seemed like forever but in actuality was only a couple hours later, the guards walked up and slid open the door. One had a clipboard that he referred to. “Logan,” he called out. He looked at me. “Mike Tyson . . . I mean Lyon,” he looked up at Mike and laughed at his own joke. No one else did, so he looked back at his clipboard. “Key . . . Keyah . . . Kye . . .” He gave up and looked at Doc. “You.” He motioned to all of us. “All three of you—you’re out of here. Let’s go.”

They led us back through the double doors into the waiting room. Sylvia Lyon, whom I recognized from the bar, was there for Mike. Pri was there for Doc. Our company lawyer, J. David O’Farrell, was there. But I didn’t see Toni. Pri saw me looking, and she nodded toward the doors, just as a group of three police officers walked through, laughing and smiling. Toni was in the center of the group, laughing along with them, her deep-blue eyes sparkling. She saw me and stopped.

“Aw! There he is—my very own jailbird.” She turned to the officers accompanying her. “Gentlemen, would you excuse me?” They practically fell over themselves nodding. She turned back to me and hit me with a dazzling smile as she slowly walked toward me. Maybe it was because I’d basically had a shitty day, maybe I was just really happy to be free, but she was even more stunning than usual in her tight blue jeans and Seahawks jacket. The officers standing behind her watched her move. They were mesmerized and, frankly, so was I. Her shiny black hair was medium length with bangs, framing her blue eyes and painted lips. She wore big hoop earrings and a sparkling nose stud. As she drew near, she beckoned me over with a finger, and my legs started moving toward her before my brain even issued a conscious command. I reached her, and she wrapped her arms around me and gave me a terrific hug with no holding back. Toni’s a big, strong girl and when she gets into it, she can really lay a hug on with no mistake as to intent. I love it. I took a deep breath, intoxicated by the smell of her hair, her makeup, just—her. I was also relieved she didn’t seem pissed on account of having to bail me out.