First Avenue (41 page)

Somberly the deep-throated engines of the two police boats murmured a low cadence as they pulled away from their dock on Lake Union.
Katherine
and
Sam
were in the first boat with the Harbor sergeant and two officers.
Markowitz
was in the second with the rest of the Harbor crew. A third, smaller boat, which usually patrolled
Lake Washington
, remained tied up at the Harbor dock. The Harbor sergeant had locked the office doors and left no one behind.

When
Sam
had called an hour earlier, it was not the type of call
Katherine
had been expecting. A drug raid, tonight,
Pierre
and
Captain
Russell
. Of course she wanted to come, but what about
Maria
? “
Maria
will be all right,” he said, thinking he knew what she would say. “No one knows she’s there.” He didn’t have a clue what she wanted to say.

Katherine explained to the girl as calmly and nonchalantly as she could that it would be a little longer before she could talk to her father.
Maria
seemed relieved rather than disappointed.
Katherine
found a blanket for her to use on the couch, opened the refrigerator and pointed out the food, and turned the television on to an old movie. She decided that everything else would be up to
Sam
and
Maria
.

Katherine looked at her watch as they cruised into the locks that connected the fresh water of
Lake
Union
with the salt water of
Puget Sound
. It was almost
nine o’clock
. The latest rain squall had stopped, and she opened the cabin door and walked out on the rear deck. It was not long before
Sam
joined her. She felt strange to see him in a way that he did not yet understand. He would soon understand.

“I’ve seen boats lined up twenty deep to get through here,”
Sam
said. “Doesn’t seem to be a problem tonight.”

“No.”

“We’d go to the head of the line anyway. I get to do that with my kayak, too.”

“Do you think they’ll actually do this tonight?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I hope so. At least that’s what I think I hope.”

“They’re not very happy you haven’t told them what’s going on.”

“You mean the Harbor guys? They’ll be all right. They know the routine. They’ve all been on raids before.”

“You seem to know most of them.”

“Some of these guys are in Harbor to lie low for a while. You shoot somebody, you go to Harbor.”

“You mean they’re here because they shot somebody?”

“No. Not all of them anyway.
Turner
was in the paper about a year ago. Did you read about him?”

“No.”

“A few too many complaints about his martial arts talents—judo, or jujitsu, or something like that.”

“Not much judo you can do out here,”
Katherine
said as the boat edged slowly forward into the locks.

It was
Sam
’s idea to redock at
Jefferson Street
. It was close to the Panamanian ship, but still out of sight. None of the Harbor crew was aware of its virtues. The two boats pulled in carefully together and tied up at the dock. All hands crowded into the cabin of
Harbor 1
. Markowitz stood in the doorway.

“Gentlemen and lady,”
Markowitz
began as though he were in front of an academy class teaching Homicide Investigations, “it’s possible that a drug deal is going to go down tonight. We have an informant who told us that a substantial quantity of heroin has been smuggled onto a ship called the
De la Cruz
. She’s anchored off Pier 43. Wright and I scouted her out from
Harbor
Island. We think the heroin will be transferred to a small boat around midnight.

“Wright and Murphy stumbled across this mess investigating a homicide, and that’s how I got involved. Some of these people let a little baby starve to death in a hotel on
First Avenue
. We think they probably killed the mother, too. It all ties together with this drug deal. As you can see, we’ve kept this out of normal channels. There’s a reason for that. We think some of the bad guys might be cops.”

A hiss of profanity rose above the noise of the idling engine like escaping steam.

“How sure of this are you?” the sergeant asked.

“We’re not sure of anything. We’re not sure that heroin is on the
De la Cruz
; we’re not sure that even if it is, the deal will happen; we’re not sure that if the deal happens, we can get close enough to do anything about it. And we’re not giving out any names until we are sure.”

Again there was silence as
Markowitz
let the sailors drag their reluctant minds up to the next level. Suddenly a ferry horn shrieked in the terminal next to them, and everyone, in varying degrees and attitudes, jumped. Shamefaced, each looked around to see how the others had reacted.

“
Christ
almighty,” the sergeant said in his dry voice, “must be some new guy on the horn.”

“I’d like to grab him by the horn, all right,”
Turner
said.

For a few moments they forgot the
De la Cruz
and all its uncertainties as they laughed at themselves and each other. It was not long, however, before the wake from the departing ferry made its way through the swells and rocked their boat so that the side bumpers rubbed against the dock and resonated a complaint.

“So what do you have in mind here,
Markowitz
?” the sergeant asked.

“Once they transfer the dope to the small boat, they’re supposed to meet up with the buyers out in
Elliott
Bay
. We don’t know where, but somewhere in deep water. That’s where we want to surprise them.”

“How do we do that?” the sergeant asked.

“We thought with the weather as lousy as it is, we might be able to sneak up on them. If we run without lights, we could follow them without being seen until they meet. Then we’ll move in as quietly as possible. We think there will only be four or five suspects, and they’ll most likely be inside the cabin. They won’t stand outside with the money and dope in this weather.”

“We can follow them all right, and we don’t have to be very close. Radar,” the sergeant said and pointed to the oscillating screen above their heads. “But they’ve probably got it too, and they might be real curious when we start tagging along.”

Markowitz looked at
Sam
and then
Katherine
. Their plan seemed to be sinking underwater before they even started, and their silence was a sure sign that none of them had a life raft nearby.

“What about the dinghy?”
Turner
asked the Harbor crew. His eyes did not include the three who had already shown their incompetence. “If we could get close enough without spooking them, we could drop it over the side with a couple of guys in it and sneak up on them.”

“Do you think they’ll just give up when they see the flag?” the sergeant asked, now questioning Turner’s competency.

“I wasn’t thinking about showing any flag,” Turner said. His gruff voice rumbled out of the huge mustache that all but hid his mouth.

“You’d probably swamp before you got out a hundred yards. There are some pretty big swells out there. Besides, how are you going to sneak up on anybody with that whiny little motor? Paddle?”

“We could, I guess, when we got close enough.”
Turner
struggled to hang on to his idea.

“What about a kayak?”
Sam
asked.

It was quiet as the sergeant turned his incredulous expression toward
Sam
. “What about it?” the sergeant asked.

“I have one here.”
Sam
pointed out the cabin window. “I come to work in it every day. I’ve been in water like this.”

“Are you crazy?” the sergeant asked.

“Sometimes.”

“You got it here?”
Turner
asked.

“That’s right. I used it this morning. I use it every morning. It can handle this kind of water.”

“How many people can get in it?”
Turner
asked. He was the only one of the Harbor crew who showed any interest in
Sam
’s idea.

“It’s made for one person, but the rear compartment is big enough to carry another man.”

“Doesn’t matter if we can’t get close enough to use it,” the sergeant reminded them. “You guys seem to forget that we’re going to show up on their screen. We can’t hide.”

“What if they think we’re tugboats?”
Johnson
asked. He was the pilot on
Harbor 1
and had been quiet until then. “We hear those guys on the marine radio all the time. We know how they talk. Maybe the bad guys can see a little blip on the radar, but they can’t actually see us. If we act like tugboats and talk like tugboats, how are they going to know the difference?”

“What if they don’t go where tugboats go?” the sergeant asked.

“
Markowitz
said they want deep water. That’s where they go.”

Another believer. The tide was changing,
Katherine
thought.

“I always wanted to ride on a tugboat,”
Sam
said. “It looks so easy just plodding along.”

“This won’t be easy,” the sergeant said.

“But it might work,”
Markowitz
concluded. “It might just work. I’ll go with Wright in the kayak.”

“No offense here,
Markowitz
,”
Turner
said, “but I think I’m in better shape to go along with Wright. You’re looking a little green, by the way.”

Everyone looked at
Markowitz
, and it was true. He did look green, but then they all looked green from the green light of the instruments and the circling image on the radar screen.

“He’s right,
Fred
,”
Sam
said.

“Fine with me,”
Markowitz
said curtly.

“We’ll call
Harbor 1
Gloria, and
Harbor 2
. . .” Sam paused as names ran through his head.

“We’ll call
Harbor 2
Olivia,” Katherine said. “That was the baby’s name.”

“The
Gloria Rose
and the
Olivia Rose
,” Johnson said. “They’ve got to have the same last name.”

“What do we call
Pierre
’s boat?”
Markowitz
asked.

“How about the
Sinking Donut
?” Turner said.

“How about the
Nippon Blue
?” Johnson said. “I’ve heard that name before.”

Johnson’s suggestion was chosen over Turner’s.

“You think maybe we should get some more help?” asked an officer from
Harbor 2
named Hendricksen. Hendricksen was the tallest of them and so used to stooping in the boat that he stooped even when there was room to stand tall.

“We considered that,” Markowitz said, “but we don’t want any more people in on this than absolutely necessary, and right now, nobody off this boat—not even our dear chief—has a clue what we’re going to do.”

“Don’t want another
Morley
, either,”
Turner
said, his voice throwing the word out like gravel on pavement.

Morley was a name that had special meaning in their small society—a cop killed by other cops in a raid gone bad. Too many cops shooting in too small a space. Everyone agreed that they didn’t want another
Morley
.

They refined the plan in bits and pieces as one officer or another offered a suggestion or raised a point that required a change.

“Anything else?”
Markowitz
asked.

Nobody had anything more to offer, at least not that he or she was willing to say.

“Okay then,”
Markowitz
said. “When Wright or Turner gives the signal, we’ll come in with lights, sirens, loudspeakers, everything we got. Be ready for anything, but if there’s any shooting, make damn sure you know what you’re shooting at.”