Pied Piper

“This is bullshit.”

“We’ve got a guy who slipped in his tub and ate his teeth.”

“Probably didn’t use one of those rubber mats, you know?” Raymond looked to be in his mid-twenties. He was thirty-nine. In another era he would have been called a dandy. He dressed sharp and greased back his hair into a ducktail so that his chocolate-brown eyes appeared to come right out of his face like a pair of dark olives. His teeth were too white to be real, and his smile approached an icy glee that warned of a stiletto or a piece hidden somewhere on his person. His pants were so tight that Boldt took them as explanation of the man’s unusually constricted voice.

“You and I are supposed to have a warm rapport, Raymond.” Ray-moan. “A nice fuzzy relationship free of surprises for either of us.” Boldt allowed the comment to hang in the thick air. “Now I’ve got to wonder if I can still trust you, because if I can’t, your name comes out of my book, and the cash stops coming your way. We get off the bus at the next corner. Know what I mean?”

“Wait one damn minute,” Raymond protested. “What the hell you talking about?”

“The dead guy in the bathtub went by the name of Andy Anderson.” Boldt watched for a response and won it.

“Never heard of him.” Raymond knew to stay clear of a dead body.

“You called him three times in the past ten days and you never heard of him? I’m the one that never heard about him, and I’m not happy about that. Now he’s in the fridge downtown wearing nothing but a string around his big toe, and my Homicide friends come and tell me you two were chummy right before he slipped.”

“Hey, man, this the first I heard about him going down, swear to God.”

“Way they’re thinking-my friends in Homicide-maybe someone put a bar of soap under his feet, kind of helped things along. You know?”

“Don’t look at me, man.”

“I’m not looking, Raymond, but I am listening. I’m the guy keeping Homicide off your case for the time being.”

“I’m sure.”

“It’s me or them. Your choice. Personally, I’d like to keep you as a source-we work well-but if you surface because of this, then our relationship’s over.”

It was warm in the small room, and Raymond’s face shined with perspiration. He wouldn’t like losing the occasional payoff. Whatever else Raymond did for money he managed to keep his name off the pink sheets, which made him all right with Boldt. “He’s a pussy chaser,” Raymond said, laconically. “A guy gets into some pussy he shouldn’t and Anderson’s the one rigging the motel room for Panavision and Dolby. Know what I mean? A little private screening for the wife. He’s been in here a couple times asking questions. The girls here … some do more than dance. He pays well. We had a little business from time to time. No big deal.”

“That’s not answering my question.”

The man grimaced. Sources did not like discussing their deals. Boldt understood this. He said, “Make an exception, Raymond. The man is dead.”

“Yeah. But something got him that way,” he said cautiously. “That shit gets contagious and I be a fucked-up dude.”

“Work with me.” Boldt zeroed in on the man’s eyes and locked up good and tight. He was stoned or high on something. Boldt repeated, “Work with me.”

“Anderson says the Fremont neighborhood gonna get hit. Some heavy lifting, you know? It’s too big an area to watch by himself-alone, he says-and that any news about such an activity would be appreciated. So I put out the word. You understand. And the only shit I hear about is some white dude about to get fried for using the wrong house for surveillance. Two to five o’clock in the morning some chemists are cooking meth in the basement of this vacant house, see? Three o’clock in the afternoon along comes this white boy who looks like he’s snuffing termites. But no he ain’t. He goes inside for a little hide-and-peek. Up on the second story. The chemists put it out on the street wanting to know if this is heat or just some stupid jackass. Not good business to whack heat. Which is how come my man hears about it, and how come I hear about it after him.”

“And you told Anderson.”

“Figured it might play. Could be his boy, you know? Watching for a house to hit.”

“Did Anderson bite?”

“You know the drill. Paid me light until he checked it out. More on the back side if it proves good.” He eyed Boldt.

“Did it prove out?” Had Anderson run smack into the Pied Piper scouting his kidnaps?

“He was gonna check it out. Get back to me.”

“Sure he was.”

“Damn right. And now you telling me he’s tits up! Fucking guy has a fifty belongs to me. This be bullshit.”

“Address of the vacant house?” Boldt asked. It was quintessential Raymond, just weird enough to ring of truth.

A huge grin overcame the man’s face, reminding Boldt of the grille of a ’47 Chrysler New Yorker. “I’m smelling that fifty,” Raymond chortled.

If the drug lab existed and they busted it, they would have probable cause to turn the house upside down and shake. If something fell out pertinent to the Pied Piper then it would later be admissible in court. The Shotzes’ baby sitter had mentioned an exterminator, as had Sherry Daech. The connection was enough to get a judge behind a warrant.

It was the first place Boldt started.

Busting a drug lab was second in risk only to defusing a known bomb. The “cookers” were typically heavily armed and sitting on a powder keg of volatile chemicals. The raid had to be sanctioned by Narcotics for warrants. Boldt processed it accordingly and got lucky: Narcotics had been after the roving lab for weeks. With the word of a reliable snitch behind it, authorization came down quickly. Behind it was the full force of Special Operations, and its elite Emergency Response Team-with an abundance of firepower and expertise.

By 11:45 P.M. all necessary warrants had been walked through the system and the first of three neighboring families was quietly evacuated from its home adjacent to the suspected lab. Under instruction by telephone, the parents and their child simply drove out of their garage and were met downtown by a woman from City Services who housed them in the Westin. At 12:20 A.M., as the second of three surveillance units was established and the second home evacuated, a special listening device was sequestered onto one of four basement windows (all of which had been painted black from the inside), and it was established that the structure was empty. Working on a combination of collected information, the third surveillance unit was in place by 12:50, believed to be ahead of the arrival of the cookers.

Combat units followed.

The street cleaner that had broken down across from the target structure was receiving mechanical assistance from three undercover Narco detectives.

The commercial Dumpster left on the street in front of the evacuated neighbor’s house contained two ERT sharpshooters. With slits cut by acetylene torch, the Dumpster was one of SPD’s cheapest and most easily disguised fortresses and had been dubbed the Trojan Horse.

One street to the south of the target residence was parked a tractor trailer-an Allied moving van-containing eight Special Ops officers, a six-foot battering ram and enough armament to start and finish a small war.

In the evacuated homes to either side, four ERT officers, all medal-winning sharpshooters, sat behind darkened windows at the ready, communications devices hissing in their ears.

Mulwright, his field dispatcher and a lieutenant of Narcotics manned the department’s Mobile Command Vehicle, a confiscated steam-cleaning van, parked with a view of the vacant house.

Boldt technically was not involved, even though he had helped plan the operation. He waited impatiently in his car along with SID’s Bernie Lofgrin, a handheld radio listening in on a Special Ops frequency.

There was no idle chatter.