talk, partly because she wouldn't join us in the sickout. Basically, Sarge, she threw me out. Next time I see her she's got her head screwed down to that bed.'
'I.I.?' Boldt asked.
'It might explain why she wouldn't discuss whatever it was,' LaMoia suggested. The unit operated under strict secrecy acts. The explanation satisfied Boldt. LaMoia added, 'Let me sniff out Chapman. You chat up Maria about that case. With me involved, it would only get her pissed off again. Hispanics and temper, Sarge! I'm telling you!'
'The call tree.'
'I'll think about it.'
'Thanks again for the call,' Boldt repeated. 'I would have missed that crime scene.'
'What are you talking about, Sarge?'
'The call. Putting me on to the assault.'
'The only call I made was from the bar,' LaMoia said.
'Earlier?' Boldt asked.
LaMoia shook his head. 'Wasn't me.'
Boldt's gut twisted. Who had wanted him to see two badly beaten officers? And much more important: Why? So he could help out with the investigation, or as a warning of how close he had come to incurring the same fate?
CHAPTER 20
Boldt placed the call from his cell phone, disturbing Phil Shoswitz at home. Boldt's former boss had the kind of contacts within the department that John LaMoia had in the private sector. LaMoia could come up with any and all information on a suspect or witness, be it financial, tax-related, insurance or medical. He had 'Deep Throats'- sources within institutions and industries-that would have made government agents blush. Shoswitz had formed similar relationships within SPD-ironically, in large part, due to his many years of guild service-and had ways of turning gossip into hard fact. He knew the scuttlebutt in the department's vehicle garage as well as the chief's social calendar. Exactly as Boldt needed.
Recognizing Boldt's voice immediately, Shoswitz said, 'You're supposed to be working that phone tree.'
'Already in motion. What about Schock and Phillipp's condition?' Boldt asked.
'Word is both are going to pull through, although Schock may lose the eye. Phillipp won't be completing any full sentences for a week or so, but he'll be back on the job.' Shoswitz already had the full medical re ports on the two and understood Boldt wanted this information first.
Boldt said cautiously, 'I need to know if they had drawn I.I. duty as a result of the Flu. I hear they may have followed a fellow officer into that bar.'
'I can ask around, but I won't get confirmation, Lou. Not if it's I.I.'
'And that lack of confirmation will tell us what we need to know.'
'Not necessarily.'
'I read this wrong, Phil. Blue on blue. I was thinking we were getting roughed up in order to cut our numbers, strengthen the effect of the Flu. And sure, maybe a brick through a window. Some rookie pissed off his paycheck isn't coming in and drinking too much. But assaults? Sanchez? Schock and Phillipp?' He left himself out of it. 'Would we do that kind of damage to each other over guild politics?'
'Don't underestimate what a desperate man will do,' Shoswitz cautioned.
'Six months into a strike, maybe. But one week? Does that make sense? And so carefully executed to look like muggings. The things are textbook, Phil.'
'Your point?'
'I could use a little help here,' Boldt prodded. 'I've got two Vice cops poking around a bar and apparently following a Property sergeant. What's that about?'
'I'll ask around,' Shoswitz confirmed. 'But if they were I.I., about the best we'll get is a denial. We'll be working hunches is all.'
'I have another source I can work,' Boldt told him. 'Sanchez may be able to fill in some of this.'
'I thought she's comatose.'
'So does everyone,' Boldt said. 'Right now, that's the one advantage I've got.'
It was too late to visit Sanchez at the hospital. She'd be medicated and fast asleep. But it wasn't too late to grab onto a few limbs and start shaking the tree. Whoever had committed the assaults would have fresh blood to hide, might even have defensive wounds to show for their efforts.
Boldt called Gaynes and Matthews and caught them up on the assaults, as well as Shoswitz's alert about the surprise health inspections. He put them onto the task of firing up the departmental phone tree and to start making calls. Gaynes rallied without complaint, a soldier in the trenches.
Daphne, as ever, ferreted out Boldt's true intentions: to question Ron Chapman at his home. She refused to allow him to go at it alone, and informed him she was bringing a stun stick along as backup. He knew better than to argue with her, or to admit that he'd welcome her company. He picked her up at her houseboat, and they drove to Chapman's together, using the drive time to prepare.
'The two of you at this hour, it's not social,' Chapman said, shutting the door behind them. He had made no effort to keep them out. Perhaps, Boldt thought, he didn't want to eat alone.
'Little late for dinner, isn't it, Ron?'
Chapman lived in a studio apartment with a partial view of Pill Hill. He had the TV going and a Stouffer's microwave meal on a folding table in front of the room's only chair-a La-Z-Boy recliner. He'd been widowed several years earlier, and the dust bugs and dirty windows confirmed a life of a man turned within. To Boldt, the room felt sad and depressed, crowded with too many snapshots of the late wife. Some people couldn't let go. Chapman suddenly struck him that way, and Boldt found it odd that his attitude about a man he'd known for years could change with a single look inside that man's home. If there had ever been joy here, it now rested in the urn that held his wife's ashes.
Chapman didn't offer them seats, in part because the only two chairs were at a small table that framed the galley kitchen's doorway, and there didn't seem to be any more room for them elsewhere.
'Little late for a house call, isn't it, Lieutenant? Strange times, these.'
'You hear about Schock and Phillipp?'
'Rudy Schock?'
Daphne said calmly, 'They were assaulted tonight.'
'Not far from the Cock and Bull,' Boldt supplied.
Ron Chapman carried an extra thirty or forty pounds on his Irish bulldog looks. It wasn't easy for such soft flesh to remain so absolutely still. Then, at once, he returned to his dinner like a dog to its bone.
'You were at the Cock and Bull tonight, Ronnie. What's that about?'
'A guy can't buy himself a drink?' Chapman complained, working on the dinner in the small plastic tray. 'Since when?'
'What do Schock and Phillipp mean to you?'
The man glanced up, as hot as his prepared dinner. 'Who says they mean anything?'
'Why play games?' Boldt asked. 'Are you into something here? Tell me I'm wrong.'
'You're wrong.'
'Convince me,' Boldt said.
'I've got my dinner to eat.'
Daphne asked, 'Are you afraid of them?'
Chapman stiffened.
She clarified, 'I'm not talking about Schock and Phillipp. I'm talking about whoever did that to them. Are you afraid of those people?'
He wouldn't look up from his food. 'Way I heard it, they were mugged. A street assault. Why should I be
