Linda bit her lip and nodded.
'Logan didn't know about the tapes before?'
'Nobody did except Angie. He thought he could put a stop to it. I told him he was crazy, that he should mind his own business, but he was determined.'
'Is that what you two broke up over, about his going after Green?'
She hesitated. 'No,' she said quietly.
'What then?'
'Angie. Logan was too naive, too big-hearted and honest to see that she was making a play for him. He asked me to copy the tapes. When I found out we had copied them for her, that was the last straw.'
We were back to the tapes again. 'But you did copy them.'
'I didn't. Jimmy did.'
'Jimmy!'
'I guess Sandy Carson over at the center is the one who actually did the copying. Logan had met her several times when we took Jimmy over to the center or went by to pick him up.'
'Sandy Carson, the one who runs the micrographics department?'
'That's the one. And that's where the tapes still are, in a file in her office. Not the originals. I'm sure Logan had those with him on the boat. But the copies are there, on microfiche. After Logan died, I told Sandy that if anything happened to me, she should turn them over to the police. Angie knew about the copies, not where they were, but that they existed. I tried to warn her that she was in danger, but she didn't want to listen any more than Logan did. They both thought as long as the copies were safe, so were they.'
'But she wasn't,' I added. 'And neither was Logan. Why didn't you come forward with this earlier, Linda? Why did you keep it quiet?'
'The cops insisted from the beginning that Logan's death was an accident. Martin Green has lots of money, lots of pull. I figured there was a payoff somewhere along the line.'
Linda Decker stopped speaking. For several moments I couldn't think of anything else to ask. I didn't like her all too easy assumption that homicide cops were on the take. 'Stupidity, maybe,' I said finally. 'Bullheadedness maybe, but not payoffs.'
Linda Decker nodded. I wasn't sure whether or not she was convinced until she spoke. 'I really was wrong about you, wasn't I,' she said quietly.
'Yes.'
'I'm sorry,' she said again. 'I know after what happened yesterday, I've got no right to ask, but you came here this morning because of…' She stopped and swallowed. 'Because of Jimmy. You must care, or you wouldn't…' She paused again. 'Will you help me, Detective Beaumont? I don't know where else to turn.'
For the first time, in all the while we had been talking, Watty's words reverberated in my head. Keep your goddamned nose out of it. Mind your own business. And here I was, back in it up to my neck.
Linda Decker was looking at me, pleading, waiting for my answer.
'I don't know what I can do,' I told her at last, 'but I'll do what I can.'
It wasn't much, but what the hell. I've always been a soft touch.
CHAPTER 17
As I went down in the elevator, I got off at four to see Peters. His bed was empty, and his roommate told me he was down the hall lifting weights in the gym.
'What's the matter with you?' Peters asked as soon as he saw my face. 'Aside from the fact that you look like somebody beat you to a bloody pulp.'
'It's a long story,' I replied.
In a quiet corner of the small gym, Peters sat in his wheelchair and listened while I told him what Linda Decker had said.
When I finished, he nodded his head. 'You don't have much of a choice, do you. Like it or not, you're going to have to talk to Manny and Kramer.'
'That's the way it looks.'
'Linda Decker doesn't have any solid proof?'
I shook my head. 'Only the tapes.'
'That's not much to go on. Purely circumstantial.'
'Purely,' I agreed. 'The problem is, if somebody doesn't start looking in the right places pretty damn soon, there's never going to be anything but circumstantial evidence.'
Peters looked thoughtful. 'What about this Martinson guy, the one who disappeared in Alaska? Is anyone down at the department following up on that case?'
'I don't know. Missing Persons, maybe. Without a body, it wouldn't have come to homicide.'
'Did she say where in Alaska?'
'No.'
'It's a big place. Maybe I can do some checking on that from here.'
I got up.
'Where are you going?' Peters asked.
'To find Kramer and see if there's any way to eat crow and still keep my self-respect.'
Peters looked at me, his eyes serious and steady. 'Sounds to me like you'll have to find a way to do both,' he said.
I nodded and started to leave, giving him an affectionate whack on the shoulder on my way past. 'Thanks for the fatherly advice,' I said.
He grinned. 'Anytime. Advice is freely and cheerfully given.'
Outside the hospital, the sky was a clear, unremitting blue. I was tired of summer, tired of blue skies, and tired of the sideways glances people gave me when they caught sight of my face. I needed to go somewhere to think. In the end I sought out the shady serenity of the Japanese garden in the Arboretum. There, beside a small, quiet pool, I sat for a full hour, trying to marshal my thoughts into some sort of reasonable order.
According to Linda Decker, we were dealing with union fraud perpetrated by thugs who didn't hesitate at murder. There were four victims dead already, if you counted Wayne Martinson, the guy missing in Alaska. Four and a half, if you counted Jimmy Rising in the burn unit at Harborview.
Martin Green and whoever else might be involved had to be stopped, one way or the other, and I sure as hell wanted to be part of the process, part of the solution. There was a major barrier to my doing just that-my bullheaded, bullnecked nemesis, Paul Kramer.
And I couldn't very well go to Kramer with nothing in hand but a lame apology and some farfetched suppositions, wild-sounding accusations from Linda Decker, a lady who had lost big. Someone who has suffered that many losses is going to have a vested interest in seeing the situation resolved, in pinning the crimes on someone regardless of how remote.
I had to have something more solid than Linda Decker's unsubstantiated allegations. I had to come up with something powerful enough to jar Detective Kramer out of our juvenile rivalry and make him pay attention, take action, preferably some action other than going straight to Sergeant Watkins and having my wings clipped.
That brought me back to the question of what was actually solid. The tapes. The microfiche copy of the tapes. And what else? In my mind, I went back over everything Linda Decker had said. What was it about the union? What all had she claimed they were doing? Selling union books, taking payoffs to let people bypass the apprenticeship program.
But those kinds of bribes only worked if the applicant had plenty of money available. For women, especially poor ones like Angie Dixon and Linda Decker, maybe the rats running the scam had been willing to take it out in trade, in services rendered, services that never made it onto Wayne Martinson's accounting tapes. Like being dessert at Martin Green's party for instance.
And what about Martinson's books, the journals themselves? Where were they? Despite what Angie and Linda had believed, the tapes themselves weren't that damning, not without the journal entries to go with them.
