'I didn't do it,' I said. 'I'm innocent. Parker was in perfectly good shape when I dropped him off at the Sheraton last night.'
She glared at me and sniffed. 'As if you'd know good shape when you saw it.' With that, Cassie Young turned on her heel and marched away. Woody Carroll eased up behind me. He was holding a styrofoam cup of steaming coffee.
'She's not having a very good day,' he said. Woody Carroll had truly mastered the fine art of understatement.
I glanced enviously at his cup. 'Where'd you get that?' I asked.
He nodded toward a table near the stairs leading up to the locker room. 'They've got coffee and doughnuts over there. You look like you could use some.'
'Thanks,' I said, but I was getting tired of all the editorial comment, of everyone implying that I looked like I'd been run over by a truck. I did look like it, actually, but it had far more to do with working an eighteen-hour day than it did with anything I'd done after Goldfarb had finally closed up shop.
Woody followed me to the table where I helped myself to two fat doughnuts and a cup of thick, black coffee. 'Is she always like that?' he asked.
'Who?' I returned.
'That woman-what's her name?'
'You mean Cassie Young?'
Woody nodded.
'As far as I can tell,' I told him. 'I've known her exactly two weeks, and she's been on a rampage the whole time.'
'That reminds me,' Woody said. 'Speaking of unreasonable people. Yesterday, when all those reporters were here, one of them wanted to talk to you. Insisted on it. Said he knew you, that you and he were old friends.'
'Let me guess. His name was Maxwell Cole.'
'So you do know him. I've read his column in the paper a couple of times. I guess I should have let him come to talk to you. I thought he was just giving me the business.'
'He was. Max and I are old acquaintances. Fraternity brothers, not old friends. He was giving you that line so you'd let him on the set.'
'You don't mind that I didn't let him through?' Woody asked, still unsure of my reaction.
'Not at all.'
'He said he wanted you to introduce him to some of the movie people so he could do a story about a real murder showing up at the same time they're filming a fake one.'
'If Maxwell Cole wants to be introduced to Cassie Young or Sam ‘The Movie Man' Goldfarb, he'll have to get somebody else to do the honors.'
Woody looked at me closely. 'You don't like Cole much, do you.'
'You could say that,' I replied.
I couldn't believe that worthless asshole Cole would try to pass himself off as a bosom buddy of mine, but then, after all these years, nothing Max does should surprise me. Once an asshole, always an asshole.
The film crew had moved away from the wingwall area to another part of the drydock. They were out on a long, narrow wharf where a series of moored houseboats would provide the basis for a crashing climax in which Derrick Parker was supposed to track down the crooked banker, the real-estate developer's killer.
Houseboats had been collected from all over the city. There was to be a carefully orchestrated fight in which the stuntmen for both stars, Parker's and the movie's heavy, were to leap from boat to boat in a climactic chase scene.
Once more I had tried, unsuccessfully, to include a hint of realism in the process. The scene had been written to include two gun-toting characters, a good guy and a bad guy, crashing through groups of innocent bystanders. At one point in the script, they were to barge through a deckside family dinner, fatally wounding a child in a barrage of cross fire. In the real world that's called reckless endangerment. Cops who do it don't stay cops very long.
I had done battle over this segment when I first saw the script, and now I thought it worthy of one last-ditch effort.
I tracked Cassie Young down during a break in the filming. 'Why does the little kid have to get shot?' I asked. 'Police officers can't do that. They can't go shooting their way through groups of civilians that way. It's a joke.'
'It's no joke, Mr. Beaumont,' Cassie retorted, pointedly dropping the word 'Detective.' I had been summarily demoted. 'We're making a movie here. We want people to care about what happens.'
'And you don't give a shit if it's accurate or not.'
She smiled sweetly. 'That's right. Accuracy doesn't sell tickets. Emotions do.'
Her remark made me wish that I had introduced Maxwell Cole to Cassie Young. They were two of a kind, a matched set, only he sold newspapers instead of movie tickets.
I made one final attempt. 'But your cops look like jerks,' I protested.
Cassie crossed her arms and looked up at me. 'So?' she said.
The implication was absolutely clear. In Cassie Young's book, cops were jerks. At least the drydock cops would be generic. There was nothing whatever to connect them to Seattle P.D. Except me.
'I'm going home,' I said.
'Can't stand the heat?' she asked demurely.
'Won't,' I replied. 'There's a big difference.'
I left Lake Union Drydock, but I didn't go home. There wasn't a cat to kick, and in my frame of mind, I was mad enough to break up furniture. Instead, I made my way up Eastlake all the way around to the other side of Gasworks Park where I paced back and forth along the water until my blood pressure returned to normal. I started for home, but when I drove past the entrance to Harbor Station, something made me turn in. Force of habit, I suppose.
The City of Seattle covers an area of ninety-two square miles. What most people don't realize is that there's a whole lot more to the city than meets the eye-parts that are underwater. As a consequence the Harbor Patrol, based in Harbor Station, has jurisdiction over some ninety-three miles of shoreline, all within the city limits. Seattle operates a fleet of six boats and boasts the only twenty-four-hour municipal marine unit in the state. When King County's and Mercer Island's police boats aren't working, Seattle P.D.'s Harbor Patrol handles all of Lake Washington on an emergency basis.
Originally the unit was a separate police organization under the jurisdiction of the Port of Seattle, with a warden in charge. Later, it was part of the Seattle Fire Department. In the late fifties, Harbor Patrol became a branch of the Seattle Police Department. Some of the officers stayed with the fire department while others went through the police academy and became police officers.
Jim Harrison wasn't one of those originals, but he was close. I found him drinking coffee in the Harbor Station kitchen when I got there.
'Hey, Beau, how's it going?'
'Can't complain,' I said. 'How about you?'
He grinned. 'I'm counting the days until I'm outta here,' he said. 'Then I'm going fishing.'
I laughed. He sounded like a kid waiting impatiently for summer vacation to start. 'After all these years, haven't you had enough of boats?' I asked.
'Working on boats, yes. Playing on boats, no.'
I shook my head. Boats hold no fascination for me. I'm a believer in the old saw that boats are just holes in the water you pour money into.
'So what are you up to today?' Without asking, Harrison filled a cup with coffee and handed it to me. 'From what Manny said yesterday, I was under the impression they were still going to be filming today and that J.P. Beaumont was stuck for the duration.'
'I took a powder,' I told him. 'I'm playing hooky.'
He shook his head and clicked his tongue. 'Couldn't that have long-range repercussions? Isn't the director some kind of buddy-buddy with the mayor?'
I shrugged. 'Let 'em fire me. I'm supposed to be there to give them technical advice, but they won't take it when I do, so what's the point?'
'Beats me,' Harrison said, then, with a sly grin, he added, 'Is that what you're here for, to cry on my
