Borderline Read online

  “I always thought it was the stars on Hollywood Boulevard that pulled people there,” Wolf said cynically, his lips barely moving. “So your goal is to have Portland be like L.A.?”

  Dorsey shot him an annoyed glance. “The target’s name is Brian Hanson. All the information is inside the paper.” Dorsey had an Oregonian folded under his arm. He laid it atop the railing between them, and pretended to check his pockets.

  “How do you want this Hanson handled?” Wolf asked. “Does he disappear? An accident, or should he be made an example?”

  The latter was the least-used option, since the death showed up as a crime and defeated the purpose of Dorsey’s project. Every now and then, it seemed most effective to have a target found horribly victimized. The police and press had speculated that it was some sort of retribution on a drug deal gone sour.

  “The target passes as being legit but he’s really up to his eyeballs in criminality. It would be best if there were signs that he was having a mental breakdown. Then we can decide whether he’ll kill himself or be murdered because he pissed off a bad guy.”

  “Like what?”

  “I have an in at his clinic—maybe we can plant drugs in his desk. We can connect him tighter with the Tammy LaFleur killing or her wacko roommate. Pour booze down his throat and set him up for a drunk-driving wreck. If we want it to look like an organized-crime revenge hit, use your imagination. Pull his nuts off or take out his tongue, I don’t care. Be creative. I want people to know this guy is dirty.”

  Wolf nodded. “What’s going on with him?”

  “Need to know, need to know,” Dorsey said.

  “I do need to know,” Wolf insisted.

  “He uses his position as a counselor to recruit young women for the sex trade and deal drugs. He’s in a major position of trust and has abused it. When he thought one of his young victims was going to squeal, he killed her.”

  “I haven’t heard anything about it on the street.”

  “He’s been cautious. I was lucky to get good intelligence.”

  “Are you sure about him? Maybe it’s a head case spreading rumors.”

  “Positive. I can get more evidence. Begin scouting him out.”

  Wolf nodded. “When should this happen?”

  “Be ready.”

  Wolf nodded as Dorsey walked away, leaving the newspaper on the railing.

  Wolf picked up the paper without looking at it and slowly walked in the opposite direction. He rode the elevator up a couple floors in the hospital, then walked down a corridor. Confident no one had followed him, he returned to the parking garage. Seated behind the wheel of his nondescript gray Taurus, he looked at Brian Hanson’s home and work addresses. Wolf began to plot his options.

  Louise Parker put her arm through her uncle’s as they walked into the dark polar bear exhibit building.

  “You remember?” he began.

  “I do,” she said, but knew he would reminisce anyway.

  “We used to come to the zoo every week back then. The MAX didn’t exist, the children’s museum was still across the parking lot, they hadn’t had the big expansion.”

  “I remember.” She put on a bad impression of his voice. “This zoo goes back to the 1880s, when a sailor who owned a pharmacy downtown began collecting animals during his travels.”

  “Go ahead, make fun of your uncle,” he said without any malice.

  She squeezed him affectionately. Two bears played in the inside cave. The Parkers watched while one bear held a hard plastic globe that looked almost like a bowling ball and gnawed at it while bobbing in the water.

  “They look so cute,” she said.

  “Could snap a bone the way I’d break a pencil. Probably even easier,” Louis said.

  “Aren’t you the cheery one. How’re you feeling?”

  “Can’t complain,” Louis said. “I vowed I’d never be one of those old folks who talked about their bodily functions and doctors’ appointments. But if you want to know when I last went to the bathroom …”

  She slapped him playfully and he gave an exaggerated wince.

  “Assaulted by a federal officer. I’m gonna talk to my attorney.”

  “Uncle!” she said, like a little girl rebuking a silly adult, and pulled his arm into hers while they continued their walk.

  “The zoo. Oaks Amusement Park. Alpenrose Dairy.”

  “Snow tubing on Mount Hood. Going to a Trail Blazer game,” she said, continuing their list of past favorite activities.

  “We do have some good memories, don’t we?” Louis asked rhetorically.

  They moved to the outside exhibit. The other bears lounged luxuriously, licking their giant paws, stretching, simultaneously looking cuddly and deadly.

  “I’ve never asked—why’d you do it?” she asked him.

  “Do what?”

  “The stuff that got you indicted.”

  “Let’s find a bench, I’m getting tired.”

  She thought he would use that as an excuse, but after they sat on a bench near the monkey house, with the shrill sounds of annoyed capuchins and spider monkeys behind them, he turned to face her. “I don’t know. It’s the kind of thing that with twenty-twenty hindsight, I can’t believe I did. You know the boiling-frog story?”

  When she shook her head, he continued. “You drop a frog in a hot pot, it jumps right out. But put it in a pot at room temperature and slowly increase the heat and eventually the critter boils to death without even knowing it. I’m not making excuses. I was surrounded by people taking shortcuts. Some legal, some not so legal, some flat-out illegal. I enjoyed the power, didn’t want to give it up.” There were a few seconds of silence. They watched a young couple towing two kids in a wagon. “I’ve got a question for you. You ever think about settling down, starting a family?”

  “Now you’re sounding like your sister.”

  “Them’s fighting words,” he said. “How’s she doing?” Louis hadn’t spoke to his sister, Louise’s mother, in close to a decade. She had never forgiven his fall from grace.

  “She’s okay. Might be showing a bit of Alzheimer’s. Hard to tell if it is just normal forgetfulness.”

  “Maybe she’ll stop holding grudges.”

  “You wish,” Louise said, and he clucked agreement.

  “Since we’re being so open, what’s the story with that counselor you sent to me? What do you want to happen?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Uncle Louis, ever since you taught me chess, I know you’ve been three moves ahead of everyone. I don’t believe it was a casual thing.”

  He wiped his brow, feeling fatigued after the slow walk. “You always knew me best,” he said fondly. “And I know you too. You think this is a good way to avoid answering my question?”

  “Okay, I’ll answer yours. Yes, I’ve thought about kids. There’ve been times when I was dating someone and I thought, ‘this could be Mister Right. What would our kids look like?’ But then something important would happen at work and my energy would go there.”

  “It’s still possible,” Louis said.

  “Possible, not probable.” They people-watched for a few minutes. Young couples, gaggles of giggly girls, noisy families, and an occasional older couple. “So why did you refer Brian to me?”

  A few long moments passed. “You may find it hard to believe, but it was an impulse.”

  She fixed him with her best interrogating-a-suspect look. They locked eyes, then both burst into laughter.

  “Okay, I still cheat on my income taxes,” he said.

  “That’s IRS and I don’t care. I do too.”

  “There’s something screwy in this town,” Louis finally said. “The crime rate being so low doesn’t add up. I know plenty of the cops, the prosecutors, the judges. None of them are such whizbangs that the city should have the lowest serious crime rate per capita in the country.”

  “Maybe it’s something other than the criminal justice system?”

  “No. I know the social servic
e system, the mental health and drug treatment systems. I understand what you’re saying, like maybe they do a great job of treating drug addicts, so there’s less drug-related crime.” He paused and wiped his brow again. “From people I got to know in prison and at the mental health center, I hear about folks disappearing. Not nice people necessarily, but disappearing in ways that don’t make sense.”

  “Uncle Louis, with all due respect, these people are bottom-feeders, probably not the kind who keep a daily planner and never miss an appointment.”

  “We’re talking about screwy stuff, stuff that even lowlifes wouldn’t miss. Say picking up drugs that had been paid for. Or setting up a hot date and not showing up.”

  She frowned. “Suspicious, but hardly enough to convict. Have you spoken with the locals?”

  “They may be part of the problem.”

  “A police conspiracy?”

  “It’s happened before.”

  “In Third World countries.”

  “I can rattle off a half dozen cases of police vigilante justice in the U.S. in the past twenty years. Who else knows who the creeps are and is more frustrated?”

  “Then you should have come to me. We could’ve gotten a task force going.”

  “I don’t have enough to convince you,” Louis said. “If I had a solid case, I would have given it to my favorite niece on a silver platter. Of course, there is a flip side.”

  “Which is?”

  “Maybe this vigilantism is the right thing to do. Look at what it has done for Portland. The great press, the booming economy. An old geezer like me can walk the streets late at night and not worry.”

  “At what price?”

  “Some dirtbags being executed.”

  “I can’t believe you’re saying this,” Louise said. “What if they kill the wrong person? Or the power of being judge, jury, and executioner goes to their head?”

  “Sweetie, can you tell me in all your years with the FBI you haven’t seen the guilty go free?”

  “Isn’t it worse to have the innocent punished?” she asked.

  “You’re talking to someone who did a longer sentence than lots of murderers because my case was high profile and I had a judge who was a hard-liner. Was that fair?”

  “This is a country built on laws.”

  “And the finest justice money can buy. I couldn’t afford as skilled an attorney as my co-conspirators. Guess who got the longest time as a guest of the government?”

  “It’s not completely fair, but no system can ever be. By short-circuiting the process, you increase the chance of dangerous inequities.”

  He patted her arm. “Oh, this takes me back. Our heated debates. They started when you were in middle school. Does the end justify the means? Is a majority always right? What is the morality of being outside the law if the law is immoral?”

  She squeezed his arm back. “It was much better than the late-night conversations I had in coffee shops during law school. You taught me to think and respect the law.”

  “The system is not good …,” he began.

  “But it’s the best there is,” she said, completing his oft repeated phrase. “I was wondering whether you were trying to set me up with your counselor.”

  “Matchmaking?” He laughed. “I hadn’t thought of Brian that way.”

  She blushed.

  “He’s married,” Louis said. “But I hear rumors that it’s not real solid.”

  “I, I’m not really interested,” she said.

  “Of course.”

  “Listen, the roommate of that dead woman made allegations against him. Stalking, harassment, maybe even murder. He’s more than a witness or an informant at this point. He’s got to be ruled out as a suspect.” Louis snorted.

  “You know him as a counselor, Uncle Louis. I’ve seen him. There are definitely rough spots.”

  “Sure, sure,” Louis said. “I don’t doubt that he could commit a crime, maybe even a crime of violence with the right provocation. But not harassing a young woman. He’s a damn Boy Scout. Do you honestly have any worries over whether he is guilty?”

  “There’s evidence that—”

  “Not evidence, your gut feeling. Can you honestly look me in the eye and say you think he’s not legit?”

  After a moment, she shook her head. “I should be heading back to my office,” she said, glancing at her watch.

  “You never would’ve said that when you were a kid. You know Packy the elephant, the first born in a U.S. zoo in decades, was born the year you were. The elephants were your favorites. I sometimes thought you were part pachyderm,” Louis said. “Well, I appreciate your taking the time to humor an old man.”

  “Ahh, things will keep. Let’s go look at the elephants.”

  Brian had left the final hour of the day for paperwork. Besides chart notes and assessments, inevitably there were reports for the Department of Human Services over possibly unfit parents, assessments for voc rehab, notification and coordination with probation or parole officers. He checked his voice mail and began slogging through the fourteen calls.

  Four of the calls were hang-ups. He had had clients who fixated on listening to his voice mail recording, and wondered if it was happening again. Then the phone rang and he picked it up.

  “Hi, this is Trixie.” A hesitant girl’s voice, and his mind ran through his teenage clients before he realized who it was. “You know, Tammy’s roommate.”

  “I know who you are, Trixie,” he said.

  “I, I wanted to say I’m sorry about what I told that FBI agent. He said that if I didn’t make trouble for you, he was going to make trouble for me.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “I can’t say. I shouldn’t have called.” She burst into tears. “I’m sorry. I haven’t been thinking right since Tammy died. I’m scared.”

  “Are you in danger?”

  After a long silence, she said, “I think so.”

  “What can you do to get yourself safe?”

  Trixie’s response was heavy breathing and soft tears.

  “Do you need to call 911?”

  “I can’t trust the police. They wouldn’t believe me anyway.”

  “What’s going on?” he asked slowly, trying to convey calm.

  “I can’t talk. I can’t talk over the phone. Can you come over?”

  “It’s not really a good idea. The police can—”

  “Pleeease. You gotta help me. For Tammy’s sake.”

  “Okay. I’ll swing by as soon as I can.”

  “Thank you, thank you. Please hurry!”

  As he hung up, Hanson debated calling her back to ask more questions, refer her to the authorities. Instead, he picked up the phone and dialed a familiar number.

  SIXTEEN

  “I’ve got a moral dilemma,” Hanson said into the phone.

  “My favorite kind,” McFarlane responded.

  “This is one where I need your opinion as a cop as much as my sponsor.”

  “Do we need to meet somewhere and talk?” McFarlane asked.

  “There isn’t time.”

  “Act in haste, repent at your leisure,” McFarlane said.

  “This isn’t a made-up time pressure. A young woman is probably in trouble. I can’t ignore it.” He gave McFarlane a quick run-through of his conversation with Trixie.

  “Because you think your ignoring Tammy is what got her killed? Assuming she was murdered. Assuming that you could have prevented it. Assuming that you’re not jumping in on this Trixie will have a bad outcome? You know what they say about ‘assume’?”

  “Yes. You make an ass out of u and me. Forget about whatever my issues are. As a cop, what do you think?”

  “You get a call with unspecified threats from a woman who has already accused you of harassment and you’re thinking about going there? You think the same thing is going to happen to Trixie that happened to Tammy if you don’t play the white knight? If I were you, I’d call it in. Ask dispatch to send a patrol car for a welfare check.” />
  “But they may take too long. And she doesn’t trust the police.”

  “If she’s paranoid, what’s to say you get there and she thinks you’re trying to kidnap her for a satanic cult? Your going there is about as smart as you dropping a few hundred mikes of acid and watching Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket."

  “But what if she—”

  “Take care of yourself. Call it in and let the professionals worry about it. Let’s meet and talk about this self-destructive shit.”

  “Thanks, I’m okay.”

  Hanson made a quick phone call to Louise Parker and hurried to his car. The rush-hour traffic seemed interminably slow.

  Jeanie Hanson finished making notes in the margin on a leveraged-buyout report. The deal had possibilities, though several provisions needed to be renegotiated. It was the end of a long, busy day. She had a dozen e-mails left to respond to, and nearly as many voice mails. Her phone beeped once, an internal call. Her secretary was gone, but it was not a call that would be screened. The LED display told her it was Hank Lovejoy, from the twentieth floor. Executive vice president and company hatchet man. A call to Lovejoy’s office, particularly at the end of the day, was as welcome as an IRS audit. The joke around the office, never said to his face, was that Lovejoy was neither loving nor joyful.

  “Hi, this is Jeanie.”

  “Please come to my office,” the silky voice said.

  “Sure. I’ll be right up.”

  She paused only to adjust her makeup and her composure. The trip was as scary as the visit to the principal’s office when she’d gotten caught cheating in the sixth grade. Her father had bailed her out, posturing as if he were angry with her while in the elite Caitlin Gable School, chuckling as soon as they were alone. She wished he were around now to muzzle Lovejoy.

  She mentally reviewed her recent projects, though she deduced that her summons was due to Tony Dorsey. He was going to sabotage either the inner southeast freeway project or the mall on the city’s edge. Probably because of the blowup between Dorsey and her husband. The deputy mayor would find a way to screw up a major project, and Jeanie would get blamed.