While I stood in the garage lobby waiting for the attendant to return the 928, I called directory assistance. There were five Winklers listed. Two of them were listed as William and one was initial W only. Rather than dialing the three at random, I tried a different tack.
The International Order of Footprinters is a service organization made up of some still active but mostly retired law enforcement folks. The Seattle area chapter includes people who once served and protected in King, Pierce, Snohomish, and Thurston counties, and in various municipal jurisdictions as well-Seattle, Renton, Tacoma, Bellevue, and Everett. Some of the retired officers served in local branches of the FBI, the DEA, and the INS or in local port-policing agencies. There may be some ongoing competition and sibling rivalry among those branches, but once you graduate into Footprinters, it’s time to get over it and let bygones be bygones.
Martin Woodman, a long-retired FBI special-agent-in-charge, is the grand old man of the Seattle area chapter. Widowed for at least twenty years now, he lives alone in the Wall Street Tower, which used to be called the Grosvenor House, and spends his long afternoons and relatively short evenings hanging out at the Five-Spot Cafe. Marty is too old and arthritic to carry on as part of the Keystone Kops anymore, and he’s served in all the organization’s various elective offices, both local and national, on numerous occasions. Now that he’s slowing down, he limits his Footprinters involvement to that of self-appointed goodwill ambassador.
Whenever former or retired cops from this side of the mountains run into difficulties, Marty is on hand to look out for them regardless of where or when they served. He makes it a point to visit and collect get-well cards for whoever ends up in a hospital, and when somebody dies, Marty is on hand to make sure the deceased officer is laid to rest with all due ceremony and respect. It’s his personal mission in life to make sure those old cops and their families aren’t forgotten. You have to respect a guy like that. Marty Wood was the one man in Seattle who would know for sure whether or not Wink Winkler was still alive. He’d also probably know where I could find him.
I called Wall Street Tower. When no one answered the phone in Marty’s room, I drove straight to the Five-Spot and parked on the street at a parking meter that had an astonishing thirty-nine minutes still left on it. Darting inside out of the rain, I spotted Marty sitting alone in a booth at the far end of the room, absently stirring a cup of coffee while staring down at the black-and-white-tiled floor.
“Hey, Marty,” I said. “How’s it going?”
“Who is it?” he asked, holding out a tremulous hand. “Can’t see the way I used to, you know. This damned macular degeneration.”
“Beaumont,” I said. “J. P. Beaumont.”
Martin Woodman’s hand may have trembled when he offered it to me, but his grip was as bone-crushingly firm as ever.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “I remember you. From Seattle PD. You’re with that new outfit now, aren’t you, the one from the AG’s office? What’s its name again?”
“Special Homicide Investigation Team.”
He nodded sagely. “That’s right. SHIT. Hell of a name, if you ask me. Wouldn’t have gotten away with calling it that back in the old days, never in a million years. Have a seat, J.P. What can I do for you?”
Marty’s vision may have been going, but his mental faculties were as sharp as ever.
“I’m looking for William Winkler,” I said without preamble. “I was wondering if he’s still around.”
“Wink? Oh, sure. Lives at a retirement home over in West Seattle. It’s not that good a place, but it’s the best he could afford. Wink’s cantankerous as hell, but then he always has been. I’m guessing his son put him there when he and his wife couldn’t take care of him anymore or when they couldn’t stand being around him.”
“Health’s no good?” I asked.
“Hell,” Marty replied. “At our age, if you’re still alive, you shouldn’t complain. Doesn’t do any good, anyway. What do you want him for?”
“I’m following up on a case of his from a long time ago. I wanted to see if he could shed any light on it.”
Marty Woodman frowned. “You know he left the department…”
“Under a cloud?” I supplied. “Yes, but all this went on quite a while before that. You wouldn’t happen to have his address or telephone number, would you?”
“I do, but it’s back at my apartment. If you wouldn’t mind walking me over there. They keep trying to get me to use this.” He picked up a white cane and tapped it impatiently on the floor. “But it’s hard teaching an old dog new tricks. So usually, when I’m ready to go back home, I call the reception desk and they send someone over to walk me there.”
As we walked through the rain across the plaza and into the lobby of Wall Street Tower, I wondered how someone as blind as Marty Woodman would be able to find and decipher an address or phone number, but I shouldn’t have worried. Marty’s one-bedroom apartment was tiny and immaculate. Most of the living room was occupied by an enormous dining-room table, the surface of which was almost completely covered with an array of complicated computer equipment and a snarl of cables.
Standing next to the CRT, Marty clapped his hands once and the familiar start-up screen appeared. “Works just like one of those clickers,” Marty said with a grin. “One clap turns it on, two turn it off. When I told Footprinters I was going blind, some of them came over and jury-rigged this sound-and-voice-activated outfit together for me. They didn’t want me to quit working, especially since nobody else wants to do what I do. Have a chair,” he added. “This shouldn’t take too long. I call her Joyce, by the way.”
And it didn’t take long at all. In order to access his database, he spoke into some unseen microphone. His voice-recognition software responded in the form of a computer-generated female voice. Marty’s “Joyce” sounded just like the woman who has spent years annoying everyone unfortunate enough to venture into the phone company’s version of voice-mail hell. Before long Joyce was reeling off Wink Winkler’s telephone number along with an address on Thirty-fifth in West Seattle. I jotted them down as she delivered them.
“You get all that?” Marty asked.
“Yes, I did. Thanks. But you were wrong.”
Marty frowned. “About what?”
“You said you were too old to learn new tricks. Obviously you have.”
The frown disappeared. Marty gave the top of his CRT an affectionate pat. “Modern science is a miracle, isn’t it? Without her I’d be just plain useless.”
I had to agree with him there. Modern science was a miracle. “You’re right,” I said. “It’s downright amazing, but you might think about giving that cane of yours a try, too.”
“Why?” he asked. “So I can walk in front of a bus?”
“Never mind,” I said.
When I left, Marty walked me as far as the door. “I don’t know what kind of a case you’re working,” he said, “but don’t be too hard on poor old Wink. He did all right when he first left the department-had a lot of helpful connections and made some good investments, but then things started falling apart. Drank too much, gambled too much, his marriage broke up. You know the drill.”
I nodded. It was an end-of-career path for far too many of the cops I knew.
“He and his son wound up owning a place called Emerald City Security, a moderately successful rent-a-cop company,” Marty continued. “That went on until a few years ago. I’m not sure of all the details, but when the dust settled, the kid had the company and Wink ended up with next to nothing.”
“I’ll bear all that in mind,” I said.
As I rode down in the elevator, I realized that the very existence of Marty Woodman’s computer setup was one of those things where what goes around comes around. For a change it had happened the right way. After all the years Marty had spent making sure Footprinters weren’t forgotten, it was nice to know that they had returned the favor.