His hand sweated against the gun’s knurled stock. The sound of blood pumping clouded his ears. It was too damn dark in this alley.
He reached the Dumpster and wedged himself into the corner against the wall. He was in a full sweat. He hadn’t heard the kid jump into the Dumpster but couldn’t discount the possibility.
He glanced toward the mouth of the alley, ten yards behind him- thirty feet, most of it unprotected.
‘‘Do you have any brothers?’’ he called out. ‘‘Sisters? A mother? Anyone who matters to you?’’
That same sickening silence.
‘‘You don’t show yourself, make yourself known to me, I’m likely to shoot you. You understand that? I don’t want to do that, but I will. You’re not coming out of there. You’re not getting past me.’’
‘‘Bullshit.’’
Fast footsteps. A dark blur from the pile of trash bags. He ran low and incredibly fast.
Boldt had only one chance to intercept that blur. He lowered his shoulder, judged the distance and charged behind a loud scream meant to distract the kid. They made contact on the far side of the alley, Boldt just getting a small piece of the kid. They both spun like pinwheels and crashed down several feet apart. The kid came to his knees. Boldt lunged toward him and swatted. The kid went down a second time. Boldt scrambled forward, catching a gray glint of a metal blade. He fired a warning shot as he rolled out of the way and the blade came down where his chest had been. Boldt kicked out. The kid fell back. The slash of a flashlight beam painted the opposite brick wall. Backup was close.
The kid stood quickly and cocked his arm back, intending to throw the knife. Boldt fired once and missed. Fired again. Missed. That blade tumbled through the air end-over-end and clattered into the brick somewhere in the narrow space between Boldt’s shoulder and head. The kid ran five paces, saw those flashlight beams paint him with their light and threw himself prostrate into the alley’s urine-soaked litter, hands and legs outstretched.
‘‘You’re under arrest,’’ Boldt called out, making himself known to his own people.
‘‘I not do nothing,’’ the kid called out.
Boldt checked his right ear to make sure it was still attached to his head as he reached for the handcuffs. This collar was his, no one else’s.
CHAPTER 68
Whoever had designed the ventilation system for the interrogation rooms had either flunked engineering or had it in for detectives and suspects. The Box, as the largest of the rooms was referred to, smelled vaguely of tobacco smoke and strongly of the acrid, bitter body odor that accompanied panic and a person’s last vestiges of freedom. The room was small nonetheless, impressively bland, and home to a cigarette-scarred table bolted to the floor and, on that night, three black formed-fiberglass chairs, one occupied by the shackled suspect, the other two by Daphne Matthews and Boldt.
Boldt understood the time pressures. With police closing in, with the SS Hana in custody of the Coast Guard and under investigation by the INS, with gang members in lockup, the sweatshop would be shut down as soon as physically possible. Boldt had a call into Mama Lu; LaMoia had detectives attempting to make contact with the Asian food distribution warehouse owned by one of the Great Lady’s companies. But ultimately it came down to a bird in the hand: His best chance to locate the sweatshop remained with this one interrogation.
LaMoia had contacted Talmadge at home as ordered by Boldt. To everyone’s surprise and disappointment, it was Talmadge himself, not Coughlie, who had come down to Public Safety to view the interrogation. Talmadge looked pale and visibly shaken, though he said nothing to explain his condition. LaMoia stood with the man on the other side of the one-way glass watching Boldt and Matthews work their magic. But LaMoia wasn’t watching the interrogation; his eyes were on the shaky Adam Talmadge.
For Boldt and Matthews, teaming up on a suspect was like two singers joining in on a duet. They had done this enough times to communicate with only body language and voice inflection. As a psychologist, Matthews tended to humanize the event while Boldt used the existence of physical evidence to maintain pressure.
‘‘You’re in some kind of trouble,’’ Boldt said to the kid.
He was a Chinese youth in his late teens, early twenties, with a neck like a water buffalo and pinprick eyes. His teeth were bad and he’d been in too many fights: Angry scars beaded from the edge of his lips, the turn of his nose and the slant of his eyes. He attempted a game face but the shine on his upper lip and the tinge of scarlet below his ears gave away his anxiety.
Daphne said, ‘‘You’re alone in this room, and you’ll be alone in a jail cell, but we know you’re not alone in this.’’
‘‘I no do nothing, bitch.’’
Boldt shifted in his chair as if to smack the guy, a fine performance. Daphne reached out and blocked him. Good cop, bad cop- ‘‘sweet and sour,’’ as they called it. Boldt ran off a list of offenses including assault and attempted murder of a police officer, the last of which set the suspect to a vigorous blinking, a kind of tic that continued to manifest itself well into the interrogation.
Boldt said, ‘‘Your priors occupy two and a half pages. Your name appears on a roster compiled by our Gang Squad. You are in violation of your parole. Any judge gets one look at these charges and you’re gone for good.’’
‘‘So let’s just see about that,’’ the kid said. ‘‘You got the sheet, Butch,’’ he said to Boldt. ‘‘How much hard time I done?’’ He grinned, ‘‘Butch and Bitch. What a pair you are!’’
‘‘You think you can duck this? You think anyone gives a rat’s ass about stepping in and standing up for you?’’ Boldt said.
The kid smirked.
Boldt dropped the bomb early so that Daphne could get to work on him. ‘‘We’re turning you over to the feds, my friend: transportation of illegals, three counts of murder-depraved indifference to life; two counts of rape; numerous RICO racketeering charges. This isn’t staying in state courts.’’
The kid’s face gave away his surprise. Perhaps Coughlie, or someone like him, had shielded the gang from prosecution in the past. With some money spread around to big-name attorneys or even under the table to the local judges, they ducked the heavy sentences and the hard time. That wasn’t going to happen this time; Boldt had taken great pains to ensure SPD kept this one for themselves.
‘‘After the federal trial, after you’ve been sentenced to who knows how many consecutive life terms,’’ Boldt continued, ‘‘then you’ll be remanded to state custody and tried well away from King County on the assault and attempted murder of a police officer.’’
Daphne cut in like a limber dancer tapping Boldt on the shoulder. ‘‘The latter of which carries the death penalty.’’
‘‘Lethal injection,’’ Boldt said, ‘‘although there’s a lot of talk about bringing back hanging.’’
The kid’s shiny black eyes tracked between them like a spectator at a tennis match. ‘‘No way you do this.’’
‘‘Yes, way,’’ Boldt replied. ‘‘You see that mirror? There’s a federal agent on the other side of it. Federal prosecutors are on their way over. This is political, you see? Nothing worse to get screwed up in than a political case. I’m telling you-nothing worse. Everybody’s got to look good, and the only way that happens is if someone pays the big price, and right now that someone is you, Mr. Tan.’’
‘‘What we’re offering,’’ Daphne interrupted, ‘‘is to work with you on this. You didn’t attack the lieutenant in that alley, you ran. That’s in your favor here.’’
‘‘I ran!’’ the kid pointed out to Boldt, who remained impassive.
Daphne said, ‘‘You did produce a knife and you did throw that knife, but maybe you were off balance to begin with, maybe that knife just kind of fell out of your hand on the way down. You see where I’m going?’’
He didn’t see much. While Mr. Tan listened to Daphne he concentrated on Boldt, well aware of where the trouble was coming from. ‘‘I dropped the knife,’’ he spurted out, a well-trained mynah bird. ‘‘Off balance.’’