She held out her hand and brushed her thumb across her fingers. 'How about extendin' some'a that generosity my way?'

I gave her a crisp new twenty.

'He showed up a week ago, Thursday. Stayed a couple of days, then left. You shoulda heard all the carryin' on.'

'What do you mean?'

She made a sour face and waved the remote. 'Moanin' and cryin', moanin' and cryin'. I don't know what all was goin' on in there.' She made a little shudder, like she didn't want to know. 'I ain't seen him since.'

'Appreciate the help.'

She turned back to the C-Span and made the twenty disappear, 'Don't mention it.'

Sooner or later it always gets down to money.

CHAPTER 8

New World Printing was east of the Duwamish Waterway between Georgetown and Boeing Field in a tract of older industrial buildings that were built when red bricks and ironwork were cheap. The front of the building contained a fancy glass entrance and a receptionist who would pick up her phone and tell Mr. Brownell that a Mr. Cole wanted to see him. Considering Mr. Brownell's uncooperative response when I phoned, it was likely that Brownell would (at worst) refuse to see me, or (at best) be warned of my approach and therefore prepared to stonewall. This was not good. I have found that if you can surprise people in their workplace, they are often concerned with avoiding an embarrassing scene, and you can jam them into cooperating. This is advanced detective work at its finest.

I parked at the curb and walked around to the loading dock on the side of the building where two men were wrestling a dolly stacked with about ten thousand pounds of boxed paper into a six-wheel truck. 'You guys know where I can find Wilson Brownell?'

One of the men was younger, with a thick mustache and a hoop earring and a red bandana tied over his head like a skullcap. 'Yeah.' He pointed inside. 'Down the aisle, past the desk, and through the swinging door. You'll see him.'

'Thanks.'

I followed an endless aisle past shipping flats stacked with boxes of brochures and magazines and pamphlets. I picked up two boxes and carried them with what I hoped was a purposeful expression, just another worker bee lugging paper through the hive.

A balding guy with a potbelly and tiny, mean eyes was sitting at the desk, talking to a younger guy with a prominent Adam's apple. The balding guy was thin in the arms and chest and neck, but his belly poked out beneath his belt-line as if someone had slipped a bowling ball in his pants. He squinted at me the way people do when they're trying to remember who you are, but then I was past him and through the swinging door and into a cavernous room filled with whirring, kachunking, humming machines and the men and women who operated them. A woman pushed a dolly past me and I smiled. 'Wilson Brownell?'

She pointed and I saw him across the room, standing at a large machine with two other people, one a kid in a KURT LIVES T-shirt, and the other a middle-aged guy in a suit. A large plate had been removed from the side of the machine so that they could see inside.

Wilson Brownell was in his early sixties, and taller than he looked in the pictures at his home. He was dressed in khaki slacks and a simple plaid shirt, with short hair more gray than not and black horn-rimmed glasses. Professorial. He was using a pen to point at something inside the machine. The guy in the suit was standing with his arms crossed, not liking what he heard. Brownell finally stopped pointing, and the suit walked away, still with crossed arms. Brownell said something to the younger guy, and the younger guy got down on the floor and began working his way into the machine. I walked over and said, 'Mr. Brownell?'

'Yes?' Brownell looked at me with damp, hazel eyes.

You could smell the booze on him, faint and far away. It was probably always with him.

I positioned myself with my back to the kid so that only Wilson Brownell would hear. 'My name is Elvis Cole. I've phoned you twice trying to find a man named Clark Haines.'

Brownell shook his head. 'I don't know anyone by that name.'

'How about Clark Hewitt?'

Brownell glanced at the kid, then wet his lips. 'You're not supposed to be here.' He looked past me. 'Did they let you in?'

'Come on, Mr. Brownell. I know that Clark phoned you six times from Los Angeles because I've seen his phone record. I know that he's been at your apartment.' He wasn't just stonewalling; he was scared. 'I'm not here to make trouble for you or for Clark. He walked out on his kids eleven days ago, and they need him. If he isn't coming home, someone has to deal with that.' Elvis Cole, detective for the nineties, the detective who can feel your pain.

'I don't know anything. I don't know what you're talking about.' He shook his head, and the booze smell came stronger.

'Jesus Christ, those kids are alone. All I want to do is find out if Clark 's coming home.' You'd think I wanted to kill the guy.

He held up both hands, palms toward me, shaking his head some more.

'This isn't an earth-shaker, Wilson. Either I'm going to find Clark, or I'm going to turn his kids over to Children's Services, and they're going to take custody away from him. You see what I'm saying here?' I wanted to smack him. I wanted to grab him by the ears and shake him. ' Clark is going to lose his kids unless he talks to me, and you're going to be part of it.' Maybe I could guilt him into cooperating.

Wilson Brownell looked past me, and his eyes widened. The bald guy with the bowling-ball paunch was standing in the swinging doors, frowning at us. Brownell's face hardened and he stepped close to me. 'Do everybody a favor and get your ass out of here. I'd help you if I could, but I can't, and that's that.'

He turned away but I turned with him. 'What do you mean, that's that? Didn't you hear what I said about his kids?'

'I said I can't help you.' Wilson Brownell's voice came out loud enough so that the kid on the floor peeked out at us.

Two men had joined the bald guy in the swinging doors. They were older, with thin gray hair and wind-burned skin and the kind of heavy, going-to-fat builds that said they were probably pretty good hitters twenty years ago. The bald guy pointed our way and one of the new men said something, and then the bald guy started toward us. Brownell grabbed my shoulder like a man grabbing a life preserver. 'Listen to me, goddamnit.' His voice was a harsh whisper, lower now and urgent. 'Don't you mention Clark. Don't even say his goddamn name, you wanna walk outta here alive.' Wilson Brownell suddenly broke into a big laugh and clapped me on the shoulder as if I'd told him the world's funniest joke. He said, 'You tell Lisa I can get my own date, thank you very much! I need any help, I'll give'r a call!' He said it so loud that half of British Columbia could hear.

I stared at him.

The bald guy reached us, the two new guys still in the swinging door, watching through interested eyes. The bald guy said, 'I don't know who this guy is. He just walked in here.'

Brownell kept his hand on my shoulder, letting the laugh fade to a grin. 'Sorry about that, Donnie. I knew this guy was coming by, and I shoulda told you. He's a friend of mine.'

I glanced from Brownell to Donnie, then back to Brownell, wondering just what in hell I had walked into.

Brownell shook his head like, man, this was just the silliest thing. 'This guy's wife has been tryin' to set me up with this friend of hers for three months now. I keep sayin', what on earth am I going to do with a new woman when I'm still in love with my Edna?'

Donnie squinted the ferret eyes at me like he was deciding something. 'What, are you a mute or something? Don't you have anything to say?'

Brownell was looking at me so hard that his eyes felt like lasers. I shook my head. 'Nope.'