By the time I returned with Watty’s coffee, I was a new man, properly attired in slacks, shirt, tie, and sports jacket, and in my wallet was a receipt for an expenditure that was going to send Karen into a snit the moment the monthly bill arrived in the mail. The fact that I now had a promotion that came with a minuscule pay raise wasn’t going to change her mind about my reckless spending spree.
Watty looked me over as he took his coffee, then nodded in grudging approval. “Took you long enough,” he said. “Now how about getting to work?”
“Sure thing. What do you need me to do?”
“Go to the motor pool and check out a car. You drive. I’ll give you a lesson in doing homicide interviews.”
Our first stop was at Seattle Rendering, located in the Columbia City neighborhood. The plant was a sprawling redbrick warehouse in a collection of similar redbrick warehouses. On a wooden loading dock I spotted a dozen yellow fifty-gallon drums that were dead ringers for the one Donnie and Frankie Dodd had found on Magnolia Bluff.
Watty and I made our way up the stairs leading to the loading dock and then let ourselves inside. The smell hit me at once—the odor of stale grease, only this time without the underlying hint of a dead body. A bullnecked man with the name STEVE embroidered on the pocket of his blue coveralls cut us off before we made it three steps inside. He was a huge, rawboned guy with hands as big as platters. He looked as though he could have taken on both Watty and me at the same time without so much as breaking a sweat. His beaky nose had apparently been broken more than once, and he was missing several front teeth. Looking at the guy, I wondered how an opponent had ever managed to get close enough to land even one of those blows.
“You got an appointment?” Steve asked, barring our way.
Watty held up his badge. “We’re looking for the owner,” he said.
“Name’s Harlan Bates. He’s back in the office,” the guy said. “Follow me and I’ll take you there. He don’t like strangers wandering around out here unaccompanied.”
Harlan’s office was at the far back of the building, closed off from the rest of the warehouse by an unpainted plywood partition. Entry to the office was through a flimsy door with a single windowpane in it. As soon as our guide opened the door, a cloud of cigarette smoke flooded out into the warehouse. I hadn’t had a cigarette since before my hurried trip to the Bon, and I breathed in the welcome taste of secondhand smoke with no small amount of gratitude.
Harlan Bates appeared to be shorter and wider than Steve, but he shared the same general physique and facial features. I guessed the two men were either brothers or cousins.
Harlan sat at a scarred wooden desk under a flickering fluorescent bulb, poring over a handwritten ledger that was open before him. The desk was as grubby as the rest of the office. An immense overflowing ashtray sat stationed at the man’s elbow, while a burning cigarette was clamped between his lips.
Harlan gave Watty and me a hard-eyed once-over. “Who’s this, Stevie?” Harlan demanded, speaking through clenched teeth and without bothering to let go of his cigarette. “Salesmen of some kind? You know I don’t talk to salesmen before noon.”
“We’re not salesmen,” Watty interjected, holding up his badge. “We’d like to talk to you about barrel number 1432.”
There were two torn and scuzzy metal-and-vinyl chairs positioned in front of Harlan’s battered desk. Without waiting to be invited, Watty took a seat on one of them, and I followed suit with the other.
In response, Bates lowered the remains of his unfiltered cigarette from his mouth. Leaving a trail of ashes across both the ledger and the desk, he returned the smoldering butt to the ashtray and ground it out, spilling more ashes as he did so.
“What do you want to know about it?” he asked.
“Where was it last?”
Shaking his head in obvious irritation, Bates slammed shut the open ledger. Then, spinning around on his decrepit wooden chair, he returned the first book to a dusty shelf behind him and pulled out another. The second one looked very much like the first. He dropped it onto the desk and opened it.
Dampening his tobacco-stained fingers with spit, he thumbed through worn, yellowing pages that were covered with neatly handwritten columns. Finally settling on a single page, he pulled on a pair of reading glasses and peered at the page with studied concentration.
“Dragon’s Head Restaurant, in the International District,” Bates said. “We dropped off drum number 1432 on Tuesday two weeks ago. Chin Lee, the owner, called here yesterday, screaming and cussing me out in Chinese because his drum had gone missing. He thought I was trying to cheat him or something. I had to send my team by to drop off a replacement late last night. Who the hell would steal a drum full of stale grease? I mean, what’s the point?”
“And the owner’s name is Mr. Lee?” Watty asked.
Harlan Bates nodded.
“Phone number?”
“You speak Chinese?”
Watty shook his head.
“Having a phone number won’t do you any good. You need to go by and talk to him in person. Old man Lee doesn’t speak English real well. He’ll need his wife or one of his kids to translate for him.”
It was Watty’s turn to nod.
“Do yourself a favor,” Bates continued. “Try the Mandarin duck while you’re at it. Old man Lee may not speak much English, but when it comes to cooking, the guy’s a genius.”
“So you have people who drop off and collect the drums?” Watty asked. “How long before you get them back?”
“Depends on how much grease they use and how much they reuse, if you know what I mean. Places like the Dragon’s Head are on a two-week cycle. Saving grease is what my mother used to do during the war. She’d take her can of it in to the butcher and get rationing coupons in return. I was little then, but it made a big impression on me. I guess I never got over it, and here we are.”
Harlan Bates was maybe ten years older than me. By the time I was old enough to remember anything, rationing coupons from World War II were a part of the distant, unknowable past.
“They fill up the drum, then what?” Watty asked.
“You already met Stevie. He’s strong as an ox. He goes out on the route with another guy, my driver. The two of them make sure the drums are sealed shut, then they tip them over, roll them into our truck, and bring them back here for processing while leaving empty ones in place.”
“So where was Stevie on Friday night of last week?” Watty asked.
Harlan pulled a cigarette out of the almost empty pack in his pocket. If he’d offered me one, I would have taken it, but he didn’t.
“Look,” he said, taking the first draw. “You asked me about drum number 1432. I told you about drum number 1432. Now how about if you tell me what this is really all about?”
“Your drum was found at the base of Magnolia Bluff on Sunday evening,” Watty explained. “There was a dead girl mixed in with what was left of the grease. According to the M.E., she had been dead for about two days before she was found. The victim was last seen on Friday night when she left her dormitory at the University of Washington to go on a blind date.”
“So you’re thinking Steve’s the blind date?” Harlan Bates said with a harsh laugh. “Good luck with that.” He wasn’t the least bit upset about the question. In fact, a slow grin was spreading over his jowly face.
“Where was he?” Watty asked again.
“You ever hear the phrase ‘queer as a three-dollar bill’?” Harlan asked.
Watty nodded.
“Well, that’s Stevie for you. Doesn’t look like a pretty boy by any means. And