Until Proven Guilty - J. A. Jance [7]
I ignored his hand, knowing it would go away. Max’s reference was to our fraternity days at the University of Washington. There was no love lost then and even less now. Then we had been rivals for Karen Moffit’s affections. I won that round. Karen Moffit became Karen Beaumont, and Maxwell Cole got his nose out of joint. It’s ironic that five years after Karen divorced me, I’m still stuck with Maxwell Cole. I’m a bad habit he can’t seem to break.
These days he’s a columnist for Seattle’s morning daily, the Post-Intelligencer. His column, “City Beat,” serves as a pulpit for Maxwell Cole, self-professed righter of wrongs. He doesn’t pretend to be unbiased. He’s one of those liberals who always roots for the under-dog whether or not it has rabies.
I could handle this self-righteous, pontificating son-of-a-bitch a little better if I hadn’t spotted old Maxey Baby down on First Avenue a couple of times, hanging around the porno flicks. I don’t think he was down there doing movie reviews. He looked at home there, a regular customer, like me in the McDonald’s at Third and Pine.
Cole likes to take on the Seattle Police Department, casting all cops in the role of heavies. I’ve lost more than one case after he has tried it in the press, noisily waving the flag of the First Amendment all the while. One of his success stories, Harvey Cahill, killed somebody else within a month after Max got him acquitted. By then nobody remembered Cole’s bleeding heart. They went gunning for someone to blame. Yours truly took a little gas.
“Still packing a grudge, I see,” Max said, carelessly reaching across our table to flick a drooping ash into an unused ashtray. He was oblivious to the fact that he was intruding. I’m sure the idea never crossed his mind.
“I’d say it’s a little more serious than a grudge,” I allowed slowly. “Antipathy would be closer to the mark.”
He turned from me to give Peters a nearsighted once-over, blinking through thick horn-rimmed glasses. “This your new partner? What happened to Ray?”
“Ask the public information officer,” I said. “He gets paid for answering your questions. I don’t.”
Max looked pained. “You know, it doesn’t pay to deliberately offend the press. You might need our help someday.”
“It’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
Connie brought the coffeepot and shouldered Max out of the way. She glared meaningfully at his cigarette and removed the offending ashtray. There didn’t seem to be any love lost between Connie and Maxwell Cole, either.
“Come on, Max,” someone called from the door. “We’re waiting on you.”
Max paused as if reluctant to abandon the confrontation. He finally sauntered away. Once the door closed behind him, Connie turned back to me. “He writes mean stuff about you,” she said, “and he don’t tip too good, either.”
That made me laugh. “Maybe I’ll get even by doing some writing of my own one day,” I told her. I had no idea the opportunity would present itself so soon.
Once she left the table, I turned back to Peters. “What the hell does J. P. stand for?” Peters asked.
“Don’t ask.”
“That bad?”
I nodded. He had the good sense to drop it. Jonas Piedmont Beaumont was my mother’s little joke on the world and me too, naming me after her two grandfathers. I first shortened it to initials and then settled for Beau. The initials had stuck with people who’d met me during my university days. I wanted to punch Max in the nose for bringing it up. He once had a nickname too. Maybe I could return the favor.
“Now, what’s the next move?” I asked, returning our focus to the business at hand.
Peters looked at his watch. “It’s only eleven. What say we go back to the office and sift through whatever statements have been transcribed. That’ll tell us who we should hit up tomorrow.”
“Maybe we’ll have a preliminary medical examiner’s report by then too,