Steel Trap
Disclaimer: Dark Angel is owned by Charles Eglee, James Cameron, and Fox. I claim no rights to these characters, alas, although I like to play with them.
Episode Reference: Takes place immediately after Some Assembly Required
Rating: PG
Summary: A Logan Cale, Man of Action fic, complete with Steelheads and major bad guys
A/N: This is for Alaidh, who requested another LCMOA fic from me. Thanks to my betas, Alaidh and Kasman, for their insight.
I live for reviews. You know what to do.
Chapter Six
By half past eight, Logan had showered, dressed, and considered fixing breakfast, but his nerves had gotten the better of him. He left for the park early, having nothing better to do and hoped that the short trip would calm him down.
He was ten minutes early to the park, looking around, almost sniffing the air as if he were a wild animal wary of hunters. His relief was palpable when he saw Sketchy sauntering toward him. He let out a deep breath.
"Hey, Logan. Morning," Sketchy said, totally unaware of the tension his presence relieved.
"Hey, Sketchy," Logan replied, a smile on his face. "How'd it go?"
" 'Cake," Sketchy commented smugly.
"Great."
"I think you'll be happy with what I got. And I've included notes too. It's all in the sack." Sketchy handed the nylon bag to Logan.
"Excellent. No problems?" Logan stuffed the bag into the backpack on the chair.
"Nah, everything was copasetic. Pretty quiet, except for the middle of the night. Hope I got stuff Eyes Only can use."
"I'm sure you did. Thanks, Sketchy," Logan said sincerely.
"Hey, my pleasure. Any time I can help the great man.."
"I'm sure he'll appreciate what you did."
"Kewl. And let him know I'm available for other - missions, okay?"
"I'll let him know." Logan looked up at Sketchy. "Can I buy you breakfast?"
"That would be cool. I'm starved. Hanging out in a crate is hungry work!" Sketchy laughed.
Logan put his hand on his wheels and backed the chair up. He turned around and headed for a coffee shop he knew between Jam Pony and the park. Sketchy shambled along side him, hands in his pockets.
When they got to the coffee shop, Logan popped a wheelie over the doorjamb and found a table nearby. Sketchy pulled one of the chairs away so Logan could get up close to the table, then sat down across from him. A kid in a greasy apron came over and took their orders.
"Must be exciting," Sketchy commented.
"What?" Logan wasn't sure what Sketchy was talking about.
"Working for Eyes Only. Must be exciting." Sketchy elaborated on his comment.
"Sometimes," Logan admitted, trying to be noncommittal. "Mostly a lot of research. Banging away on the computer."
"Do you like being a journalist?" Sketchy's voice was full of yearning. "I really want to be a reporter."
"Yeah, Sketchy. I do." Logan leaned back in the chair and began to relax. "I like to think that what I write makes a difference. And I like to think that what I relay to Eyes Only makes a difference."
"Oh, I'm sure it does. I just hope I can do the same someday. Being a bike messenger is not my idea of a lifelong career, although it'll do until something better comes along. Does keep me in beer and an occasional game of pool, though."
Their breakfasts arrived and Sketchy tore into his food like it was his last meal. Logan picked at his food, eager to get back to his computers and see what Sketchy had photographed.
At last, Sketchy wolfed down his last forkful of scrambled eggs and gulped his third cup of coffee.
"I better get to work before Normal realizes I'm missing," he said by way of farewell. "Thanks for breakfast."
Logan nodded and finished his coffee. He watched Sketchy walk away, headed for Jam Pony. Then he called for the check, paid the bill, and left the coffee shop.
*****
When he arrived back at the penthouse, Logan eagerly unpacked the sack, extracted the diskettes, and booted up his computers. Once the system was up and running, he inserted the first diskette and looked over the photos.
Sketchy had been meticulous. The Steelheads' HQ had been photographed from all angles; not an inch of the building had been neglected. As Logan had suspected, there was a rear entrance nearly at ground level, with a sturdy concrete ramp, as well as an extra wide door, in place to ease the entrance and exit of caskets, as Logan realized when he saw the tattered sign on the door. He smiled to himself; getting in and out of the building would be easy. All he had to do was find out where Eddie kept the records, if indeed he had any.
He looked over all the time-stamped photos, noting what times Eddie, Lux, and the others came and went. It seemed that the best time for a little breaking and entering was between 6 and 9 PM, when the gang was out, probably getting dinner somewhere. He planned his moves for that timeframe, laughing ruefully at the thought that he was the world's only crippled cat burglar.
The photographs at the end of the diskette startled him. He carefully peered at the screen, watching the first transaction unfold; it was obvious that Sketchy had snapped almost continuously. Logan didn't recognize the Oriental guys, but he could guess what was taking place. The photos on the diskette came to an end and Logan popped it out and replaced it with the next one.
He*did* recognize the men who participated in the second transaction, however. The first man was one of Pierpont Lempkin's henchmen; the second was one of his bodyguards. "Good job, Sketchy," he said aloud. The evidence against Lempkin was beginning to accumulate.
Logan began to assemble the dossier. Into it went the photos, Sketchy's notes, the encrypted ledgers, and Lux and Eddie's criminal records. It was almost time for an Eyes Only hack. He hoped that whatever he would find at the old mortuary that evening would add yet another nail to Lempkin's coffin. The irony did not escape Logan.
*****
The November sun was setting as Logan prepared for the evening's activities. After a brief nap, he had changed into a black turtleneck sweater and black cargo pants - he felt that all the pockets on the pants would come in handy. From the desk drawer, he extracted a small package, rolled up and tied. He undid it to check the contents and smiled at the thought that Max wasn't the only one with lock picking tools. He rolled it up again and retied it, then stuffed it into one of the knee-level pockets on his pants. Into another pocket went a couple of tiny, but powerful flashlights and a pair of black leather gloves. The last item was his gun. He inserted a clip, made sure the safety was on, and put it into the pack that hung over the back of the wheelchair. He grabbed his leather jacket and a woolen watch cap from the coat rack, made sure he had his keys, and left the penthouse.
When he got to the garage, he opened the rear hatch of the Aztek and pulled out his sports chair, which was more or less permanently stashed there for pick-up basketball games and emergencies. He had decided to use that instead of the regular one since the sports chair was lighter, faster, easier to maneuver, and turned on a dime. It also had anti-tippers on it, which might come in handy. He stashed it behind the seat for handy access. He had already removed his gun from the backpack of his other chair and hidden it in the map pocket on the front door.
*****
It was pitch dark when Logan arrived at the defunct mortuary. He drove around to the rear of the building and parked the Aztek a short distance away, where it would probably not be noticed. He donned the black leather jacket, zipped it, and turned up the collar against the rising wind, then took his gun from its hiding place and shoved it into his pocket. He put on the leather gloves. After assembling the sports chair and transferring into it, he cautiously made his way to the Steelheads' headquarters, on the lookout for anyone in the vicinity. Since the neighborhood was not the best, and it was a chilly night, few people cared to venture out after dark for a stroll.
Nutman's Mortuary was dark; it seemed that Eddie, Lux, and crew were off on a dinner break. Logan surveyed the building briefly, then wheeled up the ramp to the double doors. He locked his brakes, not wanting to roll backwards into the street, and checked the door. "Of course it's locked," he grumbled. "What self-respecting crook would go out and leave his doors unlocked?"
Out came the lock picking kit and one of the flashlights. Logan held the flashlight in his mouth while he jiggered around with the lock. Not having Max's expertise, it took him a few minutes, but at last, the door opened. He put the kit back in his pants pocket, then rolled inside the building.
Sweeping the place with the flashlight, Logan could see traces of the earlier elegance of the mortuary, now cluttered with mismatched furniture, a large color TV, and a refrigerator. It looked like the main living area. There was nothing in the room that looked like it could hold records. He wheeled through it, with barely enough space for the chair, searching for a door that might lead to an office or storage room. There were several at the rear of the room.
Logan chose a door and opened it. As he sat in the doorway, he shone the flashlight around the smaller, but equally cluttered room. This one contained an embalming table, a couple of caskets, and funerary paraphernalia, but still nothing that resembled file cabinets or even cardboard boxes of a size that could house files. Logan turned the flashlight on his wristwatch. It was after 7 pm. He had to hurry if he was going to search records.
He backed out of the room and rolled over to the next door. He carefully pushed it open and once again, shone the flashlight around.
"Jackpot!" he said to himself as he entered the room. He was in a shabby office, with a desk, several chairs and two heavy, old-fashioned wooden file cabinets. A computer was on the desk, but he resisted the temptation to hack into it right away. He figured Eddie was more of a paper files kind of guy, while Lux was the techie. He could always hack into the computer remotely later, but he had to search the hard copy files up close and now.
Logan pulled up to the first file cabinet, an oak, five-drawer affair that loomed over his head by a couple of feet. He opened the easiest drawer to reach, the one next to the bottom, and ran his flashlight over the rows of files stuffed into it. Randomly, he pulled out one, opened the manila folder, and scanned it. It was one of the mortuary files. With an exasperated sigh, Logan replaced it and rummaged through the rest of the folders in the drawer. They were all mortuary-related.
The same thing held for the files in the lowest drawer: Nutman's records going back to the turn of the twenty-first century. Logan shut the drawer, reached up, and pulled open the drawer next to the top. He stuck his hand in and extracted a file: yet more Nutman's records. He assumed the top drawer contained the same thing, since the folders seemed to be in alphabetical order.
He moved over to the next file cabinet and repeated the exercise. These folders did not contain Nutman's files. They held, among other things, income tax information for Eddie, Lux, and the other two Steelheads Logan had seen with them, whose names appeared to be Bird and Tuck. There were two sets of records for each tax form, as if the gang members had tried to figure which way would give them the best returns. There were folders full of receipts of all kinds. To Logan it seemed that the Steelheads were attempting to pursue a law-abiding profile, even down to tax records.
The bottom drawer was full of junk: old magazines, newspaper clippings about Pierpont Lempkin and his cronies and the Steelhead subculture. There was nothing in the file drawer of interest to Logan. If there were any paper records, they were in the top two or three drawers of the file cabinet.*Why make it easy for me,* Logan thought, laughing silently.
Once again, he opened the second drawer and blindly reached in to pull out a folder. This time, he hit paydirt. The folder was entitled "Transactions, 2019." Logan quickly scanned the files. They were cryptic, but not too difficult to decipher. It didn't take much imagination to figure out what "L Ky," "R Ky," and "LVR" meant. Logan tucked the folder into his jacket. He needed to see the rest of the file drawer's contents, but there was no time to randomly pull out files. He would have to be a bit more aggressive in his methods, he decided.
Logan backed the sports chair up a bit and locked the brakes. He reached up and pulled at the drawer, trying to jiggle it, to see if the cabinet would move. It seemed to be solid and heavy enough to hold his weight. Putting the flashlight in his mouth, Logan took hold of the file cabinet, the drawer with one hand, and the top of the cabinet with the other, and pulled himself upright, thankful for Bling's exercises and nagging. He moved one hand across the files to hold onto the other side of the drawer. He hung, half standing, half suspended, from the file drawer, his feet barely touching the footrest of the wheelchair.
Afraid to let out his breath for fear of the file cabinet toppling over, Logan looked over the titles on the folder tabs. Moving his head slightly, he shone the flashlight on the contents of the drawer. There were similarly labeled folders for 2020 and the current year; they must have started up the organ smuggling shortly after arriving in Seattle. Logan gingerly removed the other folders, hanging on for dear life by one arm, and carefully dropped them onto the floor, to be retrieved when he finally let go of the file cabinet. He also found a list of regular partners, the men who bought the organs and resold them to wealthy clients in Asia. The information was excellent and would bring down Eddie and company, but Logan had yet to find the connection between them and Lempkin, other than the fact that Lux was Pierpont's sister. It had to be there somewhere.
Logan's arms were beginning to tire. He had to find the connection in the next five or so minutes. He ransacked the drawer, but was unable to find what he was looking for. It had to be in the top drawer.
"Damn!" Logan said to himself as he carefully let go of the drawer and lowered himself back into the chair. He closed the drawer and shook his arms to get the circulation going again. After a couple of deep breaths to calm himself, he reached up and opened the top drawer. Reaching it was a struggle, but once he had his hands in place - one on the top of the filing cabinet and one on the open drawer for balance, he was able to chin himself slowly up to the drawer. He knew he wouldn't be able to hold on for long, so he hoped he could find what he was looking for quickly.
Once again, flashlight in mouth, Logan scanned the file folders. They seemed to be a jumble of miscellaneous items, like bills for the television set (not bought by the Steelheads, but stolen, along with the set). There were files of local businesses they shook down for "protection," information Logan normally would be delighted to find, if he hadn't been looking for something more important.
He spotted a folder tab labeled "Far East Trading Company." It set off an alarm in his mind because there was no business in the immediate area with that name. Painfully, with one hand, he extracted the folder and opened it. Shining the flashlight in his mouth onto the papers, Logan saw a list of regular payments to the Far East Trading Company by Eddie and Lux. Since they didn't seem to be dealing in Asian artifacts or souvenirs, Logan wondered what they were paying for. On a hunch, he dropped the folder on top of the others and let go. When he had time back at the penthouse, he would compare the transaction records against the payments.
Out of breath, Logan took the flashlight from his mouth, and closed the file drawer. He bent over and picked up the folders from the floor and stuck them down his jacket. Looking at his watch, he decided it was time to get out of Dodge. He unlocked the brakes on the chair and pushed himself toward the door, feeling the muscles in his shoulders burn.
Shutting the door behind him, Logan reentered the main area of the building. He wheeled through it silently, deftly avoiding the clutter. Just as he was about to open the back door and leave, he heard the sound of a key turning in the lock. Someone was returning to the mortuary and he was trapped. He retrieved his gun from his jacket pocket, slid the safety off, chambered a round, and waited.
Disclaimer: Dark Angel is owned by Charles Eglee, James Cameron, and Fox. I claim no rights to these characters, alas, although I like to play with them.
Episode Reference: Takes place immediately after Some Assembly Required
Rating: PG
Summary: A Logan Cale, Man of Action fic, complete with Steelheads and major bad guys
A/N: This is for Alaidh, who requested another LCMOA fic from me. Thanks to my betas, Alaidh and Kasman, for their insight.
I live for reviews. You know what to do.
Chapter Six
By half past eight, Logan had showered, dressed, and considered fixing breakfast, but his nerves had gotten the better of him. He left for the park early, having nothing better to do and hoped that the short trip would calm him down.
He was ten minutes early to the park, looking around, almost sniffing the air as if he were a wild animal wary of hunters. His relief was palpable when he saw Sketchy sauntering toward him. He let out a deep breath.
"Hey, Logan. Morning," Sketchy said, totally unaware of the tension his presence relieved.
"Hey, Sketchy," Logan replied, a smile on his face. "How'd it go?"
" 'Cake," Sketchy commented smugly.
"Great."
"I think you'll be happy with what I got. And I've included notes too. It's all in the sack." Sketchy handed the nylon bag to Logan.
"Excellent. No problems?" Logan stuffed the bag into the backpack on the chair.
"Nah, everything was copasetic. Pretty quiet, except for the middle of the night. Hope I got stuff Eyes Only can use."
"I'm sure you did. Thanks, Sketchy," Logan said sincerely.
"Hey, my pleasure. Any time I can help the great man.."
"I'm sure he'll appreciate what you did."
"Kewl. And let him know I'm available for other - missions, okay?"
"I'll let him know." Logan looked up at Sketchy. "Can I buy you breakfast?"
"That would be cool. I'm starved. Hanging out in a crate is hungry work!" Sketchy laughed.
Logan put his hand on his wheels and backed the chair up. He turned around and headed for a coffee shop he knew between Jam Pony and the park. Sketchy shambled along side him, hands in his pockets.
When they got to the coffee shop, Logan popped a wheelie over the doorjamb and found a table nearby. Sketchy pulled one of the chairs away so Logan could get up close to the table, then sat down across from him. A kid in a greasy apron came over and took their orders.
"Must be exciting," Sketchy commented.
"What?" Logan wasn't sure what Sketchy was talking about.
"Working for Eyes Only. Must be exciting." Sketchy elaborated on his comment.
"Sometimes," Logan admitted, trying to be noncommittal. "Mostly a lot of research. Banging away on the computer."
"Do you like being a journalist?" Sketchy's voice was full of yearning. "I really want to be a reporter."
"Yeah, Sketchy. I do." Logan leaned back in the chair and began to relax. "I like to think that what I write makes a difference. And I like to think that what I relay to Eyes Only makes a difference."
"Oh, I'm sure it does. I just hope I can do the same someday. Being a bike messenger is not my idea of a lifelong career, although it'll do until something better comes along. Does keep me in beer and an occasional game of pool, though."
Their breakfasts arrived and Sketchy tore into his food like it was his last meal. Logan picked at his food, eager to get back to his computers and see what Sketchy had photographed.
At last, Sketchy wolfed down his last forkful of scrambled eggs and gulped his third cup of coffee.
"I better get to work before Normal realizes I'm missing," he said by way of farewell. "Thanks for breakfast."
Logan nodded and finished his coffee. He watched Sketchy walk away, headed for Jam Pony. Then he called for the check, paid the bill, and left the coffee shop.
*****
When he arrived back at the penthouse, Logan eagerly unpacked the sack, extracted the diskettes, and booted up his computers. Once the system was up and running, he inserted the first diskette and looked over the photos.
Sketchy had been meticulous. The Steelheads' HQ had been photographed from all angles; not an inch of the building had been neglected. As Logan had suspected, there was a rear entrance nearly at ground level, with a sturdy concrete ramp, as well as an extra wide door, in place to ease the entrance and exit of caskets, as Logan realized when he saw the tattered sign on the door. He smiled to himself; getting in and out of the building would be easy. All he had to do was find out where Eddie kept the records, if indeed he had any.
He looked over all the time-stamped photos, noting what times Eddie, Lux, and the others came and went. It seemed that the best time for a little breaking and entering was between 6 and 9 PM, when the gang was out, probably getting dinner somewhere. He planned his moves for that timeframe, laughing ruefully at the thought that he was the world's only crippled cat burglar.
The photographs at the end of the diskette startled him. He carefully peered at the screen, watching the first transaction unfold; it was obvious that Sketchy had snapped almost continuously. Logan didn't recognize the Oriental guys, but he could guess what was taking place. The photos on the diskette came to an end and Logan popped it out and replaced it with the next one.
He*did* recognize the men who participated in the second transaction, however. The first man was one of Pierpont Lempkin's henchmen; the second was one of his bodyguards. "Good job, Sketchy," he said aloud. The evidence against Lempkin was beginning to accumulate.
Logan began to assemble the dossier. Into it went the photos, Sketchy's notes, the encrypted ledgers, and Lux and Eddie's criminal records. It was almost time for an Eyes Only hack. He hoped that whatever he would find at the old mortuary that evening would add yet another nail to Lempkin's coffin. The irony did not escape Logan.
*****
The November sun was setting as Logan prepared for the evening's activities. After a brief nap, he had changed into a black turtleneck sweater and black cargo pants - he felt that all the pockets on the pants would come in handy. From the desk drawer, he extracted a small package, rolled up and tied. He undid it to check the contents and smiled at the thought that Max wasn't the only one with lock picking tools. He rolled it up again and retied it, then stuffed it into one of the knee-level pockets on his pants. Into another pocket went a couple of tiny, but powerful flashlights and a pair of black leather gloves. The last item was his gun. He inserted a clip, made sure the safety was on, and put it into the pack that hung over the back of the wheelchair. He grabbed his leather jacket and a woolen watch cap from the coat rack, made sure he had his keys, and left the penthouse.
When he got to the garage, he opened the rear hatch of the Aztek and pulled out his sports chair, which was more or less permanently stashed there for pick-up basketball games and emergencies. He had decided to use that instead of the regular one since the sports chair was lighter, faster, easier to maneuver, and turned on a dime. It also had anti-tippers on it, which might come in handy. He stashed it behind the seat for handy access. He had already removed his gun from the backpack of his other chair and hidden it in the map pocket on the front door.
*****
It was pitch dark when Logan arrived at the defunct mortuary. He drove around to the rear of the building and parked the Aztek a short distance away, where it would probably not be noticed. He donned the black leather jacket, zipped it, and turned up the collar against the rising wind, then took his gun from its hiding place and shoved it into his pocket. He put on the leather gloves. After assembling the sports chair and transferring into it, he cautiously made his way to the Steelheads' headquarters, on the lookout for anyone in the vicinity. Since the neighborhood was not the best, and it was a chilly night, few people cared to venture out after dark for a stroll.
Nutman's Mortuary was dark; it seemed that Eddie, Lux, and crew were off on a dinner break. Logan surveyed the building briefly, then wheeled up the ramp to the double doors. He locked his brakes, not wanting to roll backwards into the street, and checked the door. "Of course it's locked," he grumbled. "What self-respecting crook would go out and leave his doors unlocked?"
Out came the lock picking kit and one of the flashlights. Logan held the flashlight in his mouth while he jiggered around with the lock. Not having Max's expertise, it took him a few minutes, but at last, the door opened. He put the kit back in his pants pocket, then rolled inside the building.
Sweeping the place with the flashlight, Logan could see traces of the earlier elegance of the mortuary, now cluttered with mismatched furniture, a large color TV, and a refrigerator. It looked like the main living area. There was nothing in the room that looked like it could hold records. He wheeled through it, with barely enough space for the chair, searching for a door that might lead to an office or storage room. There were several at the rear of the room.
Logan chose a door and opened it. As he sat in the doorway, he shone the flashlight around the smaller, but equally cluttered room. This one contained an embalming table, a couple of caskets, and funerary paraphernalia, but still nothing that resembled file cabinets or even cardboard boxes of a size that could house files. Logan turned the flashlight on his wristwatch. It was after 7 pm. He had to hurry if he was going to search records.
He backed out of the room and rolled over to the next door. He carefully pushed it open and once again, shone the flashlight around.
"Jackpot!" he said to himself as he entered the room. He was in a shabby office, with a desk, several chairs and two heavy, old-fashioned wooden file cabinets. A computer was on the desk, but he resisted the temptation to hack into it right away. He figured Eddie was more of a paper files kind of guy, while Lux was the techie. He could always hack into the computer remotely later, but he had to search the hard copy files up close and now.
Logan pulled up to the first file cabinet, an oak, five-drawer affair that loomed over his head by a couple of feet. He opened the easiest drawer to reach, the one next to the bottom, and ran his flashlight over the rows of files stuffed into it. Randomly, he pulled out one, opened the manila folder, and scanned it. It was one of the mortuary files. With an exasperated sigh, Logan replaced it and rummaged through the rest of the folders in the drawer. They were all mortuary-related.
The same thing held for the files in the lowest drawer: Nutman's records going back to the turn of the twenty-first century. Logan shut the drawer, reached up, and pulled open the drawer next to the top. He stuck his hand in and extracted a file: yet more Nutman's records. He assumed the top drawer contained the same thing, since the folders seemed to be in alphabetical order.
He moved over to the next file cabinet and repeated the exercise. These folders did not contain Nutman's files. They held, among other things, income tax information for Eddie, Lux, and the other two Steelheads Logan had seen with them, whose names appeared to be Bird and Tuck. There were two sets of records for each tax form, as if the gang members had tried to figure which way would give them the best returns. There were folders full of receipts of all kinds. To Logan it seemed that the Steelheads were attempting to pursue a law-abiding profile, even down to tax records.
The bottom drawer was full of junk: old magazines, newspaper clippings about Pierpont Lempkin and his cronies and the Steelhead subculture. There was nothing in the file drawer of interest to Logan. If there were any paper records, they were in the top two or three drawers of the file cabinet.*Why make it easy for me,* Logan thought, laughing silently.
Once again, he opened the second drawer and blindly reached in to pull out a folder. This time, he hit paydirt. The folder was entitled "Transactions, 2019." Logan quickly scanned the files. They were cryptic, but not too difficult to decipher. It didn't take much imagination to figure out what "L Ky," "R Ky," and "LVR" meant. Logan tucked the folder into his jacket. He needed to see the rest of the file drawer's contents, but there was no time to randomly pull out files. He would have to be a bit more aggressive in his methods, he decided.
Logan backed the sports chair up a bit and locked the brakes. He reached up and pulled at the drawer, trying to jiggle it, to see if the cabinet would move. It seemed to be solid and heavy enough to hold his weight. Putting the flashlight in his mouth, Logan took hold of the file cabinet, the drawer with one hand, and the top of the cabinet with the other, and pulled himself upright, thankful for Bling's exercises and nagging. He moved one hand across the files to hold onto the other side of the drawer. He hung, half standing, half suspended, from the file drawer, his feet barely touching the footrest of the wheelchair.
Afraid to let out his breath for fear of the file cabinet toppling over, Logan looked over the titles on the folder tabs. Moving his head slightly, he shone the flashlight on the contents of the drawer. There were similarly labeled folders for 2020 and the current year; they must have started up the organ smuggling shortly after arriving in Seattle. Logan gingerly removed the other folders, hanging on for dear life by one arm, and carefully dropped them onto the floor, to be retrieved when he finally let go of the file cabinet. He also found a list of regular partners, the men who bought the organs and resold them to wealthy clients in Asia. The information was excellent and would bring down Eddie and company, but Logan had yet to find the connection between them and Lempkin, other than the fact that Lux was Pierpont's sister. It had to be there somewhere.
Logan's arms were beginning to tire. He had to find the connection in the next five or so minutes. He ransacked the drawer, but was unable to find what he was looking for. It had to be in the top drawer.
"Damn!" Logan said to himself as he carefully let go of the drawer and lowered himself back into the chair. He closed the drawer and shook his arms to get the circulation going again. After a couple of deep breaths to calm himself, he reached up and opened the top drawer. Reaching it was a struggle, but once he had his hands in place - one on the top of the filing cabinet and one on the open drawer for balance, he was able to chin himself slowly up to the drawer. He knew he wouldn't be able to hold on for long, so he hoped he could find what he was looking for quickly.
Once again, flashlight in mouth, Logan scanned the file folders. They seemed to be a jumble of miscellaneous items, like bills for the television set (not bought by the Steelheads, but stolen, along with the set). There were files of local businesses they shook down for "protection," information Logan normally would be delighted to find, if he hadn't been looking for something more important.
He spotted a folder tab labeled "Far East Trading Company." It set off an alarm in his mind because there was no business in the immediate area with that name. Painfully, with one hand, he extracted the folder and opened it. Shining the flashlight in his mouth onto the papers, Logan saw a list of regular payments to the Far East Trading Company by Eddie and Lux. Since they didn't seem to be dealing in Asian artifacts or souvenirs, Logan wondered what they were paying for. On a hunch, he dropped the folder on top of the others and let go. When he had time back at the penthouse, he would compare the transaction records against the payments.
Out of breath, Logan took the flashlight from his mouth, and closed the file drawer. He bent over and picked up the folders from the floor and stuck them down his jacket. Looking at his watch, he decided it was time to get out of Dodge. He unlocked the brakes on the chair and pushed himself toward the door, feeling the muscles in his shoulders burn.
Shutting the door behind him, Logan reentered the main area of the building. He wheeled through it silently, deftly avoiding the clutter. Just as he was about to open the back door and leave, he heard the sound of a key turning in the lock. Someone was returning to the mortuary and he was trapped. He retrieved his gun from his jacket pocket, slid the safety off, chambered a round, and waited.