Sycamore Row

would know it immediately. When one slapped a waitress on her shapely rear end, events spiraled out of control, and quickly. The lone bouncer, a man who had never shied away from violence, barked at the offending Russian, who barked back in another language while rising angrily. He threw a wild punch, which missed, and then took one that didn’t. From across the room, a gang of patriotic bikers hurled beer bottles at the Russians, all of whom were springing into action. Lonny said, “Oh shit!” and thought about leaving through the kitchen, but he’d seen it all before, many times. His bar had a tough reputation, which was one reason it paid so well, and in cash.
    When another waitress was knocked down, he ducked around the bar to help her. The melee raged on just a few feet away, and as he reached to grab her a blunt object of some variety struck him in the back of his head. He fell comatose, blood pouring from his wound and draining into his long gray ponytail. At sixty-six, Lonny was simply too old to even watch such a brawl.
    For two days he lay unconscious in a Juneau hospital. The owner of the bar reluctantly came forward and admitted he had no paperwork on the man. Just a name—Lonny Clark. A detective was hanging around, and when it became apparent he might never wake up, a plan was hatched. The owner told them which flophouse Lonny called home, and the cops broke in. Along with almost nothing in the way of assets, they found thirty kilos of cocaine wrapped neatly in foil and seemingly untouched. Under the mattress, they also found a small plastic binder with a zipper. Inside was about $2,000 in cash; an Alaska driver’s license that turned out to be fake, name of Harry Mendoza; a passport, also fake, for Albert Johnson; another fake passport for Charles Noland; a stolen Wisconsin driver’s license for Wilson Steglitz, expired; and a yellowed naval discharge summary for one Ancil F. Hubbard, dated May 1955. The binder consisted of Lonny’s worldly assets, discounting of course the cocaine, which had a street value of roughly $1.5 million.
    It took the police several days to verify records and such, and by then Lonny was awake and feeling better. The police decided not to approach him about the coke until he was ready to be discharged. They kept an officer in street clothes outside his room. Since the only legitimate names in his arsenal appeared to be Ancil F. Hubbard and Wilson Steglitz, they entered them into the national crime computer system to see what, if anything, might turn up. The detective began chatting with Lonny, stopping by and bringing him milk shakes, but there was no mention of the drugs. After a few visits, the detective said they could find no records of a man named Lonny Clark. Birth place and date, Social Security number, state of residence? Anything, Lonny?
    Lonny, who’d spent a lifetime running and ducking, grew suspicious and less talkative. The detective asked, “You ever know a man by the name of Harry Mendoza?”
    “Maybe,” Lonny replied.
    Oh really? From where and when? How? Under what circumstances? Nothing.
    What about Albert Johnson, or Charles Noland? Lonny said maybe he’d met those men long ago but wasn’t sure. His memory was foggy, coming and going. He had, after all, a cracked skull and a bruised brain, and, well, he couldn’t remember much before the fight. Why all the questions?
    By then Lonny knew they had been in his room, but he wasn’t sure if they had found the cocaine. There was an excellent chance theman who owned it went to the flophouse not long after the fight and removed it himself. Lonny was not a dealer; he was just doing a friend a favor, one for which he was to be paid nicely. So, the question was whether the cops had found the cocaine. If so, Lonny was in some serious trouble. The less he said the better. As he had learned decades earlier, when the cops start asking serious questions, deny, deny, deny.

    Jake was at his desk when Portia rang through and said, “It’s Albert Murray.” Jake grabbed the phone and said hello.
    Murray ran a firm out of D.C. and specialized in locating missing persons, both nationally and internationally. So far, the estate of Seth Hubbard had paid the firm $42,000 to find a long-lost brother and had almost nothing to show for it. Its results had been thoroughly unimpressive, though its billing procedures rivaled those of any big-city law firm.
    Murray, always skeptical, began with “We have a soft hit on