Time of the Wolves

by Marcia Muller

  “He wasn’t just feeding a habit here, John. Or dealing on a small scale. He was distributing, bringing it in on this boat in a major way.”

  “Yeah.” He fell silent, staring grimly at the littered floor. “So what’re you going to do . . . call the cops?”

  “They’ll have to know eventually, but not yet. The dealing in itself isn’t important any more . . . its bearing on Troy’s murder is.”

  Back on Point Loma, I waited just out of sight of Troy Winslip’s house in the Scout. John had wanted to come along and help me stake the place out, so, in order to otherwise occupy him, I’d sent him off on what I considered a time-consuming errand. The afternoon waned. Behind me, the sky’s blue deepened and the lowering sun grew brighter gold in contrast. Tall palms bordering the Winslip property cast long easterly shadows. At around six, a white Dodge van rounded the corner and pulled into Troy’s driveway. A young woman—red—haired, willowy, clad in jeans and a black-and-white African print cape—jumped out and hurried into the house. By the time I got to the front door, she was already returning, arms full of clothing on hangers. She started when she saw me.

  I had my identification and the release from Troy’s parents ready. As I explained what I was after, the woman barely glanced at them. “All I want is my things,” she said. “After I get them out of here, I don’t care what the hell you do.”

  I followed her, picking up a purple silk tunic that had slipped from its hanger. “Please come inside. We’ll talk. You lived with Troy . . . don’t you care why he was killed?”

  She laughed bitterly, tossed the armload of clothing into the back of the van, and took the tunic from my outstretched hand. “I care. But I also care about myself. I don’t want to be hanging around here any longer than necessary.”

  “You feel you’re in danger?”

  “I’d be a fool if I didn’t.” She pushed around me and hurried up the walk. “Those people don’t mess around, you know.”

  I followed her. “What people?”

  She rushed through the door, skidding on the polished marble of the foyer. A few suitcases and cartons were lined up at the foot of a curving staircase. “You want to talk?” the woman said. “We’ll talk, but you’ll have to help me with this stuff.”

  I nodded, picked up the nearest box, and followed her back to the van. “I know that Troy was dealing.”

  “Dealing?” She snorted. “He was supplying half the county. He and Daniel were taking the boat down to Baja three, four nights a week.”

  “Who’s Daniel?”

  “Daniel Pope, Troy’s partner.” She took the box from my hands, shoved it into the back of the van, and started up the walk.

  “Where can I find him?”

  “His legit business is a surf shop on Coronado . . . Danny P’s.”

  “And the people who don’t mess around . . . who are they?”

  We were back in the foyer now. She thrust two suitcases at me. “Oh, no, you’re not getting me involved in that.”

  “Look . . . what’s your name?”

  “I don’t have to tell you.” She hefted the last carton, took a final look around, and tossed her hair defiantly. “I’m out of here.”

  Once again, we were off at a trot toward the van. “You may be out of here,” I said, “but you’re still afraid. Let me help you.”

  She stowed the carton, took the suitcases from me, and shook her head. “Nobody can help me. It’s only a matter of time. I know too much.”

  “Then share it. . . .”

  “No!” She slammed the van’s side door, slipped quickly into the driver’s seat, and locked the door behind her. For a moment, she sat with head bowed, her hands on the wheel, then she relented and rolled down the window a few turns. “Why don’t you talk to Daniel? If he’s not at the surf shop, he’ll be at home . . . he’s the only Pope on C Street in Coronado. Ask him. . . .” She hesitated, looking around as if someone could hear her. “Ask him about Renny D.”

  “Ronny D?”

  “No, Renny, with an E. It’s short for Reynaldo.” Quickly she cranked up the window and started the van. I stepped back in time to keep from getting my toes squashed.

  The woman had left the front door of the house open and the keys in the lock. For a moment, I considered searching the place, then concluded it was more important to talk to Daniel Pope. I went back up the walk, closed the door, turned the deadbolt, and pocketed the keys for future use.

  Daniel Pope wasn’t at his surf shop, and he wasn’t at his home on C Street. But John was waiting two houses down, perched on his cycle in the shade of a jacaranda tree.

  I raised my eyes to the heavens and whispered to the Lord: “Please, not again!”

  The Lord, who in recent years had been refusing to listen to my pleas, failed to eradicate my brother’s presence.

  I parked the Scout behind the cycle. John sauntered back and leaned on the open window beside me. “Daniel Pope owns a half interest in the Windsong,” he said out of the corner of his mouth, eyes casing the house like an experienced thief.

  I’d assigned him to check into the yawl’s registry, but I hadn’t expected him to come up with anything this quickly.

  John went on: “He and Troy bought the boat two years ago for ninety thousand dollars cash from the yacht broker at Glorietta Bay. They took her out three or four times a week for about eight hours a stretch. In between, they partied. Men would come and go, carrying luggage. Some of the more conservative . . . read that ‘bigoted’ . . . slip holders complained that they were throwing ‘fag parties’.”

  “But we know they were holding sales meetings.”

  “Right.”

  “Where’d you get all that?”

  “The yacht broker. I pretended I was interested in buying the Windsong. He’s probably got the commission spent already. Shit, I feel really guilty about it.”

  A blue Mercedes was approaching. It went past us, slowed, and turned into the driveway of the white Italianate house we’d been watching. I unbuckled my seat belt and said: “Ease your guilt by telling yourself that, if you ever do buy a boat, you’ll use that broker.”

  He ignored me, straightening and watching the car pull into an attached garage. “Daniel Pope?”

  “Probably.”

  “So now what do we do?”

  Thoughtfully, I looked him over. My brother is a former bar brawler and can be intimidating to those who don’t know him for the pussycat he is. And at the moment, he was in exceptionally good shape.

  “We,” I said, “are going in there and talk with Pope about somebody called Renny D.”

  Daniel Pope was suffering from a bad case of nerves. His bony, angular body twitched, and a severe tic marred his ruggedly handsome features. When we’d first come to the door, he’d tried to shut it in our faces; now that he was reasonably assured that we weren’t going to kill him, he wanted a drink. John and I sat on the edge of a leather sofa in a living room filled with sophisticated sound equipment while he poured three fingers of single malt Scotch. Then I began questioning him.

  “Who’s Renny D?”

  “Where’d you get that name?”

  “Who is he?”

  “I don’t have to talk about. . . .”

  “Look, Pope, we know all about the Windsong and your trips to Baja. And about the dealers who come to the yawl in between. The rear cabin is littered with grass and coke . . . I can have the police there in. . . .”

  “Jesus! I thought you were working for Troy’s parents.”

  “I am, but Troy’s dead, and they’re more interested in finding out who killed him than in covering up your illegal activities.”

  “Oh, Jesus.” He took a big drink of whiskey.

  I repeated: “Who’s Renny D?”

  Silence.

  “I’m not going to ask again.” I moved my hand toward a phone on the table beside me. John grinned evilly at Pope.

  “Don’t! Don’t do that! Christ, I. . . . Renny Dominguez is the other big distribu
tor around here. He didn’t want Troy and me cutting into his territory.”

  “And?”

  “That’s it.”

  “No, it’s not.” I moved my hand again. John did a fair imitation of a villain’s leer. Maybe, I thought, he should have taken up acting.

  “OK, all right, it’s not. I’ll tell you, just leave the phone alone. At first, Troy and I tried to work something out with Renny D. Split the territory, co-operate, you know. He wasn’t having any of that. Things’ve been getting pretty intense over the last few months . . . there was a fire at my store . . . somebody shot at Troy in front of his house . . . we both had phone threats.”

  “And then?”

  “All of a sudden, Renny D decides he wants to make nice with us. So we meet him at this bar where he hangs out in National City, and he proposed we work together, kick the business into really high gear. But now it’s Troy who isn’t having any of that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Troy’s convinced himself that Renny D is small-time and kind of stupid. He thinks we should kick our business into high gear and take over Renny’s turf. I took him aside, tried to tell him that what he saw as small-time stupidity was only a matter of different styles. I mean, just because Renny D doesn’t wear Reeboks or computerize his customer list doesn’t mean he’s an idiot. I tried to tell Troy that those people were dangerous, that you at least had to try to humor them. But did Troy listen? No way. He went back to the table and made Renny look bad in front of his compadres, and that’s bad shit, man.”

  “So then what happened?”

  “More threats. Another drive-by. And that only made Troy more convinced that Renny and his pals were stupid, because they couldn’t pick him off at twenty feet. Well, this kind of stuff goes on until it’s getting ridiculous, and finally Renny issues a challenge . . . the two of them’ll meet down in TJ near the bullring and settle it one-on-one, like honorable men.”

  “And Troy fell for that?”

  “Sure. Like I said, he’d convinced himself Renny D was stupid, so he had me set it up with Renny’s number two man, Jimmy. It was supposed to be just the two of us, and only Renny and Troy would fight.”

  “You didn’t try to talk him out of it?”

  “All the way down there, I did. But Troy . . . stubborn should’ve been his middle name.”

  “And what happened when you got there?”

  “It was just the four of us, like Jimmy said. But what he didn’t say was that he and Renny would have knives. The two of them moved damn’ fast, and, before I knew what was happening, they’d stabbed Troy.”

  “What did you do?”

  Pope looked away. Went to get himself another three fingers of Scotch.

  “What did you do, Daniel?”

  “I froze. And then I ran. Left Troy’s damned car there, ran off, and spent half the night wandering, the other half hiding behind an auto body shop near the port of entry. The next morning, I walked back over the border like any innocent tourist.”

  “And now you think Renny and his friends’ll come after you.”

  “I was a witness. It’s only a matter of time.”

  That was what Troy’s girlfriend had said, too. “Are you willing to tell your story to the police?”

  Silence.

  “Daniel?”

  He ran his tongue over dry lips. After a moment, he said: “Shit, what’ve I got to lose? Look at me.” He held out a shaky hand. “I’m a wreck, and it’s all Troy’s fault. He had fair warning of what was gonna go down. When I think of the way he ignored it, I want to kill him all over again.”

  “What fair warning?”

  “Some message Renny D left on his answering machine. Troy thought it was funny. He said it was so melodramatic, it proved Renny was brain-damaged.”

  “Did he tell you what the message was?”

  Daniel Pope shook his head. “He was gonna play it for me when we got back from TJ. He said you had to hear it to believe it.”

  The message was in a weird Spanish-accented falsetto, accompanied by cackling laughter: “Knives at midnight, Winslip. Knives at midnight.”

  I popped the tape from Troy’s answering machine and turned to John. “Why the hell would he go down to TJ after hearing that? Did he think Renny D was joking?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe he took along his own knife, but Renny and Jimmy were quicker. Remember, he thought they were stupid.” He shook his head. “Troy was a dumb middle-class kid who got in over his head and let his own high opinion of himself warp his judgment. But he still sure as hell didn’t deserve to die in a parking lot of seventeen stab wounds.”

  “No, he didn’t.” I turned the tape over in my hands. “Why do you suppose Renny D left the message? You’d think he’d have wanted the element of surprise on his side.”

  John shrugged. “To throw Troy off balance, make him nervous? Some twisted code of drug dealers’ honor? Who knows?”

  “This tape isn’t the best of evidence, you know. There’s no proof that it was Renny D who called.”

  “Isn’t there?” He motioned at another machine that looked like a small video display terminal.

  “What’s that?”

  “A little piece of new technology that allows you to see what number an incoming call was dialed from. It has a memory, keeps a record.” He pressed a button, and a listing of numbers, dates, and times appeared. After scrolling through it, he pointed to one with a 295 prefix. “That matches the time and date stamp on the answering machine tape.”

  I lifted the receiver and dialed the number. A machine picked up on the third ring. “This is Renny D. Speak.”

  I hung up. “Now we’ve got proof.”

  “So do we go see Gary Viner?”

  “Not just yet. First, I think we’d better report to Mari and Bryce, ask them if they really want all of this to come out.”

  “I talked with them earlier . . . they were going to make the funeral arrangements and then have dinner with relatives. Maybe we shouldn’t intrude.”

  “Probably not. Besides, there’s something I want to do first.”

  “What?”

  “Get a good look at this Renny D.”

  An old friend named Luis Abrego frequented the Tradewinds tavern in National City, halfway between San Diego and the border. The first time I’d gone there two years before, John had insisted on accompanying me for protection; tonight he insisted again. I didn’t protest, since I knew he and Luis were fond of each other.

  Fortunately business was slow when we got there; only half a dozen Hispanic patrons stopped talking and stared when they saw two Anglos walk in. Luis hunched in his usual place at the end of the bar, nursing a beer and watching a basketball game on the fuzzy TV screen. When I spoke his name, he whirled, jumped off his stool, and took both my hands in his. His dark eyes danced with pleasure.

  “Amiga,” he said, “it’s been much too long.”

  “Yes, it has, amigo.”

  Luis released me and shook John’s hand. He was looking well. His mustache swooped bandit-fashion, and his hair hung free and shiny to his shoulders. From the nearly black shade of his skin, I could tell he’d been working steadily on construction sites these days. Late at night, however, Luis plied a very different and increasingly dangerous trade. “Helping my people get where they need to go,” was how he described those activities.

  We sat down in a booth, and I explained about Renny D and Troy Winslip’s murder. Luis nodded gravely. “The young man was a fool to underestimate Dominguez,” he said. “I don’t know him personally, but I’ve seen him, and I hear he’s one evil hombre.”

  “Do you know where he hangs out down here?”

  “A bar two blocks over, called the Gato Gordo. You’re not planning on going up against him, amiga?”

  “No, nothing like that. I just want to get a look at him. Obviously I can’t go there alone. Will you take me?”

  Luis frowned down into his beer. “Why do you feel you have to do this?”

/>   “I like to know who I’m up against. Besides, this is going to be a difficult case to prove . . . maybe seeing Renny D in the flesh will inspire me to keep at it.”

  He looked up at my face, studied it for a moment, then nodded. “OK, I’ll do it. But he”—he pointed at John—“waits for us here.”

  John said: “No way.”

  “Yes,” Luis told him firmly. “Here you’re OK . . . everybody knows you’re my friend. But there, a big Anglo like you, we’d be asking for trouble. On the other hand, me and the chiquita, here, we’ll make a damn’ handsome couple.”

  Reynaldo Dominguez was tall and thin, with razor-sharp features that spoke of indio blood. There were tattoos of serpents on his arms and knife scars on his face, and part of one index finger was missing. He sat at a corner table in the Gato Gordo bar, surrounded by admirers. He leaned back indolently in his chair and laughed and joked and told stories. When Luis and I sat down nearby with our drinks, he glanced contemptuously at us, then he focused on Luis’s face and evidently saw something there that warned him off. There was not a lot that Luis Abrego hadn’t come up against in his life, and there was nothing and no one he feared. Renny D, I decided, was a good judge of character.

  Luis leaned toward me, taking my hand as a lover would and speaking softly. “He is telling them how he single-handedly destroyed the Anglo opposition. He is laughing about the look on Winslip’s face when he died, and at the way the other man ran. He is bragging about the cleverness of meeting them in TJ, where he has bribed the authorities and will never be charged with a crime.” He paused, listened some more. “He is telling them how he will enjoy stalking and destroying the other man and Winslip’s woman . . . bit by bit, before he finally puts the knife in.”

  I started to turn to look at Dominguez.

  “Don’t.” Luis tightened his grip on my hand.

  I looked anyway. My eyes met Renny D’s. His were black, flat, emotionless . . . devoid of humanity. He stared at me, thin lip curling.

  Luis’s fingernails bit into my flesh. “OK, you’ve had your look at him. Drink up, and we’ll go.”