Dead Skip
Page 5
“Looking for Ken,” Ballard said promptly.
“Hemovich? You a friend of his?”
Something in the voice tensed his gut muscles. Choose right, you might crack the case. Wrong, you blew the whole file. The gut muscles had to serve for intuition. “Hell no. I want to repossess his car.”
After a moment the porch light went on. Ballard went up to the door. The voice said, “I figured that son of a bitch would get into trouble with somebody ’sides me pretty soon. Ran off with my wife . . .” Which explained where Giselle had gotten the address: from the Polk Directory.
“Wouldn’t know where they’re living, would you, Mr. Pressler?”
The door opened wider, on a sour-faced man dressed in robe and slippers, spike-haired from sleeping. His eyes gleamed briefly, but he shook his head. “Ginny works down at Kearny and California, big insurance company. Homestead.”
“How about Hemovich?”
“Sheet-metal work when he’s working. He ain’t working often.”
“You wouldn’t remember the color of that Roadrunner, would you?”
“Wouldn’t I? Yeller. Yeller as a damned canary.”
It was chilly; Ballard could see their respective breaths in the porch light.
Pressler suddenly chuckled. “When I heard you at the garage door, thought it was him, tryna get at the kids again. Ginny wants ’em so bad she can taste it—the bitch.” His face closed up like a fist; he brought a double-barreled shotgun out from behind the door frame. “He comes around next time, I’m gonna blow his head off. Right off. A burglar, y’see?”
Ballard saw. And hauled his ass out of there.
Timothy Ryan, 11 Justin Drive.
Nothing had been done on this assignment by Heslip—unless it had been done the night before. Given information: the subject was twenty-one years old, white, just married, had quit his job at Southern Pacific Railroad yard, so no work address was known. The client was a two-bit Mission District auto and accessory dealer who specialized in old cars for conversion to dune buggies, drag cars, rods, and the like. He had sold the subject the 1956 Chevrolet, then had financed racing flats, chrome rims and lugs, a chromed engine head, and virtually all the vehicular ornamentation known to man to bring it to a total contract price of $1,989.81.
The subject had paid for three months, then had quit.
Perhaps when he had gotten married?
Justin Drive was in a small cozy residential area on the fringes of Bernal Heights. No lights were on in the house, the ’56 Chevy was nowhere around, and he was too tired to care whether he woke people up or not.
“I’m not going to open this door!” warned a quavery female voice.
“Unless Tim Ryan’s there, I wouldn’t want you to.”
“We’re the Greers.”
“Don’t know the Ryans?”
“No, we’ve just been here a week, we . . . what?” She turned from the door; her voice timbre and intonation were definitely Negro. No Ryans here. Her voice came back, “. . . husband says Mr. Ryan moved in with his father-in-law. A Mr. Harrington. Out on some street comes in right where San Jose and Ocean come together . . .”
Back out Mission toward Daly City, south through a night-emptied city. Phone booth . . . whoops. A total of 123 Harringtons with residential addresses. Back to the car for the city map. Streets where San Jose and Ocean intersected . . . Yeah. Geneva, Seneca, Oneida, Delano, Meda, Otsego. Back to the phone book. There it was.
Patrick Z. Harrington, 61 Oneida Street.
They were old single-residence dwellings, mostly stucco, mostly set back from the street behind narrow lawns. Concrete drives led to under-the-house garages. A standard construction of the 1920s and ’30s, the houses rubbing shoulders as did most houses in San Francisco; it was a city of long, narrow building lots.
The garage door was shut but not locked; it went up with only a subdued spronging of well-oiled hinges. Four-year-old Chrysler Imperial, black and dusty. He noted the license number out of habit. Raw data collected as you came into a case often broke it later on.
The door opened immediately when he touched the bell, despite the TV squawking softly in the background. Hell. Dead end again. A stooped middle-aged black man peered at him from the doorway.
“Late for socializing, son,” he said softly.
Ballard tried to put apology into his voice. “I must have been given the wrong address, I wanted a Harrington who has a son-in-law—”
“I’m a Harrington, son. Patrick Z. No son-in-law, though.”
Hell again. He couldn’t help asking it anyway. “What’s the Z stand for?”
“Zebediah.”
That figured. He rubbed his jaw to keep from grinning. Wait until he gave O’Bannon the needle about this one. Harrington. Ryan. “Do you know a Tim Ryan?”
“Stepson. My wife’s boy by her fust husband, they’s a difference between son-in-law and stepson. He ain’t even married. Tim’s off to work now, works at an all-night gas station down on Geneva Avenue somewheres. Don’t rightly know which one, a Union, I think.” He leaned forward to peer at Ballard critically. “This about that car of his?”
Again, instant decision. Again, let the gut reaction decide. You didn’t last in this business very long without developing a feel for the cases you were on. “That’s it. Big John’s Used Cars had to hire an independent detective agency because your boy ran their man off with a machete . . .”
“Hell, son, know what that feller said? Right to Tim’s face? Said, ‘Ain’t no broke coon gonna default on no car payments to us.’ Now, I ask you.”
Ballard grinned and shook his head. It figured. Everything else the client had given them had been wrong, why not that, too? He’d probably find the 1956 Chevy was actually a 1908 Stanley Steamer with a smokestack or some damned thing.
“You go drive up and down Geneva,” said Harrington. “Cain’t be too many stations open all night. Tim don’t want what he ain’t paid for.”
Ballard thanked him, turned away, then stopped and turned back. “Can I ask you a question, Mr. Harrington?”
“Fire away, son. If you hit something tender I’ll holler.”
“How come Harrington? Ryan? I thought I was looking for a bunch of Micks.”
The old man slapped his knee in sudden glee. “Hell, son, I thought you’d never ask! We’re black Irish, cain’t you tell?”
It was a Richfield station three blocks north of Geneva on Old Bayshore. What the hell, it was one of those cases. At least Tim Ryan, a stocky, wide-shouldered black kid with an incongruous stub nose, was far from belligerent.
“When he said that to me, Mr. Ballard, I just . . . well, I just lost control, I guess. I sent in a payment yesterday, I can send another tomorrow . . .”
Sure as hell, Tim Ryan hadn’t hit Heslip on the head. He’d have to check further, and his assumption was subject to what Dan and Giselle thought, but the kid just wasn’t right for it. And he had a money-order stub for the payment, too . . .
“You’ll have to cover our charges,” Ballard said. “And for God sake keep the thing current from now on.” He got back into the Ford, asked casually through the rolled-down window, “Another agent from our company wasn’t around to talk to you on this yesterday, was he?”
“You’re the only one I’ve seen.” Ryan’s sudden grin resembled his stepfather’s even though there was no blood relationship. “Only one I want to see!”
And so to bed, after stopping by the office to write notes on the cases he had worked, so Kearny would know what was going on until he had a chance to write regular reports. To bed, to sleep, perchance to dream—he’d played Macbeth in a high school play. To dream, like hell. Dead to the world before he hit the pillow.
EIGHT
“LARRY’S WORKING himself out of a job fast,” said Giselle Marc. She, O’Bannon, and Kearny were in the tiny cluttered middle clerical office at DKA, where the big radio transmitter for contacting the field units was located. On the wall behind her desk was a huge
map of the city.
“I read his notes,” said Kearny. He was waiting for the water to boil in the little kitchen alcove in one corner of the room. “He’ll want to check with The Freaks before totally eliminating Chambers, but we can scratch Willets. I never liked him for it anyway. And it looks like Ryan is out of it.”
“The black Irishman?” laughed Giselle.
“I fail to see anything funny in that,” said O’Bannon with great dignity.
Patrick Michael O’Bannon was forty-three, with freckles and flaming red hair and a drinker’s leathery face. He had started as a collector for a retail jewelry firm, had switched into investigations, had come with Kearny from Walter’s Auto Detectives at the founding of DKA. Right now he was sitting on the edge of the desk that held the radio, swinging one leg. A voice blared, he pushed the Transmit button on the stand-up mike.
“No, SF-8, that isn’t funny, either.” He released the button so he was not transmitting. “This new guy, Dan, this SF-8, where did you get him from? I didn’t know it was Hire the Mentally Handicapped Week around here.”
“I like the pimp for it, myself,” said Kearny, loftily ignoring O’B. They had just finished their weekly fight about O’Bannon’s expense account, and Kearny had lost—as usual.
“Tiger?” asked Giselle.
“I put out a feeler with our police informant on him and Joyce Leonard. If she is playing for pay, the Vice Squad might have a current res add on her.”
“What about the embezzler?”
“From Castro Valley?” Kearny shook his heavy graying head. “The guy’s a dead skip, Giselle—not one damned live address in the file. Bart just had the one work address to check on a reconfirm.”
“How is Bart this morning?” O’Bannon’s lean features looked drawn, as if it had been a rough night. For O’B, it usually was.
“No change,” said Giselle. “Still in a coma.”
The intercom buzzed, she picked up, said “Yeah?” and listened. She held the phone out to Kearny. “Waterreus the BB-eyed Dutchman.”
Kearny listened, spoke, listened, nodded, said “Thanks” and hung up. “Joyce Leonard was picked up for soliciting last January, her driver’s license has been revoked for drunk driving, and they’ve got a warrant out on her for overdue parking tags. Waterreus said he’ll check the location she’s been drawing the tags and call back.” To O’Bannon he said, “Try to raise Ballard, O’B.”
“KDM 366 calling SF-6. Come in, Larry.”
“He won’t be on the street yet, Dan,” objected Giselle. “It’s only a little after nine, his note said he was going home at four this morning.”
“He’ll be working. That deadline I gave him is only forty-two hours off.”
Larry Ballard was working, all right, feeling a hell of a lot better for four hours’ sleep, a shower, a shave, and breakfast in a greasy spoon on Ninth Avenue near his Lincoln Way apartment. But he was not in his car to answer O’B’s call. He was in San Francisco Van and Storage at 791 Stanyan Street, waiting for a black mover named Chicago. Chicago, he had learned, would have moved Joyce Leonard if anyone at S.F. Van and Storage had.
Ballard was also waiting for Chicago because everyone else at S.F. Van—every single person—was drunk. Every living soul, at 9:38 on a weekday morning. Leaning against the L-shaped counter and looking through the inner door to the storage warehouse, he could see them, passing the bottle around. Apparently most of them slept there at least part of the time; several cots were set up.
A blocky round-faced man who had said he was Bonnetti, office manager, weaved his way to the door. He gripped the frame with blunt calloused fingers. He regarded Ballard owlishly. “Oojusangon,” he said. He blinked deliberately and solemnly and tried again. “Oo . . . you. You jus’ ang . . . hang on. Good ol’ Chi-town’ll be in pr’y soon. ’Kay?”
“Okay.”
“’M gonna shraiten out ’morrow. ’Kay?”
“Okay.”
Ballard waited for the crash as he turned away, but Bonnetti, office manager, was made of the stuff of heroes. He didn’t fall down.
The front door opened and a black man as black as Bart Heslip, which was very black indeed, came through at an angle so he wouldn’t take out the door frame with his shoulders. Ballard raised his gaze from the second button on the man’s blue coveralls—which was the button level with his eyes—to the massive tight-clipped head. The features made the late Sonny Liston seem like just another pretty face.
“Chicago?”
“The Windy City flash himself.” Chicago’s voice had the resonance of a hi-fi woofer with the gain all the way up. He looked past Ballard to the back room. “Those bastards all drunk again?”
“Still.”
“There’s that, ain’t there?” Chicago said pensively.
“I’m surprised any of them still have their chauffeurs’ licenses.”
“Most of ’em don’t. But you want anything moved, old Chitown will give you his personal service. Safe as houses, silent as the fog, gentle as a kitten, Chicago will—”
“I’m trying to find a white whore named Joyce Leonard who’s shacking with a black pimp named Tiger.”
“Whoo-ee!” yelped Chicago, startled. Then he started to roar with laughter. “Sheeit, mother, you shoulda been a preacher! You do call ’em as you see ’em!”
“Am I wrong?”
“Hell no, she tried to sell me a piece in the new apartment when I got her moved in. Last Wednesday, it was.” He shook his head. “White meat don’t turn me on, I got Maybelle and four cute kids to home. Wouldn’t shoot that Joyce with your artillery, man.”
“You remembered her pretty quick,” said Ballard.
Chicago laughed again. “You’re a cop or something, ain’t you? Like private or something?” He nodded in approval. “I remember ’cause ain’t every day I get offered white meat, not even off’n a turkey like her. Likewise, a little black feller was in asking the same questions, was, let’s see—”
“Day before last?” said Ballard eagerly.
“That’s it. Little feller, wouldn’t go a hundred-sixty pounds, but moved. I mean, like a dancer.”
“Bart Heslip,” said Ballard almost fiercely to himself.
“Good friend, huh?” said Chicago. “In big trouble?”
“Big as it can get without being dead.”
“Tiger, maybe? I know that cat, mean mother. They at 545 O’Farrell, apartment . . . hell, can’t remember. On the second floor.”
Chicago wouldn’t even take a couple of bucks for a beer. A hell of a man, Ballard thought as he switched on the radio. As soon as it quit whining he unclipped the mike and depressed the red Transmit button. “SF-6 calling KDM 366.”
“Go ahead, Larry,” said Giselle’s voice.
“I’ve got a new res add on Joyce Leonard, en route there now—5-4-5 O’Farrell. I think they might be it, Giselle. Bart was at the moving company two days ago.”
Kearny’s voice came on. “KDM 366 to SF-6. Forget Leonard and Tiger, Ballard. Repeat, scratch Leonard and Tiger, over.”
“But they’re right for it, Dan. Over.”
“SF-2 is picking up the Cadillac right now from a parking lot in the three-hundred block of Eddy.”
SF-2 was O’Bannon. He didn’t mind O’B picking up the car even though it was his case now, but dammit, why was Kearny so sure that Tiger was not the one who had slugged Bart?
“Where did the location on the Cadillac come from, over?”
“A police informant was running down the subject’s parking tags, and found that Tiger and the subject were involved in a fight in a Tenderloin bar at ten o’clock the night before last. Over.”
“10-4,” said Ballard. He understood, all right. Arrested at ten on the night Bart had gotten it, they wouldn’t even have been out on the street by one o’clock, let alone hitting anyone on the head.
“Tiger is in jail, the subject is in the hospital. He went for her with a razor, took out one of her eyes with it. 10-4?”
Leonard and Tiger had looked so damned good for it.
Charles M. Griffin.
The JRS Garage, 150 First Street, was at first glance just a square open door in the side of a building across from the East Bay Bus Terminal. But when Ballard drove across the sidewalk and under a red sign offering parking at 35 cents per ½ hr, a huge shadowy parking garage stretched ahead for half a block. What a place to bury a car you were trying to hide! Maybe that’s what Griffin had done with his.
He drove up the narrow aisle between the parked cars until he was waved down by a round-faced black man in red coveralls with JRS and JOE stitched above the respective breast pockets.
“I’m not leaving it—just want to talk with one of the bosses.”
“There’s three partners,” said Joe. He was a large-bodied man with tight-clipped, tight-curled hair and an infectious grin. Ballard found himself grinning back. “Park in that middle stall between the two pillars. Leave the keys in case I have to move it.”
The office was a concrete box set beside the cross-piece of the H-shaped aisles. Behind the open counter a sandy-haired man named EARL, who looked like an ex-Navy chief, was clearing the cash register with the single-minded ferocity of a commuter-train conductor punching tickets.
Ballard checked his assignment sheet. “Is . . . um . . . Leo Busilloni or Danny Walker or . . . um . . . Rod Elkin around?”
“Leo’s out checking lots, Danny’s up at the Bush Street garage, and Rod’s out getting a sandwich. If you want to wait, you can go right through to the office.”
Ballard went by Earl and across the small room to a slightly larger room beyond. Pasted to the front of the bottled water dispenser was a typed notice: DUE TO INCREASED TAXATION, RISING PRICES, INFLATION, AND HIGHER WAGES, THIS WATER IS NOW TWICE AS FREE AS IT USED TO BE. The inner office had windows all around to chest-level which looked out into the garage, three wooden desks, and some straight-backed chairs just inside the door.
Ballard moved a copy of San Francisco Screw off a chair to sit down. Screw’s front page had a photo of a young couple proving that the underground newspaper was aptly named. Ballard, who would rather do it than look at it, passed up the paper for the bulky Griffin file, glad of having a few extra minutes to review it.