Dead Skip

by Joe Gores

  She made a two-word comment about Griffin and his mother that was probably more ritual than fact, then added, “Hell, we’ve had a warrant out on him since February; he burned us for six bills.”

  Kearny shook his head in bogus commiseration. Bail bondsmen usually got more than adequate security; one of them getting burned was like a cat sitting twice on a hot stove burner. It just hardly ever happened. He liked it.

  “How’d he get into you for the cash?”

  “He knew—” she stopped abruptly, then shrugged very casually. “Favor for a friend—you know.”

  “What about his lawyer? Can’t he help you?”

  “Hawkley? Hell, he’s . . .” She stopped again. “Hell, he probably knows less about Griffin than we do.”

  Which Kearny doubted. Lawyers always knew more about their clients than anyone else, and an old-line bail bondsman like Ma Coogan would know that very well. Something was a bit out of focus in the relationships here, which made him ask for Hawkley’s address. This was rewarded with another appreciable pause before she figured out there was no casual way she could refuse.

  “Wayne Hawkley, 1942 Colfax Street. In Concord.”

  On the way back to Concord he tried, again unsuccessfully, to raise Ballard. He was looking forward to Wayne Hawkley, who was almost surely the friend the Coogans had been doing a favor for when they had gone bail for Griffin without any collateral.

  Kearny was waiting at the angle-intersection where Concord Avenue became Galindo Street, behind a truck trailer making a left-hand turn, when Ballard turned right into Mount Diablo Street off Willow Pass Road a block away. The truck blocked Kearny’s vision; when the light changed he followed its left turn into Willow Pass. He didn’t look down Mount Diablo Street when he passed that intersection, because he was checking street signs for Colfax Street, so he didn’t see Ballard’s car. If he had, they would have teamed up, might never have caught up with Charles M. Griffin, might never have laid the blocks to the murderer who had struck down Bart Heslip. It was that close.

  The law offices of Wayne E. Hawkley, 1942 Colfax Street, were in a one-story cinder block building with red-brick fronting, plate-glass windows with the inevitable aluminum frames, and tan drapes drawn against the sun.

  Kearny parked across the street at 2:12 P.M. Inside, a Spanish-American and a Caucasian waited patiently for attention. Neither looked prosperous, but the office looked prosperous enough to make up for it. There was an immense, bare, very expensive hardwood desk, empty, and a smaller, more functional secretary’s desk set at right angles to it behind a partition. Kearny put one of his plain cards on the secretary’s desk.

  “Mr. Hawkley is busy, sir. And these other gentlemen—”

  “I’ll wait.”

  “If I could have some idea what it is concerning, sir . . .”

  “I’ll wait,” said Kearny again, wondering, by the secretary’s manner, whether he should have genuflected upon entering.

  The secretary was lean and dark and intense-looking, wearing a dark-brown blouse and a beige jumper that showed a lot of slender leg. There was a hint of bafflement and irritation behind her rimless glasses. “Whatever you wish, sir.”

  It was twenty minutes before she paused at the head of the passageway behind the big empty desk with Kearny’s business card in her hand. “That way, sir.” The distaste in her voice was unmistakable.

  She led him into a strictly functional air-conditioned office where an early-thirties type in shirt sleeves was reading a brief. He was one of the “new lawyers” so popularized by television: hirsute, goateed, wearing a loud striped shirt and a wide tie like a slice of pizza—concerned, involved, idealistic, shallow and glib.

  He looked up with carefully calculated irritation. “What is it, Madeline? I told you I was too busy—”

  “This is a Mr. Kearny. He insisted—”

  “Yes, Dan Kearny,” said Kearny heartily. “Mr. Hawkley?”

  “I’m Norbert Franks, Mr. Hawkley’s assistant. I screen—”

  “Uh-uh,” said Kearny.

  “Huh?”

  People didn’t talk to him that way. People, Kearny had an idea, didn’t even talk to Madeline that way. “Pull up the lower jaw before you drool on that pretty tie, sonny.” He turned back to the girl, his voice thick and heavy. “Let’s quit playing around and have Hawkley out here.”

  “Private eye. Big deal,” sneered Franks. “A dime a dozen . . .”

  Kearny turned back to him. The voice trailed off under that icy gray gaze; finally his hand began fidgeting with the slice of pizza and his eyes dropped to the brief. It wasn’t his day. The girl started off with angry strides. So silently that she didn’t know he was there until she had opened the next door down the hall, Kearny fell in right behind her.

  “Thanks, honey,” he said, sliding by her into the room.

  She yelped in dismay. A stooped, very tall man in a three-hundred-dollar gray-blue pinstripe was just biting the end from a cigar. His battered old hardwood rolltop dated from the turn of the century, as did he. Clear blue eyes, much younger than the face, came up to meet Kearny’s gray ones through old-fashioned spectacles and the first wreath of fragrant smoke. There was no surprise in the eyes. His thin hair was black enough to be dyed but probably wasn’t.

  “Mr. Kearny, sir. A pleasure, believe me.”

  His hand was rough and gnarled, as if he had chopped a lot of cordwood in his day. Kearny sat down across the desk from him. “You must shove one hell of a lot of bail-bond clients their way.”

  A glint appeared in the blue eyes. Kearny could almost see the mind behind them working it through. Almost. Hawkley had a thin, lined face that probably hadn’t given anything away since 1927, the year a framed certificate on the wall said he had passed the California State Bar.

  “That boy Norbert has a big mouth on him, ain’t he?” The ain’t would once have been deliberate, something for the juries that had become habitual.

  “And a lousy bedside manner. If he’s your son learning the business, buy him a shoestore.”

  The old man chuckled, opened a lower desk drawer while waving away the secretary still standing in the doorway. “Shut it behind you, Maddy.”

  She shot a look of pure hatred at Kearny, tried to slam the door peevishly behind her, only to have it yanked right out of her hand by the pneumatic closer. “Goddamn!” she said in a positively venomous voice.

  Hawkley had produced from the drawer a bottle of Wild Turkey and a pair of shot glasses. Kearny said, “I’ll give her two hundred a month more than she gets here.”

  “Wouldn’t be worth it to her, not with the commute. She likes a tennis lunch.” Pride entered his voice. “She’s my granddaughter.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Norbert’s my sister’s boy. Plumb awful, ain’t he? Wants to be one of these new poverty lawyers, I figger he’s going to make it the hard way. Cheers.”

  The Wild Turkey went down neat; bourbon like that needed no chaser, not even any comment. Hawkley sighed and capped the bottle.

  “Charles M. Griffin. What do you want to know about him?”

  Kearny considered for a moment. Coogan, the bail bondsman, had phoned up Hawkley that a private investigator was on the way. And Hawkley had tried to give him the run-around. Why? Something to do with Griffin? Doubtful.

  “His current address.”

  “Can’t help you,” said Hawkley promptly.

  “He probably assaulted one of our men with intent to commit murder on Wednesday A.M.,” said Kearny. “The police read it as an accident and we haven’t tried to make them think any different. Yet.”

  Hawkley was watching him thoughtfully. “Meaning?”

  “I’m personally taking this wherever I have to take it.”

  “You’re big?” said Hawkley abruptly.

  “Big enough. Fifteen field agents out of San Francisco and Oakland covering the city, the Peninsula, East Bay and Marin. Nine branch offices from Eureka to Long Beach. Three others
in the corporations fully licensed besides myself.”

  He added the last deliberately; three other valid licenses meant that anyone with enough clout in Sacramento to get Kearny’s pulled still wouldn’t stop DKA from operating.

  Hawkley cleared his throat; the message had gotten through. “Chuck Griffin is all you’re after?”

  “No wooden horses,” Kearny assured him.

  “Damn!” exclaimed the old man regretfully. “I still can’t help you, and I ain’t sure you’ll believe that. Chuck Griffin’s daddy was one of my first clients back in ’27. An improvident man, died broke in a car wreck in ’53. Or was it ’54? I felt bad when Chuck burned Coogan on that bail money, after I sort of rammed him down their throats as a client.” He laughed dryly. “Not too bad, of course.” He depressed a button on his squawk box. “Maddy, get me that Mount Diablo Street address on Griffin.”

  Kearny felt a flicker of excitement; the DKA file showed no Mount Diablo Street address.

  Madeline’s rather snotty tones came on. “That’s 1377, Mr. Hawkley. On a letter returned to us as unknown this address on March thirteenth this year.”

  “That’s all I’ve got, Mr. Kearny. Our letter to Chuck was forwarded from the California Street address, finally came back here. I ain’t heard from Chuck since February. I sent Norbert out to Mount Diablo Street, they’d never heard of Chuck. ’Course, Norbert . . .”

  “Yeah.” Kearny stood up. A hell of an intriguing old scoundrel, but he was a riddle Kearny didn’t have to solve. “A pleasure to do business with you, sir.”

  “And with you.” Hawkley also stood. He was a good six-three; he probably didn’t weigh any more than the detective’s compact 170. “I trust my Wild Turkey wasn’t wasted.”

  “I’m a pro, Hawkley. I only get curious when I’m paid to.”

  “Would there were more of us in this sinful world,” sighed the old lawyer piously.

  SIXTEEN

  EXCITEMENT CONSTRICTED Ballard’s chest. Parked on the crumbling, weed-covered concrete drive at 1377 Mount Diablo Street was a red car with a white convertible top and . . . Hell. Convertible. A dusty red Oldsmobile compact, not a T-Bird.

  He turned in midblock, came back to park across the street. Beyond him was a great open scar where the houses had been razed and the earth scooped out for Bay Area Rapid Transit. In this minor moon crater were stacks of cement-reinforcing rod, coils of hose, stakes with yellow tags on them, parked trucks. The air was filled with dust, the staccato slap of diesel motors. Bulldozers and earth-movers crawled clumsily about like blind beetles seeking a way out.

  The white-plaster house was small, L-shaped, one-story, with the pale-pink numbers 1-3-7-7 set in descending order down one of the four-by-four porch posts. Old, crummy, poorly kept-up. He was tense. The trail might lie here, despite the insurance agent’s belief that it was a dead address, and he might miss it.

  He crossed the street under the shade of the thriving front-yard maple. Running along the left side of the property was an overgrown hedge; Ballard went down the narrow space between it and the side of the garage to cup his eyes and peer in a dusty cobwebbed window. An earth floor overflowed with meaningless debris, including an old brass bedstead, a ripped mattress, treadless car tires, three ruined tricycles.

  He walked back, stood by the Olds to listen to the pop of diesels. In the front yard, knee-deep in weeds, were two big recently rained-on cardboard boxes of trash. The front porch was strewn with a miniature obstacle course of broken toys. Growing up across the front steps, when he waded over there, was a flourishing sweet-pea vine.

  He rang the bell.

  After a few moments a woman opened the door, giving him a momentary glimpse of a cluttered living room, a new color TV spewing afternoon bathos, a new round felt-topped table suitable for poker.

  “If you’re selling someth—”

  “Buying,” said Ballard.

  That stopped her. She was in shorts and halter, barefoot, with her face carefully made up and brilliant toenails and fingernails. The halter revealed deep cleavage between full breasts; her legs were good, the bare belly between shorts and halter flat and hard. Her face was narrow and vixenish under gleaming brown hair.

  “What are you buying?”

  “Information about Griff.” No flicker in her wide brown eyes at the nickname. Hell. “Charles M. Griffin. I heard he’s staying here.”

  She shook an almost regretful head. “Man, you heard wrong. I don’t know him.”

  “How about your husband?”

  She shifted her weight to throw out one hip in a deliberately sensuous pose. Her thigh brushed the back of Ballard’s hand. He drew the hand back quickly; she was trouble looking for a place to happen, and he didn’t want it to happen to him.

  “I s’pose. If he knew him at work, like.”

  “Maybe Griff is one of the poker players.”

  “Poker?” She turned her head to follow his gaze to the table. “Oh. Poker.” She added quickly, “No. Never heard of a Griffin.”

  Ballard gestured at the Olds compact, put a smile on his face. “When I drove up, I thought that was Griff’s car. He was driving a red and white T-Bird hardtop last time I saw him.”

  She frowned, then exclaimed suddenly, “Wait a minute, that rings a bell. Red and white T-Bird hardtop. Loaded, power-everything, all the goodies—air, power windows, seats, steering, brakes. Sure. Howie Odum has been driving a car like that for a month or so. I had a ride in it last week . . .” She bit it off, like a child realizing it has just told a secret.

  Last week! If Griffin’s car had been around then, Griffin himself must also have been close by.

  “Where could I find Mr. Odum?”

  Instead of answering, she said, “Griffin. Charles Griffin. That’s the name. Howie told me back in April, couple of weeks after he got the car, there might be some mail coming for that name, I should just hold it. He said he’d pick it up every now and then. But didn’t any come—unless my husband, he found it in the box and marked it unknown or something.”

  From inside came the tentative, just-waking wail of a child. She looked at Ballard with a shocked, almost furtive expression. “Hey, man, you won’t be coming around here again, will you?”

  “Not if I find Griffin.”

  “For God’s sake, don’t say anything to my husband about Howie.” She put a hand on his forearm. “Please? He’d just kill me if he knew that Howie had been around. He . . . they aren’t friends any more.”

  “I have to know Odum’s address,” said Ballard ruthlessly.

  “Look, I don’t have it. Honest. I mean, there wasn’t anything wrong, me riding around with him in the T-Bird, we didn’t . . . you know.” Which probably meant they had. The kid squalled again in the background. “But I left the baby here alone and all, the other two were in school . . .”

  “What bars does Odum hang around?”

  “He doesn’t. He’s on . . . look, he got into trouble. With the Feds. He . . . you see, a couple, three years ago he got into a bind and well, he . . . forged some checks, including some of Bob’s. So you know, Bob and him don’t . . .”

  “Odum’s trouble was connected with these forged checks?”

  “Ah, look, I got to change the kid. I’ve leveled with you, you won’t get me in trouble with Bob, will you?”

  “Of course not,” he said soothingly, “Mrs.—”

  “Sharon Beag . . . ah, Sharon.”

  He didn’t push. Names were easy to learn. Besides, he’d gotten all there was to get here. Odum would have been sentenced in Concord, if he’d been paper-hanging in local bars. He realized that she had started to shut the door, gave it one more try.

  “You must have some idea where Odum’s living.”

  Her eyes were made beady by peering through the narrow opening. “Maybe down around Oakland, Alameda, like that. He never really said . . . honest . . .”

  The door was shut. Ballard went down the steps to flounder out across the rankly overgrown yard. He
stumbled over a hidden wheelless coaster wagon and almost went down, cursing, expecting to flush a covey of quail.

  In his mind, as he got into the car, two images suddenly came together. Sharon, bored mother of three who had kept her looks despite the babies, getting into the back seat of the T-Bird with Howie Odum, just-released convict. And Cheri over on California Street not a mile away, wrestling with Griffin’s kinky friend with the flashlight. Easy to see both men as the same man. Howie Odum. A writer of bad checks, which meant a con man, which meant plausible, smooth. And maybe tall and handsome. And just out of stir, perhaps sexually maladjusted because of it . . .

  Odum, sure as hell mixed up with Griffin, driving his car.

  Odum was the key.

  Ballard pulled from the curb. The radio gave its usual warm-up squeergk, like water going down a drain, and then said to him in a very loud and clear Dan Kearny voice, “SF-1 calling SF-6. Come in, Ballard.”

  He scrabbled at the clipped mike. That voice was much too strong and ungarbled to have come from Oakland Control on the other side of the hills.

  “This is SF-6,” he said.

  “I’ll meet you in that little coffee shop on Willow Pass and Mount Diablo Street in three minutes, over.”

  “Don’t eat anything there,” said Ballard. “Their food is lousy.”

  “10-4. SF-1 over and out.”

  He struck the steering wheel happily with the heel of his hand. Dan Kearny was in the field! Kearny would have some ideas about finding Howard Odum. And through him, Charles M. Griffin. The jaws were closing. Then, as he pulled up beside Kearny’s Ford wagon in front of the coffee shop, he wondered: Now, how in hell did Kearny find out that I was on Mount Diablo Street?

  “From the attorney, Hawkley,” said Kearny.

  He added nothing about the odd can of worms he had opened in the Hawkley/Coogan relationship. They had been kicking around the case for forty minutes.

  “Anyway, there’s nothing more to get at that address,” said Ballard. “I squeezed her dry. Since it was a Federal rap—”

  “That I doubt,” said Kearny. Even more, he doubted that Ballard had squeezed Sharon dry. Larry just wasn’t that good with women. The best way was to push them fast and hard to where they started crying but before they got stubborn. It was an art. He went on, “The Feds come in only on interstate—Odum was probably just kiting checks in local bars and somebody blew the whistle. He was probably in Quentin, not Lompoc.”