Dead Skip

by Joe Gores

  Bart Heslip had started to snore.

  At exactly 7:07 P.M., Dan Kearny drove down Mount Diablo Street in Concord. The sun had another hour of Daylight Saving, but it was low and its light was pink-tinged. The shadows it now cast were long and thin, unlike the round fat ones Ballard had found earlier.

  Kearny went a full block beyond the house before U-turning, and parked far enough down the street so his car would be out of sight. He ambled slowly back, tasting the neighborhood. Small one-stories built as veterans’ dream homes after World War II. Still bungalows then, instead of the pervasive California ranch style.

  In front of the house next door, Kearny paused to pat a mongrel pup that had cantered up with unsuspicious puppy friendliness. Kearny’s hard gray eyes roamed the street, the setup at the Beaghler house.

  There were too many cars parked in front of it. Five of them.

  The red and white Olds compact convertible in the driveway—Sharon’s car, of course. A dusty black Chevy Nova with the slightly splay-footed stance that too-wide tires give small cars. Beaghler’s. Probably jazzed-up to get out and move, a useful trait for a number of things both legal and illegal.

  Kearny thumped the dog in the ribs. The dog loved it. Looking too hard for illegal setups today? No. There were those extra cars outside Beaghler’s house. Three of them. And they were all wrong.

  What about people over to supper? Ballard’s description of the living room said no. Even crappy housekeepers clean up for company. But what about an early poker game with the boys? That was a possibility—what did men care about housekeeping as long as the beer held out? Yes, a good possibility. Except.

  Except that Kearny knew damned near everything there was to know about cars. Not just how to open them without keys, or run them without switching on the ignition. Everything. And just driving by those three late-model sedans, all with California plates, all recently washed, he had spotted the odd fact about them.

  All three were rental cars.

  He gave the dog a final friendly thump, went by the cars toward the house. Check. Each had the unobtrusive Dymo-printed adhesive tab used to identify rental vehicles. Rear bumper. Lower left-hand corner of the windshield. Back of the rear-view mirror.

  Which meant three different rental companies.

  Picking his way across the overgrown yard, Kearny tried to come up with a legitimate explanation. Friends coming in from out of state. Then why three different companies? Family reunion, people coming in at different times from different places. On a weekday? A business conference. That could explain the cars; coincidence could explain the choice of three different rent-a-car companies. It also could explain the poker table. A conference, not cards.

  But how many business conferences with out-of-state associates did an auto mechanic living in a twenty-five-year-old $18,000 tract home have? Legitimate business conferences?

  Kearny rang the bell.

  He stood turned slightly from the door, the perfect picture of a bored salesman or house-to-houser. Then the door opened, and Kearny immediately recast his role.

  This man had never been an auto mechanic, or a home-owner, or would have worked for anyone else. He was wide and blocky, with flat square shoulders, a good half-head taller than Kearny’s five-nine. His hands were out of a foundry, his wrists roped with veins. His face was bony, as flat and hard as the shoulders, rough-hewn in the same foundry as the hands.

  He didn’t say anything, he didn’t have to. He confirmed what the clustered rental cars suggested, and made it even more certain by stepping out on the porch and closing the door firmly behind him.

  Kearny had to make the motions, anyway. “Mr. Beaghler?”

  “No.” Just a monosyllable, nothing more.

  “How about the little lady of the house? Is Mrs. Beaghler—”

  “No.”

  “You mean she isn’t here at the present time, or that—”

  “I already said no.”

  The big catlike man reached behind him without looking, twisted the knob, started to slide through the door sideways and back in, automatically not letting Kearny see into the house. As he automatically had stepped outside the door and shut it behind him, just in case Kearny had been fuzz. Once you let a cop in, he was in. If you came out to him and shut the door, then he needed a warrant to go through it.

  Until Kearny spoke, he had no idea he was going to; the face was totally unfamiliar. But something in his computer mind, programed by a quarter-century of investigations to indelibly retain detail, because detail so often broke cases, had recognized those hands, the ears set flat to the square skull, the black dry hair, the voice. Even though it had been a single night ten years before.

  “Parker,” he said.

  The door stopped closing. Eyes of flawed onyx regarded him thoughtfully. Kearny wished he had broken his own rule about carrying the S&W four-inch .41 Magnum for which he had a permit. The thoughts behind those eyes made a gun seem a comforting idea.

  “What did you call me?”

  “Parker.”

  “You’re making a mistake,” he said flatly. Whether the mistake was in the name or in using the name wasn’t clear. “The name is Latham.”

  Kearny allowed himself a shrug. “It was Parker in 1962. You’ve gotten a new face since then, but the rest is the same.”

  Then he saw the recognition in the eyes, in the slight relaxation of the tough, muscle-roped body.

  “My name’s Kearny,” he went on. “You were vagged in Bakersfield, broke out of the prison farm. A woman from Fresno gave you a ride, ended up taking you home with her for a two-day shack-up while the heat died down. You never told her you were the one they wanted, but she knew. She didn’t care. She was my wife’s sister. I stayed at the house the second night. We killed a bottle between us.”

  The big man came back out on the porch. His eyes were still watchful, but not at the moment murderous. “I was Ronald Casper then.”

  “She heard you telephoning a guy in Chicago, collect. He wouldn’t accept a call from Casper, you had to use the name Parker. She told me about it afterwards, after you left. She still talks about you. I never told her she was just an easy way for you to be off the street for a couple of days.”

  Parker shrugged; he didn’t seem to care about that. He said, “So what is it now?”

  “I’m looking for a paroled con named Howard Odum.”

  The big man waited, perfectly still, perfectly relaxed, totally dangerous. Thoughts moved behind the stony eyes. He said, “Odum is a friend of Beaghler’s?”

  “Was. Friend of the wife’s now. Beaghler doesn’t know.” Kearny added carefully, “This has nothing to do with anything Beaghler’s into now.”

  Parker decided. He opened the door enough to stick his head in and call. “Sharon.”

  In a few moments the woman Ballard had described came out. She carelessly let the door swing wide enough to give Kearny a glimpse of at least three more men in the living room. The plunder squad. Parker shut the door again.

  Ballard had been right about Sharon’s obvious physical charms, but Parker looked at her like something for sale by the pound. “He wants Odum. Tell him.”

  “Odum?” Her voice was strident. “I haven’t seen Howie since—”

  Parker made an impatient movement with one hand. Her eyes tried to meet the onyx ones, couldn’t.

  She cleared her throat. “1684 Galindo Street.”

  The address Ballard had gotten from the parole officer. No good. Kearny wanted the rabbit’s bolt-hole, not the main burrow. And she would know what it was. She’d have gotten it from Odum on the back seat of the T-Bird in some country lane while he was busy between her legs.

  Parker looked over at Kearny queryingly. Kearny shook his head. He turned back to Sharon. “Try again.”

  It was impossible for her to look innocent, but she tried. “Honest,” she said, “that’s his address.”

  Parker didn’t move, but the atmosphere changed. To Kearny it was as though the
other man were leaning over her like an oncoming storm. You could almost see the shadow crossing her face. “Once more,” Parker said, and there wasn’t anything in his voice at all.

  “Well, uh—” She licked her lips, gave Kearny a quick pleading look, as though somehow he might protect her from what was happening. Kearny kept his own face blank, and she looked back at Parker, saying, “Maybe he means, uh, Howie’s girl friend over in Antioch.”

  Parker glanced at Kearny, and Kearny nodded. Parker looked back at Sharon, and waited.

  Sharon had started to blink now, and once she started talking, the words poured out in a nervous stream: “He . . . stays over with her a lot. She . . . I don’t know her name, but her address is . . . ah, 1-9-0-2 Gavallo Road. It’s a like new apartment building, twelve units. Howie said—”

  “Good,” Parker said. “I’ll be right in.”

  She’d been dismissed. It took her a second to get it, and then she scrambled back into the house like a cat leaving a full bathtub.

  Parker turned to Kearny. “I’d hate to think you’d memorized those car plates to find out who rented them.”

  “What cars?” said Kearny.

  The door closed behind him before he was even off the porch.

  Some kind of heist, probably. Parker had the sort of cold, lawless control that went with that sort of planning. He’d watch the papers for the next few days for something big, local: a bank vault, an armored car, something like that. Or Parker might kill the whole deal because Kearny had recognized him. Parker wouldn’t still be around if he weren’t a very cautious man while being simultaneously a very bold one.

  Getting into the car, Kearny realized that the back of his neck ached. When he rubbed it, his hand came away smeary with sweat. Tension. But what the hell, he had Odum’s ass nailed to the wall. Thanks to Parker.

  NINETEEN

  “YOU GOING to start the car?” asked Kearny mildly. He checked his watch. “Your seventy-two hours are almost up.”

  That was it. That was just it. Kearny bringing up the goddamn deadline now. The perfect psychological moment. Waste an hour on stakeout while Kearny is wasting an hour at the Beaghler house, then he comes back and gets into your car and calmly tells you to get going. Get going where?

  With a muttered curse, Ballard started to open his door.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” demanded Kearny.

  “I’m going back inside and turn sweet little Mary upside down and shake her until an address falls out. That bitch knows where Odum is, Dan, and I’m—”

  “So do we.”

  “I’m going to—Huh?” Ballard froze, stupidly, half in and half out of the car.

  “1902 Gavallo Road, Antioch. We don’t know the name of the girl Odum’s shacking with, and we don’t know the apartment number, but there’s only twelve units in the building . . .”

  Ballard had a sinking feeling. “How in hell did you get all that?”

  “I turned a bitch upside down and shook her until an address fell out.” Kearny added nothing about Parker. The big, hard criminal had played straight with him.

  “Sharon?” Dammit, would he ever get so he didn’t blindly believe whatever they wanted to tell him?

  Kearny gave him a version of the interview with Sharon Beaghler sanitized of Parker as they headed east on California 4, out across the valley floor toward the Sacramento River delta and Antioch. Right out of reach of KDM 366 Control, on which Giselle would shortly be trying to call them.

  Bart Heslip opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling. What in the hell went on? Where . . . He licked his lips. He turned his head from side to side. How . . .

  “Christ,” he said, “I’m thirsty. What time . . .”

  His voice trailed off. Before anyone could tell him that it was a handful of seconds past 8:47 on the evening of Friday, May 12, and that he had been in coma for three days, he started snoring again.

  Dr. Arnold Whitaker looked around at the exhausted Corinne Jones, the slat-thin red-headed nurse whose behind he had a passion for patting, the little Filipino aide who had just brought Corinne a glass of orange juice and who had recently been catching Whitaker’s magnificently roaming eye. Whitaker beamed.

  Corinne, laughing and crying at the same time, headed for a phone.

  Their headlights splayed a little white world out in front of them which fled down the highway at their approach. It was still warm enough, in the cup protected by the dim round-topped hills, for them to have their windows open. The wind raked their hair like blowing leaves. Tension was building inside Ballard.

  “Do you really think this is it, Dan?” he asked tightly.

  “If it isn’t, we’ve wasted the day.”

  Kearny drew on his cigarette, stubbed it in the ashtray. Ballard found his lips were dry. Howard Odum, murderer. He couldn’t leave it alone.

  “Ah . . . how do you plan to play it if he is there, Dan?”

  “By ear,” said Kearny.

  A car on the other side of the highway divider poured a long stream of horn-noise against their windshield as it whipped by. Probably teen-agers, juiced up on the warmth of the night and the fact of their youth.

  “Do we . . . ah, try to take him ourselves?”

  Kearny’s square face was without expression; the glare of another passing car momentarily touched his massive jaw. “We aren’t cops, Larry; and we don’t have enough evidence to give the cops. We don’t have any evidence. Not about Griffin, not about Odum, not even about Bart being attacked.”

  “Then what—”

  “We’re private investigators on a routine repossession assignment, remember? Running down a 1972 Thunderbird two-door hardtop for our clients, California Citizens Bank. When we find the car we will take possession of it on their behalf.” He paused to light another cigarette, and shook one from the pack for Ballard. “But I’m betting that Odum will have to do something about us when we take the car away from him. Whatever he was willing to kill for last February, or last Tuesday, sure as hell hasn’t gone away.”

  Meaning they were deliberately trying to provoke some sort of action by Odum. Action, for instance, like the attack on Bart. Well, Ballard thought, fair enough. There were two of them. Then another, oddly disturbing thought struck him. “What if he doesn’t try to stop us, Dan?”

  “Then we wait. We wait for Bart to wake up and point the finger at him. And while we’re waiting, he won’t unzip his pants in a men’s room without somebody putting it in a DKA report. Twenty-four hours around-the-clock overt surveillance if necessary.”

  His voice was surprisingly rough, full of a suppressed fury that Ballard found totally unexpected. Dan Kearny involved in a case? Kearny? For the very first time Ballard realized that he had been given a deadline so he would think only about investigating instead of about why he was investigating.

  “Not that I think it’s going to be necessary,” Kearny went on thoughtfully. “Odum will have to make his move tonight. And then we’ll have him.”

  “If he doesn’t have us first.”

  “I met a man today who would use Odum for a toothpick.” But it wasn’t really needed. Ballard had just been talking; he wasn’t really nervous any more, or scared, or whatever the hell it had been.

  Bart Heslip came out of it, suddenly, all at once, at 9:40 P.M. One minute he was lying there corpselike on the bed, as he had been lying for three days; in the next, his eyes were open, with intelligence struggling for comprehension behind them.

  “Hi, Corry,” he said vaguely to Corinne Jones. “Jesus, I’m thirsty.” And then, to Whitaker’s delight, he added so terribly tritely—all the cornball TV doctors had it right—“Where am I? What happened?”

  “It’s Friday,” said Corinne. “Friday night. Oh, Bart—”

  “And your name, sir?” asked Whitaker.

  “Barton Heslip,” he said. “I’m thirsty.” His voice sharpened. “What cathouse they let you out of, man?”

  Whitaker, in his colorful ensemble tha
t Kearny had noted that morning, looked pained. His hands fluttered. “I am Dr. Arnold Whitaker. This is Trinity Hospital in San Francisco. There is no need to be alarmed. There has been an accident—”

  “I’m not alarmed,” snapped Heslip in an alarmed voice. “What kind of accident?” Then in awed tones he added, belatedly, “Did you say Friday?”

  “Oh, Bart!” Corinne exclaimed again instead of answering. She was clasping one of his hands between her full breasts. More love than she had thought possible possessed her when she looked into his eyes. “Oh, Bart . . .”

  The hand tightened within hers. “I’ve been here since . . . Tuesday?” he asked cautiously.

  Giselle, in the background, looked at Whitaker, who nodded. She stepped forward with a wide grin on her face. She’d caught a taxi from the DKA offices as soon as Corinne had called her. “Hi, hotshot,” she said.

  “Giselle!” Heslip said weakly. “What the hell happened to me?”

  “We hoped you could tell us.”

  He looked at her blankly. “I remember repo’ing the Willets Merc out there on Seventh Avenue . . . telling Larry about it . . .’’ He looked almost pleadingly at the red-headed nurse. “I’m thirsty . . .”

  They parked in a closed gas station a block away from 1902 Gavallo Road in Antioch. It was a small, unenthusiastic delta town, shut up tight here in the residential area although it was not even ten o’clock. Ballard had driven the Ford once past the apartment house, the top story of which was visible over the roofs of the intervening houses.

  “We’ll walk in,” said Kearny. “If the T-Bird’s there, we grab it. If not, we check all of the apartments, starting with single women or two girls living together, until somebody pops. Any questions?”

  “I need my repo tools?”

  “Bring them, but I’ve got an ignition key dupe. Made it up this morning from the dealer’s code numbers.”

  Although most cars could be hot-wired, keys helped where quick action was necessary. And keys got you around the sticky problem of locking steering wheels activated only by the ignition.