Breakdown - [Nameless Detective 19]

by By Bill Pronzini

  * * * *

  Chapter 5

  Back in the Barbary Coast days, before and for a while after the 1906 quake, the block of Pacific Avenue between Kearny and Montgomery was known as Terrific Street. There were twenty-four saloons and dance halls in that one block, among them the Criterion, the So-Different, the Golden City, and Spider Kelly’s notorious watering hole on the first floor of the Seattle Hotel. On Terrific Street in those days you could buy just about anything in the way of sinful pleasure, from opium dreams to “specialty” prostitutes from the four corners of the globe.

  The saloons and dance halls are generations gone, victims of the Red Light Abatement Act of 1914, but most of the original squat brick buildings are still standing today—survivors of the ‘89 quake as well. Their outward appearance hasn’t changed much since the post-1906 reconstruction. Despite the cars in the street and the high rises towering on all sides, you can almost feel their history—a sense of what it must have been like on the Barbary Coast a century ago.

  Nowadays, the Terrific Street buildings house offices, many of which are vacant. There is an overabundance of downtown office space, particularly in the modern Financial District to the immediate north, and as a result the owners of these venerables have been reluctant to make improvements or lease concessions demanded by current and prospective tenants. Some of the owners were being forced into making repairs because of structural weakening after the recent quake; but the buildings’ age and brick construction still make them undesirable now that everyone’s earthquake consciousness has been raised. If it weren’t for the fact that they’re a part of the Jackson Square Historic District, they might have been sold long ago and razed in favor of high rises. One of the country’s most flamboyant criminal attorneys, Melvin Belli, still has his offices in one of them and makes a practice of sitting in his window and sneering at tourists who come to gawk. Less well known, if no less competent, attorneys— criminal and otherwise—also have their offices on Terrific Street. Paul Glickman is one of them.

  I entered his building, across the street and down the block from Belli’s, at three twenty. Glickman and his partner, Elston Crandall, occupied the entire second floor. Their reception room was far more sedate than Belli’s, which I had had occasion to visit once; in fact, about the only thing they had in common were high ceilings, windows facing Pacific, and outside window boxes full of flowers. I gave my name to the male receptionist and was shown into Glickman’s private sanctum right away.

  He was alone when I entered, seated behind a broad walnut desk that faced his own row of windows overlooking Terrific Street. Thomas Lujack wasn’t due until a quarter of four. I’d wanted a few minutes alone with Glickman first; he had had a client with him when I called from Containers, Inc., and we had spoken just briefly. He stood to shake my hand, then waved me to a chair upholstered in tan cloth. Tan and walnut-brown were the dominant colors here—all very tasteful and dignified, so as to inspire confidence in his clients, no doubt. He inspired confidence too: in his early fifties, trim, with salt-and-pepper hair, calm eyes that looked at you steadily from beneath bushy brows, and a quiet take-charge manner. If I ever had the misfortune to find myself charged with a felony, he was the man I would want to defend me.

  He had a habit of steepling his fingers when he talked from a seated position; he did that now. Without preamble he said, “It appears Nick Pendarves was in error last night. Mr. Lujack claims he was at his brother’s home in Burlingame until nine o’clock.”

  “Coleman confirms it,” I said. “Eberhardt and I talked to him an hour ago.”

  “So. If Pendarves was wrong once in making a ‘positive’ identification, he could just as easily be wrong twice.”

  “It’s a nice legal point, anyway.”

  “Mmm. It almost makes me wish Pendarves had filed a police report. Which he hasn’t yet, or I would have heard about it.”

  “You don’t really want it in the public record, do you?”

  “Only if it can be proven beyond a doubt that there wasn’t a deliberate attempt on Pendarves’s life. I find it hard to believe that Mr. Lujack would hire someone to run down Pendarves with a car, but a jury might not. Juries are unpredictable, especially in a homicide trial.”

  “I don’t see any way of proving it now,” I said.

  “No, neither do I.”

  “I take it Pendarves hasn’t tried to contact Thomas since last night?”

  “No.”

  “With any luck, he won’t. What was Thomas’s reaction when you told him about the incident?”

  “Shock, dismay, anger. He sounded genuinely upset.”

  “He won’t do anything rash, will he?”

  “I warned him against it.”

  “Then Pendarves is the only one we have to worry about. He may just let the whole thing slide, but I wouldn’t want to bet on it.”

  “Would it do any good for you to talk to him?”

  “I doubt it. But I’ll give it a try tonight.” I glanced at my watch; it was twenty of four. “There’s something you should know before Thomas gets here,” I said, “something Eberhardt found out today from a coworker of Pendarves’s named Antonio Rivas. I don’t know that it has anything to do with Frank Hanauer’s murder, but it’s a possibility.” I went on to tell him about the illegals situation at Containers, Inc.

  Glickman had one of those unreadable courtroom faces, an attribute that helped make him a good trial attorney, but I could tell from the clipped way he said “Mr. Lujack should have seen fit to tell us that himself” that he didn’t like the news any better than I did.

  “His brother claims they kept quiet because it couldn’t have any bearing on Hanauer’s murder. The real reason is they were afraid it would leak out to the INS.”

  “If it becomes a matter of public record now, it could have a prejudicial effect on our case.”

  “Unless it relates to the homicide in a way that proves Thomas innocent.”

  “Do you think it might?”

  “Too soon for me to say. How would you’ve handled the illegals thing if the Lujacks had owned up in the beginning?”

  “Advised them to turn themselves in immediately,” Glickman said. “And to issue a statement to the media that they were doing so voluntarily, as an act of contrition. The public approves of voluntary confessions of minor sins, if they’re done at the right time for the right reasons; it would have helped Thomas’s credibility. Going public at this late date would have the opposite effect, I’m afraid. The prosecution would see to it if the case does go to trial.”

  “So how do you handle it now?”

  “That depends. On what Mr. Lujack has to tell us, and whether or not you can establish a link between the illegals matter and the death of Frank Hanauer.”

  Thomas Lujack showed up ten minutes late and full of apologies. “Traffic’s snarled on the Bay Bridge,” he said. “People drive like idiots in bad weather.” He pumped my hand, pumped Glickman’s, hung his damp London Fog trench coat on an antique clothes tree, and plunked himself down on another of the visitors’ chairs.

  He was a couple of years younger than his brother, and far more stylish in his appearance and dress. Longish fox-brown hair, swept back on both sides in thick wings; silky-looking mustache that partially concealed a weak mouth. Wearing a Harris tweed sport coat today, over a mint-green shirt and designer jeans, with a couple of flashy gold chains looped around his neck. He made me feel rumpled and outmoded by comparison. He even managed to make Glickman look stuffy and bourgeois, like a Capitol Hill Republican.

  Usually he had an easy, breezy way about him that may have been natural and may have been calculated for effect. The past couple of times I’d seen him, though, he’d been as fidgety as his brother. Today he couldn’t seem to keep his hands still; they plucked at the creases in his trousers, touched his face, touched his hair, drummed at the arms of the chair, fiddled with the gold chains.

  He said to me, “I guess Paul’s told you I was at Coleman’s
until nine last night.”

  “He told me,” I said. “So did Coleman.”

  “Ah? You talked to him? Well, good, good. Then you know I had nothing to do with what happened to Pendarves. If anything happened. I doubt it, myself.”

  “You go straight home after you left Coleman’s?”

  “Sure. Straight home.”

  “I called your house at a quarter of ten. There was no answer.”

  “Quarter of ten last night? That was about when I got there. You must have just missed me.”

  “Uh-huh. Where was your wife? Coleman said you called her before you left his place.”

  “At a friend’s. I picked her up on the way. I’ve been using her car since . . . well, since December fifth. She’s got a rental but she doesn’t like to drive much.”

  I watched his hands dip and flutter. The nervousness didn’t have to mean anything. Hell, if I were facing one vehicular homicide rap, and had just been accused of another by the star witness in the first case, I wouldn’t be sitting still either.

  I said, “You have any contact with Pendarves in the past three weeks? Any kind at all?”

  “Christ, no. You think I want anything to do with that schmuck?”

  “You might have tried to talk to him, see if you could convince him he was wrong about what he saw.”

  “Uh-uh. No way. Paul warned me against that.”

  “Suppose Pendarves tries to talk to you about last night. How do you handle him?”

  “I don’t,” Thomas said. “I steer clear of him.”

  “And if he makes any overt threat or action?”

  “I report it to Paul immediately.”

  Glickman’s hard steady gaze was fixed on his client. After a few seconds he said, “Now then, Mr. Lujack. We’ll discuss your practice of hiring illegal aliens.”

  Thomas sat still for a couple of beats, showing no reaction. Then his hands began to move restlessly again, and he smiled in a wry and self-deprecating way. “So you found out about that.”

  “Did you think we wouldn’t?”

  “Well, I hoped not. It’s not something I’m proud of.”

  “Why didn’t you confide in me?”

  “I didn’t see any reason to. Neither did Coleman. Why open up a can of worms if you don’t have to?”

  “If it’s opened publicly now,” Glickman said, “it won’t help you in court.”

  “I know. But it’s not going to get opened publicly, not if we keep it among ourselves.”

  I said, “What makes you so sure?”

  “The INS hasn’t tumbled in six years. Why should they now?”

  “Is that how long you’ve been employing illegals? Six years?”

  “About.”

  “Whose bright idea was it in the first place?”

  “Does that matter?”

  “It might. It ever occur to you that maybe there’s a connection between the illegals and Hanauer’s murder?”

  “Oh, come on. What possible connection could there be?”

  “You tell us, Mr. Lujack.”

  “None. None at all.”

  “Was it Hanauer’s idea?”

  “To hire illegals? No. It was Coleman’s.”

  “You and Hanauer approve it right away?”

  “More or less. We were still on shaky financial ground in those days and it was a way to save ourselves thousands of dollars a year. Hell, like it or not, undocumented workers have become a common business option—”

  “You or Hanauer ever have trouble with your workers? Somebody you had to fire, for instance?”

  “I know I didn’t. Frank would have mentioned it if he had. Besides, neither of us hires or fires the factory workers. Our shop foreman takes care of that.”

  “Rafael Vega.”

  “Right.”

  “Did Vega have trouble with any of the illegals during the past year?”

  “Nothing he reported . . .” Thomas’s voice trailed off, and he frowned. At length he said, “Well, there was one clash between him and Frank. But it was so minor I’d forgotten all about it.”

  “What kind of clash?”

  “Words, that’s all. A couple of months ago.”

  “Were you there at the time?”

  “Yeah. It got a little heated.”

  “What did they have words about?”

  “Production. We had a rush order for a hundred gross of number ten singlewalls, one that Frank brought in personally, and we were behind schedule. He blamed Vega for the delay.”

  “You said the exchange got heated. How heated?”

  “Oh, they did some shouting at each other. Vega threatened to quit, but that was just chili-pepper talk.”

  “That all he threatened to do?”

  “You mean did he make any threats against Frank? No, it wasn’t like that. Nothing personal. Just one of those workplace flare-ups, that’s all. The next day it was like it never happened.”

  “How did Hanauer and Vega get along otherwise?”

  “. . . All right. No problems.”

  “You sound a little hesitant.”

  “I’m just trying to remember. To be honest, I don’t think Frank liked Vega much. And the feeling was probably mutual. But again, it wasn’t personal.”

  “What was it, then?”

  “I guess you’d call it bigotry,” Thomas said. “Frank didn’t care for Mexicans. Didn’t actively hate them, you understand—just didn’t much care for them as a race. He thought they were lazy.”

  “Uh-huh. And Vega knew or sensed this.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “How about you? What’s your opinion of Latinos?”

  “I’m no bigot, if that’s what you mean. I like Mexicans just fine.”

  Sure you do, I thought. That’s why you hire illegal aliens and pay them starvation wages without any benefits. That’s why you use phrases like “chili-pepper talk.”

  I said, “You and Vega get along all right?”

  “Sure. Fine.”

  “You pay him well?”

  “Damn well. He’s never had a kick coming on that score.”

  “So he has no reason to hate or dislike you.”

  “Not unless he’s a bigot.”

  “You think he might be?”

  “He keeps it to himself, if he is.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  Thomas shrugged. “Good worker, keeps his people hopping. We never have to worry about the manufacturing end with him on the job. He can be hard-nosed sometimes—fiery. You know how those Mexicans are. The Latin temperament.”

  “Meaning he sometimes flies off the handle?”

  “Sometimes.” Thomas smiled his self-deprecating smile. “He’s got my kind of pop-off temper. Especially after he’s been drinking.”

  “He drinks on the job?”

  “No, no. I mean when he’s hung over, after a wet night.”

  “That happen often?”

  “Not often, no. I don’t think he’s a heavy boozer. Once or twice a month he’ll come in and you can tell he was shitfaced the night before. That’s about it.”

  Glickman had been sitting quietly all this time, listening to my Q & A with Thomas. Now he stirred and said to his client, “It’s possible, whether you think so or not, that this man Vega has motive to want to harm both you and your late partner. If you’d been completely honest with us from the beginning . . .”

  He didn’t need to finish the sentence; Thomas got the point. “Okay, I was wrong and I apologize. What else can I say?”

  “Is there anything else you’ve neglected to tell us?”

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  “However small it might be.”

  “I swear it—nothing.”

  “Because if there is,” Glickman said, “and I find out about it, I’ll resign immediately as your defense attorney. And I’ll be obliged to pass on my reasons to whomever you get to replace me.”

  I said, “That goes for me too.”

  Thomas bobbed
his head and said that he understood. He looked innocent and eager to please; but there was sweat on him now and he seemed even more nervous. Had he been honest, or was he trying to con us by deflecting suspicion elsewhere? Was he what he appeared to be, an unethical but basically decent businessman caught in a web of circumstance, or was he in fact a cold-blooded murderer?