by Joe Gores
“Anyway, many thanks. What hospital’s Andy in? I gotta fly back this afternoon, but maybe—”
“Wouldn’t do any good, he’s still in intensive care.”
Dain shook his head. “Fuck of a note. Well, anyway, give him my best when you get in to see him.”
“Sure thing.”
Dain spent half a day working the O’Hare parking lots and shuttle buses with Broussard’s mug shots, then spent most of his flight to San Francisco studying them. Even with the flat police lighting and the dehumanizing circumstances, her beauty shone through. Exotic was a good word. Deep tan or dark skin, dark eyes that challenged the camera, the cops behind the camera… The surname suggested a reason for her dark rather wild beauty. As did the soliciting busts in New Orleans.
It was going to be another routine operation. He would find them, Maxton would get his bonds back, Zimmer would probably get roughed up a bit, and that would be that. He might as well be working for legitimate clients on the right side of the law for all the good this was doing him.
Who would need a hitman in the Jimmy Zimmer bond caper?
Homicide had been jumping all morning. A tourist from Cincinnati had wandered into Emergency at S.F. General complaining of a headache, then had fallen dead on the floor. They had found a .22 slug in his brain. The cabbie who delivered him to the hospital had picked him up on Eddy Street in the Tenderloin.
A thirteen-year-old shot a fourteen-year-old dead with an A/R on full automatic in the parking area of one of the Western Addition housing projects in an argument over a crack concession.
When police arrived at a rather nice Victorian on Elizabeth Street on a neighbor’s complaint, they found a seventy-three-year-old man watching Santa Barbara with a self-righteous set to his jaw and a bloody claw hammer in his hand. His sixty-eight-year-old wife lay on the floor in front of the TV. She had wanted One Life to Live.
In his private office Randy Solomon was working on the preliminary paperwork on the three killings. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, his jacket over the back of his chair.
Dain came through the open door. He was wearing horn-rims and a conservative three-piece suit and was carrying a slim attaché case. Randy hadn’t laid eyes on him for over a year. His face hardened as he did an exaggerated double take.
“Well, well, the big private eye. A whole year, nothin’, then here comes Jesus Christ. Down here slummin’, white boy?”
Dain sat down in the visitor’s chair.
“Why the hardnose, Randy?”
Solomon detoured around Dain to close the door, then came back so he could lean down into Dain’s face. He said softly, “I knew a guy once—young, sharp, good mind, good investigator. Sweet wife and a nice little kid. Just getting started on his own… looking for that big case…”
“And they all lived happily ever after,” said Dain.
Solomon ignored this. His voice was openly hostile.
“Know what I see now? A whore in a three-piece suit.”
“I do what I always did, Randy. Find people.”
“For the sleaze of the earth,” snapped Solomon hotly, “with that fag bookseller pimping for you.”
Dain was suddenly on his feet.
“What am I supposed to do, for fuck sake? Repos and wandering wives? The fuckers killed my family! Where else will I find them except outside the law?”
Solomon looked surprised, then chuckled and went around behind his desk. The tension suddenly went out of both men.
“Shit, I might of known. You getting anything?”
“Another day older and deeper in debt.”
“So why the fancy getup?”
“I’ve been at the stock exchange cavorting with the bulls and the bears.”
“Who’s winning?”
“This morning, the bulls. To be exact. Robert Farnsworth of Farnsworth, Fechheimer and Farnsworth out of Chicago. Daddy sent him out here for three months of seasoning before giving him more control of the family brokerage business. Bobby-boy is best buddies with a guy I am seeking for a sort of connected Chicago lawyer named Maxton. This guy and an exotic dancer—”
“Teddy Maxton?”
“Yeah,” said Dain in surprise, “you know about him?”
Randy waved a vague hand. “He comes out here as consulting defense counsel every once in a while. He’s damned good in front of a jury.” His voice, eyes, hardened slightly. “Our Teddy the kind of guy hires a hitman?”
Dain shook his head. “I’m just paying the bills with this one.” He leaned forward in his chair, cleared his throat. “But I, ah, need a good wireman, Randy.”
“You know that stuff isn’t admissible in court,” chided Solomon. “And it sure as hell ain’t legal.”
“Admissible in court I don’t need, legal I don’t care about. I just think this Zimmer will be calling Farnsworth and I want to be listening in.”
Solomon tore a sheet from his memo pad, began writing on it. “Remember Moe Wexler?”
“Pensioned off six or seven years ago on a medical disability? Had a leg broken in about eight places…”
“That’s Moe. Here’s the address of his electronics shop.” He handed Dain the memo slip with a wink. They stood. “How’s my boyfriend? Shenzie the wonder cat?”
“Don’t ask. You might get stuck with him again for a few days if this Farnsworth thing pans out. The neighbor lady in Mill Valley who usually takes him is out of town…”
Solomon gave his deep chuckle. “Anytime for the Shenzie cat.” They shook hands, Dain started for the door. Randy spoke to his back. “How about some handball?”
Dain turned and looked at him. Suddenly grinned.
“How about tomorrow? I’ll whup your ass.”
“That’s my man,” said Randy happily. “The hopeless romantic to the bitter end.”
13
Arched across the front window of the narrow storefront in Clement Street was MOE’S ELECTRONICS PLUS. Under this in smaller letters was, TVs—VCRs—Recorders—Radios, and under that in even smaller letters, repair & service. Dain pushed open the door, jangling a small brass bell fixed to a spring inside the top of the door. There was a wooden counter with an old-fashioned cash register, behind that a doorway to the work area covered with a heavy brown curtain.
The curtain was shoved aside by a big easygoing man running to fat. He had a cute little mouth and hair in his ears and ex-cop written all over him. He moved with a slight limp.
“Hello, Moe,” said Dain.
Wexler studied him for a moment, then smiled genially.
“Eddie Dain,” he said. “You’re looking fit. Randy Solomon called, said you might be around, or I’d of thought somebody was sending an ex-49er tackle around to bust my other leg.”
“How’s the first one?”
“Still busted.” He hesitated. “I’m sorry about your wife and kid.”
Dain was silent. Wexler raised a hinged flap of countertop and went to the door to twist the bolt lock at the same time that he jerked down over the doorpane a small brown roller shade that had OUT TO COFFEE—BACK IN 15 on it. Dain had begun counting out $100 bills on the counter like dealing a hand of poker.
“One bug on the private phone of Robert Farnsworth at Farnsworth, Fechheimer and Farnsworth. They’re a brokerage house on Pine across from the Pacific Coast Stock Exch—”
“You sure your call won’t come through the switchboard?”
“My man is dumb, but not that dumb.”
Moe nodded. “They got a service door on Leidesdorff Alley with a lock on it you could open with garlic breath.”
“You ex-cops,” marveled Dain. He counted out another sheaf of bills. “The second bug is at Farnsworth’s apartment. He’s got a three-month lease in that tall white stucco place on Montclair Terrace where Francisco—”
“Yeah. Gotcha.”
“Apartment three-C. We’re looking for a call from a James Zimmer or anybody who could be Zimmer. I figure a week tops.”
Moe shuffled th
e bills together like a hand of cards.
“I can use an infinity mike at the brokerage house, can go back in for it afterwards. At the apartment I might have to go into the walls, that’d mean I’d have to leave the equipment.”
Dain gestured at the third fan of bills he had laid on the counter. “If you can salvage the equipment, consider the extra five bills a bonus.”
“A week gonna be enough?”
“If we’ve got no action in seven days, I’ll have to rethink my premise.”
Moe started to pocket the folded bills, then hesitated.
“Randy says you’re working for Teddy Maxton on this one.”
“Randy’s got a big mouth,” said Dain coldly.
“We went through the academy together, what can I say?”
“What the fuck is it with Teddy Maxton and the SFPD? Mention his name and you all piss your pants in unison. Maxton’s in Chicago, for Chrissake.”
“He’s got a long arm.”
“That bother you, Moe?”
“It rains, my leg hurts, that bothers me. I can’t get it up for the wife, that bothers me. Maxton don’t bother me.”
“Then why are we talking about him?”
Moe leaned forward slightly across the counter to look closer at Dain, as if confirming some rumor he’d heard.
“Watch your butt with this guy, Dain. He’s one tricky son of a bitch.”
Dain smiled for the first time since his wife and child had come up in the conversation.
“So am I, Moe. So am I.”
Maxton got out of the elevator on the P-1 level under his office building and crossed the concrete to the Mercedes parked in his slot. It was another scorching Chicago summer afternoon, but Maxton, moving between his air-conditioned office and his air-conditioned home in his air-conditioned car, only felt the heat by his backyard pool, where he expected it.
He pushed the remote that unlocked the doors of the Mercedes, started to get in, checked the movement. Dain was sitting in the rider’s side. Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante, K-64, was sweet as honey off the car’s CD player.
“How the fuck did you get in here?”
Instead of answering, Dain said, “We’re going out to O’Hare, I want to show you something.”
“That’ll take hours this time of day, and I’ve got two tickets to the Cubs game.”
Dain said nothing. Maxton got in, grumbling, began fighting the rush-hour traffic out Wacker to the big convoluted freeway exchange that would put him on the John Kennedy north to O’Hare. Cars were stacked bumper-to-bumper, horns blared, exhausts fumed, light glared into drivers’ eyes off polished chrome. The air conditioner whooshed softly under the Mozart.
“Zimmer and a peroxide blonde were booked on a flight leaving for Rio four hours after the bonds were taken,” said Dain in a conversational voice.
This jerked Maxton’s head around. “They left the country? How the fuck’re you going to—”
“Remember last New Year’s Eve office party? When you hired some exotic dancers to put on a show for the employees?”
“Of course. We’d had a good year, financially.”
“Zimmer met her there.”
“Who, goddam you?”
“The woman who planned this whole thing. You had a little something going with her yourself at the time, I hear.”
Maxton said icily, “You hear wrong.”
“She wasn’t always a peroxide blonde. Think about it.”
Dain slid down in the seat and shut his eyes. He didn’t open them until the roar of a landing jetliner’s engines penetrated even the Mercedes’s vaunted sound-exclusion paneling, then he sat up suddenly.
“Get in the right lane, to long-term parking.”
Maxton swung the wheel over, stopped at the striped arm, got his ticket from the machine, drove through. His voice was tentative, almost shocked. “You’re saying it was… Vangie?”
“Evangeline Broussard,” Dain nodded. “She planned the steal, she was waiting for Zimmer in an alley around the corner from the bank. Go down this row.”
Maxton obediently drove down the long row of dusty cars.
“I don’t get it, Dain. Why would Vangie—”
“You wanted her to fuck one of your business associates in the back room during the Christmas party, for Chris-sake.”
His bewilderment didn’t lessen. “Yeah? So?”
“She thought she loved you, Maxton,” Dain said in an almost defeated voice. “She thought you loved her.”
“Loved her? She’s a fucking hootch dancer, for Chris-sake!”
“Stop here.”
Dain walked over to Vangie’s red Porsche; from the dust on it, and the dried rain-streaks on the windshield, it obviously had not been moved in many days. Maxton followed, still not knowing what they were doing there. On the far side of the Porsche, Dain leaned his elbows on the dusty top. Maxton faced him across the grimy red roof.
“And then?”
Maxton shrugged sullenly. “She did it, of course. A couple weeks later her gig ended, so we broke it off. But I gave her the money for a car since she was driving to New York…”
Dain patted his palms on the roof of the Porsche.
“This car. Right here. Vangie didn’t expect anyone to connect her with Zimmer, probably figured the car would get stolen and that would be that.”
Maxton started pounding his clenched fists on the car roof.
“Goddam her soul to hell! My money, my car! I’ll see her dead, the rotten little bitch!”
Dain shrugged by raising one shoulder.
“That crap doesn’t do any good, Maxton. Zimmer saw her at the party, fell hard. She saw him as a way to get back at you. She must have laughed herself sick when you decided to steal two million in bonds and handed them to Zimmer for safekeeping.”
“And the fuckers are away clean! You may as well—”
“You ever consider what sort of trouble you’d have converting two million in American bearer bonds into cruzeiros in Brazil? When the rate is nearly four thousand to one and you don’t even have the language? You can bet Vangie considered it.”
“What… are you saying?”
“They never caught the plane. Doubled back to the city by airport limo, caught a bus to Texarkana, left it at some stop in between. Once they have you thinking South America, why leave the country? The bonds are legal tender in any brokerage house they walk into.”
“How do you know all this stuff?” asked Maxton almost suspiciously.
“It’s what I’m good at, remember?” He walked around the car back toward the Mercedes, Maxton following.
“I’ll get a list of the bonds to every brokerage—”
“No. You’ll spook them. She’s smart, I tell you.” He stopped, opened the driver’s door of the Mercedes. “She’ll plan to wait a few months before cashing them in—”
“My bitch wife won’t wait a few months, damn you! I’ll put an army to work on the brokerage houses, we’ll—”
“No army. Nobody. Nada. Zero. Nothing. Get it?”
Dain held the open door; after a moment’s hesitation, Maxton slid in under the wheel.
“All right,” he said, “I’ll play it your way for the moment. What’s your next move?”
“Go back to San Francisco.”
“San Francisco?”
“To wait. It won’t be long, believe me. She won’t be able to control him.”
“Wait is the goddamnedest stupidest idea I’ve ever—”
“It’s time to quit looking for your prey and start looking for what your prey is looking for. In the dry season if you’re a lion and your prey is a wildebeest, you wait by the water hole. If you’re a red-tailed hawk and your prey is a field mouse, you soar over the—”
“You think she’s in San Francisco?”
Dain slammed the door, walked away between the close-packed dusty cars. “Don’t screw it up, Maxton,” he said over his shoulder. “Wait for them to make their move. They will. Believe me.”
III
VANGIE
The Big Easy
THE SECRET OF RECOGNITION
O nobly-born, that which is called death hath now come. Thou art departing from this world, but thou art not the only one; death cometh for all. Be not attached to this world; be not weak.
THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD
14
Night—soft, warm, moist, seductive—handcuffed New Orleans to the Vieux Carré’s blocked-off Bourbon Street like a kinky lover. Exotic underwear shops, crowded cheek by jowl with po’boy sandwich stands, displayed teddies and chemises and lace body stockings with open crotch panels for easy access. Traditional jazz poured out into the night from open doorways at the crowds of shirt-sleeve and summer-dress tourists.
Jimmy Zimmer strolled along a side street, stopped outside Carnal Knowledge where two strippers sprawled on straight chairs just outside the open doorway, loose meaty thighs spread wide to catch the cool outside breeze and the eye of passing males. He moved inside, stood near the stage, looking much seedier than he had in Chicago less than three weeks earlier. He seemed jumpy and determined, his eyes almost mean behind their horn-rims, his skin pale as if he spent all his time indoors.
Vangie’s face registered consternation when she saw Jimmy arrive. She was hand-cut crystal in a display of Coke bottles, her body moving to the music by its own volition. Rednecks shrieked obscenities at her, college boys made explicit suggestions, two black-leather lesbians moaned sexual dreams.
Through a gap in the fake plush curtains, Harry the Manager watched her as avidly as any john. He was a short man with a degenerate face; his bald pate, fringed with dandruff-flecked brown hair, gleamed with the urgent sweat of his thoughts.
When the music ended, Vangie came hurriedly through the curtain wearing only the required cache-sexe, her otherwise nude and magnificent body gleaming as if oiled. She had to corral Jimmy and send him hustling back to their room before her next show, and before he…
But Harry was right beside her, his short fat legs trotting to match her long muscular strides. “Baby, you’re terrific! In two weeks you’ve almost doubled the gross!”
