“Where?” Ross looked over at him. “Where’s that kid going to run?” Ross shook his head. “People say the same thing about the homeless. ‘Why don’t they go someplace warm like Florida?’ Like they could just pack up the family station wagon and drive three thousand miles across country. They stay where it’s familiar, where they know the services and the angles, where they have a network. Those kids have no place to go. They don’t trust anyone. That’s the sad part.”
Donley knew.
They parked at the corner of Polk and Larkin. The Gulch in the morning was everything it was not at night—quiet, deserted, mostly subdued. The lunch crowd wouldn’t arrive for an hour. Donley looked up at a neon sign of a green cactus wearing black sunglasses. The cactus held an umbrella to shade it from a bright tropical sun. Tequila Dan’s.
“You sure this is the place?” Donley asked, considering the knotted-wood facade and bamboo-pole railings that made the restaurant look like a tropical shack dropped in the middle of the city.
“This used to be the Grub Steak,” Ross said. “Before that, it was a hamburger-and-fries joint. Believe it or not, it used to look like a cable car. I’ll bet you ten bucks you can’t get a hamburger or steak in here now.”
“No wonder I couldn’t find it,” Donley said.
Donley fed the parking meter and followed Ross up the wooden ramp.
Inside the restaurant, seashells and other beach finds filled a fishing net draped over the entrance. To Donley’s right, colorful fish swam in a large tropical fish tank. Reggae music and chirping birds played at a moderate level from speakers attached to beams made to look like beach logs and palm trees. Weathered tables and chairs sat beneath thatched roofs.
“Can’t believe what an active imagination and a good bank loan can do,” Ross said. They took stools at a horseshoe-shaped bar decorated to look like a Club Med bar at a resort in the Caribbean. A bartender in a flowered shirt and khaki shorts put paper coasters in front of them. Then he picked up a stack of playing cards, separating and burying the top card using just one hand, like a magician. They ordered coffee.
The bartender set down two mugs and filled them from a coffeepot. Ross stirred in three packets of sweetener. “Looking for a kid named Danny Simeon. Sometimes goes by the name Dingo.”
The bartender set the coffeepot back on a burner and returned to flipping the cards, showing them the ace of spades, burying it, and flipping it up again. “Who are you?” He asked the question without stopping the card trick. His thick mustache draped over his mouth, preventing them from seeing his lips move, like a ventriloquist act.
Ross and Donley had discussed the scenario in the car. If Simeon lived in back of the restaurant, he did so illegally. The owner and employees wouldn’t be eager to talk about it, but they might to someone perceived to be a friend of Father Martin.
Donley set a business card on the counter. “I represent Father Thomas Martin. Danny Simeon may be able to help.”
The bartender did not pick up the card or give any indication he read it from behind rose-tinted glasses, but the moment Donley mentioned Father Martin, the man stopped flipping the deck of cards.
“Thought you looked familiar. Saw you on the TV. How’s he doing?”
“Not too good.”
The bartender shook his head. “The whole thing is a tragedy.”
“Father Martin said Danny kept a room in the back. I think he could be in some danger. I’m trying to find him before there’s another tragedy.”
The bartender paused for a second, picked up Donley’s business card, twirled it between each of his fingers, and made it disappear. “Wait here.”
He came back a few minutes later. “It’s in the back off the bathroom.” They started from their stools. “I could get in trouble for letting someone live here; just trying to help him out.”
“You’ve got no problem with us.” Donley pushed a twenty-dollar bill across the counter.
The bartender pushed it back. “Give it to the shelter.”
They walked past two men studying a chessboard of odd-shaped tiki pieces. Ross stopped and studied the board, then reached down and moved a black piece. “Checkmate.”
The player returned the piece to its original position, looking irritated. “Nice try. That’s a rook.”
Ross shrugged at Donley. “Damn thing looked like a knight.”
They continued down a short hallway past a unisex bathroom to a room stocked with restaurant supplies. At the back of that room they encountered two doors. One led to an alley. On the other door someone had stenciled PRIVATE. Donley knocked once, turned the handle, and opened the door. He got one foot inside when he heard a sharp click.
A muscular young man sat on the edge of a bed holding a six-inch switchblade in his right hand.
Ross walked into the room without pausing. “Down, boy.”
Danny Simeon had a gray blanket wrapped around his shoulders. Pale and sweating profusely, he looked sick and spoke in a halting voice. “Which one of you represents Father Tom?”
“I do,” Donley said.
Simeon looked about to say something more; then his eyes rolled back in his head and he dropped the knife and slumped off the edge of the bed and onto the floor.
Ross and Donley paced Donley’s living room like two expectant fathers waiting for their spouses to give birth. When Kim walked in, they asked the same question. “How is he?”
“He’s better,” Kim said. “But he’s dehydrated and in a lot of pain. His body is fighting off the effects of the drugs they were giving him for the pain, and I doubt he’s eaten or drunk much. Mostly he’s weak and tired and needs to regain his strength.”
“Can he talk?” Donley asked.
“Not for a while. He crashed. From how you described it, when he sat up, the blood likely rushed from his head, and he passed out. I’ve given him some Tylenol with codeine for the pain, which should knock him out for a while. That will give me a chance to get an IV in his arm and pump him full of fluids. But I have to go to the hospital to get that. I’d say late this afternoon, maybe tonight.” She became quiet and gave Donley a look he recognized.
“What is it? What’s the matter?” Donley asked.
Her eyes shifted to Ross.
Quick to pick up on the signal, Ross excused himself. “I’ll wait in the car.”
After Ross had left, Kim said, “I’d feel more comfortable if he was in a hospital.”
“He’s not safe there, Kim, and I doubt he would go.”
“Is it safe having him here? I’m worried about Benny.”
At the moment, Benny was at day care.
Donley rubbed his forehead. He’d asked himself the same questions. “I didn’t know where else to take him. I knew I couldn’t take him to the hospital. I thought of you. I’m sorry. Listen, Father Martin says he’s a good kid. And nobody knows he’s here. But if it makes you feel better, why don’t you and Benny stay at your mother and father’s for a few days? At least until I figure out what’s going on.”
“I don’t want to split us up. I’m worried about you.”
“I’m fine. And I’ll feel better if I know you and Benny are safe.”
Frank Ross opened the front door and stuck his head in.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” he said. “We need to go.”
“What is it?” Donley asked.
“Someone who might be able to help.”
Back inside the Cadillac, Donley fastened his seat belt and looked back up at the front window of his house. Kim was not there. “Everything all right?” Ross asked.
“She’s worried about me.”
“My wife’s been worrying about me for twenty years. She worried every night I was on duty. Worrying is a part of loving.”
“Yeah, I guess. I’m worried about her and my son.”
“You got a boy?”
“Benny. He’s almost three.”
“How long have you been working for Lou Giantelli?” Ross asked.
�
��Little over three years; Lou’s my uncle.”
“Small world. He was my attorney.”
“Really,” Donley said, though he’d suspected it.
“There was a time when you couldn’t find anyone in law enforcement who didn’t know Lou Giantelli. He’s represented a lot of cops. Word of mouth spread quickly he was a good guy to know.”
“Does Lou representing you have to do with why you’re no longer a cop?”
“It has more to do with why I’m still alive.”
“I didn’t mean to pry.”
“No worries.”
After a beat, Donley changed subjects. “How old is your son?”
Ross didn’t answer.
“I saw a picture in your office.”
Ross adjusted in his seat. “He would have been nine last month.”
Donley felt his stomach drop. “Frank, I’m sorry.”
Ross nodded. “My son disappeared two years ago. He walked out the front door and never came home, disappeared without a trace.”
Donley sat stunned, uncertain what to say, a hollow pit in his stomach.
“We searched for a long time, and that kept me going, that hope that we would find him. But every day you lose a little more hope. I couldn’t sleep. When I did, the nightmares usually woke me. When I was awake, the nightmare was real.” He shook his head, fighting off his emotions. “I developed a little problem with the bottle.” He looked at Donley and smiled wanly. “My name is Frank, and I am an alcoholic. I have been sober seven months, twenty-two days.”
“Congratulations.”
Ross looked out the windshield. “Yeah. The end of the day used to hit me like a ton of bricks. That was when I was forced to spend time with my thoughts. When I didn’t feel like thinking, I climbed into a chair with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. It helped for a while, but you can do that only so long before your world crashes. One night I drank until two in the morning, passed out, woke up at five or six, and started in again. My wife had left me by then. She was grieving in her own way. There was no one to stop me. No one to tell me I was in no condition to drive. I ran a red light and hit a van with a mother and two kids on their way to school.”
“Were they hurt?” Donley asked.
“Not seriously, thank God. But that was right about the time California was coming down hard on drunk drivers. The family got a lawyer, and it got ugly. Your uncle handled it for me.”
As Ross told the story, something familiar about it caused a spark of recognition. “I remember that case. I think the last thing was the insurance company settling. I might have even written a coverage opinion.”
“Like I said,” Ross continued, “your uncle was a name around the station. He persuaded the insurance company to pick up my defense, so I could keep my home and what little savings I had. Then he got the department to put me on leave, so I wouldn’t lose my pension and keep open the chance that I might someday be reinstated—as remote a possibility as that is. He kept me out of jail by getting the court to agree to a diversionary program for alcoholics. Then he went and found my wife to go through it all with me. I’m most grateful for that. He didn’t have to do that.”
“That was you?” Donley asked.
“That was me,” Ross said.
Twenty minutes later, they were seated at a table in the back of a narrow and crowded Bon Appetit sandwich shop on Market Street. Donley seasoned a roast-beef sandwich with salt and pepper. Frank Ross lifted a spoon of clam chowder from a sourdough-bread bowl, blowing on it before tasting it.
“Nothing better on a cold day,” Ross said, shaking what seemed like an entire pepper shaker into the bowl.
“I thought you said we were going to meet a friend?” Donley asked.
“Are you complaining?”
“No. I’m actually starving.” Donley bit into his sandwich.
Ross nodded to the door while raising the spoon to his lips. “Here he comes.”
Donley looked back over his shoulder as a short, curly-haired man with large-framed glasses walked in the door and surveyed the tables. When he saw Ross, the man’s eyes widened, and his smile broadened. He walked toward them, leaning forward like a man traveling downhill, his feet trying to catch up to his body.
“Hello, hero.” He pushed the glasses onto the bridge of his nose and slid into a chair next to Donley.
“Sam Goldman, metro editor at the Chronicle,” Ross said to Donley. “Can I buy you lunch, Sam?”
Goldman adjusted the knot of his tie. “You know me. I never stop long enough to eat. It’s my own diet. I call it work.”
Ross turned to Donley. “Sam was my journalism instructor during a very brief career choice in college. He’s also the best journalist in the city.”
Goldman beamed. “Don’t you believe a word he says, friend. He’s buttering me up for something.”
Ross sipped chowder off his spoon. “Sam, this is Peter Donley.”
Goldman looked like he’d just walked in on his own surprise party. “You’re kidding.”
Donley smiled. “Guilty as charged.”
Goldman leaned across the table. “You? Or the priest?” He laughed and glanced at Ross. “So, this is why you called the other day with all the questions. You’re working for the priest?”
“Not all the questions.” Ross put down his spoon, ripped off a piece of bread, and dipped it into his bowl. “But yeah, I’m working for the priest.”
“Best detective I know,” Goldman said to Donley. “Frank Ross is like Allstate Insurance. You’re in good hands. Lou Giantelli taught you well.”
“Lou’s his uncle, Sam.”
Goldman redirected his attention to Donley. “You’re full of surprises, hero.” He seemed to be studying Donley’s face. “Do I know you from someplace else?”
Donley’s last bite of his sandwich lodged in his throat. He washed it down with a sip of Coke. “I don’t think so,” he said.
Goldman looked at him like he was trying to figure out a puzzle. “You sure? I’m good with faces and like Webster’s with names.”
“Donley’s pretty common,” he said. “And I’ve been in the news a bit lately.”
Goldman kept his eyes locked on Donley’s face. “It’ll come to me.” He smiled and broke eye contact.
“Sam has met just about every important person in the world who’s come through this city,” Ross said, “but he’s not easily impressed. He likes a good story better.”
“Those people put their pants on one leg at a time, just like you and me.” Goldman turned back to Ross. “Did I tell you I met the Pope last year? How do you like that? I had my photographer take a picture of the Jewish kid kissing the Pope’s ring. They blew it up and put a poster on the door to my office. We howled for weeks.” He turned to Donley. “So, what’s the story? Did the priest kill that kid?”
“Off the record?”
“Careful,” Ross said between another spoonful of clam chowder.
Goldman raised his hands as if surrendering. “OK, hero, off the record.”
Donley said, “We’re all going to find out.”
“So, what do you got for me, Sam?” Ross asked.
“Aside from never getting to see you anymore, I got some information for you on the victim. Seems he wasn’t exactly a choirboy.”
“I figured that.”
Goldman smiled like a kid with a secret. “It gets better, friend.” He opened a black satchel and pulled out sheets of paper. “The kid was a street prostitute, but according to my reporter who wrote that sidebar the other day, he was older, seventeen.”
Ross looked dismayed. “Seventeen is older? What am I, a dinosaur?”
“If you are, then I’m a fossil.” He turned to Donley. “She tells me they’re on the street at ten and eleven, sometimes younger. By the time most kids are learning how to drive and thinking about the junior prom, these kids have already passed middle age. It’s a tragedy.”
“Just go down Haight Street on a Friday night,” Ross said. “They�
�re still romanticizing the hippies and flower children. They end up hooked on heroin, one step from death’s door.”
Goldman nodded. “She’s trying to do a feature on the kid, but nobody down there is saying much, not even to her, and she looks like she could belong—purple hair and more body piercings than a bulletin board. She says they’re all scared. They say kids are dying.”
Ross gave Donley a look but didn’t say anything. “So, what do we know about the victim?” he asked Goldman.
“The kid landed in Hollywood by bus, going to be a star. After two years living on the streets of Santa Monica, Venice Beach, and West Hollywood, he ended up in the Gulch a junkie. He was also apparently a con man and petty thief. His juvenile records were sealed, but we got a copy of them after he died. He’s got a rap sheet as long as War and Peace. Possession. Intent to distribute. Breaking and entering. Car theft. But it’s the one not on there I think you might find most interesting.”
“Yeah?” Ross said. “What is it?”
“Extortion.”
Ross stopped the spoon halfway to his mouth and lowered it back to the bread bowl.
Goldman smiled. “I thought that might interest you.” He turned to Donley and pointed to his temple. “I still don’t use a computer. I type off a portable, and I store the information up here. When I went through the rap sheet, something clicked, and it all came back to me.”
“What was it?” Ross asked.
“A little story a while back about a kid blackmailing men, threatening to expose them for having sex with a minor. Most were scared enough to pay the money.”
Frank Ross nodded. “I remember that story. That was this kid?”
“That was this kid.”
“What happened?” Donley asked.
“The exact specifics might forever remain a mystery, hero. There was no court proceeding.”
“How did that happen?” Donley asked.
“Don’t know, but the kid got off easy. Not even a note on his record.”
“Who was he blackmailing?” Ross asked.
“A mover and shaker in the restaurant business who owned a trendy nightclub south of Market Street. Ring any bells?”
“Yeah, it does,” Ross said, looking like he actually heard bells ringing.
The 7th Canon Page 20
