Finnegan's week

by Joseph Wambaugh

  With a toss of his head toward the saloon, Jules said, “Is Lou okay alone or should I …”

  “Don’t worry about Lou,” the lawyer said. “She’ll be in the stateroom having her afternoon snooze any minute now. She can’t stay awake after her noon cocktails.”

  CHAPTER 17

  While Jules Temple cruised unhappily in the placid waters of San Diego Harbor, Fin Finnegan foundered in the turbulent waters of show biz.

  “I’m not surprised,” he said to his agent when he received Orson’s call at the police substation.

  “I’m shocked,” Orson said. “It wasn’t too much dialogue for you, was it?”

  “He’s toast,” Fin said.

  “What?”

  “That was the dialogue. He’s toast.”

  “That was it?”

  “I said it every way I could think of. I coulda done it in Uzbek, but it wouldn’t of mattered. Can you get me a second chance with somebody that has better karma?”

  “I don’t see how I can go around her.”

  “Orson, I’m not asking to play Macbeth at the Old Globe!”

  “I can try.”

  “In the length of time it took you to get me the last job, Russia turned democratic. Can you be a little more speedy?”

  After his agent hung up Fin was even too depressed to wallow, so he called Nell Salter.

  “Good day to you!” he said.

  “By that delighted exclamation, this can’t be Detective Fin-negan,” she said. “He’d be attending an A.A. meeting today.”

  “I’m sorry about last night,” he said. “I don’t usually …”

  “Yeah, you said. You don’t usually.”

  “By way of apology, let’s do lunch. Sorry, I was just talking to my agent. Let’s have lunch.”

  “Too much work to do.”

  He tried another tack: “I was thinking about driving over to that waste hauling company. You know, Green Earth?”

  “Why in the world would you do that?”

  “Well, the stolen-vehicle report was made here at Southern, wasn’t it? In my presence. So I’ve got a proprietary interest in this case. I think I oughtta talk to the truckers in more detail. There’re a lotta part-time truckers and full-time thieves hanging around Angel’s Cafe where the truck got ripped off. These Green Earth truckers might have a thought or two now that they’ve had time to remember. Like who they mighta seen there on the day in question.”

  “That’s remote,” she said.

  “Sure, but it’s worth doing because of the load they lost, isn’t it? I mean, if I can get a lead on the suspect, I might find the stuff. The truck thief died from it, so maybe I don’t want someone else to die. I thought you might feel the same way.”

  That neurotic little bastard was laying a guilt trip on her! And it worked! “Okay,” Nell said, sighing. “I’ll meet you at Green Earth in thirty minutes. But I can’t do lunch.”

  “See you there,” Fin said.

  When he hung up, he opened his desk drawer and gathered his electric razor, his shaving lotion, and his emergency toothbrush. He figured that after he did the cursory questioning of the two drivers, he’d be able to persuade her to have a burrito at his favorite Mexican joint on Palm Avenue where all the cops and Border Patrol did lunch.

  They were well inside the jetty, cruising past a buoy where, on this sunny afternoon, three adult sea lions shared their space with two young ones. Every animal was asleep and did not stir when the yacht motored past them.

  Jules and Willis Ross still sat quietly on the fly bridge, the lawyer looking up when they passed under the Coronado Bridge. It soared 246 feet above the water, and was dedicated in 1969 by then Governor Ronald Reagan. Since then, more than 150 pitiful wretches had leaped from it into the cold dark water.

  After they’d passed the bridge Willis Ross slowed to watch the Navy SEALs practicing helicopter drops and pickups in the south bay. Only when he tired of it did he finally turn to Jules and say, “Okay, tell me your troubles.”

  “Not my troubles,” Jules said. “Troubles belonging to the guy who’s buying my business. Troubles from his other waste hauling company.”

  “Then tell me why I should be giving free legal advice to some guy I don’t know.”

  “I’m asking you for myself,” Jules said quickly. “Because if he gets in trouble with the EPA or the D.A., he might not be able to close escrow. That’s why I’m so worried about what happens to him.”

  “Okay, as long as it’s for you, gimme the whole scenario.”

  “Apparently a couple of his waste haulers, truckers with brains like insect larvae, might’ve dumped a load of hazardous waste that they should’ve returned to his yard for proper transfer to a disposal site. And somebody might get very sick from the dumped material.”

  “I’d say the truckers’re in big trouble, but the owner of the company isn’t in trouble unless he knowingly committed an offense. Did he know they were gonna dump it?”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “Then I think he’s okay.”

  “But there’s a hitch. See, he’d improperly manifested that load of waste. He’d shown it to be one thing on the manifest when really it was much more dangerous than what he showed. And he was gonna haul it to an improper site and dispose of it in an improper manner. That improper site was also listed on the manifest.”

  “Improper? You mean, unlawful?”

  “Let’s say unlawful. But whatever happened, it occurred before he had a chance to transfer it to the unlawful site.”

  “Let me get this straight. The truckers just took it upon themselves to dump the stuff. Why?”

  “Who knows why? They’re scum of the earth, all of them. We’re not sure why they’d do such a thing.”

  “Well,” the lawyer said, “it’s gonna look pretty bad for the owner of the business. He did some tricky stuff on the manifest, you say? It could be alleged that by not alerting his employees to what dangerous material they had, he’d contributed to their later actions of dumping what they couldn’t have known was extremely dangerous.”

  “That seems very unfair to the owner.”

  “How sure are you that someone might get contaminated?”

  “Let’s say someone dies from it. Then what?”

  “I know this much: Intentional mishandling that results in an injury or death can result in prison time, and some fines that’d scare even Ross Perot. I think your friend should talk to a lawyer. You can refer him to me.”

  “I’ll do that,” Jules said, “but tell me this, Willis. What if it was dumped out of our court’s jurisdiction?”

  “Where?”

  “Say in Mexico. And let’s say it’s a Mexican citizen who gets hurt or dies. Does my guy still have to worry?”

  “This is getting wildly speculative.”

  “Well, there’s some evidence that his load could’ve gone to Mexico for illegal dumping.”

  “I’ll tell you this as a practical matter, Jules,” the lawyer said. “If the NAFTA agreement sails through the Congress of the United States under our sure-to-be-elected President Clinton and our green-as-grass environmentalist, Vice President Gore, I would not wanna be in your friend’s shoes. Not if a Mexican citizen is injured by our hazardous waste that’s been illegally dumped in their country.”

  “I see what you mean,” Jules said.

  The yacht had proceeded as far south as The Castle, a quixotic barge anchored in the shallows off Chula Vista. The barge had been constructed from surplus U.S. Navy landing crafts in the form of a floating castle with turrets at all four corners. The barge had served as a party-boat in good times and as a warehouse in bad times. Tied to one end of The Castle was a floating dinghy-dock littered with marine trash and guano, the gulls of San Diego Harbor being The Castle’s primary users.

  Jules looked at The Castle and felt a sudden chill. In its abandoned state it had taken on the look of a prison. Mini-Alcatraz!

  Willis turned the Peligrosa around and headed to
Glorietta Bay, throttling back, barely causing a ripple when he took the boat inside, passing the Naval Amphibious Base and pointing toward the Coronado Yacht Club.

  Beyond the little club was the Hotel del Coronado, the Victorian fantasy resort opened in 1888 on one of the loveliest white sand beaches in all of California. The hotel now stood like a proud but seedy old aristocrat surviving on money from package tours, but in bygone glory days a dozen U.S. presidents had stopped there. Legend had it that in 1920 the-man-who-would-be-king was mesmerized there by a naval officer’s wife whom he later courted and won, declaring to the world that he was renouncing the crown for the woman he loved. Perhaps the Del’s greatest glory in more recent years was that it represented the Palm Beach resort in the film Some Like It Hot.

  While gazing at the observation tower on the very top of the old hotel, Willis Ross said, “With all the hell being raised over not having adequate safeguards for us from their pollution, can you imagine the political outcry if it turned out that a Mexican citizen died because of the criminal acts of U.S. citizens? I think the D.A. or the U.S. attorney, or both, would file big-time charges against your friend.”

  “I see,” Jules said. “Well, this is all hypothetical. Nobody knows yet if an illegal dumping really occurred, or if anyone suffered as a result.”

  The lawyer, who was used to friends offering all sorts of “hypotheticals” about dilemmas that might occur, took a business card from his wallet and looked Jules squarely in the eye. “Give him my name and phone number,” Willis Ross said. “Your friend needs representation, my friend.”

  An accented female telephone voice said, “Mees Salter? Ees thees Mees Salter?”

  “Yes, this is Nell Salter.” Then the voice said something in Spanish and Nell heard a familiar male voice on the line.

  “This is Doctor Velásquez, Ms. Salter,” he said.

  “Yes, Doctor, do you have news for me?”

  “I have,” he said. “We are certain that our patients were exposed to something very much like Guthion. And we have been able to talk to the younger boy, Luis Zúniga, age nine years.”

  “Good!” Nell said. “Then you know how it happened?”

  “Yes, they found the drums on the ground behind a truck on a dirt road in Colonia Libertad. That is a very poor colonia by The Soccer Field.”

  “Yes?”

  “The boys accidentally overturned the drum when they were prying it open and they were both soaked with the liquid. The older boy, Jaime Cisneros, age ten, had a history of asthma, so the material had a devastating effect on him.”

  “Is he still in a coma?”

  “I am sorry to say that he died last evening just before midnight. He did not emerge from the coma.”

  “Oh, Christ!” Nell said.

  “We expect Luis Zúniga to recover. He is a strong little boy.”

  “Christ!”

  “Yes, I am afraid that too many of the children in the poor colonias do not survive to become adults.”

  “About the drums of hazardous waste, have you …”

  “The authorities were alerted, and I have personally been advised that the drums are no longer where the boys found them, although there is evidence of the spill.”

  “Can we assume that the empty drums’re being used by the local people?”

  “Of course,” Doctor Velásquez said. “Steel drums have many uses.”

  “Even drums with a skull and crossbones painted on the side?”

  “These people, Ms. Salter, face far greater dangers than that in their everyday lives. That is what they would say.”

  “I hope I can find out if anyone besides the dead truck thief had a hand in this,” Nell said.

  “I hope so,” he said. “Good luck.”

  “If I do I promise I’ll try to have him prosecuted for causing the death of that child.”

  The line was quiet for a moment, then Doctor Velásquez said, “I do not want to sound cynical, but down here we do not believe that the American courts would care that much about a dead child. A dead Mexican child.”

  “If someone else was involved I’ll get him into court. I swear.”

  “Yes, that is a good thought to keep,” said Doctor Velasquez.

  After hanging up the phone, Nell stared at her copy of the police report detailing the truck theft. Then she called Fin and told him that now she intended to take this investigation very seriously.

  That afternoon, while Jules Temple was on his booze cruise in San Diego Harbor, Abel Durazo was licking the ear of the pregnant secretary at Green Earth Hauling and Disposal.

  “Stop that!” she said, but didn’t pull away.

  “Okay, Mary,” Abel said. “Where else can I leeck?”

  “You little brat!” she said. “You’re terrible!”

  “We got time,” he said. “One more months, then no more to make love. But we okay for now.” He reached down and patted her belly.

  “You really are terrible.” She smiled when he nuzzled and kissed her neck.

  “I need to make call to T.J.,” he said. “Okay?”

  “You’re lucky Mister Temple doesn’t check the phone bills,” she said. “Or maybe I’m the lucky one. He’d fire me for all your toll calls.”

  “One more. Please?”

  Mary was a plain dumpling even before the pregnancy, and she’d never been able to resist this handsome young hauler who might well be the father of her baby, for all she knew.

  “Oh, all right,” she said, “but hurry up. Mister Temple might come back.”

  Mary resumed her bookkeeping, not able to understand a single word of the angry telephone conversation that Abel had in Spanish with an employee of Soltero. But when he hung up he was smiling.

  “I go to T.J. tomorrow,” he said. “Maybe breeng back some perfume.”

  He slipped his hand inside the neckline of her maternity smock but withdrew it when there was the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

  “Get outta here!” she said, and Abel scurried toward the back staircase. He turned in time to see a man and woman enter Mary’s office. The man looked familiar.

  “What’d you find out?” the ox wanted to know when Abel trotted across the yard with a lottery winner’s grin.

  “Soltero got money, Buey,” Abel said. “Tomorrow he pay.”

  “What time we gonna meet him?”

  “Like joo tell me, I say early. Hees man say we meet late. I say no, my compañero, he scared of the dark.”

  “You little dickhead!” Shelby took a playful swing at Abel, who ducked, and feinted with a left hook of his own.

  Then Abel said, “I say we go to hees house. Thees guy say no, we meet at Bongo Room, Avenida Revolution, fi’ thirty.”

  “Five-thirty? Yeah, that’s okay, I guess. In a bar, huh? That’s cool. We ain’t goin to no outta-the-way place. Not when we’re collectin six grand from a crook.”

  “After we get money, we go all over T.J.,” Abel said. “We get some tequila, some food.”

  “Some pussy?”

  “Okay, no problem.”

  Shelby was wondering if he should score some meth down there or should he bring his own, when Mary opened the window of her office and yelled, “Abel! You and Shelby come up here! There’s people here to talk to you!”

  Fin Finnegan and Nell Salter were waiting in the office when the truckers entered by way of the back stairway.

  Abel remembered where he’d seen the man as soon as the ox whispered, “The cop!”

  Shelby Pate felt his anxiety level rising. These were older cops, real cops, not some little navy cop with cute tits and freckles on her nose.

  “Can we use this office?” Nell asked the secretary.

  “That’s Mister Temple’s office,” she said, “but I guess it’s okay.”

  Fin held the door and closed it after all four of them were inside.

  Nell motioned them to the client chairs and she sat on the corner of the desk.

  Shelby Pate admired her long legs, and t
hought that the bent nose made her look sexy, like a biker momma.

  Abel wasn’t looking at her legs. He was plainly worried, when Fin said, “This is Investigator Salter from the D.A.’s Office. She’s helping me look into the truck theft. We were wondering, now that you’ve had time to think about it, could you tell us a little more about that afternoon at Angel’s?”

  “Like what?” Shelby asked.

  “We tol’ everytheeng,” Abel said.

  “Did you see anybody at Angel’s,” Nell asked, “anybody that you knew or had seen before? Maybe some out-of-work hauler? A lotta truckers hang around there.”

  Fin said, “Maybe you saw somebody there who mighta seen somebody else that was suspicious. Some trucker who’d already left by the time you’d finished your meal? Think about it.”

  Abel and Shelby each did an impression of honest truckers trying to think. Shelby actually started stroking his unshaven chin. His blue T-shirt was emblazoned in white with PUBLIC ENEMY.

  Finally the ox said, “Naw, I can’t think a nobody. How ’bout you, Flaco? Did you see somebody there that we knew?”

  “Nobody,” the Mexican said, shaking his head. “They all strangers that day.”

  “This is important,” Nell said. “This is about a lot more than the theft of the truck.”

  Shelby felt his adrenaline surge. The shoes! They’d talked to that little navy bitch about the shoes! “Whaddaya mean?” he asked.

  “We can say for sure now,” Fin informed them, “that the man driving your truck died as a result of being exposed to the Guthion from your load.”

  “The thief, he die?” Abel asked.

  “He may’ve been the truck thief,” Fin said. “All we know for sure is he was driving a load of pottery from T.J. to San Diego and it cost him his life.”

  Enormously relieved that they weren’t there to talk about shoes, Shelby bared his gap-tooth grin and said, “He kicked the pot instead a the bucket!”

  Everyone looked at him but nobody laughed.

  Well fuck them, he thought.