Finnegan's week

by Joseph Wambaugh

  All she did was shriek at him. His ears were full of the dry dust of Mexico, and she shrieked inside his skull. The unearthly shrieking!

  Gulls shrieked and screamed and wheeled above him. He opened his eyes and stared at a sky inflamed, at a dawn red as blood. The sound of surf thundered in his ears and he gagged on the sand in his throat. He whimpered and sniffled, and clawed his way out of a dune of drifting sand.

  When he sat up his hair and face were white with sand. He didn’t know where he was. A gull hovered in the sky above him, like the Holy Ghost. Shelby covered his eyes and sobbed, swallowing back his terror. It wasn’t until he spotted the remains of his bag of meth lying beside him that the phantasmagoria retreated and he knew he was still alive.

  By the time Shelby Pate had snorted enough cringe to get control, and by the time he’d located his bike parked in a vacant lot close to a coffee shop, it was nine o’clock Sunday morning.

  He was a fearful sight, with his loose stringy hair full of sand, with dried blood on his hands and on his face, from thrashing through the fence at the international border. He shuffled toward the coffee shop, and a street person loitering outside took one look at him and went scuttling away. After three cups of coffee, Shelby thought he was ready to go home.

  Bobbie went for a jog along Coronado Beach in her shorts and T-shirt on Sunday morning. There were lots of hardbodies out, both male and female. It was a dry morning in that a Santa Ana was blowing in from the desert.

  Coronado was Bobbie’s favorite beach. She started her run along the sand beside the Coronado Shores high-rise condominiums, a.k.a. Taco Towers because so many wealthy Mexicans from Tijuana owned condos there. She ran north past the Hotel del Coronado, zigzagging through sand dunes tufted with ice plant. She ran north all the way to the Naval Air Station golf course, beside which dogs were permitted to run free on the beach and play in the surf with their owners.

  She stopped to watch a dog catching a Frisbee, then paused again at the golf course. Although there were lots of navy personnel on the links that day, she didn’t spot anyone she knew. Then she stopped to say hello to the lone sentry on the beach, where public access was divided from the navy land. After that she turned and ran as hard as she could all the way back to the Towers.

  It was a strenuous workout. She arrived home, showered, ate a bowl of cereal, and read the paper. It was very hard to concentrate on the boring election coverage. She went to her file folder and removed the copy of the San Diego police report she’d been given by Fin. Bobbie got out her county map book and pinpointed the addresses of Abel Durazo and Shelby Pate. She was dying to know if they’d come home after having driven off with the Mexican who no doubt was the fence for stolen goods.

  Bobbie did not dare admit to Fin or to Nell what she still believed in her heart: that Jules Temple was involved. They’d just scoff, and keep repeating that a guy like Jules Temple would not be stealing navy shoes. Still, there was something about him that made her know he had something to hide.

  Impulsively, she picked up the phone. If Abel Durazo answered she’d hang up. If anyone else answered, she’d wing it.

  A child said, “Bueno?”

  “Do you speak English?” Bobbie asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Is Abel Durazo there?”

  “He’s not home.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “This is … somebody from his job. I need to talk to him. Did he come home last night?”

  The child yelled something in Spanish, then came back and said, “My mother says no, he didn’t come home last night.”

  “Thank you,” Bobbie said.

  After she hung up, she thought about calling Fin, but of course he’d tell her to cool it till Monday. He’d make her feel like a rookie cop. Like a kid.

  She picked up the phone and called Shelby Pate’s number. A woman answered.

  “Excuse me,” Bobbie said. “Is this Shelby Pate’s residence?”

  “No, this is my residence. Who’s this?”

  “I have to speak to him. Is he home?”

  “No!” the woman said. “He ain’t home! So he’s out fucking around on you too, huh? Are you one a the speed freaks from Hogs Wild?”

  “Sorry,” Bobbie said, getting ready to hang up.

  “If you see that scum sucker, tell him for me he’s outta here! Tell him I threw his fucking clothes out in the street at eight o’clock this morning!”

  After the line went dead, Bobbie immediately called the Tijuana Police and talked to four different people to whom she gave the names of Abel Durazo and Shelby Pate. She got an English-speaking woman on the line, who said, “Who are you inquiring about?”

  “Shelby Pate,” Bobbie said. “I’m a detective with the U.S. Navy. I’m just trying to find out if he’s in jail, or in the hospital or something.”

  The woman said, “You gave another name. What was that name?”

  “Durazo,” Bobbie said. “Abel Durazo.”

  “One moment please,” the woman said.

  When she came back on the line she said, “Do you have a pencil? I have another number for you to call.”

  Bobbie was excited. Maybe they were in jail, and maybe it had to do with being caught selling two thousand pairs of shoes! When she rang the other number she was given over to a man who spoke nearly unaccented English. “This is Rojas,” he said. “Who do you wish to learn about?”

  “Shelby Pate,” Bobbie said. “I’m a detective with the U.S. Navy at North Island. And also I wanna know about Abel Durazo. Are they in jail, or what?”

  Rojas said, “I am with the state judicial police. Do you know Mister Durazo very well?”

  “No,” Bobbie said. “I’m investigating his possible involvement in a large theft of navy shoes.”

  The Mexican cop said, “We have a murder victim in our morgue with the name of Abel Durazo on his California driver’s license and on his pasaporte.”

  “Good god!” Bobbie said. “How about Shelby Pate?”

  “No, but another man was murdered. A man named Porfirio Velásquez Saavedra, better known to us as Juan Soltero.”

  “Is he a receiver of stolen property, by any chance?”

  “Yes, and other things. It appears that they killed each other. Durazo was stabbed, and then must have got off one shot before he died. A derringer pistol was found beside him.”

  “Could you go to the home of the dead man and search for two thousand pairs of U.S. Navy shoes?” Bobbie asked, and then she had a long conversation with Rojas concerning her investigation.

  After she hung up she dialed Fin’s number, but got his answering machine. She dialed Nell’s number and got another machine. She hung up and experienced the longest afternoon of her life. She called Fin and Nell no less than fifteen times, leaving several messages for each of them. The messages sounded progressively more impatient and more excited.

  After spending three hours on Mission Beach, most of it under a beach umbrella, Fin and Nell decided to go to his apartment to shower and change for dinner.

  “And to do what?” Nell asked, after he made the suggestion.

  “Ride the roller coaster,” Fin said.

  “I haven’t ridden a roller coaster in twenty years,” she said.

  “I ride it every once in awhile. It’s very nostalgic for me. When I was a kid my sisters used to take me for rides with their boyfriends. I sat between them usually. The boyfriends hated my guts.”

  They were lying under the umbrella when he’d asked her. He thought she had a terrific body, for a woman of a certain age. She thought he had pretty good buns, but ought to work on his tummy.

  Late that afternoon, after eating a hot dog and a hamburger, Fin Finnegan and Nell Salter rode the Mission Beach vintage roller coaster, raising their hands in the air and screaming as they sped down the dips, losing themselves for a while in lovely memories of their lost youth.

  When Shelby arrived home he found some of his clothes
in the driveway. Some were in the street and some were on the little patch of grass in front of the house. He parked the Harley, jumped off and ran to the front door, discovering that his key no longer fit the lock.

  He started banging on the door, yelling, “Bitch! You better open this fucker or it’s goin down!”

  His next-door neighbor, the tweaker who’d interrupted him when he’d been trying to landscape the neighborhood, opened his window and yelled, “Hey, dude! Your old lady said to tell you she went home to her momma!”

  “She changed the fuckin lock!” Shelby hollered.

  The tweaker said, “She told me you ain’t got nothin in the house no more. She threw everything out. By the time she told me, there was people from down the street stealin everything. I got some a your stuff in my garage. You kin come get it.”

  Shelby ran to the tweaker’s garage and jerked it open. His camouflage jacket was there, and his extra helmet. He ran inside his own garage and pulled things down from the shelf: every box, every tool, every auto part. The boots were gone!

  He ran back outside and said to the neighbor, “My boots! I had some boots in the garage!”

  “Didn’t see no boots,” the tweaker said. “I saved your shirts and some jeans and I got a bag full a your sox. Them greasers from down the block, they got your boots, I guess.”

  The ox just gaped. Finally he said, “You shouldn’t never steal somebody’s shoes.”

  “That’s cold, dude,” the tweaker agreed.

  Shelby said, “Some Mexicans got the firin squad for takin a man’s shoes.”

  “What firin squad?”

  “They got shot.”

  The tweaker said, “Dude, you shouldn’t be doin that crystal so early in the morning. You ain’t talkin sense.”

  “You shouldn’t never steal somebody’s shoes,” Shelby Pate informed his neighbor. “It’s the worst mistake you can ever make.”

  Bobbie Ann Doggett was beside herself with excitement. She thought about calling up the assistant director of security at North Island, but she knew he’d say what Fin would say: “It’ll all keep till tomorrow. Till you’re on duty and can work in a proper investigative environment.”

  What could she do now anyway? Nobody was going anywhere. Abel Durazo was on ice, and so was his Tijuana contact, Soltero. Shelby Pate might also be lying in a Tijuana alley with a knife in his ample gut.

  Jules Temple would be coming to his place of business tomorrow as usual, none the wiser as far as his employees’ fate was concerned. And how was she going to tie Jules Temple into all this? She wasn’t. Not unless Pate was still alive and willing to talk about it.

  So far, everyone who’d come in contact with those navy shoes had ended up dead. Her boss would probably tell her that if she recovered the shoes, the navy ought to send them immediately to Saddam Hussein.

  Bobbie sat and tried to read a magazine, cooling her heels until three o’clock. Then she rang up Fin and Nell once again. Bobbie was going bughouse.

  After she hung up, she got dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and strapped on her shoulder holster, concealing it under her most comfortable cardigan. Then she grabbed her purse and map book and headed for the house of Shelby Pate in National City.

  She drove her Hyundai slowly through the ethnically mixed, working-class residential neighborhood, a district with lots of homeboy spider-script sprayed on all the walls. His house was easy to spot. It was the only one with the front door kicked off the hinges. The small yard was littered with articles of clothing, and a Harley hog sat menacingly in the driveway, aimed at the street.

  A fleeting memory occurred to Bobbie. The director of security had once warned her that women in police work frequently take great risks because they don’t want to call for backup from the men until they’re sure they need it. But by then, it’s often too late. He’d warned that many female cops had been needlessly injured and even killed, for fear of seeming to be the damsel in distress.

  He’d finished reading the paper, but found that he couldn’t concentrate on the Sunday talking-head shows blathering about Tuesday’s election as though everyone wasn’t already certain that George Bush was history. Jules had never cared anything about politics. He sat, channel grazing, when the phone rang.

  “Hello,” he said, thinking it might be Lou Ross with details about the New York trip.

  “It’s Shelby Pate, Mister Temple,” the voice said.

  Jules was astonished. He caught his breath and said, “Yes?”

  “I gotta talk to you today.”

  “How’d you get my number?”

  “Abel got it for me,” Shelby said, “a few days ago.”

  “How’d he get it?”

  “From Mary,” Shelby said. “He was fuckin her.”

  “I see,” Jules said. “What do you wanna talk about?”

  “Money,” Shelby said.

  “I see,” Jules said.

  “Want me to explain?”

  “I don’t want you to explain on the telephone,” Jules said. “I’ll meet you somewhere.”

  “Where?”

  “At my office.”

  “Be there at one,” Shelby said.

  “I simply can’t,” Jules said. “I can be there by five-thirty. That’s the best I can do.”

  “Okay,” Shelby said. “Five-thirty.”

  “Will Durazo be with you?” Jules asked.

  “He had an accident in T.J.,” Shelby said. “He ain’t never gonna be with me again.”

  When Jules hung up, he was paralyzed with rage. His heart was pounding. His mouth was very dry but at least his hands didn’t shake. He was pleased that his hands didn’t shake. He’d always been able to control stress to a remarkable degree, hadn’t he? He was pleased that his mind had worked so quickly under fire. He’d told that pig to meet him at five-thirty because he knew instinctively that he’d be better off after dark. Whatever happened, it should happen after dark.

  Jules hadn’t clearly formulated a plan yet, but Shelby Pate was forcing him. He wasn’t exactly making it up as he went along. He already had ideas, but they weren’t crystallized. Abel Durazo wasn’t coming back? That was great news. There was only Pate.

  Jules looked at his watch. There was plenty of time to go to Green Earth and make preparations. Hazardous waste could be stored for a long time if he did it properly, and he certainly knew how to do that in order to sidestep government regulations. There was a stack of drums containing diesel fuel, and some containing etching acid that he’d been holding until he had a sufficient load. He’d put Shelby Pate into one of those drums.

  Then it would be a matter of borrowing a boat from someone at the club. Maybe a runabout on a trailer. He could haul it to the yard and dolly the drum onto the boat; then he could launch the boat and dump the drum a mile offshore. He could do it as soon as Monday, or wait till the weekend. That might be best, doing it on the weekend. Then he could stay out and do some fishing just to prove something to himself: that Jules Temple did not panic. That Jules Temple was once again in control of his own destiny.

  But he quickly dismissed that plan. The more mundane but less dangerous way would be to dump Pate’s body in the vicinity of a bikers’ bar like Hogs Wild, and let it be found. Let the police think he’d died as he’d lived, at the hands of some other lowlife scum.

  CHAPTER 26

  “It’s possible that I’ve been running away from my three sisters all my life,” Fin said to her.

  He was sitting on the sofa eating his second bowl of butter brickle ice cream. His bachelor apartment, a block from the sand in south Mission Beach, had been thoroughly cleaned and tidied up by Fin on the chance that he’d be successful in persuading Nell to come home.

  She was seated at the kitchen table finishing her second bowl.

  “Why would you spend your life running away? Are they so awful?”

  “Actually, all three’re smarter than me. And each managed to have a happy marriage to guys that weren’t millionaires or senile or
comatose. The youngest one’s recently widowed and she got herself a good job, recession and all. They have nice kids and they’re successful in life. Me, I’m a failed actor, a failed cop, and the world’s worst marriage prospect.”

  “So’re you saying you always marry women who aren’t like your sisters?”

  “Actually, I came to that conclusion just after I met you.”

  “Whaddaya mean by that?”

  “You remind me of my sisters.”

  “I thought they kicked ass and took names.”

  “They did. It didn’t work, but they kept trying.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that you waste a lotta time on self-pity?”

  “That’s exactly what my sister says.”

  “Which one?”

  “All three.”

  “Are you a junkie that can’t stop?”

  “Probably,” he said, “unless I finally get involved with somebody who’s like my sisters.”

  “I thought your first wife, the good sergeant, kicked your butt from time to time.”

  “Yeah, but she did it for her own amusement. My sisters did it to make me a better person.”

  Nell got up and went to the refrigerator for more ice cream. “The hell with calories,” she said.

  “With that bod, you can afford a few calories.”

  “Looks like I’m doing it again,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Getting involved with a Peter Pan policeman. Your favorite song is ‘Someone to Watch Over Me,’ right?”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “A woman my age would kinda like it the other way around, even in these modern times.”

  “Hillary Clinton wouldn’t think so. Who’re you voting for on Tuesday?”

  “Since you got me all mixed up I’ll probably vote for Perot.”

  “I’d rather not talk politics.”

  Nell sat down next to him on the sofa, and said, “I’ll bet your sisters spoil you rotten. Want some of my ice cream?”

  “Does this mean we’re … involved?”

  She didn’t answer, but she put down the bowl and scooted closer.