“Fucking amazing,” said Ralph, exaggeratedly bug-eyeing Tina’s body. “Bet you’ve been having a good time for yourself down here, eh, Smokey? I’d hate to have that body dusted for prints. Put you away for life.”
Smokey, a little man with the mouth of a deacon’s wife, gave him a shadow of a smile. “You through with her?” he asked.
“Not really,” said Lehman. “I was going to ask if I could take her home for the weekend. I promise to have her back first thing Monday morning.”
“Yeah,” I said, “put her away.” I’d seen enough. Tina hadn’t changed much below the neck, but above she was nearly unrecognizable. The mask of make-up and animation had been ripped away, leaving a face that was a little hard, a little dumb, a little vacant—nothing you’d pay two fifty a drink to see. They say some stiffs look like they’re sleeping. Tina’s face looked like she was waiting for a very late bus on a cold, wet night, and her feet hurt. They should have put her on the stage of The Jungle just like that. It would have set the topless go-go business back a century.
“Come on,” I told Lehman, “you can sneak back later after Smokey goes home. I suppose all the paperwork is upstairs?”
“Yeah,” said Lehman when we’d left Sefton and Tina behind and gotten into the thin, green-doored elevator that would take us to the top of the building—once again the discreet, back-door way. “Everything is in The Brother’s office. He wants to see you.”
“I can’t say the same. But what about Smokey? Isn’t he going to think it’s peculiar that I resigned yesterday and came down to cop a peek at Tina today?”
“Smokey can’t afford to think anything’s peculiar,” Ralph said. “He likes his job. Besides, he’s been down in the morgue so long I think he’s lost contact with reality.”
“Lucky him.”
The elevator banged to a stop, and we stepped out, across a wide hall and through a door marked “Bruno D. Kolchik, Deputy Chief.” His secretary, a skinny blonde with an I-dare-you-to-kiss-me mouth and dangling jade earrings, looked up from the novel she was reading.
“Oh, hello,” she said graciously, marking her place with a long finger. “The chief has been expecting you, but he’s out for a few moments. If you’ll take a seat…” She waved her free hand toward a pair of forbidding courtroom chairs against the wall.
Feeling nasty, I looked even more blank than usual. “The chief?” I said. “But we’re here to see Bruno Kolchik, formerly Sergeant Kolchik of the Parks Division—you know, a big, beefy guy with hairy red ears and a face like a broken knee. If we’ve come to the wrong office…”
“Shut up, Joe,” said Lehman.
She was working her mouth like a poisoned pike, but nothing was coming out. Just as she was about to start pinching herself to see if she was having a nightmare, her boss shouldered the door aside like a tent flap and nearly trampled us. Except that people the size of Ralph Lehman don’t get trampled. People my size do. The Brother didn’t look happy.
“I’ve been expecting you,” he said to Lehman. He didn’t even look at me, but charged through the space I’d been occupying and disappeared into his office. I assumed we were supposed to follow. Lehman did, but I lingered to have a word with the blonde.
“Remember,” I said, “snitchers never prosper. Besides, he might be a sergeant again someday.” But she’d forgotten I existed and was trying to find her place in her book.
“What the hell kept you?” Bruno yelled at me when I came through the door into his big office. He had a cut-glass decanter in one hand and a tall glassful of ice cubes in the other. Lehman had settled into the most comfortable chair in the room and was staring patiently out the vast windows.
“She wouldn’t let me go without a goodbye kiss,” I said. “You know how some broads are.”
He didn’t like that, and his ears deepened three shades of red. One thing about The Brother: he not only had the title of Deputy Chief, he thought he was Deputy Chief. Some guys who’d been a sergeant for fifteen years until their brother was elected mayor and then suddenly found themselves number two man of the whole force would be sheepish about it. Not Bruno. The way he acted, you’d think he’d passed a civil service test for the job. The trouble was that he’d have made a swell lost-property clerk, and that’s probably what he’d be if and when his brother wasn’t mayor anymore. So long to the three stars on the shoulder and the cut-glass decanter.
“Watch it, Goodey,” he said, pointing the decanter at me as if he wished it were a gun. He splashed a little Scotch on the Persian carpet. “I don’t like you, and you’re only out of the clink as long as you make yourself useful and watch your smart mouth.”
“I don’t like you, either,” I said, reaching out and taking the decanter. There was no glass at hand, so I took a polite swig from the decanter. “And you’re only in this office as long as your brother is mayor. That won’t be long if it gets out that he killed Tina D’Oro.” Even The Brother wasn’t too dense to realize that what I said was true. So, instead of exploding, he took a long, ice-cube-tinkling gulp of his drink and came out of the experience a much calmer man.
“But the mayor didn’t kill her,” he said. “We know that. Your job is to find out who did. And to do it fast. We’re sitting on a time bomb, and if it goes off before the killer is safely behind bars, we’re all going down with the ship.” His direct gaze took in Lehman as well as me. “And I mean all.”
“What I want to know,” I said, “is why you think you need me. You’ve got a fistful of aces here. Why the hell do you want a busted detective cluttering things up? Let homicide earn its money.”
“Don’t think they won’t,” he said. “Maher is handling that end of the operation. And he’s got the word that he can go down as fast as he came up. He’ll be doing his best. But the mayor thought it might be useful to have someone else on the job. Someone with maybe more flexibility than the homicide crew and a personal interest in finding the killer.”
“Like his own survival?” I asked.
His eyes nodded, if eyes can do that sort of thing.
“And maybe somebody who’d be tempted to bend the law just a little bit in the interest of the same. Somebody ripe for a fall if things get too sticky,” I added.
This time his eyes shrugged. “You do anything illegal,” he said, “you do it on your own hook. As far as the world knows, you’re just an ex-copper out to make a living behind a private buzzer. If you want to look into who spiked Tina D’Oro, nobody can tell you no.”
“Speaking of that buzzer,” I said, “I assume you’ve got it for me.”
Bruno walked over behind his big desk and picked up a thin file folder. “It’s in here,” he said, holding the folder out toward me, “along with the coroner’s report on Tina and a copy of Maher’s report from the scene of the crime. Take it.”
I let him hold it for a while. He had strong arms.
“And Tina’s diary?” I asked.
“The diary has been destroyed,” he said too quickly. “It doesn’t exist anymore.”
“That’s too bad,” I said, still not taking the folder, “because if that diary doesn’t exist, neither do I.” I stuck out both wrists. “Put the cuffs on me, Ralph. I’m ready to stand the rap for Cousin Stanislaus. I’d rather do that than go after Tina’s killer blindfolded with both hands tied behind my back. Besides, maybe I’ll cop a self-defense plea.”
The Brother looked disgustedly at me, then at Lehman. He threw the folder down on his desk and whirled to look out the window at traffic on the Oakland Bay Bridge.
“Joe,” said Ralph, “be reasonable. You’re talking about a document which, if it still exists, is deeply embarrassing to the mayor and his family. You can’t expect—”
“I do expect, Ralph,” I said. “And I’m doing nothing without a look at that diary. I don’t expect you to give it to me to take home, but I’ve got to have a good, hard look at it, or I don’t budge. Either give me the diary or take me down to the cells.”
Lehman di
dn’t say anything, but The Brother turned around and without looking at me walked over to a big Red Period Picasso print and lifted it down from the wall. He twiddled around with a combination knob and opened a round metal door. Fishing out a small book with a red plastic cover, he threw it down on his desk with a loud slap.
“All right,” he said to Lehman, “let him look at it. Here. He can take notes, but the diary doesn’t leave this office. You understand?” He tried to drill holes in Lehman with his eyes. That’s been tried before, and Ralph silently returned the favor. The Brother wheeled and headed for the door.
“Thanks, Bro,” I said to his disappearing back.
I picked up the thin diary, sat down in Bruno’s big leather chair and put my feet on his desk blotter. Ralph wearily went back to memorizing the area south of Market Street.
Tina D’Oro was no Samuel Pepys. You could pick up more gossip on a bus ticket. If you went by her diary, life as a topless go-go dancer was about as exciting as learning to spotweld. And she didn’t even keep it every day. January 1 started out with one big resolution: “I will learn ten new words every week.” Nothing more lofty or aspiring than that. The handwriting was junior high school gothic with the cute touch of making the dots over the i’s into circles.
Tina tended to keep her diary mostly as a reminder of appointments rather than as a repository of deep, dark secrets. The name that appeared most often was someone called Irma. “Lunch with Irma.” “Irma’s for a hairdo.” “Meet Irma at four.” I’d have to meet this Irma. But the most intriguing thing was a series of initials: O.G., F.I. (“Check up with F.I.,” the diary said), H.C., J.M.
But then, on March 5, Tina began to throw discretion out the window. “Dinner with the mayor,” the diary said. That old dog. Thereafter a certain Mr. Kolchik began to get a lot of space. She spelled his name three different ways, but the inference was clear. Mr. K. was riding high, if that’s not too bald for you. Then it became Sandy…Sandy this and Sandy that. Poor Kolchik. If he’d been less important, he’d have been a mere S.K., and the diary could have been found—for the record. The last entry was ten days before: “Movie with Irma.”
I took a few notes, but, to tell the truth, Tina’s diary wasn’t a gold mine for clues. I mean, I had no immediate need for an arrest warrant. Maybe if I’d studied the diary for twenty years I’d have discovered that Tina was really a Russian spy using an elaborate code.
I didn’t have twenty years. I flipped through the diary one last time and threw it over to Ralph Lehman.
“There you are, Ralph,” I said. “Stick it back in The Brother’s safe or eat it, for all I care. I’ll have the villain in the pokey by a week Tuesday, or my name’s not Sherlock Holmes.”
“Your name’s not Sherlock Holmes,” said Ralph, looking depressed. “You’re not even a very good detective.”
“Thanks, old truthteller,” I said. “I’ll see you around.” I slouched toward the door, pretending that I was a man who had someplace to go.
“Tell me something, Joe,” said Lehman as I put my hand on the doorknob. I looked around at him. “Do you think I’m a terrible shit for going along with the brothers K. this way?” He looked as if he really wanted to know.
So I told him. “Yeah, Ralph, I think you’re a terrible shit. But don’t look hurt. We’re all terrible shits in this business, and you ought to be happy that next year you won’t have to be one anymore.”
“Thanks,” he said, pushing the word out as if it were a two-ton boulder on his chest.
“I suppose you’re my contact,” I said, “and you’ll be hearing from me. But now you tell me something, Ralph. Do you think I’m going to find out who killed Tina?”
He shook his big head. “Not a chance, Joe,” he said. “Not a chance in the world.”
“I’ll try to live up to your faith in me,” I said and walked out through Bruno’s door. The skinny blonde wasn’t there; neither was The Brother. They must have been off someplace holding each other’s hands and worrying about the fact that sergeants don’t have secretaries. Neither do convicts.
I went out of the police building as I’d come in—the back way. I never liked back doors. They rob you of that comfortable feeling of belonging. Now that feeling was long gone, and with only a thin folder of papers under my arm I felt naked and alone. I’d even have been glad to see Chub just then, but God knows where he was.
The young cop had left my car in the parking lot, but I cut through a tall, thin alley toward Sam’s Cafe. Then I remembered that Sam’s was a cop hangout, and I was no longer a cop. I took a random right and after about a block was in front of something called Ricardo’s Place. The windows looked as if they’d been used for the bottom of a racing pigeon cage.
There was nobody behind the bar. That didn’t bother me, and I slipped into a booth in front of the least-dirty window and slid the contents of the file folder out on the slightly sticky table. I was admiring the private operative’s license when a voice came out over the bar like a rusty laser beam. “The public library is three blocks over, mate.”
“Thanks,” I said, looking up at a knobbly, bald Scandinavian head stuck to a long, thin body in a worn-out T-shirt. Tattoos which were vivid on the arms blurred as they disappeared into the T-shirt “If you’re Ricardo, you can bring me a double Margarita, easy on the salt.”
“We’ve got only three drinks in this joint,” the man said. “Whiskey, whiskey, and beer. In that order.”
“That suits me,” I said. “In that order. Do you have table service, or is the waitress on strike?”
He brought me a double whiskey and a beer chaser. I paid him, and he did a disappearing trick into the shadows near the bar.
Tucking away my ticket to romance, adventure and poverty, I turned to two of the last documents which would concern themselves with Tina D’Oro. The autopsy report was straightforward in the extreme. The subject had expired due to an excessive loss of blood, which in turn was caused by an undisclosed pointed but not-very-sharp instrument. She’d been dead about twenty-four hours when she was found. She was likely to be dead for a long time. The autopsy report didn’t actually say that, but I like to interpret whenever I can.
Johnny Maher’s report was a little more convoluted. Leaving out the professional jargon that passes for erudition in the police force, Maher’s version was that Tina hadn’t turned up for her gig on Thursday night. This was greeted with a certain amount of dismay, the culture lovers being lined up three deep in front of the bar. Somehow a substitute was found to take Tina’s place in the show if not in the hearts of the suckers.
Meanwhile, somebody went upstairs and did the doorknob-shaking routine at Tina’s apartment. But no answer. The matter was dropped until after the last tourist had been pried from the bar, and The Jungle slammed its doors. Then somebody named Miss Irma Springler—that must be my Irma, I thought—came in looking for Tina. Seems they had a date of some kind. The club manager, Mr. Sherman Bums, told her that Tina hadn’t come in for work that evening. Hadn’t been seen at all that day, in fact.
Miss Springler got a bit upset. So much so that she went upstairs and started belting Tina’s door. Still no answer. Then Miss Springler insisted that somebody find a key for Tina’s door and open it. She had a premonition, she said, that something terrible had happened to Tina. A key was found, the door was opened, and there was Tina, still in what was supposed to be a costume, lying in the middle of her living room on an expensive orange rug which had soaked up a whole lot of blood.
The coppers were called, who tugged on Johnny Maher’s chain. In his professional opinion there’d been little struggle. Whoever had done it had been known to the victim and hadn’t been in her apartment long. Clues to date: none.
This was not exactly the kind of detection likely to get a man promoted, but then Johnny didn’t mention the little red diary he’d found, flicked through, and pocketed. Johnny may not have been the best detective in the world, but he had an eye for the main chance. And he’d be g
oing all out to make sure he wound this one up the right way. With His Honor nowhere in sight. There were higher rungs on Maher’s ladder than sergeant.
I closed the file, tipped back the rest of the whiskey, and washed it down with the beer. When I left, Ricardo didn’t come out to say goodbye, but that was okay by me. I can’t take sentimental scenes, and my suit couldn’t stand any tear stains. We both knew what we meant to each other.
Walking back to the police parking lot, I decided to go home. Then I remembered that I didn’t have a home. I decided to go there anyway. Pulling my car out of the lot, I headed for North Beach.
7
Retrieving the extra key from a crack under a ledge on the front porch, I climbed the stairs to my front door and opened it. Somehow it never occurred to me to knock. The living room was empty. I figured that the Bible banger was out saving souls, and I was heading for the bathroom when something in the bedroom caught my eye. Not to sound too much like one of the three bears, but someone was sleeping in my bed. And it wasn’t Goldilocks.
But it was a girl. Automatically tiptoeing, I moved through the bedroom doorway and stood looking down at the sleeper. She was Chinese, with skin like polished silk. A shiny black rope of hair lay coiled over her left shoulder. In my big bed she looked about nine years old, but her face was infinitely older and worn. She had black pouches like bruises under her eyes, and the skin over the minuscule bridge of her turtle nose was drawn so tight it was the non-color of old ivory. One arm like a not particularly sturdy stick of rigatoni lay palm up on top of the covers. An ugly blue-black swollen vein in the crook of her arm told me something about the way she got her kicks. It was like seeing a two-year-old kid with a fifth of gin.
Just as I was waxing moralistic and wondering what the hell my subtenant was up to, something small but compact attached itself to my back, and a pair of hard little hands began trying to put a crimp in my windpipe. I’m easygoing and slow to anger, but this was getting annoying. So I put an elbow where it would do the most good and heard a rewarding “oomph” from the jockey on my back. The hands let loose, and my friend hit the floor behind me with a crash. I turned around and was about to step on the face of a midget in a flashy silk jacket when Gabriel Fong came through the door with both arms full of groceries and an alarmed expression on his face.
The Triple Shot Box (Goodey's Last Stand, Not Sleeping Just Dead & Fighting Back): Three Gritty Crime Novels Page 4
