by Joe Gores
She sat down across from him. “Nothing like that, Dan. He just keeps calling for reports so he’ll know when to set up the auction of the classic cars. He wants to move them all at once. Last night Bart got the Ferrari convertible down in Woodside. They took a shot at him, but didn’t hit the car.” She told him of Bart’s adventures, ending with, “Anyway, he and Larry had to call a tow truck—”
“If he thinks he’s going to stick the tires on his expense account, after pulling a stupid stunt like that . . .” His private line rang. He snatched it up, said, “Yeah?” into it.
“They sugared the gas tank, too,” said Heslip’s voice.
After a strangled pause, Kearny said with disgust, “Maybe you can raise one of the other field men and bum a ride in.” He threw the receiver in the direction of the phone. As Giselle was replacing it correctly, he said, “How are we doing otherwise?”
The young, taffy-haired woman in the old-fashioned pinch-waist yellow and brown plaid suit and run-over black pumps paused on the sidewalk in front of Brittingham Funeral Directors. Tugging at her mid-calf skirt, she stared up at the impressive inset portico flanked by four double sets of Ionian Greek pillars. Brittingham’s had been serving San Francisco from the same location on Sutter Street between Larkin and Polk since 1850, and to date, not one of their clients had ever come back to complain about their work.
Carter Brittingham IV, great-great-grandson of the founding Brittingham, was standing in the hallway outside the crowded Evergreen Room waiting for the Reverend Dickson, who was, of course, pro forma late. Dickson was a difficult man of God— indeed, in his darkest, most secret moments, Brittingham thought of him as the Reverend Dickhead.
Seeing an Arkie-looking woman enter, Brittingham glided toward her, speaking in a deep, soft, almost sepulchral voice.
“If you could tell me your Loved One’s name, madam—”
“Loved One?”
Her voice had some sort of regional twang; apart from lips smeared a garish red, that small oval face should have had a dusting of freckles across the bridge of the nose but didn’t quite. Slanty eyeglasses that had gone out in the 1970s gave her the slightly goofy, off-kilter look of a tipsy church organist.
“The, ah, Departed whom you wished to—”“Oh, no, I’m looking for Mr. . . .” Her voice had an upward inflection that made it a question. “Brittingham?”
“I am he,” said Brittingham with admirable brevity.
He was a slightly soft, fulsome man over six feet tall, impressive in striped pants and cutaway dark coat, gleaming plain-tip black Oxfords, and black silk tie knotted in a full Windsor.
She stuck out a firm hand which he found himself taking.
“Becky Thatcher,” she said. “From a little bitty town in the Ouachitas Mountains of Arkansas. I’m looking for a job.”
Brittingham shuddered inwardly. “I’m very sorry, Ms. Thatcher, but we have no openings of any—”
“Isn’t anybody better’n me on hair and makeup for corpses.”
This stopped Brittingham cold. It was very difficult to find cosmeticians who could—or would—adequately wash and set the hair of the Departeds, let alone make up their poor, cold, dead faces. And the girl he’d had for almost a year had, the day before, suddenly quit.
He considered Becky Thatcher’s taffy hair piled in curls on top of her head, the pigeon-toed stance in the scuffed shoes, the garish lipstick, the jangly costume jewelry. Any corpse this little hillbilly sent up to him might well come out looking either like a strumpet or a gigolo. But he needed someone now.
“So, um, what . . . er . . . qualifications?”
“I’ve been to beauty school—didn’t graduate, Mama took sick and we needed the money so I went to work for the local undertaker. Mr. Toombs. He taught me to make up corpses real pretty for God. Toombs, isn’t that just the name for a man who buries people, though? Anyway, he was the coroner, too, so I’ve worked on every sort of people—fell off of a silo, mashed flat by a semi, gut-shot by someone thought they was a deer—”
“Oh my,” he said, “we don’t get many Departeds like that at Brittingham’s.” He paused. “Well, I don’t suppose it would do any harm for you to fill out an employment application . . .”
The Reverend Dickhead chose that moment to come in from the street bearing several layers of unction.
“Carter, Carter, my dear man, may God bless, sorry I was detained, but a man of God is at the mercy of . . .” His eyes focused on Becky Thatcher, surreptitiously caressed the body accented by the pinch-waist suit. “Ummm, whom have we here?”
Becky dropped him the hint of a curtsy.
“Reverend, I know you and Mr. Brittingham are gonna be real busy, so if you could spare him for just one teensy second . . .”
With one small hand she drew Brittingham a few feet down the hall, out of the Reverend’s earshot.
“I’ll fill out them forms and all later, but couldn’t I just sort of . . . try out today? I really need the work.” Her eyes turned merry behind the slanty glasses. “You don’t like what I do, you don’t owe me a thing. What can you lose?”
What indeed? His assistant, Harvey Parsons, would be there to see she didn’t do anything outré to one of their Loved Ones.
Giselle Marc had hitched her chair closer to Kearny’s desk, and had been talking steadily. Since DKA’s life’s blood was finding people who had defaulted, defrauded, or embezzled from banks, bonding companies, lending institutions, or insurance conglomerates, and taking their unpaid-for chattels, she had a lot to go over with Kearny. An hour later she was down to a final folder. She opened it on the desk.
“Okay, the classics from UpScale Motors. We started out looking for seven of them after Ken scored that little 280Z. Larry got the Corvette roadster out of Wiley’s brother-in-law’s garage down in Pacifica the day after you left.”
“Any trouble?”
“Not with the repo, no.” She already was losing her enthusiasm at his return. “But, ah, Dan, something happened that might come back to bite us. A few hours after Larry took the Corvette, the brother-in-law and his very pregnant wife stormed in here with a bunch of Polaroids they said showed—”
She was interrupted by the arrival of three men through the back door. Two of them were cops who now and then shagged cars through police records for DKA. The other . . .
“You Kearny?” snapped the one she didn’t know.
He had strands of thin black hair combed sideways to cover a spreading bald spot and his small black mustache looked pinned to his sallow face like a tail pinned to a birthday party donkey.
Kearny said, “Tom. George. How are the families?”
The stranger yapped, “I’m the one you gotta worry about, wise-ass. Sergeant Willis Franks of the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Department. You’re under arrest for aggravated assault and wanton destruction of property. On your feet, buster.”
Tom and George winced. Kearny said, “Let’s see some tin.”
Franks pulled out his shield wallet and displayed his badge. Kearny nodded and stood up.
“Pacifica?” he asked Giselle as if the cops weren’t even there. She nodded. “Okay, get Hec Tranquillini on the horn and have him meet me at the San Mateo County Courthouse.” He looked at Franks. “The holding coop’s still in South City, isn’t it?”
Franks nodded, taking the cuffs off his belt.
“You don’t need those,” said Tom.
Franks got a mean cop look in his eye. “Assistant D.A. Scarbrough said to bring him in fast and bring him in hard. I don’t know what that means to you pussies up here, but in San Mateo that means the cuffs.”
“You ain’t in San Mateo,” George pointed out.
Kearny winked at Giselle, said, “Hec, pronto,” and went out with the San Mateo cop firmly holding his arm.
sixteen
Hector Tranquillini was small and neat and nasty, like a scorpion in your shoe. Five-four in his artfully constructed high-heeled boots, an invariable 145 pounds before a session of handbal
l at the YMCA on Golden Gate. Handball, not racket-ball. And no sissy soft inflated blue handballs: the little black hard rubber ones that made red swollen catchers’ mitts of your hands.
Hec was waiting in the interview room when Dan was brought in prior to his arraignment and bail hearing before the judge. Hec shooed out the guard while flicking his eyes around the room to indicate the D.A. might have it bugged. Illegal, of course, and it couldn’t be used in court; but bugs were a useful tool in scoping out the defense attorney’s strategy. Fat chance, fella.
“Another fine mess you’ve gotten me into,” Hec said with the joviality of a miniaturized Al Capone once the guard was gone. He slid the Accusation and Complaint across the table. Dan read, suddenly looked up to meet Hec’s twinkling eyes. His own hard blue eyes were bright with suppressed laughter.
But in deference to the possible bug, he said in a defeated voice, “Do you think you can get me out of here on bail? I . . . I don’t know if I could handle a night behind bars.”
“I can try. And I think I’d better demand a preliminary hearing as soon as possible so we’ll know how bad it is.”
* * *
Assistant D.A. Philip Scarbrough was just 30 years old and just six feet tall, straight, single, with the sort of clean-cut good looks that often came out of Stanford. And like so many other Stanford men, he was on the rise. Important People were beginning to notice him. He would work up to District Attorney of San Mateo County, springboard to state Attorney General— after that, who was to say how far his ambition might carry him?
He didn’t have the interview room bugged. He didn’t have to. When Ellen and Garth Winslett brought in their complaints against Daniel Kearny, he knew he had a winner. A crowd-pleaser. A vote-getter. The brutality of the assault, the brazen smashing of the garage door, the purloined Corvette, the business card, those damning Polaroids of the battered Ellen . . .
That’s why he’d told Sergeant Willis Franks to bring Kearny in fast and hard, show him who was in charge from the git-go. He first eyeballed Kearny in Judge Valenti’s modern but pleasant South San Francisco courtroom overlooking Mission Road, with San Bruno Mountain lurking in the background. Kearny was a tough-looking fifty-something, with a square jaw and slightly flattened nose and cold eyes. All bluff. He was scared. Had to be.
Looking at the reddened marks on Kearny’s wrists from the tightness of the cuffs clapped on as they’d crossed out of San Francisco County, Scarbrough thought maybe he shouldn’t have told Franks to be so enthusiastic. But slimeball repossessors were never popular with jury members driving financed cars.
“Mr. Scarbrough?”
Judge Anthony Valenti was a burly 60, with a wealth of his own grizzled hair and the huge hands of his Italian grandfather, a fisherman in the days when Monterey’s Cannery Row had been the sardine-packing capital of America. Rimless specs perched on his broad fleshy nose.
“Ready for the People, Your Honor.”
“Is the defendant in court and represented by counsel?” “Yes, Your Honor.” Tranquillini’s voice suddenly bore the subtle Italian lilt of his ancestors from northern Italy’s Lombardy district. “Ettore Tranquillini for the defense.”
Ettore? Kearny suppressed a grin. Hector was Ettore only over a plate of Mama’s pasta—or in front of an Italian judge.
Scarbrough almost felt sorry for the defendant. This was Kearny’s attorney? A little pipsqueak with not much black curly hair, and so short. Surely not even marginally competent.
Hector was on his feet. “Your Honor, I would like to bring to the court’s attention the treatment my client has received. He is a respected San Francisco businessman, yet a San Mateo deputy sheriff dragged him from his office in handcuffs—”
“He assaulted a pregnant woman!” Scarbrough burst out.
Judge Valenti said mildly, “Surely not proven yet, Mr. Prosecutor. And I want to hear you on the subject of handcuffs.”
Scarbrough said defensively, “He’s a repossessor, he—”
“Your Honor!” Tranquillini was on his feet again. “Those handcuffs were ratcheted down brutally tight—look at Mr. Kearny’s wrists.” Dan held his arms aloft; the reddened, scraped skin showed up nicely against the muted courtroom colors. “All of this without even a courtesy call to my office so I could surrender my client in the usual manner.”
“Is this true, Mr. Prosecutor? Was no attempt made—”
“We . . . didn’t know who his counsel was, Your Honor.”
“And you didn’t ask?” The judge heaved a deep sigh. He said to Kearny, “How do you plead, sir?”
Dan stood up respectfully. “Not guilty, Your Honor.”
“So noted. And in the matter of bail?”
Scarbrough said quickly, “A hundred thousand, Your Honor.”
“Did the complainant lose her baby?”
“Well, no, Your Honor, but—”“Was she hospitalized?”
“No, Your Honor, but we have Polaroid photos showing—”
The judge gaveled him silent. “Those are for the trial, not here. Bail is set at ten thousand dollars, cash or bond.”
“Your Honor,” said Hec, “we request a speedy preliminary evidentiary hearing, so the court can determine whether the state has sufficient evidence to bring my client to trial.”
“Sufficient—” The judge stopped himself. He expected delaying tactics by the defense, not a rush to judgment. He said thoughtfully, “I see.” He looked over at Scarbrough. “Any objections, counselor?”
Scarbrough was secretly delighted. He had planned to ask for a fast prelim himself, giving Valenti a chance to eyeball Ellen Winslett in court before her bruises faded and before she gave birth. Beat up and pregnant. A dynamite combo. He had more than enough to bind Kearny over, and at trial the jury would convict without leaving the box. Tranquillini was a clown.
“None at all, Your Honor. We are happy to oblige the accused.”
“All parties will be advised of a court date,” Valenti said formally. “Defendant is released subject to bail being posted.”
Next morning at Brittingham’s Funeral Parlor, every viewing room was occupied, with several more Departeds on the runway, as it were, like jets waiting for clearance to depart. Two Rosaries tonight, three Viewings, in the morning four Funerals.
One result of all the hurry and worry was that Brittingham forgot all about Mrs. Karposki until a scant hour before her Viewing. He had left her hair and makeup to that strange little female person who had come around asking for the cosmetician’s position. Oh my!
He rushed down to the sterile, brightly lighted embalming area to find Harvey Parsons passing the time with eighty-three-year-old “Tex” Watkins. Tex was supine on a stainless steel table, nude, staring up into the round overhead lamp with in-different eyes. Harvey was about to drive a thick hollow steel spike down into his solar plexus to start the embalming process.
Nowadays they made a small incision above the clavicle and used an aneurysm hook to fish out the main carotid artery, put in an insertion tube, and pump in some formalin solution such as PSX. But Brittingham had trained Harvey himself in the old ways he secretly felt were still the best ways, and now couldn’t spare him for the time it would take to retrain him.
“Harvey, did that new girl, Miss Thatcher, come in today?”
Harvey was a strapping young man with a clean-featured, almost ascetic face, a shaved head, and no instinctual empathy for Bereaveds. But what that lad could do with viscera . . .
“She’s in the Readying Room, sir, with the Jones baby.”
Brittingham felt a thrill of anxiety. A baby! He trotted, slightly knock-kneed, across the cold, sterile embalming room to the pastel colors and soft lighting of the Readying Room. A place of preparation, a place of—dare he think it—hope?
A stranger in a white floor-length smock turned at his entrance—and was Becky Thatcher transformed. Gone under her crisp white cap was the mound of taffy curls. Gone the slanty glasses, gone the Day-Glo dress, the run-over shoes
, the jangly jewelry, the garish lipstick. In their place, a doe-eyed refined-looking young woman of remarkable beauty and serenity. Only the soft voice with its tinge of accent remained the same.
“Oh, Mr. Brittingham, I’m so glad to see you, sir!”
And she stepped aside so he could view the infant. He almost cried out, My God, we’ve made a terrible mistake, that child is alive! But then he realized it was just her remarkable skill. Life glowed in the little cheeks, the chubby hands seemed to reach out for a hug, surely any moment childish prattle . . . He felt salt tears start in his eyes. Becky spoke earnestly to him.
“Babies is easy, Mr. Brittingham. Ones this small, they’s not much been did to them before . . .” She paused. “Now Mrs. Karposki, poor woman, she seen some rough things in her day.”
An abusive spouse, for one. Brittingham turned to the other wheeled gurney. All the physical bruises and psychic pain of assault were gone from the dead woman. She was surely only sleeping. And her hair! A silver halo around that thin, finally serene face.
“Miss Thatcher, what can I say?”
Becky suddenly giggled. “How about, ‘You’re hired, Miss Thatcher’? You say that, I’m one happy little hillbilly lady.”
She was infectious. Brittingham chuckled himself.
“You’re hired, Miss Thatcher.”
It wasn’t until noon that Hec could get away from court to join Dan Kearny and Giselle Marc for a council of war in the guaranteed privacy of DKA’s upstairs reception area. Hec listened attentively as Dan asked Giselle, “What did you do with Larry after the Winsletts showed up?”
“Took him off the classic cars right away,” said Giselle. “Tomorrow he’ll be back on his regular cases—”
“No. I don’t want him coming into this office at all until this thing is settled. Not even at night to type reports. Find him some work where he doesn’t have to show up for any reason.”
“Okay. For what it’s worth, he says the Winslett woman was totally cooperative, gave him the keys, even served him tea in the garage. The man he described coming down the street as he left matches Winslett himself.”
