by Joe Gores
“I’m closing up now, the last guy’s just leaving,” Sonja said behind him in a low, throaty voice. “When you get here, stick your head in and I’ll come out. I don’t want to stand around outside waiting, Tim—you don’t know what this town’s turned into.”
Right on. Tim didn’t know Sonoma, liked tall lean blondes, and screwed other guys’ wives. O’B drained his O’Doul’s, picked up his pretzels, waved off his change, and headed for the door.
“Thanks, Sonja,” he called as he went out.
Sprint across the square for his car? No. Play the odds. He stepped back into the shadows of a narrow alley that led to a courtyard of small shops and cafés.
Seven minutes brought the throaty growl of a sports car. It stopped with its dark green hood just visible from O’B’s ambush. Panoz kit car. Left in the street with the motor running as Bland crossed the sidewalk.
Tim Bland pulled open the door of the General Vallejo to stick his head in, and O’B walked unhurriedly out of the alley. He slid into the cockpit of the low gleaming green car crouched like a leopard in the street. Slamming it into gear, he fishtailed away around the square with Tim Bland’s shouts of outraged astonishment shredded by the wind of his passage.
twenty-one
Milagrita came across the BART station’s pedestrian walkway at 2:01 A.M. She was wearing jeans and a 49ers warm-up jacket and had her hair tucked up under a Giants baseball cap. She was alone. Nobody crossed behind her. Morales was still in place on San Jose Ave, across Geneva from the old Green Muni Center crammed with antique trolley cars. He squealed the Accord around the corner and skidded to a stop right in front of her.
“Get in!” he yelled.
He was away so fast the open passenger-side door slammed shut behind Milagrita on its own. Only where Geneva merged into Ocean Avenue did he look over at her. She had opened her jacket and removed her cap and shaken out her long black hair. Red letters on her black T-shirt said SUPPORT MENTAL HEALTH OR I’LL KILL YOU. Her eyes were very big, but her voice was strong.
“You had us meet way out here because you do not trust me.”
“I don’t trust nobody.”
“Then indeed I am sorry for you.”
“You gonna get in trouble being out this late?”
“I am almost nineteen,” she said proudly. “The phone number I gave you is an apartment I share with another girl. Esteban does not like it, but . . .” She shrugged. “Mi madre trusts me so he can do little about it.”
Almost nineteen. When he had nailed her in that Geneva Avenue motel room, he had thought she was sixteen, a juvie. It hadn’t bothered him: before Esteban’s attack, he had started to look at fourteen-, even thirteen-year-olds. Now he had been without a woman for so long he didn’t know what he’d like.
There was little traffic as they drove west on Ocean Avenue through a neighborhood of small businesses.
“Uh, I’m sorry what I did to you, Milagrita.”
It was the first time he could remember apologizing to anyone except in a sort of half-assed way to a giant iguana in Baja’s desert north of Cabo during the great Gypsy Cadillac hunt.
“It was wrong,” she agreed gravely, “but it is finished.”
“Not for your brother. He still has guys watching me.”
“Verdad,” she said seriously. “It is why I had to talk to you. When you came into the pizzeria today I meant what I said. He will try to kill you if he knows you have seen me.”
“I didn’t even know who you were!” Morales blurted out.
“I have always told Esteban that. After a time he saw you had no interest in any woman, so he was satisfied and would have given up. But one of Esteban’s amigos, Jorge, says I have been dishonored and that you must really pay for what you did.”
“Uh . . . do you . . . how do you feel about this Jorge guy?”
She was silent for a moment, her dark sleek head lowered.
“I hate him. Someday, because you have had me and he has not, he will try to take me the way you did, and make me keep silent about it afterward. But he feels you have challenged his machismo, so he wants you dead first. That is what I wanted to tell you. Esteban would give up, but Jorge, never.”
“Yeah, well, I ain’t so easy to kill.”
Big words for a cobarde, he thought. A man who hides behind closed blinds, and now hides behind a girl’s skirts. A girl he couldn’t protect from this Jorge even if he wanted to.
He asked, “Can you drive a car?”
“Cómo no?” The touch of pride was back in her voice.
“This one?”
She checked for auto trans, nodded. “De vero. But why?”
“I’m working. I might need you as a driver.”
“What sort of work does one do at two in the morning?”
“I’m a repoman.”
They crossed 19th Avenue into Merced Manor. A long block north, beyond broad Sloat Boulevard, was Stern Grove where the free summer concerts were held. Morales had never been to one. He wondered if Milagrita had.
“What kind of car are you looking for?” she asked.
“Don’t know,” he grunted.
She giggled. Her teeth were small and very white in her brown face. When she laughed her whole face laughed. She was a pretty young woman about to plunge into beauty.
“What sort of repoman does not know what he has to repo?”
Morales handed her Giselle’s folded skip list from behind the visor. The Corvette and the Ferrari were lined out.
“It’ll be one of these other five cars. We start by finding Gellert Drive, just before Sunset, and go from there.”
They went by the broad flat-topped grassy mound of a Water Department reservoir built after the ’06 quake. The fog was in, out here near the ocean the night was cold and damp. They had not passed another car in either direction since crossing 19th.
“There! Ahead to the right!” Her voice was excited.
On this side of Ocean, Gellert was just a block long and the numbers were wrong. They recrossed Ocean and followed Gellert to the address, 492, that Trin had gotten from Carlos Feliu. It was a well-kept two-story salmon-colored house with green and white trim. A Jeepster was parked in the driveway.
“Maybe it is hidden in the garage,” Milagrita said.
By jumping up repeatedly, Morales could see through the glass along the top of the overhead door. Empty. Walking back toward his still-running car, he thought it would be a good trick on him if Milagrita drove off and left him. She didn’t.
“Nothing,” he said when he was back behind the wheel.
“So we have failed.”
We? Had that been real disappointment in her voice? He told her the story of the dealership raid and the salesman whom Trin thought had taken off with the demo he was driving.
“Es claro. He has no right to the car,” she agreed.
They drove a grid of two-block streets within walking distance of the residence address checking out every long shot they saw. It was nearly three-thirty and Milagrita was yawning by the time all the possibilities were exhausted.
“There’s a little pocket of streets over beyond Sunset where he might have hidden it,” Morales said doggedly.
He hadn’t realized how much he wanted to look good in front of Milagrita.
“Let’s go,” she said gamely.
One block beyond Sunset, Ocean hit a circular court called Country Club Drive. They cruised slowly. As they passed a remarkably ugly green and yellow San Francisco row house in the 400 block, Milagrita suddenly exclaimed aloud.
“Wait! Stop! Back up! There is one from your list!”
It was a black moisture-covered 1995 Acura NSX, obviously parked there for hours. Jesus, was he so tired he had missed it?
“It is truly worth sixty-two thousand dollars?”
“If it’s the one we want. They ain’t makin’ ’em anymore.”
He left the Accord running as he got out his flashlight and opened his door. They were scant yards from Skyl
ine Boulevard; beyond that sprawled the San Francisco Zoo. Fog-laden ocean wind carried the wild mingled smells of the animals to them.
“Is this really it?” Milagrita demanded. She was like a ferret after a rabbit. He almost started to laugh at her.
“I think so. Lemme check the VIN.”
Yeah! Right number. He started working his filed-down skeleton keys on the door. The third one fit. In her excitement, Milagrita started yipping and jumping up and down. Then she started pounding Trin on the chest. Finally, she embraced him.
He opened the Acura’s door, started to get in. Lights went on in the second floor of the green and yellow house. A window went up over the inset garage. A voice yelled.
“Hey, you out there, I’m calling the police.”
Morales stepped back out, shouted at him, “This your car?”
“No, but—”
“Then shut the hell up and go back to bed.” To Milagrita he said, “Let’s get out of here—he’s gonna call the cops, so I’ll drive this one and you follow me to our office in the Accord. It’s Daniel Kearny Associates at 340 Eleventh Street.”
It was after 4:00 A.M. when they got to DKA. He wanted to send her home in a cab, but she wanted to see the whole process: notifying the police of the repo, removing and cataloging the personal property, making out the condition report, finally writing a field report that also noted time and mileage and expenses. Trin included $25 for a driver, which he solemnly offered and which she solemnly accepted.
Only then would she let him call a taxi. They parted wordlessly after another of her brief impetuous abrazos. He paid the cabbie, stood watching the Yellow disappear down Eleventh Street toward Bryant and her Mission District apartment.
Would he ever see her again? Not if he wanted to stay healthy. Probably wouldn’t be able to stay healthy even then.
Getting back into his own car, he realized this had been the best night of his life. And he couldn’t even say why.
twenty-two
Larry Ballard woke at eight on Monday morning with the heady smells of Midori still on his body. He unsuccessfully groped for her in the bed beside him before sitting up under the twisted bedclothes. Swinging his feet to the floor, he padded through into the living room with its pathetic kitchen alcove.
“Midori?”
Then he remembered. Monday morning. She had promised Nordstrom’s she’d be back to work on Monday. Feeling at once almost frail and like the biggest stud in the world, he crossed the living room to twitch aside the bulbous bay window’s oft-mended lace curtains to look out across Lincoln Way into the green depths of Golden Gate Park.
No green depths. Just a solid bank of early fog swirled and whipped by icy gusts off the Pacific. Out here in the ironically named Sunset District there was usually fog in the morning and evening with a four-hour window of milky sunlight in between.
Ballard let the curtain fall back. Not only would Midori be riding the streetcar out to Stonestown in her thin coat—the only one she had—she still had classes to attend. She’d go right from her half-day at Nordstrom’s to S.F. State.
Forgetting his naked state, he strode down the hall to her apartment and crossed her tiny living room calling, “Midori?” She was in the bedroom, in bra and panties, just dropping a black dress with a mid-calf skirt down over her head.
She turned. “Rarry! I try not to wake you. What is—”
“It’s cold out, you’ve got classes this afternoon, I want to drive you to work.”
“Like that?”
He looked down. Whoops.
Midori was already giggling and sliding her panties down and off under her dress. And just like that, Larry got to live out his fantasy of flipping her skirt over her head and having his way with her while she was fully dressed. Turn on!
He even got her to Nordstrom’s on time afterward.
Back in his apartment in a lovely haze, he walked in on a ringing phone and Giselle’s crisp Monday morning voice.
“Mel’s Drive-In on Geary Boulevard in thirty minutes, Hot Shot. Breakfast is on me.”
“Make it forty-five. I need a shower.”
The great Yana hunt had begun.
Competing with the clatter of silver and the rattle of plates were a dozen flavors of English from Mel’s usual crowd—black, brown, yellow, white, and every shade in between. Larry looked around.
“We’re only two blocks from UpScale,” he said. “Isn’t that a little risky?”
“With UpScale closed down, I figured this would be the safest place in town to meet. Especially in this crowd. I had trouble spotting you myself.” She paused. “So where were you this morning, Hot Shot? I’ve been calling since dawn.”
Larry cleared his throat. “Uh . . . I’ve had a lot to do . . .”
“To whom?” She held up a detaining hand. “Whoever she is, you’re going to have to refocus your energies on your old flame Yana for a while. She’s missing, and Dan has accepted an assignment from Staley to find her.”
Larry laughed. “From Staley? The Great White Father must really want to put me to work. This puts me back in the field with billable time and mileage to cover my salary, and the Rom won’t want written reports.”
“Just don’t show up at the office and screw up the court case and get yourself sued personally.”
“I won’t.”
He leaned back, one hand idly turning his teacup.
“So why do they want Yana?”
Giselle looked at her notes. “It’s a confused story. The long and the short of it is, she’s wanted for the murder of her husband.”
“Poteet?”
Giselle nodded.
“That flake,” muttered Larry.
“But apparently she had been ostracized by the tribe before this happened.” She circled something on the page in front of her. “Something called marime.”
“Marime! Any idea what for?”
Giselle gave him a wide-eyed look from beneath arched eyebrows.
“Could it be . . . Satan . . . ?”
“Knock it off, Giselle, Yana and I were friends as well as . . . well, friends. I helped teach her to read, for God’s sake!”
“Be that as it may, all the evidence points to her in the murder of Ephrem Poteet. His dying statement—legal bedside testimony, by the way—an eyewitness next door.”
Larry waved dismissively.
“Eyewitness is the worst kind of evidence. They got her fingerprints? Hair and fiber samples? DNA? They able to put her in L.A. that night?”
“They’ve got to find her first,” conceded Giselle. “But she’s slippery. Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern had her in their hands and she waltzed right out from under their noses.”
Larry looked at the table for several moments.
“Let me tell you a story that Yana told me,” he said. “A true story. There was a big shoot-out down in Mexico City between two feuding Gypsy families from Puerto Rico and Cuba. A bunch of people were killed. Each family was tried by a kris—”
“A court?”“Yeah.
And each family was given a marime sentence. It was the worst disgrace in the history of the Gypsies on this continent. That was in 1947 and even now, fifty-three years later, neither extended family has recovered from the disgrace. They’ve lost their businesses, other families won’t marry their grandchildren, and they are afloat between two cultures, considered pariahs in both. The way Yana told that story, I could see how horrified she was, and how much her tribe meant to her.”
“Maybe she doesn’t believe in marime anymore,” Giselle said gently.
“And murder!” Larry said, as if he hadn’t heard her. “There’s something called a mulo—the ghost of the victim. I don’t believe in ghosts, but Yana was a powerful person, and she did. None of this makes sense.”
“Well, find her.” Giselle’s voice had an edge of impatience. “Maybe you can sneak a peek at her crystal ball and get the answers you’re looking for.”
Larry stood up. “Ask Dan to make Staley
point me in the direction of Yana’s brother, Ramon Ristik. I’ll try to get a line on what the cops have, too.” He looked ruefully at his empty plate. “I guess I’ll have to start with Beverly at Jacques Daniel’s. I swear those guys eat lunch there two-three times a day.”
Three of the UpScale classics were still outstanding: a black 1970 Aston Martin Volante; a champagne 1990 Jaguar XJS convertible; and a red 1966 Mustang convertible. So Ken Warren wanted to check out the rest of the former UpScale salesmen.
Christian Roxborough lived in a gray two-story house at 557 Raymond Avenue in Visitacion Valley. In this mixed brown/black/yellow neighborhood, nobody would tell Ken anything. He was white, he was tough-looking, and he talked funny. And Roxborough was a community pillar: married, family man, Little League coach, wife a churchgoer.
It was a tough stakeout. The houses faced the sharply rising eucalyptus-dotted slope of McLaren Park, so Ken had to park in the turnaround at the street’s dead end behind a big powerboat on a six-wheel trailer under a blue tarpaulin cover. He never saw Roxborough; but the wife parked her Dodge van in the double garage under the house. If Roxborough had made Ken, which was likely, he could leave and enter the house in the back of the van where Ken couldn’t see him. Of course he might not be hiding one of the classics at all.
But Ken kept right on checking the neighborhood for info on what cars Roxborough drove. Early Saturday morning, he got to Discount Liquors on the old Bayshore just as the owner was unlocking his black steel thief-guard shutters.
“Hnood hnmornin,” said Ken to the guy’s back.
The big black man whirled around. “Kenny!” he exclaimed in a big booming bass voice, his ebony features aglow with delight.
In pre–Pac Bell Park days, Ken and Clarence Withers had parked cars for the Giants’ home games in a cheapo dirt lot across the street from Candlestick’s regular lot. They’d had some times together for sure, before Clarence got married and got religion during a single disastrous weekend.
“Hyna nrepomnan neow,” said Ken.
“A repoman?” Clarence went into a bout of high hee-heehee laughter. “Ain’t after my slick, is you, man?”
