by Dane Hartman
“Mafia?”
“No, free-lance. A good reliable asshole like him, he gets calls from all over the state. Last I heard he was operating in San Diego, which was why I was surprised he turned up here.”
“He known for arson?”
“Arson?” Butterfield shrugged. “He’s never been charged with that particular crime, but I certainly wouldn’t put it past him. He’s very innovative in the way he carries out his hits. Try anything once, see if it works.” He indicated the chonta that overnight had been transformed from a murder weapon to state’s evidence. “Imported from South America. Very effective. Our pathologist tells us that Mr. Ninn must have been dead within seconds.”
Harry nodded unhappily.
“You think that he could have been responsible for the slayings we’ve had in San Francisco?” Harry asked, observing the weapon. It was his sense that the hit man could not have been, but he wanted to see what Butterfield had to say.
Butterfield agreed with him. “From what I’ve read and heard about those beheadings, I’d have to say no. They sound to me like a man gone off the deep end. Pathological, you know? And Pigeon was pathological all right, but he wouldn’t go about killing people in the same way. Not with so much blood. With him everything was, well, I guess the word for it is discreet.”
He now thrust forward a slip of paper so that Harry could inspect it. All it said was “X801.”
“We found it on Pigeon when we did a thorough search of his body. You have any idea what it might mean?”
Harry shook his head.
“I thought it might be a license plate or something like that. We’re checking it out with the Registry of Motor Vehicles here and in San Francisco, but I’m not really hopeful anything’ll come of it.”
As Harry was rising to leave, for all the necessary information had been exchanged between the two men, Butterfield urged him to stay in touch. “I have a feeling we’re going to see a development in this case real soon.”
“I wish I could say the same.”
Harry drove immediately to the hospital where Owens was being cared for. The case had become secondary in his mind because of his concern for his partner. All he could think of was that the miserable luck that had stalked all his previous partners still persisted, like some demon that he could not, whatever prayers and potions he tried, be exorcised.
Last night, in his confrontation with Pigeon, he had been afraid. There was always fear there, there was no way to escape it, and in most instances he found the fear was a healthy thing, like pain. Better than indifference, better by far than numbness. But that fear had been nothing compared to the dread he felt hours later when he had had to telephone Mary Beth and tell her what had happened to her husband.
Because he felt both responsible and guilty, because he kept going back over the shooting in his mind, wondering whether he could have done something sooner, or differently, to prevent harm from coming to Owens, he was prepared for an angry, reproachful response from Mary Beth.
She had been sleeping when he’d called but came instantly awake. And far from being in any way accusatory, she accepted the news as calmly as she could, telling him that she would be on the next available shuttle flight to Los Angeles.
Harry found her in the waiting room that adjoined the emergency area. It was getting on toward noon, and the area was alive with activity. There were a great many more people seeking emergency aid than usual because of the fires, and for hours, as Mary Beth waited for her husband to come out of surgery, men and women, bruised and battered and burned, paraded before her, some of them silent, their lips pursed in defiance of their pain, others crying out in protest and agony. The atmosphere was far from soothing, and in Harry’s eyes it could only heighten her tension and fear.
He greeted her and sat down beside her. Though her eyes were red, she was no longer crying, and she seemed composed though abstracted.
“There’s a coffee shop in this hospital, it might be better to wait there. I’ll come with you if you want.”
“No, I want to be here when the operation’s over. I want to be here.”
She asked him in detail how Owens had sustained his injuries, and Harry gave her as accurate an account as he could, omitting some of the more sordid particulars.
“Poor Mac,” she kept saying. “Poor Mac. You say he died instantly? I suppose then that it was better than suffering.” Her knuckles were white, and to stop her hands from trembling she knitted them together in her lap.
After sitting together like this for a few minutes in an uncomfortable silence, Harry decided that he would have to leave. He promised he would call in an hour, when the procedure was expected to end, and stood there for a moment, uncertain as to whether there was anything else to say, any assurance or consolation he could give. He realized there was nothing.
Mary Beth raised her eyes to him. “Thank you, Harry. For all you’ve done, thank you. And don’t blame yourself for what’s happened. That would be terrible.”
It was like a priest absolving him of sin. But the truth was that even Mary Beth, even Owens if he recovered, could not do that. Only he himself could, and he didn’t know if that was possible.
He now went back to Ocean Boulevard. Where the house belonging to Eloise Cummings and Patience Bell had stood there was only a smoldering ruin. The remaining walls had gone from white to black; the bedroom on the second floor, charred and still wet from all the water that had been used to douse the flames, was exposed to view. Harry could see the closets, now just more rubble and ash, where the two extravagant ladies had stocked their lavish collection of clothing.
As he stood there, staring at the house, he noticed another woman who was standing on the adjacent lawn. She was probably close to thirty, with brown hair that was let loose down her back and wearing a long blue dress. She looked as if she hadn’t quite gotten over the Sixties. She had the style and manner of a veteran of Haight-Ashbury who was aging gracefully but aging all the same.
“Do you live next door?” Harry asked.
She nodded, hastening to add so Harry would not get any ideas, “With my husband.”
Harry strode toward her. “Quite a fire last night,” he said, keeping his voice neutral. “I happened to see it.”
“It almost got out of control. For a while there I thought we might lose our house, too. We had all our things packed and were ready to evacuate. Thank God, that wasn’t necessary.”
The woman introduced herself as Alice David. Harry mentioned that he was a police officer and showed her his identification. Either she did not see or did not care that he represented the San Francisco force.
“You investigating the fire? There were men here all this morning, sifting through the rubble. They say it was arson that did it.”
“Not exactly the fire. More like the house itself. And the women who occupied it. Did you know them?”
“You mean Patience and Eloise? I used to see them if that’s what you mean. I don’t think anyone really knew them except for the men that’d keep marching in and out of the house. They didn’t have other girlfriends. And most of the men friends weren’t exactly friends, if you catch my meaning.”
Harry caught it all right.
“Would you say that they made their living from prostitution?”
“I don’t think you’d be jumping to any conclusion. That would be my guess. They must have paid a mint for their clothes.”
“They did indeed.”
“Mmmmm,” she said as though a hunch had just been confirmed. “I think though that basically they weren’t straight at all. I have a feeling they were lezies. Gay, you know? You’d never see one without the other. They were inseparable, and they were both good-looking, more than good-looking actually, and probably they had a package deal going for the men. Two for the price of one, you know? But I’d say they were contemptuous of the men, of all men.”
“Ever see a repeat, I mean one man in particular who kept coming back?”
“Le
t’s see.” Alice turned thoughtful for a few moments. “Yes, there was one. Middle-aged. Handsome if you like them like that.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, big-boned, businessman type. Austere. Probably a jock in college. Gray-haired, carefully cut and styled. He stood out because he looked so wealthy, so much in command of the situation. What I remember most was that once he came he used to stay as long as he liked. Sometimes through the night, at least for several hours, usually during the afternoons. And that was a privilege none of the other men ever got. I suppose he was just paying so much more, and it was undoubtedly easier on the girls, handling one guy instead of a dozen.”
“How many times would this man visit?”
“Five, six times a month maybe. But then the girls would go away for a while, it wasn’t as though they were there continuously. I wonder what they’ll think when they find out this has happened.” She looked over at the hulk their home had become.
“I don’t think they’re going to worry about it much,” Harry remarked without elaboration. “Did you ever know what this man’s name was?”
“Well, as I said, I never said more than good-morning or good-night to them, but I once heard them going on about somebody they referred to as Teddy. Teddy this and Teddy that, and do we really want to go up to San Francisco again, such a drag. They’d lay out nude in their backyard and they’d gossip like mad out there, and when they started an argument, you know, with Patience wanting to go up to San Francisco, and Eloise saying no, you could hear them all over the neighborhood.”
“Any family, any relatives you know of?”
“I’m sure they cut them all off years ago. Or vice versa, more likely. They lived in that place for four or five years, before we moved into this neighborhood, and to them, you know, Christmas was like any other day. Fuck a few more men, put more money in the bank.” She sounded oddly resentful. She was undoubtedly happy to see such destruction visited upon them. She didn’t know the half of it.
“Tell me, Mrs. David, what kind of transportation did this middle-aged man, Teddy, employ to get here?”
“It varied. I’d see him roll up in a white Porsche, but once or twice he arrived in a limo. One of those block-long gas-guzzlers with the sunroof? He used to have his chauffeur wait for hours for him. Driver would just sit there and read. I felt so sorry for him one time I brought him out some coffee.”
Harry had stopped listening. Something the woman had said about the limousine had sparked a sudden inspiration. The cryptic set of digits preceded by an equally cryptic X returned to his memory. “Mrs. David, do you mind if I use your phone for a moment? It’s long distance to San Francisco, but I will compensate you for it. But it’s urgent that I call.”
She seemed surprised by the intensity in his voice but had no objection to his using the phone.
It was perhaps little more than a wild guess, but it was just possible that he had something, that he had figured out the meaning of X801.
There was a slight delay as the transmission was completed. Then he heard the predictably upbeat voice on the other end: “Good morning. Cavanaugh-Sterling International.”
Harry paused for a moment, then requested the office he had called only a few days before. “Extension 801,” he said.
Another brief wait. Then a young woman’s voice: “Mr. Davis’ office, can I help you?”
Little did the secretary know it, but she already had. Harry hung up, reasonably certain that he now knew who had hired Tom “Pigeon” Loving. And further, he also felt that he knew who exactly Teddy was. “That son of a bitch,” he said aloud.
Alice scowled at him. “What?”
He turned around. He had forgotten she was right there beside him.
“I need to make just one more call, Mrs. David.”
“Go ahead. Can I get you some coffee? A Coke?”
“Nothing, thanks.”
He now dialed the hospital. As he waited for the doctor to respond to the page, he grew increasingly apprehensive. On the one hand, he felt exhilarated at finally uncovering the Tocador killer. On the other, he recognized that bad news about Owens would dampen that exhilaration and cause his triumph to pall.
At last the doctor—a polite but somewhat authoritarian figure who did not like to disclose more facts than he had to and who remained extremely cautious when it came to predicting the outcome of his cases—came on the line. “Ah, how are you, Mr. Callahan? What can I do for you?”
As if he didn’t know. Harry reminded himself not to loose his temper at this man—wouldn’t do any good.
“I would like to know how the surgery on my partner Drake Owens went.”
“Generally speaking, it went as well as could be expected under the circumstances.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that we have successfully removed the bullet. He has lost a considerable amount of blood, and we had to give him an additional three pints. He is now in recovery, and shortly we will send him up to the intensive care unit.”
“What are his chances, Doctor?”
“I would say that they are fifty-fifty, marginally better than they were last night.”
“I would like to see him.”
“I am afraid that no visitors are allowed at present. If he is coming along by tomorrow perhaps then . . .”
But Harry did not have time to wait in Los Angeles until tomorrow. He reached Mary Beth at the Holiday Inn on Wilshire, where she had gone after Owens had emerged from surgery, and told her that he was returning to San Francisco. “If anything happens let me know immediately,” he urged her, “and I’ll be back as quickly as I can.”
“I think it’ll be all right, Harry. The doctor tells me he’s almost out of the woods.” She did not sound nearly as optimistic as one would have inferred from the words alone. “And I hope that I don’t have to disturb you.”
“That’s the last thing you should be worrying about,” Harry said before hanging up.
And now he had to face another challenge: proving absolutely that William Davis, chairman of the board of Cavanaugh-Sterling, and the demented murderer Teddy were one and the same, and then putting him away before he could do any further harm. Neither task was going to be easy.
C H A P T E R
F i f t e e n
As Harry was walking toward his office, on the seventh floor of the Justice Building, he was stopped by Bressler, who happened to be coming in the other direction.
“Well?” he said. “What have you got?”
“Pieces,” Harry tersely replied. “I’m trying to put them together.”
“How’s Owens coming along?”
“When I talked to the doctor before I left L.A. he had a fifty-fifty chance.”
“That’s more than a lot of people get.” Bressler used cynicism to conceal the very real pain that he, like any other cop, felt when death threatened one of their own. “How soon are you going to have those pieces put together?”
“Very soon.”
“It better be. I am tired of taking flak in this case. I am tired of losing officers, I am tired of losing credibility. You better deliver something good.”
“If I deliver it’ll be good.”
“I wish I could believe that.” Bressler began to walk away, then he stopped suddenly and said, “By the way, that fellow Davis get ahold of you?”
“Davis? You mean William Davis?”
“That’s right. He said he had some information for you, wouldn’t say what it was, said he needed to speak to you immediately. I told him that you were flying down to L.A. and gave him the address where you and Drake were staying. Did he reach you all right?”
Now Harry understood how Teddy’s man Pigeon had managed to track them down.
“Oh yes,” Harry answered, “he certainly reached me all right.”
Bressler shot him a curious look, sensing that Harry was holding back an important detail, but when Harry failed to elaborate, he merely shrugged and continued on his way.
Harry decided to turn right around, forget about checking on the messages and paperwork that had piled up on his desk during his brief absence. He resolved instead to go to Davis’ home—one of his three homes, the one inhabited by Davis’ wife.
He realized that Davis would not be there and in fact hoped that he would not be. If Davis was the man he sought, and after what Bressler had just disclosed, he had even more reason to believe he was, then he could not take him directly, not yet. He intended to circle around him, close in on him, maybe force his hand.
His wife, he hoped, would be the place to begin.
Sheila Davis lived in a large, but hardly overwhelming, villa that overlooked Tiburon’s waterfront with its cluster of restaurants, galleries, antique shops and marinas that lined Main Street. Like the neighboring villas set into the hillside, it was painted a pastel hue, in this case, lemon. In its architecture and situation, it brought to mind an aristocrat’s home on the Mediterranean.
A woman came to the door and squinted at Harry. She was obviously the maid, a Chicano slightly stooped by the years and by her labor. She had difficulty comprehending what Harry was saying.
“Who is it, Maria?” Harry heard a woman call out.
Then Sheila Davis herself came to the door. She looked much like she had in the photograph Davis kept on his desk: pale and vulnerable, tentative about her movements as though nothing was to be depended on, even the sustaining pull of gravity.
Harry displayed his I.D. for her.
“Oh?” she said. “You’ve come about that terrorist attack. I’ve talked to your people before. I don’t know whether I can add anything but please come on in.”
Harry said nothing to disabuse her of her assumption. He did not want to say anything just yet that might suggest he was more interested in putting her husband behind bars than he was in putting away the men who’d tried to kill him.
She escorted him into a den that was lined on two walls with bookshelves. The books were all impressively bound in leather, but what astonished Harry, when he observed how they were arranged, was that all the books were of the same width. The Bible and War and Peace and Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities matched exactly as did several hundred others.
