Counting to Infinity

by J. L. Abramo

As we ate, I was thinking out loud about all I thought I had learned from talking with Max Lansdale, Tom Romano, the late Stan Riddle, and Ray Boyle. I tried throwing it all into a mental cauldron, mixing it well, and sampling the results. Eddie listened, all the while alternating between roles as the staunch supporter and the devil’s advocate. In the end we arrived at the same conclusion. Go through the motions of trying to locate Chandler and Clams, for Lansdale’s benefit, until I found a way to get loose of it. Start by trying Ray Boyle again, since he was the only person I’d spoken with who seemed to have a line to Chandler and seemed pretty certain that Harry was alive. If somehow I actually came face-to-face with Chandler, I could ask him to clear up a few things, if I even cared by then. Or simply beg him to do something to get Lansdale out of my life.

  So, it looked like it was time to start building up my frequent-flier miles again. Back at Eddie’s place, I gave my cousin Bobby a call in Westwood and asked if he would pick me up at LAX and put me up at his apartment for the night.

  Eddie gave me a warm send-off at O’Hare. As luck, or dumb luck, would have it, I had just enough time to get to Parker Center before Boyle went off duty.

  Part Two

  Falling

  Nine

  Bobby dropped me off in front of Parker Center a few minutes before seven that evening. I knew from experience that Ray Boyle rarely got out of the building before eight. I promised my cousin that I would buy him dinner after I was done with Ray, unless the lieutenant had me arrested.

  It was Thursday. I had been to Chicago twice and now two times to L.A. in four days and all I seemed to have accomplished was to get myself in deeper. On the upside, I hadn’t rested in one place long enough for jet lag to catch up with me.

  I found Ray in his office, just as I had two days earlier. The difference was that instead of finding Boyle talking on the telephone, I walked in just as he hurled the phone into the blackboard against the far wall.

  “Jesus!” he said, well above a roar, “If they can put a man on the fucking moon, why can’t they keep a goddamn rapist off the street for more than three hours?”

  Or, as Darlene might have said on the same subject, if they can put a man on the moon, why not put them all there?

  “Ray, we need to talk,” I said, watching him closely for any sign that might suggest he wasn’t through throwing heavy objects.

  “I’m in no mood, Diamond. Make a fucking appointment.”

  “I’m not leaving until you tell me what’s really going on between Harry Chandler and Max Lansdale. And save the bullshit. You may need it later on to explain destroying perfectly good office equipment.”

  “Did I detect a little hint of a threat in your tone, Diamond?”

  “I’m dead serious, Ray.”

  “Boy, Diamond, you must be fucking insane. You’re standing in a building that at this moment has the largest population of police per square inch in all of California, if not the world, and you come barging in uninvited thinking that you can throw your weight around? I said I’m not in the fucking mood. Do yourself a favor, leave me alone. Take two fucking Valiums and call me in the morning.”

  “Fuck you, Boyle.”

  “Don’t bother. I’m sure that the animal they just released will grab me in some alley and beat you to it.”

  “C’mon, Ray. Don’t take it out on me. Throw the fucking stapler or something. But calm down and give me a little time. I need help, and I have nowhere else to turn. I’m sure you’ll believe it when I tell you that there are many places I would rather be than here watching you have a tantrum.”

  “I need a fucking drink,” he said.

  “Fine, I’ll buy you a drink.”

  “I’m sick of it, Jake.”

  “Well, Ray, it’s a dirty job but somebody’s got to do it. Will you help me?”

  “I don’t know if I can,” Boyle said.

  “Will you at least try?”

  “I need a fucking drink.”

  “Fine, let’s get out of here. I’ll buy you a drink.”

  I had to jog to keep up with him.

  Out of the building, down the street, and into a local saloon.

  I didn’t catch the name of the joint, only the neon shamrock over the front door. The barkeep had a scotch poured for Boyle before we made it up to the bar.

  I asked for a shot of Dickel on ice and got that all-too-familiar look of mystification from the bartender. I asked him to make it a Jack Daniel’s. I spilled a good portion of the drink trotting after Boyle as he moved rapidly to a booth in the rear.

  I slid into the bench seat opposite him. He knocked down the scotch in one gulp and before the empty glass hit the table the barman had another round set down in front of us.

  After dispensing with his second drink, Boyle cooled down enough to take a stab at dispensing with me.

  “Make it fast, Diamond. If I’m in this drinking hole much longer you’ll have to carry me out with a backhoe,” he said, waving to the bartender for a refill.

  “Why did Randolph Lansdale put a hit on Chandler?” I asked, wasting no time. “Was it because of Carla Rosario or was it something else? Something that Harry Chandler had discovered about Lansdale?”

  “I told you what I know, Jake. My understanding was that when Lansdale knew that he couldn’t have Carla, he made sure that no one would. If there was something else on Lansdale’s mind, I never heard about it.”

  “Tell me where I can find Chandler, Ray. I want out of this thing.”

  “I can’t do that, Jake,” Boyle said, “but I did get word to Chandler, and he agreed to meet with you. He’ll come up to San Francisco; he’ll pick the time and place. You’ll have to hold out for a week at most.”

  “A week. Jesus, Ray, where’s the guy coming from? Fucking Siberia?”

  “Might as well be,” Boyle said, draining his third scotch, “and that’s all I can say. Get back home and wait until you hear from him.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “If you don’t get the fuck back to San Francisco?”

  “If I don’t hear from Chandler.”

  “You will. He knows who you are, knows you were tight with Jimmy Pigeon, and he wants to do the right thing,” Ray said. “And if that’s not enough, Harry owes me and he gave his word of honor that he wouldn’t let you dangle.”

  “His word of honor. What is he, a fucking Boy Scout?”

  “His word is solid, Jake. I’m doing all I can. Stay out of trouble for a few days and then you can put it all behind you.”

  “If I don’t hear from Chandler by the middle of next week I’m coming back down here, Ray, as much as I hate this place,” I said. “And I’m coming straight to you.”

  “If you’re trying to frighten me, Diamond, save it for when I’m sober. I’m too stupid at the moment to be afraid of anything, and I’ve got to get out of here.”

  Boyle rose from his seat, threw a twenty-dollar bill on the table, and turned toward the exit.

  “Ray,” I called as he moved away.

  “Hold that thought,” he said, and he was gone.

  I called my cousin Bobby from a pay phone at the bar entrance and asked him to meet me at a steak house we both knew a few blocks from Parker Center. After dinner we sat up for a few hours at his apartment in Westwood while he filled me in on the new movie he was set to start work on the following week, but the air travel was finally catching up with me, so I soon stretched out on Bobby’s sofa, and he went off to his bedroom to sleep. I managed to get through a few pages of the Dostoyevsky novel before I was out cold.

  The next morning, Friday, I took an early flight back to San Francisco. Darlene picked me up at the airport. It didn’t take long for me to fill her in. I didn’t have much filler. Darlene claimed that a few calls had come in during my absence. Possible new cases. She said that she had the rough details waiting on my desk for consideration.

  “Could take your mind off this Lansdale business.”

  “Maybe,” was all the response
I could manage.

  I sat at my desk in my back office looking over Darlene’s notes.

  Three cases.

  A store owner who suspected that his new manager was skimming off sales.

  A mother who was afraid that her teenage daughter’s boyfriend was a drug dealer.

  A defense attorney who wanted evidence to demonstrate, if only to himself, that his client wasn’t guilty of circulating child pornography.

  I was so distracted, the best I could do to decide which if any of the cases I would as much as follow up on was going to require tossing a coin or two.

  Mostly, I was looking at the telephone waiting for Harrison Chandler to make it ring.

  When the telephone did ring I nearly swallowed my cigarette.

  “It’s Ted Harrison, Jake,” said Darlene. “His client goes on trial Monday for distributing child porn and he’s frantic.”

  I pushed the blinking button on the phone console.

  “Mr. Harrison,” I said, “Jake Diamond.”

  “Mr. Diamond, I need some help, fast. My client is innocent.”

  Tell me about it, I thought.

  “Tell me about it,” I said.

  “Sal Fuller runs a small mail-order business, ships mostly Northern California. Seeds.”

  “Seeds?”

  “Plant seeds, flowers, vegetables, that sort of thing.”

  “Okay.”

  “A package sent from his warehouse was delivered to the wrong address. The woman who received it opened the package. There were photographs. Disgusting photographs. She called the police.”

  “Wasn’t she afraid of the penalty for opening someone else’s mail?”

  “I suppose that opening the package was one thing, but the nature of the pictures was another. She claimed that the package arrived damaged and she spotted the contents. In any event, the authorities were less interested in mail tampering than in who was doing the mailing.”

  “How about who was doing the buying?” I asked.

  “They questioned the man who was supposed to have received the package. His lawyer worked out an immunity deal if he would explain how he ordered the material. He claimed that he ordered from a site on the Internet, and paid by cash through a post office box.”

  “Did the police stake out the box?” I asked. “Find out who picked up the payment?”

  “The story hit the Chronicle and no one has showed up at the P.O. Box since. All the police had to go on was that the package originated from Sal’s Seeds, and my client was arrested and charged.”

  “What’s Sal’s story?” I asked.

  “Sal Fuller is a model citizen, Mr. Diamond, a family man. But all of the testimonials that I could drum up are not going to make a jury ignore the fact that the package was shipped from Sal’s warehouse.”

  “If your client is innocent, it had to be someone who had access to his shipping facility; does Mr. Fuller have a suspect?”

  “No. But I do.”

  “Oh?”

  “Fuller has a son, seventeen years old. The boy works for his father on weekends, in shipping. I’ve suggested to Fuller that his son might be responsible, but he refuses to consider it.”

  “Or Fuller has considered it, and decided to protect his kid,” I said. “I really don’t see how I can help you, Mr. Harrison. I think you’ll just have to do your best to make your case on the man’s good reputation. There’s not much more you can do. Wherever the chips fall, in the end it’s between the father and son.”

  “What if I leaked my suspicions about the boy to the police?”

  “You have to decide what’s in the best interest of your client. I don’t envy you and I wouldn’t dream of advising you.”

  “And what if the boy is involved in something that is hurting these young children in the photographs?”

  “I’m guessing that if the kid is the culprit he’s simply buying the photographs from somewhere else and reselling at a profit. He’s probably too naive to really understand the implications of the source. If it were something else the kid was peddling, he’d probably be up for a Junior Achievement award. Maybe that’s the solution. Maybe you can find out where he was getting the material and get both father and son off the hook.”

  “Could you help me do that, Mr. Diamond?”

  “The kid is a minor, Mr. Harrison. I can’t touch it. Tell you what you might do. Give Lieutenant Laura Lopez a call at the SFPD, Vallejo Street. Lopez works with teenagers. Feel her out. Give her the rough details, without naming names. Convince her that you’re interested in helping the boy without ruining his life. You can trust Lopez. If she says that she can help, she will.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Diamond. I’d like to compensate you for your time.”

  “Donate something to one of Lieutenant Lopez’s pet youth projects, Mr. Harrison,” I said, “and good luck.”

  While I was in my help-an-adolescent-in-trouble mode, I decided to call the woman worried about her daughter dating a drug pusher. The number she had given to Darlene was for her office at a large downtown financial institution.

  I got the basic questions out of the way quickly, asking the name of her daughter’s boyfriend, how the two had met, and what had led her to believe that the boy was involved in the drug trade.

  “The boy’s name is Pedro Sanchez,” said Jane Miller. “Isn’t it obvious, Mr. Diamond?”

  Jane Miller was a single mother of three; Rachel was her eldest. Rachel and Pedro were students at the San Francisco Arts High School on Font Boulevard. They had been seeing each other since doing a show together in the Drama Department. I knew the school, knew of its reputation and requirements, and was almost certain that Jane Miller was doing her bit for racial profiling. I told her, as I had told Harrison, that I couldn’t investigate juveniles. She said “Thanks for nothing” and hung up.

  The call bothered me. A woman who was so vehemently against her daughter’s socializing with a Hispanic boy that she would suggest criminality was dangerous to both the boy and her daughter.

  I called Lopez and filled her in, asking if she would speak to the guidance counselor at the school to determine whether family intervention was needed. I also told Lopez that she might be getting a call from an attorney named Ted Harrison about another teen in a jam.

  “What’s with you, Diamond,” Lopez asked when I was through, “you bucking for Concerned Citizen of the Year honors?”

  “I’m just taking them as they come, Lieutenant,” I said, “while I’m waiting for Judgment Day.”

  Two down and one to go, and I hadn’t made a cent. I called the last number, hoping that the new manager suspected of skimming off sales was legal age. As it turned out, I knew the place and the owner. Gant’s Loans, one of a row of pawnshops on Sixth Street between Stevenson and Market streets. I stopped into Gant’s often, looking for used classical CDs, and Monty Gant usually gave me a call when something came in that he thought might interest me.

  “Monty, Jake Diamond.”

  “Jake, thanks for calling. I got this new guy here and I think that he’s robbing me blind, but I can’t catch him at it. It’s the nature of the business. Our salespeople are free to negotiate prices, and I’m almost sure that this guy is underreporting what he’s taking in.”

  “You’re calling me to play secret shopper, Monty?”

  “Would you please, Jake?”

  It almost made me grateful that an exciting case came along now and then, even it if held the threat that I could be killed if I couldn’t find a few ghosts for Max Lansdale.

  “Is the suspect working now?”

  “He’s here until six. I leave at five. There’s a real nice Rolex, I’m asking three thousand dollars. I’ll bring the cash over to you. See what kind of deal you can make with the guy.”

  “I’ll meet you at the diner on Stevenson at five, Monty. Get any good music in?”

  “Nab this fuck for me and you can take your pick, Jake.”

  “I’ll see you at five,” I said.


  I opened the office window to determine what Angelo had prepared for his lunch special at Molinari’s on the avenue below.

  Despite the fact that the Catholic Church had lifted the ban on Friday meat consumption years ago for some esoteric reason, Angelo Verdi was a die-hard traditionalist. Since Angelo had featured fried calamari on Sunday, which I had of course missed when I was rudely whisked off to Chicago, Angelo went with baked clams that Friday afternoon.

  Vongoli al forno. So much for putting the Lansdale dilemma out of my mind.

  I picked up a salad for Darlene—romaine, cucumber, and Roma tomato, hold the dressing—and we dined together at her desk.

  We talked about plans for the weekend. Hers, including a visit to Half Moon Bay, and mine, hopefully including some quality time with Sally French. Darlene donated her side order of garlic bread to Tug McGraw. It could only improve the mutt’s breath.

  Later in the afternoon I called Sally at her office, hoping for some luck that wasn’t bad. Not yet. Sally had a function to attend, related to her work with the city arts council.

  “You’re certainly welcome to join me, Jake,” she said, “but I don’t think you would enjoy it very much.”

  I had great faith in Sally’s disclaimers, so I politely passed.

  “How about tomorrow?” I asked.

  “I have a preordained brunch date with my mother.”

  I didn’t have to be warned about the entertainment value of that program.

  “And afterward?”

  “I’ll probably be free of Mom by two. Then I’m wide open through Sunday.”

  “How about I drop over at four, we can dream up a Saturday night on the town.”

  “Four it is,” she said. “By the way, Jake, do I still need to be looking over my shoulder?”

  “Just to be safe, at least until tomorrow afternoon. Then I’ll do the looking for you.”

  “Okay, see you then,” she said. “Stay on your toes.”

  Speaking of mothers, I had neglected mine for a while and decided that having dinner with Mom was as good a plan as any on a Friday night in the baseball off-season.