“On the house.”
Donnally nodded thanks and took a sip.
Rusch cocked his head toward the front window and pointed up the block toward Mission Street.
“I’d just bought this place when you got shot out there. At least ten years ago and I remember it like it was yesterday. People are still talking about it. You’re a legend. . a leg-end.” Rusch smiled and made a trigger motion with his thumb. “Like at the O.K. Corral. Bam-bam, bam-bam-bam.” He laughed. “All my customers go running out the back door like they didn’t want to be anywhere near the Mission District when the cops showed up and started patting people down. Then sirens coming from everywhere. Whoop-whoop-whoop.”
Donnally had gotten caught in a crossfire between Sureno and Norteno gangsters after he climbed out of his car to meet an informant at Morelia Taqueria. He put fatal slugs into both of them, and the Norteno put the one into him that ended his career.
“I ran out there. I could see by the way them EMTs were working on you that your cop days were done.” Rusch pointed down at Donnally’s hip. “All the blood coming out of there told me that’s where you got shot. I didn’t figure that you’d be doing much running and gunning after that.”
Rusch rubbed his side as though in sympathy. “That joint back to working okay?”
In fact it wasn’t. Donnally woke up to the stabbing memory of that day every morning and went to sleep with it every night.
But that was none of Rusch’s business.
Donnally nodded and changed the subject. “I found some cash in Hamlin’s safe.”
“Not from me. I gave him thirty grand altogether. It’s got to be gone by now. Long gone.”
“Madison seemed to think that the deal was for life with a hundred grand always on deposit.”
Rusch smiled again. “He should’ve taken up that little misunderstanding with Hamlin.”
“He tried.”
Rusch paused and pursed his lips, then squinted at Donnally and asked, “What kind of bills did Hamlin have?”
“Hundreds.”
“You won’t find my fingerprints on that money.” Rusch gestured toward the cash register. “Biggest bills I get coming through here are fifties and most are twenties.”
Rusch didn’t need to say that the denomination of choice in the biker drug trade was the twenty.
“Then why the attempted hit on Madison in prison?” Donnally asked.
Rusch’s brows furrowed and he drummed his fingers on the bar. “Where’s this information going?”
“You see me taking notes?”
“That’s not an answer.”
“In my head unless you’re lying to me.”
Rusch stared out into the bar until he got the attention of a biker wearing a black vest and a green T-shirt with a shamrock printed on the front, then he nodded at the stool next to Donnally.
Donnally recognized the shamrock as an Aryan Brotherhood emblem. One of the first homicides he investigated was an execution of a Hell’s Angel named Irish by an Aryan Brotherhood member wearing a similar T-shirt, except with the words “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” printed below it. He now wondered if this gang connection was the reason Rusch remembered his name and the day he was shot down. Donnally was known throughout the Aryan Brotherhood because he’d chased down scores of members, their wives, girlfriends, hangers-on, and associates and until he’d gathered enough leads to identify the killer.
The biker walked over and slipped onto the stool. He had a windburned, middle-aged face that had seen a lot of sun and grit, and teeth that had met a lot of cigarette smoke.
“You know anything about a stabbing in CMF Vacaville? Guy named Madison.” Rusch looked at Donnally. “When?”
“Little over a month ago.”
The biker rotated his chair toward Donnally and inspected him. “What’s your interest?”
Rusch cut in. “My interest.”
“He looks like a cop,” the biker said, still eyeing Donnally, but not recognizing him due to the passage of time. “Who is he?”
“He was a cop. Now he. .” Without lifting up his hand, Rusch flicked his forefinger at Donnally. “What do you do now?”
Donnally noticed that Rusch had avoided introducing him by name, probably fearing the biker would take a swing at him, with the rest jumping in, because he’d put a gang brother in prison for life.
Looking at bikers reflected in the mirror behind the bar, Donnally imagined that after the police cleared the scene on the day he was shot, some of these same men had returned to celebrate. Laughing, backslapping, high-fiving, and laying bets on whether he’d ever walk out of the hospital.
“I run a restaurant in Mount Shasta.”
“Which one?” The biker asked the question like he’d been through the town enough to catch Donnally in a lie.
“You know it,” Donnally said. “Lot of motorcycle club guys stop in on their way up to Washington and Oregon. Lone Mountain Cafe.”
The biker nodded, spun his stool around, and walked back to his table. Moments after he sat down and whispered a few words to the others at the table, one of them withdrew a cell phone and made a call. It rang a few minutes later and the biker returned.
He looked at Rusch. “Bennie Madison? The guy who-”
Rusch nodded.
The biker turned toward Donnally. “His nickname is Shitty. He refused to pay for some crystal meth he got from somebody.” The biker emphasized the last word, then paused, implying the somebody was the Aryan Brotherhood. “He was supposed to hand over some Oxycontin tablets he got from the doc.” The biker pointed at his own head. “He was milking some kind of brain thing. Scamming the hell out of it. Shitty claimed the meth was bunk-it wasn’t. And somebody couldn’t let that kind of disrespect pass.”
Chapter 12
Donnally dropped into a chair across from Ramon Navarro in the Golden Phoenix, a shotgun Chinese cafe composed of six tables, two fish tanks at the back, and a cook who doubled as the waiter, halfway between the Hall of Justice and the Mission District bar of Rudy Rusch. It was long past sunset and they figured they owed themselves both lunch and dinner. Only one other table was occupied, by an old man hunched over a bowl of soup and watched by a lobster sitting shoulder-level behind the glass.
“A waste of time,” Donnally said. “My guess is Madison knew he was dead on the case and figured he’d be dead for real in a year or two, so he sent Hamlin to threaten Rusch and extort some cash in order to cushion his fall. Maybe they split the money.”
Navarro displayed an I-was-right-about-Hamlin smirk. “So it wasn’t so pro bono after all.”
“Looks that way.”
Donnally reached for the menu standing between the napkin dispenser and the wall.
“You sure it wasn’t Rusch who sent the Aryan Brotherhood after Madison?” Navarro asked. “The rumor years ago was that they backed him in buying the bar.”
“In a credibility contest between Madison and Rusch, I’ll take Rusch. He still calls his wife The Bitch, even though saying it paints crosshairs on his forehead.”
The cook walked up. Donnally ordered chicken chow fun. He’d missed Golden Phoenix’s version of the dish, nutty, dry-fried, and spicy, during the years since he’d moved up to Mount Shasta. Since he was doing cop work, he felt like eating cop food, at least in San Francisco. Long gone were the days when officers limited themselves to a Norman Rockwell diet of burgers and fries and roast beef or turkey plate specials.
Navarro ordered the same.
“You get any prints off the money?” Donnally asked.
“Some.” Navarro reached down and withdrew a file folder from his briefcase and handed it to Donnally, who passed over copies of his cell phone research and Hamlin’s calendar. “We’ve dusted most of the bills and recovered a few prints so far. The techs are still going through them.” He pointed at the folder. “Those are the people we’ve identified so far.”