She shook her head and stepped back, shivering slightly-whether from the cold outside or the memory of the murder, I couldn’t tell. “I… don’t get out much these days.”
“May I come in, talk with you about the shooting?”
She shrugged, unhooked the chain, and opened the door. “I don’t know what good it will do. Amor’s a damned fool for saying she’d testify in the first place.”
“Aren’t you glad she did? The man killed your husband.”
She shrugged again and motioned me into a living room the same size as that in the Angeles house. All resemblance stopped there, however. Dirty glasses and dishes, full ashtrays, piles of newspapers and magazines covered every surface; dust balls the size of rats lurked under the shabby Danish modern furniture. Madeline Dawson picked up a heap of tabloids from the couch and dumped it on the floor, then indicated I should sit there and took a hassock for herself.
I said, “You are glad that Mrs. Angeles was willing to testify, aren’t you?”
“Not particularly.”
“You don’t care if your husband’s killer is convicted or not?”
“Reg was asking to be killed. Not that I wouldn’t mind seeing the Dragon get the gas chamber-he may not have killed Reg, but he killed plenty of other people-”
“What did you say?” I spoke sharply, and Madeline Dawson blinked in surprise. It made me pay closer attention to her eyes; they were glassy, their pupils dilated. The woman, I realized, was high.
“I said the Dragon killed plenty of other people.”
“No, about him not killing Reg.”
“Did I say that?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t imagine why. I mean, Amor must know. She was up there in the window watching for sweet Isabel like always.”
“You don’t sound as if you like Isabel Angeles.”
“I’m not fond of flips in general. Look at the way they’re taking over this area. Daly City’s turning into another Manila. AD they do is buy, buy, buy-houses, cars, stuff by the truckload. You know, there’s a joke that the first three words their babies learn are ‘Mama, Papa, and Serramonte.’” Serramonte was a large shopping mall south of San Francisco.
The roots of the resentment she voiced were clear to me. One of our largest immigrant groups today, the Filipinos are highly westernized and by and large better educated and more affluent than other recently arrived Asians-or many of their neighbors, black or white. Isabel Angeles, for all her bright, cheap clothing and excessive makeup, had behind her a tradition of industriousness and upward mobility that might help her to secure a better place in the world than Madeline Dawson could aspire to.
I wasn’t going to allow Madeline’s biases to interfere with my line of questioning. I said, “About Dragón not having shot your husband-”
“Hey, who knows? Or cares? The bastard’s dead, and good riddance.”
“Why good riddance?”
“The man was a pig. A pusher who cheated and gouged people-people like me who need the stuff to get through. You think I was always like this, lady? No way. I was a nice Irish Catholic girl from the Avenues when Reg got his hands on me. Turned me on to coke and a lot of other things when I was only thirteen. Liked his pussy young, Reg did. But then I got old-I’m all of nineteen now-and I needed more and more stuff just to keep going, and all of a sudden Reg didn’t even see me anymore. Yeah, the man was a pig, and I’m glad he’s dead.”
“But you don’t think Dragón killed him.”
She sighed in exasperation, “I don’t know what I think. It’s just that I always supposed that when Reg got it it would be for something more personal than driving his car into a stupid shrine in a parking space. You know what I mean? But what does it matter who killed him, anyway?”
“It matters to Tommy Dragón, for one.”
She dismissed the accused man’s life with a flick of her hand. “Like I said, the Dragon’s a killer. He might as well die for Reg’s murder as for any of the others. In a way it’d be the one good thing Reg did for the world.”
Perhaps in a certain primitive sense she was right, but her offhandedness made me uncomfortable. I changed the subject. “About the threats to Mrs. Angeles-which of the Kabalyeros would be behind them?”
“All of them. The guys in the gangs, they work together.”
But I knew enough about the structure of street gangs-my degree in sociology from UC Berkeley hadn’t been totally worthless-to be reasonably sure that wasn’t so. There is usually one dominant personality, supported by two or three lieutenants; take away these leaders, and the followers become ineffectual, purposeless. If I could turn up enough evidence against the leaders of the Kabalyeros to have them arrested, the harassment would stop.
I asked, “Who took over the Kabalyeros after Dragón went to jail?”
“Hector Bulis.”
It was a name that didn’t appear on my list; Amor had claimed not to know who was the current head of the Filipino gang. “Where can I find him?”
“There’s a fast-food joint over on Geneva, near the Cow Palace. Fat Robbie’s. That’s where the Kabalyeros hang out.”
The second person I’d intended to talk with was the young man who had reportedly taken over the leadership of the Victors after Dawson’s death, Jimmy Willis. Willis could generally be found at a bowling alley, also on Geneva Avenue near the Cow Palace. I thanked Madeline for taking the time to talk with me and headed for the Daly City line.
The first of the two establishments that I spotted was Fat Robbie’s, a cinderblock-and-glass relic of the early sixties whose specialties appeared to be burgers and ehicken-in-a-basket. I turned into a parking lot that was half-full of mostly shabby cars and left my MG beside one of the defunct drive-in speaker poles.
The interior of the restaurant took me back to my high school days: orange leatherette booths beside the plate glass windows; a long Formica counter with stools; laminated color pictures of disgusting-looking food on the wall above the pass-through counter from the kitchen. Instead of a jukebox there was a bank of video games along one wall. Three Filipino youths in jeans and denim jackets gathered around one called “Invader!” The Kabalyeros, I assumed.
I crossed to the counter with only a cursory glance at the trio, sat, and ordered coffee from a young waitress who looked to be Eurasian. The Kabalyeros didn’t conceal their interest in me; they stared openly, and after a moment one of them said something that sounded like “tick-tick,” and they all laughed nastily. Some sort of Tagalog obscenity, I supposed. I ignored them, sipping the dishwater-weak coffee, and after a bit they went back to their game.
I took out the paperback that I keep in my bag for protective coloration and pretended to read, listening to the few snatches of conversation that drifted over from the three. I caught the names of two: Sal and Hector-the latter presumably Bulis, the gang’s leader. When I glanced covertly at him, I saw he was tallish and thin, with long hair caught back in a ponytail; his features were razor-sharp and slightly skewed, creating the impression of a perpetual sneer. The trio kept their voices low, and although I strained to hear, I could make out nothing of what they were saying. After about five minutes Hector turned away from the video machine. With a final glance at me he motioned to his companions, and they all left the restaurant.
I waited until they’d driven away in an old green Pontiac before I called the waitress over and showed her my identification. “The three men who just left,” I said. “Is the tall one Hector Bulis?”
Her lips formed a little “O” as she stared at the ID. Finally she nodded.