“May I talk with you about them?”
She glanced toward the pass-through to the kitchen. “My boss, he don’t like me talking with the customers when I’m supposed to be working.”
“Take a break. Just five minutes.”
Now she looked nervously around the restaurant. “I shouldn’t-”
I slipped a twenty-dollar bill from my wallet and showed it to her. “Just five minutes.”
She still seemed edgy, but fear lost out to greed. “Okay, but I don’t want anybody to see me talking to you. Go back to the restroom-it’s through that door by the video games. I’ll meet you there as soon as I can.”
I got up and found the ladies’ room. It was tiny, dimly lit, with a badly cracked mirror. The walls were covered with a mass of graffiti; some of it looked as if it had been painted over and had later worked its way back into view through the fading layers of enamel. The air in there was redolent of grease, cheap perfume, and stale cigarette and marijuana smoke. I leaned against the sink as I waited.
The young Eurasian woman appeared a few minutes later. “Bastard gave me a hard time,” she said. “Tried to tell me I’d already taken my break.”
“What’s your name?”
“Anna Smith.”
“Anna, the three men who just left-do they come in here often?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Keep pretty much to themselves, don’t they?”
“It’s more like other people stay away from them.” She hesitated. “They’re from one of the gangs; you don’t mess with them. That’s why I wanted to talk with you back here.”
“Have you ever heard them say anything about Tommy Dragón?”
“The Dragon? Sure. He’s in jail; they say he was framed.”
Of course they would claim that. “What about a Mrs. Angeles-Amorfina Angeles?”
“… Not that one, no.”
“What about trying to intimidate someone? Setting fires, going after someone with a gun?”
“Uh-uh. That’s gang business; they keep it pretty close. But it wouldn’t surprise me. Filipinos-I’m part Filipina myself, my mom met my dad when he was stationed at Subic Bay-they’ve got this saying, kumukuló ang dugó. It means ‘the blood is boiling.’ They can get pretty damn mad, ’specially the men. So stuff like what you said-sure they do it.”
“Do you work on Fridays?”
“Yeah, two to ten.”
“Did you see any of the Kabalyeros in here last Friday around six?” That was the time when Isabel had been accosted.
Anna Smith scrunched up her face in concentration. “Last Friday… oh, yeah, sure. That was when they had the big meeting, all of them.”
“All of them?”
“Uh-huh. Started around five thirty, went on a couple of hours. My boss, he was worried something heavy was gonna go down, but the way it turned out, all he did was sell a lot of food.”
“What was this meeting about?”
“Had to do with the Dragon, who was gonna be character witnesses at the trial, what they’d say,”
The image of the three I’d seen earlier-or any of their ilk-as character witnesses was somewhat ludicrous, but I supposed in Tommy Dragon’s position you took what you could get. “Are you sure they were all there?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And no one at the meeting said anything about trying to keep Mrs. Angeles from testifying?”
“No. That lawyer the Dragon’s got, he was there too.”
Now that was odd. Why had Dragon’s public defender chosen to meet with his witnesses in a public place? I could think of one good reason: he was afraid of them, didn’t want them in his office. But what if the Kabalyeros had set the time and place-as an alibi for when Isabel was to be assaulted?
“I better get back to work,” Anna Smith said. “Before the boss comes looking for me.”
I gave her the twenty dollars. “Thanks for your time.”
“Sure.” Halfway out the door she paused, frowning. “I hope I didn’t get any of the Kabalyeros in trouble.”
“You didn’t.”
“Good. I kind of like them. I mean, they push dope and all, but these days, who doesn’t?”
These days, who doesn’t? I thought. Good Lord.…
The Starlight Lanes was an old-fashioned bowling alley girded by a rough cliff face and an auto dismantler’s yard. The parking lot was crowded, so I left the MG around back by the garbage cans. Inside, the lanes were brightly lit and noisy with the sound of crashing pins, rumbling balls, shouts, and groans. I paused by the front counter and asked where I might find Jimmy Willis. The woman behind it directed me to a lane at the far end.
Bowling alleys-or lanes, as the new upscale bowler prefers to call them-are familiar territory to me. Up until a few years ago my favorite uncle Jim was a top player on the pro tour. The Starlight Lanes reminded me of the ones where Jim used to practice in San Diego-from the racks full of tired-looking rental shoes to the greasy-spoon coffeeshop smells to the molded plastic chairs and cigarette-burned scorekeeping consoles. I walked along, soaking up the ambience-some people would say the lack of it-until I came to lane 32 and spotted an agile young black man bowling alone. Jimmy Willis was a left-hander, and his ball hooked out until it hung on the edge of the channel, then hooked back with deadly precision. I waited in the spectator area, admiring his accuracy and graceful form. His concentration was so great that he didn’t notice me until he’d finished the last frame and retrieved his ball.
“You’re quite a bowler,” I said. “What’s your average?”
He gave me a long look before he replied, “Two hundred.”
“Almost good enough to turn pro,”
“That’s what I’m looking to do.”
Odd, for the head of a street gang that dealt in drugs and death. “You ever hear of Jim McCone?” I asked.
“Sure. Damned good in his day.”
“He’s my uncle.”
“No kidding.” Willis studied me again, now as if looking for a resemblance.
Rapport established, I showed him my ID and explained that I wanted to talk about Reg Dawson’s murder. He frowned, hesitated, then nodded. “Okay, since you’re Jim McCone’s niece, but you’ll have to buy me a beer.”
“Deal.”
Willis toweled off his ball, stowed it and his shoes in their bag, and led me to a typical smoke-filled, murkily lighted bowling alley bar, He took one of the booths while I fetched us a pair of Buds.
As I slid into the booth I said, “What can you tell me about the murder?”
“The way I see it, Dawson was asking for it.”
So he and Dawson’s wife were of a mind about that. “I can understand what you mean, but it seems strange, coming from you. I hear you were his friend, that you took over the Victors after his death.”
“You heard wrong on both counts. Yeah, I was in the Victors, and when Dawson bought it, they tried to get me to take over. But by then I’d figured out-never mind how, doesn’t matter-that I wanted out of that life. Ain’t nothing in it but what happened to Benny Crespo and Dawson-or what’s gonna happen to the Dragon. So I decided to put my hand to something with a future.” He patted the bowling bag that sat on the banquette beside him. “Got a job here now-not much, but my bowling’s free and I’m on my way.”
“Good for you. What about Dragon-do you think he’s guilty?”
Willis hesitated, looking thoughtful. “Why you ask?”
“Just wondering.”
“… Well, to tell you the truth, I never did believe the Dragon shot Reg.”
“Who did, then?”
He shrugged.
I asked him if he’d heard about the Kabalyeros trying to intimidate the chief prosecution witness. When he nodded, I said, “They also threatened the life of her daughter last Friday.”
He laughed mirthlessly. “Wish I could of seen that. Kind of surprises me, though. That lawyer of Dragón’s, he found out what the Kabalyeros were up to, read them the riot act. Said they’d put Dragón in the gas chamber for sure. So they called it off.”