“Positive.”
“So anyway, I figure you want me to tell you something, but I can’t figure what it is. You got to know nobody in my organization would pull a stunt like that one last night. Hijacking cash and killing schoolteachers, that ain’t my business or my style.”
“I know it’s not.”
“So?”
“So the police aren’t the only ones looking for the shooter. Big guy about forty, bald, bushy eyebrows, onion breath. Uses a short-barreled revolver, likely a thirty-eight.”
“Could be anybody. How come you figure I’d know him?”
“You know a lot of people, like you said.”
“Not somebody looks like that. You, Bluto?”
Bluto’s mouth was full of chicken breast; he grunted and shook his head.
“So,” Kinsella said, “I figure there’s something else you want me to tell you. Some other angle. Like maybe you figure this bald schmuck wasn’t a solo worker. Like maybe you figure the lady’s husband was in on it.”
“You’re pretty sharp, Nick.”
“Sure I am. That’s how come I’m still in business after, what, twenty-three years. That’s how come I pay such high taxes.” He finished the chicken leg, threw the bone into his wastebasket. Cleaned his fingers and his mouth again, tossed the greasy paper towels in with the bones, and fired up one of the black stogies he favored. Two puffs, and the air grayed; I could feel congestion form in my chest. “Cohalan, that’s the husband’s name, right? I don’t know him, neither.”
“He’s a crankhead,” I said. “He’s got a girlfriend who’s a crankhead. There’s a chance the two of them were dealing as well as using, that that’s what they wanted the money for.”
“So? That also ain’t my business.”
“No, but I hear it’s Jackie Spoons’ business now.”
“Aha,” he said. “So that’s it. Jackie Spoons.”
“I know he doesn’t work for you anymore, but I thought you might know where I can find him.”
“He’s crazy, you know that? A crazy man.”
“Crazy enough for hijacking and murder?”
“Sure, but not the way it was done last night. Uh-uh.”
“I just want to talk to him.”
“When he quit me,” Kinsella said, “I was glad to see him go. He don’t take orders, he don’t show restraint, he don’t act like a normal human being. And he don’t like to talk to people he don’t know.”
“I won’t cross him.”
“Maybe you don’t think so. But what you call crossing and what he calls crossing might be two different things. You come close to it last night. I’d hate to see your luck run out with Jackie Spoons, and I have to go to your funeral after all.”
“That won’t happen. Where can I find him, Nick?”
He sucked on his stogie, blew a stream of foul-smelling smoke in my direction. I coughed and waved it away, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Well, what the hell. I said my piece. I figure you don’t want to listen to good advice, that’s your business. I figure maybe you’re entitled to push your luck. I might push mine, too, if I’d been the one come close to it in Daly City.”
“I’ll keep your name out of it. He won’t know where I got the information.”
“You figure I care about that? I don’t care about that. Jackie Spoons is crazy, but he don’t scare me. Nobody scares me except Uncle Sam. That’s why I pay my high taxes right on time every year, don’t take no questionable deductions.” He sent another spurt of smoke my way. “Okay. You know the Veterans’ Gym? Out near the Daly City line?”
“I know it. That’s my old neighborhood.”
“Yeah? The Outer Mission?”
“Born and raised.”
“I be damned,” Kinsella said. “I didn’t know that. Used to be a good, solid working-class neighborhood. Now it’s as shitty as this one. Whole damn city’s falling apart, you ask me.”
And you’re one of those who helped with the deconstruction, I thought. I said, “The Veterans’ Gym where Jackie Spoons hangs out?”
“That’s where. Lifts weights, watches the pissants that pass for fighters these days train — like that.”
“Do his dealing there, too?”
“Uh-uh. He’s crazy, but he’s smart enough not to crap where he relaxes. You go out there, ask for Zeke Mayjack. Him and Jackie Spoons been friends a long time. You connect with Zeke, schmooz him a little, get him to walk you up to his buddy, and maybe Jackie’ll talk to you after all.”
“Thanks, Nick.”
“Don’t thank me yet. You ain’t seen Jackie Spoons yet.”
I said, “Before I leave, can I run a couple more names by you?”
His sigh turned into a hacking cough. When he got it under control he said, “These names maybe also connected?”
“Maybe. I’ll know when I find them.”
“So go ahead.”
“Charlie Bright. Junkie and small-time dealer.”
“Nah. Bluto?”
Bluto shook his head.
“Dingo,” I said.
“What the hell kind of name is that, Dingo?”
“I don’t know that it is somebody’s name. A place, maybe. Mean anything?”
“Nah. Bluto?”
Bluto shook his head.
“So that’s it then,” I said. “Unless I can talk you into asking around about Bright and Dingo?”
He thought about it. “I did you one favor, now you figure I’m good for more than one in return. Well, maybe I am. I’m a soft touch for people I like, people done me a good turn one time. But I’m also a guy believes in what you call your quid pro quo. You done me a favor, I done you a couple, now I figure we’re even. So if I ask around about this Bright and this Dingo, then I figure you owe me one. Not right away, but someday, and you don’t say no when I ask. Fair enough?”
I didn’t like the idea of being in Nick Kinsella’s debt, but I did not have much choice. If I refused it would offend him, and Kinsella was nobody you wanted to be mad at you. “Fair enough,” I said.
He grinned, coughed, scowled, jabbed the stogie into an ashtray, and grinned again. “I got your card, I’ll call you. Won’t be too long, one way or the other.” I nodded and turned for the door, and he said, “And don’t forget what I told you.”
“About the quid pro quo?”
“Nah. About Jackie Spoons being crazy. About don’t make me have to go to your funeral after all.”
The Veterans’ Gym was one of those time-warp places that have somehow managed to survive into the technological age and the new millenium. One good reason, if not the only one, is that it was tucked away in a blue-collar section well removed from the heart of the city. Even so, its days had to be numbered. San Francisco’s explosive economy has driven real estate values through the roof and changed the city’s shape, cultural diversity, and future. It used to be a bohemian paradise, flavored by old-world ethnicity and a laissez-faire attitude; now, the bohemians and artists, poor by nature, are being forced out in droves, and residential and commercial space is being auctioned off to the highest bidder. Big Business and Big Bucks rule, and you can’t tell the politicans from the developers and all the other high-profile, high-living, high-handed movers and shakers. The old way of San Francisco life is dying; places like the Veterans’ Gym, despite its location, are little more than upright corpses waiting for the undertaker.
As soon as I walked in, it was like stepping back fifty years or more — into a scene in a circa 1950 black-and-white boxing flick that had been poorly colorized. The walls in the big anteroom were coated with fight cards, many of them for bouts that had been held in the old Civic Auditorium, and high-gloss photos of boxers in fighting poses. A lot of the names were familiar: Joe Louis, Ezzard Charles. Unfamiliar were such long-gone, long-forgotten local white hopes as Silent Ramponi and Mongo “The Rock” Luciano. Through an open doorway I could see part of the main gym, two guys sparring in a ring, somebody in sweats banging away on a light bag. Smack of leather on leather, male voices yelling encouragements and obscenities. Smells of sweat and liniment and leather and canvas and wood so old even the termites were fifth or sixth generation. Strictly a male domain, the Veterans’. Not even the most ardent feminist would care to try breaching its testosterone-soaked atmosphere.