“What scene? What’s the Alamo?”
“Mean you don’t know?”
“Would I be asking if I did?”
“Salsa scene. Tex-mex food and music.”
“Restaurant? Club?”
“Both. Big place down the Peninsula, tex-mex barbecue on one side, salsa club on the other.”
“Where down the Peninsula?”
“Belmont.”
Belmont was one of the towns strung like beads between San Francisco and San Jose, a good twenty-five miles south and close to Redwood City, where Tamara’s father was on the police force and she’d been born and raised.
“And they give these out to their customers?”
“Right. To anybody spends twenty-five bucks or more. Good for a dollar off in the bar or restaurant. ‘Remember the Alamo!’ so you won’t forget where you got it.”
“How recently were you there?”
“Six months, about. Horace likes barbecue, I like to boogie.”
“What kind of place is it?”
“Just told you, tex-mex food and salsa music—”
“I don’t mean that. What kind of clientele?”
“Young folks, mostly. Cool crowd.”
“It have any kind of rep?”
“Rep? Oh, like a drug deli?”
“Like that.”
“Not that I’ve heard.”
“But some people who go there use drugs.”
“Some people everywhere use drugs.”
“My point is, you could score there if you had the right connections.”
“Same answer. You can score just about anywhere if you got the right connections. Think that’s why Cohalan went to the Alamo?”
“There’re tex-mex restaurants and salsa clubs here in the city,” I said. “Belmont’s a long way from his office downtown, a long way from Daly City.”
“Well, could be he didn’t like to pick up his pussy... ’scuse me, his women too close to home. Could be that’s where he met Byers.”
“Also possible. But I still like the drug angle.” I took the chip from Tamara, returned it to my wallet. “There’s something else that makes me like it, too.”
She was smiling now, that knowing little grin of hers. Quick on the uptake, as always. “Gotcha,” she said. “Charlie Bright.”
Born in Texas, and the Alamo was a tex-mex hangout. Arrested with Byers for dealing methamphetamines, and both Byers and Cohalan were crankheads. Somebody had been supplying them. Maybe Jackie Spoons, maybe the Aussie called Dingo... and maybe a young guy on parole who had suddenly begun missing work and changed his address without telling his PO, both indicators of drug-related recidivism.
“Yeah,” I said. “Charlie Bright.”
15
The Alamo was a big hacienda-style place, stucco and exposed beams and tile roof, that took up most of a block just off El Camino Real. A neon roof sign spelled out the name in a garish dazzle of pink and green and yellow. All of the exterior was brightly lit. Floodlights trained on the stucco walls showed them to have been painted pink; other floods illuminated a good-sized parking lot that extended from the front around on one side.
The lot was half full when I got there at seven o’clock. I found an empty space about equidistant between the two main entrances, one neon-marked Restaurant, the other Salsa, and went in through the latter. More bright neon tubing, muraled walls, booths and tables, and a slick-looking dance floor ringing a center bar. At the far end was a dais, empty now except for half a dozen standing microphones; it was too early for live music, if they even had a band performing on Mondays. Canned Latin music blared from loudspeakers. Two large TV sets mounted on opposite walls showed a Monday Night Football game in progress. Most of the twenty or so patrons were watching the game — silent, violent action played out in pantomime to the hammering salsa beat, not my idea of an ideal combination.
I made my way to the bar, scanning faces as I went. Nearly all were young, twenties and thirties, and none was familiar. I ordered a bottle of Dos Equis, in keeping with the motif, and when the black-shirted bartender served it, I showed him the photo printout of Charlie Bright, saying that Bright was the son of an old friend, and I’d been told he was a regular here. The bartender squinted in the dim light, shook his head. “Don’t know him, man.” I asked if he knew anybody named Dingo. Another headshake and a walkaway.
There was one cocktail waitress on duty; I got the same negative response from her. For twenty minutes I stayed put at the bar, nursing the beer. People came in, people went out. No Charlie Bright. A pair of swing doors had a green-neon Restaurant sign over them; I walked over and entered the other half of the Alamo.
Crowded in there, men, women, and kids stuffing themselves in booths and at tables. A young hostess outfitted in a peasant blouse and a flaring Mexican skirt led me to a corner table. Her reaction to the photo was a shrug, a half-smile, and “Sorry, I never seen him before.” Mexico by way of Brooklyn or the Bronx.
I hadn’t eaten since lunch, so I ordered a small plate of barbecue beef brisket and managed to get most of it down. Too edgy to care much about food. Stranger surrounded by strangers in a strange land, waiting for one familiar face that didn’t appear.
Back into the club. More young people now, none of them Bright. A second waitress had come on duty; I took a table in her section. Well, she said when she’d had a look at Bright’s likeness, maybe she’d seen him once or twice, but she couldn’t be sure. “We get a lot of customers — this is a real popular place, you know?” As for Dingo: “That’s a funny name. I don’t know anybody with a funny name like that.”
I nursed another bottle of Dos Equis. The big room kept filling up, a good crowd for a Monday night. More strangers. And I began to stand out among them: I was more than twice the age of ninety percent of the clientele. Glances, open looks, a few whispered exchanges. I kept glancing at my watch, fidgeting, staring toward the entrance — making it plain that I was waiting for somebody who should have shown up long ago. But I couldn’t keep up the pretense indefinitely. And the canned music seemed louder, more strident, and strobe lights had begun flashing over the dance floor. The racket, the assault of colored lights created a surreal atmosphere, impairing my vision and giving me a headache. In that pulsing, light-and-dark crush of bodies I would have had trouble recognizing Kerry from more than a few feet away.
I gave it up, went out into the cold night and walked around until my head cleared. Then I got into the car, rolled the window partway down, and sat there feeling frustrated. After nine now. Long damn day, and nothing much to show for it. No news from Joe DeFalco that I didn’t already know, no word from Nick Kinsella, no new leads or additional data on Annette Byers’ illegitimate son. And now tonight, no Dingo and no Charlie Bright.
Hang around here how much longer? Couple of hours? Until midnight? I ought to go home, get some sleep. Sure, but I knew I wouldn’t sleep much; mostly lie wide-eyed in the dark, listening to Kerry’s breathing, listening to the clicks. Might as well stay put, wrapped in the dark cocoon of the car, for as long as I could stand it.
I called the condo to let Kerry know I would be late. We didn’t talk long. She was fine, Emily was fine, I was fine — there did not seem to be much else to say long distance.
Minutes died slowly after that. Another stakeout, another handful of lost time. Most of my life spent in situations like this, waiting, vegetating. Suspended animation. Dying by inches and clock ticks.
Better than already being dead, I thought.
Better than lying in cold storage like Carolyn Dain and her husband.
Yes, sure, but they didn’t know it. Awareness for them had ceased; time for them stood still. By the grace of God I had been granted more minutes, hours, days, months, maybe years, and here I was killing off some of that precious gift in another dark, lifeless stakeout. Didn’t I owe it to myself, to Kerry and Emily, to use what time I had left in healthier, pleasanter ways?