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I called Eastside Meat Packers, to find out if Bright had gone to work today. Negative. This time he hadn’t even bothered to call in and it had cost him his job. So if what I’d witnessed last night was in fact a drug buy, it could be that Bright was too stoned or strung out today to drive to Emeryville, which in turn made it likely that he was still somewhere in that San Mateo apartment complex. The thought made me feel a little more positive.

As I watched Tamara at her Mac computer, it occurred to me that if I wasn’t so damn stubborn and technophobic and rooted in the old ways, and had learned computer skills myself long ago, I could run DMV checks myself instead of having to rely on her all the time. I could be sitting down there in San Mateo with a laptop doing two things at once, not killing time but making good use of it. Too late for this old dog to learn new tricks? Probably, given my disposition and temperament. The world wasn’t mine any longer; it belonged to Tamara and her generation. And that included the detective business... her business now as much as mine. Why not step aside then, let her take it all the way into the twenty-first century? She was fully capable of making it grow and prosper in the new millenium as I never could.

I was brooding on that when she said, “Got it. Want me to print it out for you?”

“No. Just read it off.”

“Ford’s registered to Kirsten Sabat, S-a-b-a-t, nineteen-o-nine Third Avenue, San Mateo.”

Nineteen-o-nine Third Avenue was the address of the apartment complex. I worked my memory, but I couldn’t recall if Kirsten Sabat had been one of the names on the mailboxes. Too many names, too late at night, and I’d been too focused on Charlie Bright.

Tamara asked, “Want me to run a driver’s license and employment check on her?”

“Might as well.” I was already on my feet, shrugging into my overcoat. “But it’s low prority. Dingo, Jackie Spoons, Annette Byers’ background first.”

“Right. I should have something pretty soon on the father of her bastard kid. You going to San Mateo?’

I nodded. “Keep me updated.”

“You do the same, hear?”

Tamara called sooner than expected, and not for the reason she’d indicated. I was still in the city, just climbing the entrance ramp to 101 South near the city’s best new construction in years, Pac Bell Park, when the car phone buzzed.

She said, “Man just called for you. Nick Kinsella.”

“About time. What’d he say?”

“Wants to see you. Said he’s got something for you.”

“Tell you what it is?”

“Wouldn’t say.”

“Where is he? Blacklight Tavern?”

“Yup.”

“Change of plans then,” I said. “The Blacklight and Kinsella first, then San Mateo.”

16

“Man, you’re in some big hurry,” Kinsella said. “I figure it can’t be more than ten minutes since I talked to the girl in your office. What’d you do, fly over here?”

“I was in the neighborhood. What’ve you got for me, Nick?”

“Dingo, that’s what I got.”

“What about Dingo?”

He made his chair creak and groan, leaning back. His desk was strewn with more food remains — Chinese takeout, probably from the previous night — and the butts and ashes from a couple of dozen dead black stogies. The air in his office was dead, too, murdered by tobacco smoke laden with carcinogens. We were the only two people in there trying to breathe it this morning.

He tore the wrapper off another stogie, bit off one crooked end, fired it with a gold-and-platinum lighter. Taking his time, enjoying himself. That was Kinsella: fat, sloppy, corrupt, with a flair for the dramatic and a vicious streak on the one hand, a tempering one of generosity toward people he liked on the other. I didn’t prod him. When you dealt with Kinsella, you played down on his level, according to his rules, or you didn’t play at all.

“Ah,” he said when he had the stogie drawing to his satisfaction. “Nothing like a good cigar. ‘A woman’s just a woman, but a good cigar’s a smoke.’ Who was it said that?”

“I’m not sure. Kipling, maybe.”

“Who’s Kipling?”

“Long-dead British writer.”

“Yeah, a limey. Figures.” He made the chair creak and groan again. “So like I said, Dingo.”

I waited.

“I figure maybe he’s your shooter,” Kinsella said.

I could feel myself go tight, inside and out, all at once. “Bald? Bushy eyebrows? In his forties?”

“So I hear.”

“Who is he?”

“Nobody much. One of these shit-for-brains guys, apes walking around on two legs. Like Bluto, you remember Bluto from the other night? Big guys, tough, but zombies from the neck up.”

“What’s his real name?”

“That I don’t have. Nobody seems to know.”

“His connection to Jackie Spoons?”

“Word is he worked for Jackie awhile,” Kinsella said, “about a year ago. They had some hassle over money — Jackie figured Dingo screwed up on a collection, tried to hold out a little for himself. Beat the crap out of him, busted his leg. What I told you, he’s crazy. Jackie, I mean.”

“Where can I find Dingo?”

“You figure I’m right, he’s the guy almost put you in a pine box?”

I said between my teeth, “I’ll know that when I see him.”

“You figure on putting him in a pine box?”

“Where, Nick?”

“Beats me. Beats everybody I talked to.”

“Who knows him besides Jackie?”

“Nobody knows him, me included. He’s what you call your mystery man.”

“Maybe Jackie knows where he is.”

“Uh-uh. He ain’t had nothing to do with Dingo since the hassle; he can’t help you. Stay away from him, you know what’s good for you. That’s from him as well as me.”

“Is Dingo a crankhead?”

“What you think? He worked for Jackie, even Jackie uses what he peddles.” Kinsella shook his head. “Drugs, they’re for the apes and the schmucks and the losers. You got to keep a clear head, you want to climb up on top and stay there. No drugs, no booze. No broads, either, except once in a while. Just a lot of good cigars.”

“Anything else you can tell me?”

He shrugged, blew smoke at me, shrugged again. “You got your favor, my friend,” he said. “You got all I got. Like they say, now the ball’s in your court.”

The Ford Taurus was no longer parked in front of the San Mateo apartment complex. Nor anywhere else in the vicinity; I drove around two full blocks to make sure the car hadn’t been moved to another spot.

It bothered me a little, but not as much as it would have before I talked to Kinsella. I found a place to put my car and went to have another look at the mailboxes in the building’s vestibule. Kirsten Sabat — Apt. 411. That was something, anyway.

I was about to ring the bell when two young women wearing flight attendants’ outfits and dragging wheeled suitcases emerged from the elevator inside. San Francisco International was not that far from here; a lot of the apartments were probably occupied by airline personnel. These two were in a hurry. They came out through the entrance doors without a glance my way or a backward look as they clattered down the steps. Sometimes problems get solved before they develop, and this was one of them. I caught the door before it shut and slipped inside with the same straight-ahead purpose, as if I belonged there as much as the stewardesses.