No answer.
“Mrs. Vega, I know your husband hires illegals for Containers, Inc. Is that why he-”
“What the hell’s the big idea, pancho?”
He was standing in the hall doorway, a beefy kid who walked soft for his size: I hadn’t heard him come into the house and apparently neither had Mrs. Vega. He was about twenty, wearing a thick down jacket and a pair of Levi’s jeans; his bandit’s mustache would give him a ferocious look even when he wasn’t angry. He was angry now. His eyes blazed, the cords in his neck bulged, and he stood with his feet apart and his hands fisted on his hips. There was nothing belligerent in the pose. His anger struck me as the protective variety.
“What you bothering my mother for?” he said. “Asking so damn many questions?”
“Are you Paco?”
“Yeah, I’m Paco.” He took a couple of steps into the parlor. “Who’re you, man? INS green-carder?”
“No.”
“You sure talk like one.”
I stood up, doing it slowly so he wouldn’t get any wrong ideas. “I’m a private investigator,” I said. “Working on behalf of your father’s employer, Thomas Lujack. I’ll show you my ID if you want to see it.”
“… You trying to get Lujack off? The murder charge?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, you’re wasting your time. That marrano is guilty as hell. I hope they stick his ass in the gas chamber.”
Mrs. Vega said, “Paco!” in a thick-sharp voice.
“Sure, Mama, I know-you don’t like that kind of talk in your house. Well, I don’t like you drinking so much wine either. What good’s that stuff gonna do? Bring him back, make things better?”
“Paco,” she said, and this time it was like a moan. Softly she began to cry.
He said, “Christ,” but he went over and put his hand gently on her shoulder, leaned down to whisper something in Spanish. The words didn’t make her stop crying, but they did make her put her glass on the table and then reach up to clutch at his hand.
“Why do you think Thomas Lujack is guilty?” I asked Paco.
“What I think is my business.”
“Why don’t you like him, then? Something to do with your father?”
“Look, man, why don’t you get out of here? There’s nothing for you in this house.”
“You have any idea where your father is?”
“No. I wouldn’t tell you if I did.”
“Why not? You wouldn’t be afraid he had something to do with Frank Hanauer’s murder, would you?”
“What? Man, you’re crazy. Get out of here.”
“Why does he go to San Diego, Paco? Why to Mexico?”
He pulled away from his mother, stood flat-footed again with his hands curled into fists. “I’m not gonna tell you again. Out, right now, or I throw you out.”
He meant it; it was in his eyes. I had pushed him as far as you could push a man in his own home. I raised my own hands, slowly, and held them palms outward as I said, “I’m going. I didn’t come here to make trouble. All I’m after is the truth.”
“You got everything you’re gonna get out of us. So don’t come back. Understand?”
Without answering I moved over to the doorway. Paco stood watching until I passed through into the hall; then he turned back to his mother. She was still sobbing quietly. Just before I opened the front door, I heard him speak to her in Spanish. He didn’t know that I had a working knowledge of the language, so he didn’t bother to lower his voice. The words were as clear as they were bitter.
“Hush, Mama,” he said. “He’s not worth your tears.”
He didn’t mean me. He was talking about his father.
* * * *
When I got back to my car I found that somebody had broken into it. The passenger door had been jimmied open, snapping the lock so that I ended up having to tie the door shut with a piece of wire. The only thing of real value, the mobile phone unit, was intact and undamaged, which meant that the thief hadn’t had the right tools or was scared off or was just some poor desperate junkie looking for cash or small valuables. In any case the glove compartment had been hurriedly rifled.
An old clunker like mine, I thought. Parked on the street for little more than an hour, nothing in it worth stealing except a difficult-to-remove cellular phone, and it had still been an instant target.
Life in the Mission at the beginning of the nineties.
Life in the goddamn city.
* * * *
Chapter 7
Nick Pendarves was not in the Hideaway when I got there. I took the same stool I had occupied on my last visit and asked Max, the laconic bartender, if Pendarves had come and gone. He said no. I tried to get him to talk about the incident last night, but he wasn’t having any. Pulling words out of him was like trying to pull wood splinters out of your own behind: slow, frustrating, and ultimately futile.
Most of the regulars were there, in their customary places. One who wasn’t in his customary place was shy Douglas Mikan, who was usually engaged in a chess match with Harry Briggs, the retired civil servant, in a back-wall booth. There was no sign of Briggs tonight and Mikan was sitting at the bar, one stool removed from mine, with his nose aimed downward into a glass of draft beer. As always, he wore a suit and tie-the only one of the regulars who dressed formally. His mother’s influence, I supposed. Her name had been Grace, according to the bar gossip I’d picked up, and she had also been a regular until her death a couple of years ago.
Tonight there was a remote look on Douglas’s chubby moon face, as if he had ridden his thoughts to some faraway place-a pleasant enough place, because he didn’t look unhappy. Dreamer, I thought; wanderer in an imaginary world, maybe, that was far kinder to him than the one he lived in.
“How come no chess tonight, Douglas?” I asked him.
He mumbled something that sounded like, “Harry didn’t come in,” without looking at me.
“Well, how about a game with me?” It was better than just sitting here at the bar, doing nothing while I waited. “I won’t give you much competition but I’ll try like hell.”
The invitation seemed to please him. He accepted, asked Max for the chess set, which was kept behind the bar, and we went to one of the booths and set up a game. I tried to draw him out about Pendarves’s troubles while we played, but he was as reticent as Max. Between moves he sat staring at the board, as if I weren’t even there. So I sat quiet, too, and brooded about Rafael Vega.
Who had called Vega at ten thirty last night? And why? The call could have had something to do with the alleged attempt on Pendarves’s life; the timing was about right. But if there was a connection, what was it? And why hadn’t he come home last night or shown up at work today? There were a lot of other questions I wanted answered too: Had Vega had anything to do with Frank Hanauer’s murder? Why did he make periodic trips to San Diego and Mexico? Why did his wife drink too much wine and react so strongly to what was, after all, only a twenty-four-hour absence? Why did his son think he was unworthy? And why did Paco dislike Thomas Lujack so much?
Douglas beat me quickly and badly, twice, and then muttered something about having things to do at home. I was no challenge to his abilities; I wouldn’t have wanted to keep playing me either. He thanked me politely and waddled off, and I went back to sit at the bar with what was left of my beer.
After a while Peter Vandermeer came up next to me to order a fresh drink. He was the elderly amateur historian who had staked a claim to the other back booth, where he pored over his books and pamphlets. We exchanged hellos, and he proceeded to tell me an amusing anecdote about Emperor Norton, one of San Francisco’s legendary characters, who in the 1870s had proclaimed himself Emperor of the United States and Defender of Mexico. The anecdote was good enough so that I bought his drink for him. He gave me a wink and a sly smile along with his thank-you; he seemed pleased with himself, as if he’d done something clever. Hell, he probably had. I’d paid for his drink, hadn’t I?