The way it looked, Thomas Lujack’s recent death hadn’t done any more to slacken activity at Containers, Inc., than had Frank Hanauer’s. The wheels of industry keep right on grinding, all right, through thick and thin; dead bosses have about as much effect as a ten-minute coffee break. I parked in the lot and hustled inside through the rain, laughing at myself again. Mr. Metaphor: Second-Rate Philosophy at Cut-Rate Prices.
Teresa Melendez wasn’t at her usual station; this time I got to talk to a tight-lipped guy in a corduroy jacket who seemed annoyed at having to work the switchboard. Yes, Mr. Coleman Lujack was in today but he wasn’t seeing anybody. I gave my name and said my business was urgent and asked him to please request ten minutes of Mr. Lujack’s time. Reluctantly, he used the intercom; talked and listened for ten seconds, disconnected, and said in I-told-you-so tones, “Mr. Lujack is sorry, he isn’t seeing anybody today.”
Especially not me, I thought.
I said, “Rafael Vega. He come back to work?”
“No. And he still hasn’t called in. Now if that’s all, I have work to do.”
“Me too,” I said to myself on the way out. “But nobody seems to want to help me do it.”
* * * *
The office was locked up tight; Eberhardt still hadn’t put in an appearance. There was only one message on the answering machine, and it made me swear out loud. It was from a screwball Hollywood TV producer named Bruce Littlejohn, who had latched onto me after the publicity surrounding my abduction and escape. He was bound and determined that he was going to make a TV movie about my life; I was bound and determined he wasn’t. I’d told him so the last time we talked, not mincing words. That had been over a month ago, and I’d dared to believe that he had finally gone away. Fat chance. He was like malaria or herpes: Once you were exposed to him, you couldn’t seem to get rid of him.
I didn’t listen to his message; as soon as I heard his voice I flipped the switch to rewind. While some old coffee reheated on the hot plate, I took care of my mail and got no answer on a call to Rafael Vega’s home number. The coffee tasted stale, and the sandwich I’d bought on the way from Containers, Inc., wasn’t much better. I was forcing down the last of each when Eberhardt showed up.
He came in blowing and shivering and smacking his gloved hands together. “Christ, it’s cold out there. Windchill factor must be zero. Some damn weather.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Makes you want to stick a feather up your ass and fly south for the winter.”
He stared at me for a beat and then laughed. “That’s pretty good,” he said. “You make that up or what?”
“Heard it from Bob Hope.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.” It was something my old man used to say on days like this. I hadn’t thought about it in two decades or more. Why it should have popped into my mind today was a question I didn’t want to have answered, either by Eb or myself. The less I dwelt on my old man, the better.
While Eberhardt poured himself a cup of coffee, I told him about my conversation with Eileen Lujack. He said, ” ‘The coyotes are going to make us rich.’ What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Something to do with illegals, maybe. Seems to me I’ve heard the word before, in that context.”
He shrugged. “You think it’s important?”
“It might be. The money angle is, that’s for sure.”
“Yeah. Thomas couldn’t have afforded a four-hundred-thousand-dollar piece of property five years ago, not on his annual draw and what the company was worth back then. We should have dug deeper into his background, I guess. But hell, he was our client; we weren’t trying to get anything on him.”
“Or Coleman.”
“Or Coleman. So what do you think? They’re mixed up in something a lot shadier than hiring undocumented aliens?”
“That’s how it adds up. And if they are, Hanauer had to know about it too. It’s got to be the hidden motive in both murders.”
“You really think Pendarves was framed, huh?”
“More so all the time.”
“But why? It just doesn’t make sense with Thomas the victim.”
“Maybe Pendarves has some idea. And that’s another thing that keeps bothering me: Why haven’t the police found a trace of him since Tuesday night?”
“He picked a hole somewhere and pulled it in after him.”
“I hope that’s it.”
“What other explanation is there?”
“He could be dead,” I said.
“Dead?”
“Murdered, just like Thomas. Can you think of a better way to cement a frame against him?”
“Christ. Killed the same night as Thomas, you mean?”
“Before or after, and his body dumped somewhere. That could be the reason his car was found abandoned in Golden Gate Park.”
He thought about it. “I like the other theory better.”
“So do I … for now. If Pendarves is alive and holed up somewhere, it figures to be right here in the city. And that probably means somebody’s hiding him.”
“One of his pals from the Hideaway?”
“Or one of his pals from work. Antonio Rivas, for instance.”
“No way,” Eberhardt said. “I told you, they weren’t close.”
“You also told me Rivas was holding something back. Maybe it involves Pendarves.”
“Rivas as the third witness? I thought we ruled that out.”
“We did. As a matter of fact, I’m inclined to rule out the third-witness angle entirely.”
“That makes two of us.”
“What I’m thinking,” I said, “is that maybe Rivas knows something more about the Lujacks and their tie-in with the illegals. And that maybe he also let that something slip to Pendarves.”
“So you want me to have another talk with him.”
“Wouldn’t hurt. Wouldn’t hurt for you to check into Coleman’s background and life-style either … see if he’s been spending more money the past five years than he should have been.”
“Now? I thought we were still on hold until Thomas’s widow makes up her mind.”
“She’ll come through. Why waste time?”
“Uh-huh. All right, what the hell-I want answers as much as you do.” He drained his cup as I got to my feet. “So what’re you gonna be doing while I tackle Coleman and Rivas?”
“Finding out what happened to Rafael Vega,” I said.
* * * *
La Moderna market was on Howard Street, half a block off Sixteenth in the heart of the Mission. A display window full of fresh fish and hanging strands of chorizo flanked the entrance on the left; on the right under an awning were open bins of vegetables and green and red chilis. There were customers inside but the place wasn’t crowded; it was a little after three and still raining hard. The butcher shop and meat counter ran the bodega’s full length and was staffed by two men in blood-spattered aprons. One of them, using a cleaver to whack a chunk of beef into soup meat, was Paco Vega.
Finding him hadn’t been difficult. Eberhardt had neglected to ask the Vegas’ talkative neighbor where Paco worked, but when I’d looked her up twenty minutes ago, she’d given me the information without any prodding. While I was in Albert Alley I’d rung the doorbell at the Vega flat, on the chance that Mrs. Vega was home. There had been no answer.
Paco was intent on his work and didn’t see me right away. The other butcher was telling a heavyset woman in black that they didn’t have any sesos today; she didn’t seem to want to believe him. I stood alone at the counter, watching Paco wield the cleaver. He did it with short, clean, professional strokes, but the strokes were harder than necessary; there was a dark, set expression on his face, and each time the blade thumped down, white muscle-knots appeared at the corners of his mouth. Paco Vega was an angry young man.