“The organized rings need financing to get started, don’t they? So they can hire brokers and drivers, buy vehicles if needed?”
“That’s right.”
“Where does the money come from? Strictly from Mexican interests, or are there Anglos who play dark angels?”
“There are Anglos,” Orloff said. Not without reluctance, as if he didn’t like to admit that some of his own countrymen could also be scum. “Is that the reason you’re here? You know someone, an Anglo, who might be involved with the coyotes?”
“Maybe, maybe not. As I told you, I’m not sure of my facts just yet.”
“If you have knowledge of felony activity involving the federal government, it’s your duty-”
“Let’s not start that again, Mr. Orloff. I know my duty- to the federal government, and to my profession, my clients, and myself. When there’s anything definite to report, I’ll report it. You have my word on that.”
“I hope your word is your bond,” he said sententiously, and made a little production of switching off his tape recorder.
We both got on our feet. He didn’t offer to shake hands before I went out; neither did I. Each of us had our reason. He didn’t want to touch a private detective of questionable moral fiber and possible liberal cant. I didn’t want to touch an asshole.
* * * *
The sky had quit its copious leaking during the night, and this new day wasn’t as gray or damp as the past several had been. There were patches of blue here and there in the overcast, through which a pale winter sun kept trying to shine. Hallelujah. The wind was still gusty and chill, but then you couldn’t expect too much sudden improvement in the weather at this time of year. I took advantage of the dry air and pale sun by walking over to the building where Bates and Carpenter had its offices, three blocks from the INS encampment. I thought that since I was in the neighborhood, I’d take a little of my time and a little of Kerry’s to see how she was bearing up.
But she hadn’t come in today. Her secretary, Ellen Stilwell, didn’t know exactly why-just that Kerry had called to say she had some “personal business” to attend to.
“Did she mention her mother?” I asked.
“No. No, she didn’t.”
Downstairs in the lobby I shut myself inside a public telephone booth and called Kerry’s home number. The line burred to itself eight or nine times, and I was about to hang up when Cybil’s frail voice said, “Hello?”
I cleared my throat. “May I speak to Kerry, please.”
“… She’s at work.”
“Oh, of course. What time did she-”
“Who is this?”
I said my name. “Cybil, I hope you’re feeling-”
She hung up on me. Fast and hard.
* * * *
It was foggy in Daly City. But then, it is almost always foggy in Daly City, no matter what the weather happens to be in San Francisco and other parts of the Bay Area. Something to do with proximity to the ocean and wind currents. Wisps of the stuff crawled along the rooflines of Teresa Melendez’s white-frame cottage, blew down into the empty carport. The Honda Civic wasn’t anywhere on the street either. Nor was Rafael Vega’s Buick Skylark.
Another impasse.
Well?
* * * *
Eberhardt was at his desk when I came into the office, reading what looked to be magazine tear sheets with an expression of mildly horrified fascination. He put the sheets down in a hurry when he saw me, as if I’d caught him doing something not quite wholesome.
“Oh,” he said, “it’s you.”
“Who’d you think it might be? The vice squad?”
“Huh?”
“What’ve you got there? Dirty pictures?”
“This? Nah.”
“What then? You were pretty engrossed.”
“Yeah, well … never mind. Where you been all morning?”
“Working. How about you?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Waiting for a call right now. You talk to Glickman?”
“No. Did you?”
“Little while ago. One guess what he had to say.”
“Coleman Lujack fired him, and us by extension.”
“Right. We’re to keep our noses out of Coleman’s business from now on. That’s a direct quote from Coleman.”
“The hell with him. You have a chance to do much digging into his finances yet?”
“Some. Provocative stuff but none of it conclusive.”
“Same here. Provocative and nasty.”
I told him about my talks with Coleman and Paco Vega, my so-far uncorroborated guess about Rafael Vega and Teresa Melendez, and what I’d learned from Orloff about the coyotes. He agreed that it was a good bet the Lujacks had gotten themselves mixed up in the “travel agenting” of illegal aliens, probably through Vega and his contacts, and probably by financing one of the coyote rings. Eb’s check on Coleman had turned up a situation parallel to his brother’s: He, too, appeared to be living a little too high off the hog for his share of the Containers, Inc., profits. At a conservative guess, each of them had to be raking in around fifty thousand dollars annually as their share of the scam.
“But there’s no hard proof of any of it,” Eberhardt said. “And we still don’t know who killed Hanauer and why. And if you’re right about Thomas, who killed him and why.”
“I’ll lay you odds Coleman and Vega had a hand in at least one of those murders and probably both.”
“His own brother?”
“Why not? Cain killed Abel, didn’t he?”
“Who? Oh, the Bible … yeah.”
“Vega’s the key,” I said. “Find him, we find the answers and the proof we need.”
“He’s in Mexico by now. Why else would he have disappeared?”
“I’m not so sure, Eb. I think maybe he’s still around.”
“Because of what Paco said about him shacking up with some bimbo? Hell, the kid could be wrong. So could you about Teresa Melendez.”
“I’ll find out by tonight, one way or another.”
“You intend to keep working on this, huh? Even though we’ve been canned?”
“Sure. Don’t you?”
He gave me his long-suffering look. “We’re on shaky ground and you know it. Coleman and the widow could make big trouble for us-harassment, invasion of privacy. We could lose our licenses.”
“Not if we bust the whole thing wide open.”
“Big if. I say play it smart and back off. Turn what we have over to that INS guy-what’s his name, Orloff? — and let him handle it.”
“No,” I said.
“Why the hell not?”
“We were hired to prove Thomas didn’t kill his partner. We haven’t proved it yet.”
“Ahh. His hands were dirty whether he ran Hanauer down or not. Just as dirty as Coleman’s and Vega’s. What difference does it make if he was guilty of homicide or not?”
“It makes a difference,” I said. “You want to give up on the case, go ahead. But I’m going to see it through.”
He shook his head. “You are one stubborn wop, you know that?”
“So you keep telling me. Anything new on Pendarves?”
“Well, he’s not hiding out at Antonio Rivas’s place, I can tell you that. There wouldn’t be room. In addition to Rivas there’s his wife, three kids, mother-in-law, and pregnant seventeen-year-old unmarried niece-all in five rooms on Bryant Street.”
“What about the information Rivas was holding back?”
“I couldn’t get it out of him. I doubt if has anything to do with Pendarves anyway.”
“The coyote angle?”
“That’s my guess,” he said. “Rivas got a whiff of it, but he’s not talking on account of he’s afraid of Vega.”
I asked if he’d checked with the Hall of Justice for an update on the police search for Pendarves. He had, and there were no new developments. And no leads at all on how Pendarves might have gotten out of the city and the Bay Area, if he had gotten out. One of the people they’d contacted was Pendarves’s ex-wife, Jenna, in Chico; her comment was that she hadn’t had any dealings with him since the divorce and that she hoped he rotted in hell. Her sister was even more outspoken. If he showed up around there, she said, she’d blow his head off with her shotgun.