“I got home too late to call. What’s your news? Something about Cybil?”
“If I have to wait to hear yours,” she said, “you can wait to hear mine.”
“Fair enough.”
“Oh God, she’s calling me. … I’d better go.”
“Don’t let her read the paper either.”
“She hasn’t looked at a newspaper since she’s been here.
She’s just not interested.” I could hear Cybil’s voice now, rising querulously in the background. “Three thirty,” Kerry said, and rang off.
I called Eberhardt’s number. Still no answer, which was just as well; I didn’t really feel like talking to him yet. We’d connect later in the day. He’d see to that, if I didn’t. He read every news item in every edition of the local papers, as if he were moonlighting as a researcher for a clipping service.
* * * *
I drove out to Daly City first. Teresa Melendez struck me as one of the least likely possibles; might as well eliminate her first if I could.
As usual, fog crawled over its hills and flats, put a shiny wetness on the streets: giant formless gray slug and its slime trail. I had to use my windshield wipers on the way across from 280 to Atlanta Street. Teresa’s Honda was under the carport, but I didn’t get a response when I rang the bell. I pushed it again, listened, heard nothing, and tried the door. Unlocked. Not smart, Teresa, not these days. I opened it and went in calling her name.
Silence.
On the floor near the couch was an empty fifth of vodka, lying on its side in a wet spot where some of it had dribbled out. An empty glass and an ashtray full of cigarette butts was on an end table. The place smelled of booze-and of stale tobacco and, faintly, of sickness.
I moved into the rear of the house. She was in one of the bedrooms, lying face down across a rumpled king-size bed, the same housecoat she’d worn yesterday bunched up over her hips. Dead drunk in a dried patch of her own vomit. I called her name again from the doorway; she didn’t stir. I went and leaned over the bed and shook her, hard. That got me a low mumbling groan. One of her hands came up, twitching, as if she were trying to brush away a bothersome fly, and then flopped down again. She didn’t wake up. Without help she wouldn’t wake up for hours yet.
Brew up some coffee, haul her into the shower? No. Instead I tugged the housecoat down over her hips and thighs, covered her with a tattered quilt that was lying at the foot of the bed. Then I set about searching the room and the rest of the house.
Coleman Lujack had been shot-and I had been shot at- with a 9mm automatic; that was what I was hunting for. I didn’t find it. Nor any other type of handgun. Nor anything at all that linked Teresa Melendez to Coleman’s murder.
Her car keys were on one of the kitchen counters. I took them out through the back door, over under the carport to the Honda. The driver’s door was open; I leaned in and looked through the glove compartment, under the seats. No gun. I unlocked the trunk and poked around in there. No gun. She could have gotten rid of it, of course, but I didn’t think so.
Back inside the house, I put the keys where I’d found them and went to look in on Teresa again. She hadn’t moved. Let her be, I thought. She’s not the one. If Coleman had come here, she might have tried to do what she’d said she would- cut his heart out and feed it to the neighbor’s dogs. But she wasn’t the kind to go stalking a man, even one she hated as much as her former boss, and then blow him away with a 9mm cannon. She was the kind to cry and wallow in self-pity and drink herself into a puking oblivion.
Not a killer, Teresa Melendez. Just another lost soul.
* * * *
South to the San Carlos hills. But it was an hour’s worth of wasted time and effort: Eileen Lujack was away somewhere again.
* * * *
Albert Alley was a little hive of activity this Sunday morning. The sun was out here-the Mission has the best weather in San Francisco-and so were the residents: young guys working on cars, kids playing ball, kids hanging out, well-dressed families on their way to and from church. Spanish music clashed with heavy-metal rock, each issuing loudly from an unseen radio. On one of the stoops, two men sat drinking beer out of cans and watching a pro basketball game on a portable TV.
There was nobody in the little garden fronting the Victorian where the Vegas lived, nobody on the stoop. I went up and worked the bell for more than a minute before I got results. When the door finally opened, it was Mrs. Vega who peered out at me.
Like Teresa Melendez, she, too, had spent Saturday night soothing her love for Rafael in an alcohol bath. Her face was puffy, her eyes bloodshot and sick with pain both physical and emotional. The smell of sour red wine blew off her like a bad wind. What was it about that son of a bitch that made his women grieve for him so intensely? Maybe he had admirable qualities underneath; maybe he was gentle and loving and kind to animals. Or maybe it was just that his women were lousy judges of men.
At first there was no recognition in Mrs. Vega’s gaze, probably because she was seeing me through the soft focus of her hangover. I watched the knowledge break in on her as I spoke.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” I said, “but I need to talk to your son. Is he here?”
“No.” She spat the word at me as if it were a bitter-tasting seed.
“Can you tell me where I can find him? It’s important that I-”
She slammed the door in my face. And locked it. And went wherever it was she went to nurture her pain.
* * * *
La Moderna Market was open for business, but the butcher shop part of it was closed; no fresh meat on Sundays. I spoke to both grocery checkers, one of whom referred me to a stockboy named Manuel. Manuel said maybe I should try the Cafe Guitarra on Guerrero Street. Paco hung out there sometimes, he said, because achiquita he liked waited tables.
* * * *
Cafe Guitarra turned out to be one of the funky products of the Mission’s New Bohemia status-a combination coffee house and music hall that featured folk, rock, punk, and flamenco guitar players. Paco wasn’t there. Three waitresses bustled around, all of them wearing white blouses and colorful peasant skirts; the second one I talked to was evidently the chiquita Paco was interested in, because her eyes got bright when I mentioned his name. He hadn’t been in so far today, she said. Had I tried La Raza?
I said, “La Raza? You mean the graphics center?”
“No. Centra Legal.”
That surprised me. “Why would he be there?”
“He works there sometimes on weekends.”
“Doing what?”
“Helping out. You know, volunteer stuff.”
“How long has he been a volunteer for them?”,
“A long time, I think.”
As I left the cafe I decided that I shouldn’t have been surprised. La Raza Centra Legal is a legal assistance and referral group, and is deeply committed to making sure that the IRCA amnesty program for undocumented aliens is properly administered. Rafael Vega had become a coyote who preyed on his own people; his son, who knew or suspected this, and who hated him as a result, had taken the exact opposite route and become a La Raza volunteer. No, I shouldn’t have been surprised at all.
* * * *
La Raza Centro Legal has its offices on the 2500 block of Mission Street. I spotted Paco Vega as soon as I walked in, sitting at a table with two other young Latinos; they were stuffing envelopes from stacks of some kind of document or flier. He didn’t see me until I called his name. His first reaction was anger, but it lasted only a couple of seconds; what replaced it was a kind of disgusted resignation. He got up and did a slow walk to where I stood.
“Man,” he said, “you’re like a dose of the clap. You just don’t go away.”
“You get around pretty good too,” I said. “I didn’t know you were an activist volunteer.”
“Yeah, well, there’s plenty you don’t know about me. What you want, pancho? You didn’t come here to talk about La Raza.”