Well, Stan could remake himself, too. He made his round pleasant face what he thought was tough and headed toward the instructor, who was wearing a tank top and black tights and black running shoes, standing in the front of the check-in desk with his arms crossed.
Trouble was, he looked like Bluto. His neck was six inches wider than his head, his shoulders were cantaloupes, his pectorals watermelons, his biceps grapefruits, his thighs oak trees. But Stan would not be intimidated by a sentient vegetable garden. He had learned a lot talking with the landlady, had seen what had worked for Kearny.
“So how much did Eddie Graff stiff you for?” he snarled.
The little head on top of the massive body inclined so slitted blue eyes could look at him. “We don’t like bill collectors in here, Jack. I think I’ll punch your lights out.”
Stan rushed outside to wait for Kearny, who was telling the mirror athlete in a low, scummy voice, “Eddie knicked me for a bundle on the daily double over to Golden Gate Field. I wanta pay off — it ain’t good, be late in my business, y’know what I mean? But the old broad at his place said he’d moved.”
“Talk to Uncle Harry, runs the U-Haul place on Pier Thirty-three. He rented Eddie a trailer to move his stuff.”
Trin Morales, having replaced the stolen Acura tires with other stolen Acura tires, was eating a fajita and drinking Tecate from the bottle in a little cantina on South Van Ness. Here all the faces were brown, here Spanish in many different flavors was spoken, here all signs were in Spanish, all goods and foodstuffs those that Latinos favored.
If Morales ever felt at home anywhere, it was in places like this. He could scan the faces, listen to the voices, could pick out Mexican, Salvadoran, Uruguayan, Guatemalan... This one had no green card, that one was also an illegal but with purchased documentation... It was why Trin was a good detective. He could see inside people’s minds to their emotional states.
It was just that he didn’t give a damn about those states.
Now, that girl of 14 just came in, she would have crossed the border at San Diego no more than three nights ago. He could see it in her frightened doe stance, the large dark liquid eyes never still, the big-sister’s dress that hung off her developing body. Yeah, well, he’d introduce her to the realities of life here in el Norte: she’d be in his bed by dark tonight, or on an INS deportation bus to the border by dark tomorrow.
Then an item on the Spanish-language newscast from the little blurry TV over the counter froze him in place.
There were no leads in the murder of labor union leader Georgi Petlaroc, shot down in gangster style on Post Street early that morning. Many Latinos were members of the Hotel and Restaurant Local 3 of which Petlaroc was president, and...
Georgi Petlaroc, who surely, through who knew how many cutouts, had to be the man paid Morales to scope out the Kiely mansion, had been shot down in Post Street just hours after Assemblyman Rick Kiely had asked Morales if he knew the man.
I crook my finger, you come running — comprende? Or maybe after tonight I won’t need you. We’ll see.
Maybe after tonight I won’t need you.
Maybe tonight the guys I already hired will get Petlaroc.
They had. The Trin knew it. Knew it.
Knowledge meant power; and power meant profit. How could he profit from this knowledge? He would have to be careful, he would have to be sly, because there was mortal danger here — the powerful politician already had hired hit men to kill the powerful union leader. But there was a hell of a lot of money to be had here, too, if he played it right.
Trin Morales paid up and went out into South Van Ness, the just-pubescent illegal Latina temporarily spared his attentions.
The stubbed-off Embarcadero Freeway was gone, courtesy of the Loma Prieta earthquake. But gone even before the quake was most of the shipping business that had made San Francisco’s Embarcadero famous from the gold rush days until well after World War II. Most of it had crossed the bay to the busy Oakland waterfront, more of it had migrated north to Seattle, much of it south to San Pedro and San Diego, and some of it even — post-NAFTA — further south to Mexico ports.
In its place had come gentrification: upscale restaurants, high-rise condos and apartment buildings, cobbled roadways, shrubbery and chrome and glass and bay views, even a palm-lined esplanade. The Port Authority was more than happy to lease space in the huge, shadowy, empty, echoing piers north of the Bay Bridge to small businesses that could pay rent.
Uncle Harry’s U-Haul faced the Embarcadero and Telegraph Hill from Pier 33. Through dusty interior windows Kearny could see five huddled U-Haul trailers in the dimness of the empty pier. In the office was a desk with an old IBM Selectric on it and a blond secretary behind it typing an invoice. No computers for Uncle Harry. Beyond her was a closed inner office.
Plink. A long pause. Plink. Another pause. Plink.
She did what passed for cogitation with her. “Two s’s in Mississippi, right?”
“Four,” said Kearny. “We need the current address of one of your clients.”
She jerked the invoice from the Selectric and crumpled it into a ball she threw into a wastebasket beside her desk; to the basket was clipped a black miniature backboard with a black rim and a white net and the legend HERO HOOPS. When the paper went through the net, the backboard gave a throaty roar of electronic crowd approval and several seconds of loud clapping.
“Hey, that’s terrific!” exclaimed Stan the Man.
Kearny looked at Groner as if he had just regressed to a six-year-old wearing short pants. The blonde was ratcheting a fresh invoice into her typewriter.
“Guy we’re looking for is named Eddie Graff,” said Kearny.
“Only Uncle Harry knows stuff like that.” Plink. A long pause. Plink. Another pause. Plink. The longest pause. More cogitation. She was using up a year’s worth of thoughtful expressions here. “He’s not in.”
“We’ll wait.”
“One p in Mississippi, right?”
“Two.”
She jerked out the new invoice and crumpled it up and threw it. A hook shot this time. The crowd cheered. Fans clapped. She ratcheted in a new invoice form. Plink. A long pause. Plink. Another pause. Plink.
Kearny found a chair and sat down. Were he Uncle Harry, he would be bald and have ulcers the size of dinner plates by now.
Stan was wondering if he could practice Hero Hoops while they waited. He really did need to sharpen up the old game.
“I guess I was just off my game,” said Giselle savagely.
The recreation room was old-fashioned, with long drapes in graceful folds, floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on the miniature golf course where she had lost miserably. There were mounted heads on the walls, a billiards table, a Ping-Pong table, a wet bar, and a beautifully polished folding games table of various hardwoods intricately inlaid with mother-of-pearl.
Paul’s wife came in. Giselle had been looking forward to meeting the woman who had managed to possess, at least serially and perhaps concurrently, both principal players in a half-billion-dollar electronics business. She expected Demi Moore’s lush body, Sigourney Weaver’s icy intellect, Sandra Bullock’s innocent facial beauty hiding inner complexities.
She got Red Ridinghood on the way to Grandma’s house, Cinderella without her slipper, Little Bo-peep before the sheep got lost. This was Bernardine’s femme fatale?