Ignoring Ballard, the woman from the rear table swept by on her way to the cash register. Tall, angular, languid, remarkable breasts, good legs, but with notably heavy jaws and brows, hint of five o’clock shadow. Transvestite? Or somebody halfway through a sex-change operation, popping progesterone and estrogen while waiting for the surgeon’s knife to make the changeover final and complete? Or just a woman with a high testosterone level? In San Francisco, any of the above, and just possibly all at once.
Her perfume reminded him of Amalia. Had the strike vote gone through? Undoubtedly. Were the St. Mark picket lines already up? Probably. Amalia had joked to look for her on the lines; would she be there now, shivering in the 3:00 A.M. chill? Maybe. He would go up to...
“You figured it out,” growled the damaged voice.
He looked up. Mood Indigo’s wide yet wiry black bartender was standing over him, eyes still hidden behind their dark glasses, big bull ring in his nose glinting in the subdued light.
“How the hell do you eat wearing that thing?”
The bartender jerked a thumb, led the way to the table where the woman had been sitting. Ballard picked up his cup and followed him. They sat down across from one another.
“I don’t have to,” said the bald man.
He reached up into his nose, gingerly unhooked the ring from it. The septum wasn’t pierced; the ring just clipped on like a clip-on earring. He was rubbing his nose vigorously. He sighed in relief.
“Made of light plastic,” he said. “Otherwise...”
When he spoke his voice was different, the rasp of damaged vocal cords was gone, and he was taking off his black glasses. He laid them on the paper napkin at his place to laugh across the table at Larry Ballard’s startled expression.
The bald bartender from Mood Indigo was Bart Heslip.
Chapter Ten
He held up his hands, palm out, in the universal gesture of surrender. “Don’t say it,” he said.
Ballard said it. “It was you in the cops’ composite.”
“I cannot tell a lie.”
He grinned his familiar wide white grin. With the bull ring gone from his nose, and the shades from his eyes, if he’d still had his mustache and wasn’t bald as an eight ball, he might have been the old Bart Heslip.
“Since I knocked Petrock on his butt in Queer Street last night, I knew the cops would be going through the ’Loin looking for me — which meant I’d have to keep on truckin’ at Mood Indigo. Didn’t want them to get told by some relief bartender that a guy fit their description hadn’t shown up for work. So I had to be somebody else, quick.” He ran his fingers over his bald head and nude upper lip. “Like the new me?”
Ballard pushed the nose ring away as if it were something dead. “Really cool, man.”
A bulky man in a light tan topcoat and carrying a briefcase knocked at the NO ADMITTANCE door behind the counter. He had eyes like a rivet gun. The door opened, a face peered out, Tan Topcoat was admitted, the door closed.
“And that’s some voice you’ve got to go with it.”
“Yeah. Subtle.” Heslip went into character. “I could of been a contender.” He switched back to his usual voice. “It ain’t easy to do, makes my throat raw.” He vigorously rubbed his nose with a flattened pink palm. “Damn ring drives me wild, too. But it’s a good disguise — then you walk into Mood Indigo right in front of the cops. I was afraid you’d use my name—”
“Hell, I didn’t even recognize you.”
“You didn’t see me moving around. I’d of been a subject, you’d of recognized me right away. Thing is, those same two cops spent a couple hours grilling me when that old dancer, Chandra, got killed in her house on Greenwich Street.”
“That was quite a few years back, Bart.”
“They might be pond scum, but they ain’t dumb.”
“Why were you at Queer Street in the first place? Why are you bartending at Mood Indigo?”
“Cat paid me a lotta money to do both things, Larry. But first you gotta tell me the rap on these cops.”
“I front-tailed them from Mood Indigo — here, as a matter of fact. Sat close enough to listen in as they talked.”
“Maybe they burned you. I mentioned Ace in the Hole—”
“No way. I pretended I was waiting for a boyfriend, it took me right off their radar screens.”
“Blind prejudice do have its uses.” They drank coffee. “So what’s on their narrow minds? How chief a suspect am I?”
“There’re plenty of others,” said Ballard with an optimism he didn’t feel. “During the strike vote in the Executive Council last night, Petrock stuck his big bowie knife in the table six inches from the fingers of the union’s vice-president, Rafael Huezo, who already hated his guts. Petrock also just recently ousted the former president, a hot Italian lady named Amalia Poletti, who is now organizer for the International. He was already feuding with them — and the International isn’t a bunch of pussies. Finally, he was drinking in that gay bar with the secretary-treasurer of the union, a guy named Ray Do...”
“Little guy with a worried face.”
“If you say so. Do was the last guy to officially see him alive, always on Your Hit Parade for the cops. Then there’s the homosexual angle. Petrock is big-balls macho and here he’s so well known in a Polk Gulch gay leather saloon that he’s got his own beer mug hung up over the bar.”
“Not much in that, it’s a culinary workers’ union, lots of gay members whose votes he’d want. Besides, Petrock thought he was a throwback to guys like Harry Bridges.” He sipped his coffee luxuriously — Ballard’s insistence on good coffee was catching. “I’m hearing they’ve got a lot of places to look besides the strikingly handsome guy in that composite.”
Behind Ballard, another bulky man knocked and was admitted through the NO ADMITTANCE door. While also bearing an attorney’s briefcase, he resembled an attorney the way a tarantula resembles a robin’s egg. Ballard looked toward the short-order cook for more coffee, then changed his mind and got up to pour them each a cup from the glass pot on the warmer.
When he came back, Bart said, “What are the cops doing about all those other suspects?”
“Two hours after the shooting they drove over to Oakland and tossed Ray Do out of bed so hard he bounced, but it looks like he’s clean. He was getting a ticket at the Bryant Street on-ramp to the skyway about four minutes after Petrock got shot in Post Street.”
“Mighty convenient, right there by the Hall of Justice.”
“He was driving the wrong kind of car, a beat-up old Chevy. The bartender from Queer Street saw the hit from down the block and said it was either a short limo or a long black sedan. He also said it took off for the Tenderloin.”
Heslip said drily, “Where I’d said I was working. Terrific.”
Another topcoated man with a briefcase was admitted to the NO ADMITTANCE room. His pale expressionless face looked like a plaster cast of a Neanderthal. Ballard swiveled around in his chair to watch him, turned back frowning.
Heslip asked, “How about Huezo?”
“Wide open. The wife was in bed asleep, didn’t know what time he got home. Amalia claims she was shacked up with somebody at the time of the hit, they’ll get around to checking that. They’re also questioning rank-and-file union guys, and ringing doorbells around that Polk-Post corner for eyewitnesses.”
“Lots of luck on that one.”
“Yeah. Amnesia of the eyes. They’re also checking airline passenger lists before and after the time of the murder in case somebody imported a gunman to do it. Trouble is, Bart, nobody liked Petrock and anybody could have hired somebody to ice him.”