“Paul in the men’s room?”
The kid turned around from his keyboard. “The dweeb?”
“You’d better not let the chief hear you call him a dweeb. His name is Paul Rochemont.”
“He’s a Rochemont?” The cop looked suddenly uncomfortable. “He, ah, got a phone call and took off. Sir.”
“Phone call? Who from? Took off? Where? How?” barked a suddenly steely Kearny.
“From Prestige Motors — that’s the Mercedes dealership in San Rafael.”
“How the hell did he leave? He didn’t have a car.”
“Taxi.”
“Call him at the dealership, tell him to stay put until I get there.”
Larry Ballard parked on Golden Gate Ave, fed the meter two quarters, went into the union headquarters in hopes of talking with Amalia again. Was it only twenty-four hours ago they had met? It seemed like a week. Without sleep. He hadn’t even had a chance to think of the implications of what Bart had told him last night — that it was Petrock who had hired him to punch out Petrock. It made as much sense as a Tarantino movie.
Just inside the door to Local 3, in a sad-looking potted palmetto, a spider had hung her web between several fronds. The men and women on benches along the wall looked sad and unattended, too, as if they’d been waiting a long time for someone to talk to them.
Beyond the zombies was a partitioned office with four of the kind of windows you have at a theater, with a little gouged-out place underneath to shove money or papers through. Here, it would be money for union dues.
Only one of the windows was open. Behind it on a stool was a lanky man with dusty hair and a white dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. His forearms did not look strong enough to balance a tray of food or drinks. He was listening to a joke being told in the office beyond him. His name plaque read BURNETT SEBASTIAN.
“Pardon me,” said Ballard.
Sebastian continued to listen to the joke until the punch line, “A refrigerator doesn’t fart when you take out the meat,” as Ballard said again, “Pardon me.”
The lanky man finally decided to notice him. The eyes didn’t fit the rather pleasant face: they were mean and watchful the way a boar hog’s eyes are mean and watchful when he thinks he can maybe get a tusk into your calf.
“Yeah?”
“Amalia Pelotti, please.”
“Amalia. Yeah. You have an appointment?”
Ballard didn’t. “Yes.”
Sebastian was looking down at a blotter on the desk with the month laid out on it. “I don’t see it here.”
“The appointment isn’t with you.”
With ill grace, Sebastian said, “I’ll see if she’s in.”
He left the window, went out a side door to a long hallway stretching parallel to Golden Gate past a rabbit warren of mismatched offices and partitions. On silent rubber repoman’s soles, Ballard followed him to a small messy littered office with a desk and two chairs and a trestle table piled high with union literature. From the lingering cigarette smell but no ashtray it was the office of a closet smoker. Amalia, all right.
The tall gawky union man whirled around angrily when he realized Ballard was right behind him.
“Union premises are off limits to nonmembers,” he snapped.
Ballard said, “Do you think Ms. Pelotti might be on the picket lines at the St. Mark?”
Sebastian sniffed an outraged bureaucrat’s sniff. “She’s supposed to be here during work hours.”
Ballard sat down in the visitor’s chair. “I’ll wait.”
“You will not.” He grabbed for the telephone. Ballard could picture three-hundred-pound union goons jumping up and down on his spine. He slouched his way out of the chair again.
“I will not,” he agreed.
At the corridor, he turned left, away from the front office toward the right-angle corridor leading to Golden Gate Ave. The walls were of raw Sheetrock, not even taped, but a couple of holes already had been kicked in them. There was trash on the worn linoleum floor.
The street door was the kind that could be opened from the inside by pushing a bar, but not from the outside without a key. He emerged directly across the sidewalk from his parked car. A heavyset Latino, his back to Ballard, had his hands cupped against the window to peer inside.
“Lose something?” asked Ballard pleasantly.
Trin Morales straightened up and turned. “Thought it was your car, shithead,” he said.
“Now you’re sure.”
“Hey, you got an informant, anybody like that around here?”
“I know someone,” Ballard admitted. “You’re after what?”
Morales shrugged. “Maybe a little union history, like?”
Ballard came closer, got confidential. “Listen, my source is really good. And a really nice guy. In fact, he’s on the desk right now. Name of Burnett Sebastian.”
“Hey, thanks,” said Morales in surprise. “I owe you.”
As Morales went off toward the union’s office, Ballard got out of there before Trin discovered just what he was going to owe Larry after talking with Sebastian.
Chapter Fourteen
When the old Redwood Highway had been turned into six lanes of freeway in the late ’50s, San Rafael’s Francisco Boulevard had been split right down the middle to become an access road for the skyway going through the center of town. Francisco had ended up as two boulevards zoned light industrial — East and West, according to which side of the freeway you were on. Odd numbers on the east, even on the west.
Dan Kearny knew Prestige Motors was on Francisco — DKA had done repos for them over the years, in the genteel sort of way a Mercedes dealer in Marin would prefer. But he had forgotten about East and West, so he ended up cruising the length of Francisco East without spotting his dealership. Plenty of auto agencies — Lexus, Ford, Infiniti, Toyota, Chrysler-Dodge-Plymouth-Jeep... But no Mercedes.
Lost again. Christ, was he getting senile?
He did a loop-the-loop using Fourth Street and Heatherton by the tidy new bus depot and found Prestige Motors on Francisco West next to a shopping center that specialized in heavy-duty appliances. He parked in an angled visitor’s slot.
Prestige fit its name, sprawling futuristic buildings of glass and dull silver metal designed with Germanic efficiency. On the front left corner glittered a three-story turret from which Rapunzel would have had a hell of a time hanging down her hair for Prince Charming to climb, since there were no windows: just tall glass panels separated by wide strips of that dull-polished silver metal.
Elegant salesmen scattered about, able to sell Bibles to bishops without working up a sweat. Maybe they’re holograms, thought Kearny as he entered the glittering glass cage.
“Sales manager,” said Kearny.
A Bible salesman said, “You want Peabody Chumley.” He whipped a miniature microphone from a nearby table. “Mr. Chumley to the floor,” he said, his projected voice booming out from the speakers in the corners of the sales floor a nanosecond after he spoke.
Peabody Chalmondeley was tall, lean-faced, beautifully tanned, dressed in soft tweeds: Stewart Granger in his King Solomon’s Mines days, minus only the broad-brimmed safari hat with the leopard skin band.
“Chumley here,” he said.
“Kearny here. I’m meeting Mr. Paul Rochemont—”
“Sorry, old chap, he’s already gone.”
“I left word for him to wait.”
“Quite so. But you see, someone posing as an auto mechanic took Mr. Rochemont’s auto for a ‘test run’ from the garage this morning and did not bring it back—”