The St. Mark, across California from the Fairmont, was not. Half a hundred pickets circled in front of the grand old hotel, not quite blocking its circular driveway, carrying signs.
Some taxis were trying to nose their way through the noisy but essentially peaceful throng; others were turning away. There was a steady buzz of conversation, some laughter. Once in a while a voice was raised in anger. A chant started.
“Check out now! Check out now!”
Ballard stood on the sidewalk scanning the pickets and he saw Amalia, wearing slacks and her windbreaker and a soft fuzzy-looking beret tipped fetchingly down above one eye. She looked dedicated. Ballard moved on to a grizzled cop who surely had his thirty in, and was watching the proceedings benignly, with his hands clasped behind his back, teetering up on his heels and then back down like a schoolteacher watching the students at recess. There was dried mustard on one lapel of his blue uniform jacket.
“You see who has the picket signs?” Ballard asked.
“There’s a guy with a stack of them in his trunk parked up on the corner of Jones.”
“That’s all red zone up there, isn’t it?” asked Ballard.
The cop looked him over and grinned. “So sue me. My old man was a longshoreman. He always said unless you went out on strike, management would piss in your beer every time.”
Ballard found the guy with the signs. He gave Ballard one.
“You’re late,” he said.
“My old lady is sick.”
“You’re still late.” The sign man was heavyset, wearing a W.C. Fields nose and the rosy capillary bloom of a heavy drinker. Ballard couldn’t help thinking of O’B. “Go and sign in with the strike captain.”
“I already did.”
Waving his picket sign around enthusiastically, Ballard found his way to Amalia, fell in beside her.
“I thought of being a scab, but I was afraid you’d hit me with a picket sign.”
She looked over at him and burst out laughing. “I would have.” They walked. “What are you doing here?”
“Mr. Sebastian back at the local says you’re supposed to be at your desk right now.”
“Mr. Sebastian is an asshole. That’s a-s-s-h-o—”
“I knew we saw things the same way.”
They walked.
“All right, then,” said Amalia suddenly. “You’ve found out my deep dark secret. I’m out here because I believe in all this bullshit. All of it. Trade union strikes, living wage for the workingman, bennies for the union rank and file—”
“Bennies?”
“Benefits.” She slanted a look over at him. She found it companionable walking side by side with Ballard among the throng. “Health and welfare insurance. Pregnancy leaves. Employer-paid day-care centers. Pension and profit sharing.”
“How’s it going?”
“Today the good guys are winning one. In the past week we’ve settled with fourteen other hotels...” She pointed across California. “Including the Fairmont and Stanford Court just down the street. Five years. More pay. Greatly expanded benefits. Job protection. And a cooperative grievance procedure.”
“Commonism!” barked Ballard in a trailer trash voice.
“Why, you’re a goddam fascist!”
Ballard raised his voice to join in the chant.
“Check out now! Check out now!”
Amalia started to giggle; it was quite startling from such a sternly beautiful woman. “But you’re my fascist,” she said.
They kept walking. Ballard felt remarkably at peace, close to Amalia in body and spirit. He considered taking her free hand with his free hand but decided it probably would be a bad move. He was right. She was preaching in ringing tones.
“What we really object to is that the St. Mark wants to start paying a lot of our workers by the hour instead of by the shift as we have it now.”
Although he considered the labor union movement to be, frankly speaking, a handful of flea dirt, if somebody like Amalia found it compelling he was perfectly willing to be influenced. But would she want a doormat for a lover? Of course not.
“You mean that now your people get paid for a whole shift even if they only work part of it.”
“That’s right, and we want to keep it that way.”
“Is that fair to management? They’re paying for something they aren’t getting—”
“Now you’re the one being the asshole,” she said.
“But I’m your—”
“Shut up.” She looked at her watch. “I really should get back to the union to check out my messages. Do you have a car?”
“Four blocks away.”
“I walked up from headquarters.”
She took the sign from his hand, gave both of them to a pudgy black girl who was walking beside them with a contemplative look on her face, obviously far away and in another galaxy.
“Sally, will you turn these in for us?”
“Huh?” The girl whirled to face them, startled. Then she broke out in a big grin. “Oh. Sure, Amy.” Then, as if recalled to her duties, she raised her voice to the common chant.
“Check out now! Check out now!”
Ballard stopped dead in the midst of the pickets. “Wait a sec, I want to remember this moment, forever, just as it is.”
Amalia was laughing again. “Fool!” she exclaimed.
Morales had parked in one of the lots up on Broadway’s nightlife strip; he was standing on the corner of Pacific and Montgomery, cattycorner across the street from Rick Kiely’s law offices, wondering if he was stupid to be there.
Ballard’s asshole buddy Sebastian had been a real bastard. When Trin had mentioned his pal Larry Ballard who’d just been there, Sebastian had started to call the cops and Morales had been forced to flee. He owed Ballard one, all right. And eventually he’d figure out how to give it to him. Meanwhile, here he was outside Kiely’s door without ammunition.
He realized that his palms were sweaty and his collar was too tight even though his tie was pulled down two inches from his thick brown throat. That night in the limo, Kiely must have impressed him more than he wanted to admit. Or maybe what had impressed him was the speed with which Petlaroc had been dispatched once the maid had told Kiely about Morales.
To hell with this crap. Trin Morales wasn’t going to let some gringo attorney face him down. He looked both ways, then danced around and through the oncoming traffic against the WAIT on surprisingly quick, light feet.
Rick Kiely’s law offices were in the ground floor of a building that bore his name. It was tricked out with reused brick, broadleaf shiny green plants, a recessed entryway, gaslights on sconces flanking the doorway. The trim around the doors and windows was black, the lettering
genuine gold-antiqued in the style of a post-gold rush Gay ’90s saloon. The windows were inset, with decorative black wooden slat shutters laid back against the walls on either side of each.
Looking inside was like looking into the movie set of an old-style attorney’s office from the turn of the century. Receptionist, secretaries, and minor associates worked at open desks so they could be seen by passersby. This late in the day the receptionist was the only one still there.
The door had an antique bell on a strap of spring steel that tinkled merrily when Morales opened it. Inside were antique hardwood furniture, a thick wine-colored carpet, stuffed chairs with burgundy upholstery. From floor to ceiling on the back wall, inlaid hardwood bookcases crammed in artful disarray with lawbooks bound in leather and finished in gold.