“Danny’s in trouble. It’s something to do with the union.”
“Danny can take care of himself,” said Ballard.
“Not this time,” said Beverly. Kearny sat down in Larry’s easy chair, cup in hand, and said, “Jeanne threw me out,” just as Beverly continued, “It’s five days tomorrow since I’ve seen him. He wouldn’t leave me in the lurch that way. I had to call you.”
Five days. Great. “It’s about goddam time, isn’t it?”
“What the hell do you mean by that?” said Kearny.
“Not you — her,” Ballard said, indicating the phone.
“Well! If you have company there with you—”
“Not you — him. Dan Kearny just showed up on my doorstep.” Ballard added to Kearny, “What can I do about it?”
“You can damn well come out here and talk to me!” wailed Beverly.
“Won’t do any good to talk to her tonight,” said Kearny in a resigned voice. “She’s really steamed.” Then he added, “I’m gonna have to bunk here a couple days, ’til she cools off.”
“I’ll be there soon as I can,” said Ballard into the phone.
Chapter Two
As Ballard slammed down his receiver out in the Sunset, Georgi Petrock slammed his drink down on the bar in that part of downtown once known as the Polk Gulch. The narrow saloon on the corner of Post Street had ornate gold lettering edged in black across its front facade:
directly over a maroon sign with Gay ’90s lettering that read:
There were no women, and most of the men crowding the hardwood bar were wearing black spandex or leather.
“Used to be that if a new hotel opened up it automatically would become union,” Petrock boomed from his stool near the front door. He drank from a beer mug with PETROCK decaled around its side. “Now the bastards fight tooth and nail to keep us out. Lookit the St. Mark — they’re hiring union busters to run a fight that hasn’t even started yet!” He put a confiding arm around the man next to him, not bothering to lower his voice very much. “But I rammed the vote right down that sick, feeble-minded sellout artist’s spic throat, Ray! By tomorrow this time, our people will have hit the bricks.”
“Jesus, Georgi,” muttered Ray Do, the local’s diminutive secretary-treasurer and one of Petrock’s allies on the council. “Not so loud! The rank and file still have to—”
“I’m their president, they’ll go along with what I want.”
“Buncha goddam sheep if they do,” said a voice.
Petrock whirled to glare at the black man sitting on a stool in front of one of the pinball machines that crowded the front of the saloon. With a sort of flourish, the man spun his stool a couple of times to end up facing the two union men.
“Who the hell are you?” demanded Petrock.
“Just call me Nemesis. I tend bar in the ’Loin, I don’t know down the till and I don’t need no fat-ass union pricks tellin’ me I ought to.”
Nemesis was a good half foot shorter than Petrock, plum black, with kinky hair and a thin mustache, black leather vest and pants, no shirt. The hard planes of his chest shifted with his breathing, his arms were shapely with muscle; he had an exaggerated breadth of shoulder and tightness of waist.
Petrock was very red in the face. He yelled, “Harry’ Bridges saved the asses of the working stiffs in this town back in the thirties, an’ I’m doin’ it today! But Harry didn’t have to work with spics and jigs!”
“Spics an say whut?” demanded the black man, leaning into him as if into a brisk wind.
Petrock gave his sneering laugh, turned back to the others.
“Whadda ya say to a jig in a three-piece suit?” When nobody responded, he said, “Would the defendant please rise?”
“That’s twice.” There was a dangerous gleam in the eye of Nemesis.
Petrock said, “The micks dance jigs, I dance on jigs.”
“An the jig’s up.”
The black man came off his stool in a smooth panther rush to sink a looping bolo punch into Petrock’s rather flabby belly.
“Ooof!” Petrock sat down on his butt on the floor, a very surprised look on his face.
His attacker pointed a dictatorial finger at him.
“Jus stay there on yo ass where you b’long, white boy. You get up we gonna dance fo sure, an I don’t enjoy waltzing with no faggots.” At the door he paused. “You’d look funny, Petrock, tryna kiss the pavement ’thout no face on the fronta yo haid.”
As the black man angled away across Polk Street, hands in his pockets, whistling to himself, Trinidad Morales was leaving a large white house with Georgian pillars on Hazelwood out in exclusive St. Francis Woods. The owners, names unknown to him, were attending a gown and blacktie affair at Davies Hall.
Trin Morales was another DKA field man with a fistful of month-end cases to work, but right now he was moonlighting. He didn’t know why he had been paid to memorize the layout of the house and look for a hidden safe, or who had paid him, but he didn’t care. The dinero was damned good, up-front, and tax-free.
He went out boldly but silently, pulling the front door shut behind him, stuffing one of his habitual cheap cigars into his face — to be slapped in the kisser by a powerful spotlight.
“Police!” boomed a bullhorned voice. “Freeze!”
Morales, impaled on the light like a butterfly on a pin, was a broad brown moon-faced man of 35, with small quick hands and too much belly. A gold tooth glinted when his thick lips smiled, but the smile seldom reached his eyes.
Right now he was almost smiling, because he had resisted the temptation to lift the homeowner’s exquisite solid-gold flatwear, and he had no burglar tools in his pocket. On such things are probation instead of hard time based. The Chicana maid he had threatened with la Migra and deportation had left the door unlocked for him, but the stupid puta hadn’t told him about the silent alarm. Probably not bright enough to know there was such a thing as electronics. Squinting, he raised his hands.
While Trin Morales was read his rights in San Francisco, up in the redwood logging country some three hundred miles north, redheaded Patrick Michael O’Bannon — O’B to the rest of the troops of DKA — had just come from the Eureka General Hospital room of Tony d’Angelo, his damaged predecessor. He was on his way to a bar called the Sawdust Lounge to watch a man play the musical saw.
And in Kent Woodlands, Ken Warren had started to get out of the car to remonstrate with the Nutcracker soldier, but Giselle had grabbed his sleeve and pulled him back in.
“I can’t take you anywhere.” She pushed the button, said into the speaker, “Giselle Marc and Ken Warren for Bernardine Rochemont. By appointment.”
The guard made no move to open the gate. Instead, he repeated, in the same tone of voice, “What a heap of tin!”
“He’s a mechanical man!” Giselle exclaimed.
But there was a buzzing sound and the guard jerked sideways and disappeared, to reappear a moment later. “Wha-wha-wha-what a hea-hea-hea-heap of ti-ti-ti-tin!” he sneered.
The gate swung majestically open. Giselle drove through, it swept shut behind the car. With a sudden sideways shimmer and an electronic buzz, the guard abruptly disappeared for good.