“You guys got something for me besides lousy manners?” Bart asked in a flat, cold voice.
The Mormon turned on the seat to spear him with icy eyes.
“You don’t like our manners you can get out right here.”
Bart chuckled and shook his head. “Uh-uh. You guys need me for something.”
The Vulture took a left on Pine. Here, a few blocks above the Tenderloin, were middle-class apartment houses: San Francisco was a town of micro-habitats.
“We want somebody dumped.”
“But do you have the seeds for it?” sneered the Mormon.
“Dumped” was an inexact underworld term that could mean anything from a beating to an execution. Since one man was already dead, victim of a hit, he wanted to pin them down quick.
“I got the seeds,” said Ballard, “you got the bread? Five large, half up front.”
“A grand,” said the Vulture, finding Bart’s eyes in the rearview again. “This is just a simple strong-arm chore.”
“How simple?”
The Vulture turned downhill on Larkin, the rents in the apartment houses flanking the street falling with each block.
“Put a guy in the hospital for a few days.”
“Two large,” said Bart promptly. “Half up front.”
The Mormon surprised him by taking an envelope from his inside jacket pocket and counting out ten $100 bills. He kept the money in his hand.
“You get the rest when we read about it in the papers.”
“Tell me who and where, I’ll figure out the when.”
If Bart had a name, he could somehow warn the intended victim or at least figure out why they wanted him beaten.
Trin Morales needed fresh underwear and his stash of cash in a little hidey-box he’d made under the kitchen sink. But were they still staking out his place — if they ever had been?
“Hey, chica,” he said to the 13-year-old girl in the car with him, “ahora. Vamos a mi casa.”
“Si, jefe.”
“I will give you a key, you will go in first and turn on the lights so I will know you are safe.”
“Si, jefe.” He would report her to Immigration unless she did for him certain specific sexual things she’d never heard of.
If someone was staking out the place, they’d get her, not him. Same if they’d booby-trapped it. And if it was safe, he could enjoy the little chica before throwing her out in the A.M.
The Vulture just kept driving the same fucking streets, but a parked car with men in it always drew the cops’ eyes eventually. Bart decided to push a little. He leaned forward and put his elbows on the back of the front seats.
“When you said dumped, I figured it maybe for a hit. That guy in my union, Petrock, got taken off the other night, that looked professional to me. Figured maybe there was somebody else had to go, but your hitters had left town.”
“What made you think it was our hitters?”
“We’re here, ain’t we?”
The Mormon’s eyes found Bart in the rearview again.
“I heard there was three guys in on that one. The guy who set it up, the driver, and the guy that did it.”
The Vulture slid the car to a stop across Eddy Street from Mood Indigo. His voice was full of something bordering on awe, mixed with a slight sick enthusiasm.
“I heard they used a twelve-gauge double-barrel. One barrel of double-O shot, the other a deer slug. I heard that at close range like that, it just tears a guy apart.”
“For guys aren’t involved, you seem to hear a hell of a lot,” said Bart. The remark didn’t seem to alert them.
“We get around, boy,” bragged the Mormon.
“Heard the shooter and driver got five K each for the job.” The Vulture gave a sudden unexpected shudder. “Driving, okay, but you couldn’t give me a hundred grand to pull the trigger.”
“You got any more like that, let me know,” said Bart. “I need the dough.”
“It’s easy to be a tough guy sitting here in the car all warm and toasty,” said the Mormon. “You do this little strong-arm for us, maybe we’ll have something bigger for you next time.”
“Fine by me,” said Bart. He reached a hand over the back of the front seat toward the Mormon. “Give me my up-front grand and tell me who I’m supposed to beat up.”
The Vulture took a heavy drag on his eighth cigarette since Bart had gotten into the car. “We don’t know much about him except his name and what he looks like.”
“You might be able to find him at Local Three,” said the Mormon. He added with sudden surprising viciousness, “The guy’s a nobody, a nosy son of a bitch.”
“Heard he turned up at the St. Mark picket line, too.”
How much did they really know about the operation of Local 3, how much was hearsay? He didn’t have much time to find out.
“He a member of the union?”
“Nah,” said the Mormon. “Tall blond number, loves himself.”
Like you, thought Heslip.
“Goes by the name of Larry’ Ballard,” said the Vulture.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Larry Ballard had drunk a beer and listened to the music. Maybelle was terrific; so was the piano player. And the gray-haired guy who’d come up from the audience with his trumpet was no slouch, either. He had a good lip, and long, slow, dark, wailing notes like Red Allen’s in his younger days that complemented Maybelle’s great husky tones.
Ballard slid off his barstool, leaving a couple of bucks for the patent-leather weasel behind the stick, and headed for the door; obviously, Bart wasn’t here and it didn’t look like he was coming back anytime soon. All to the good. Maybelle would be here to cover should he come in.
He was raising a hand to push the door open when it swung out and away from him and Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern entered. They stopped with obvious delight on their somehow similar faces.
“Shit!” muttered Larry under his breath. Out loud, he said, “Thanks a lot for fucking me up with Amalia.”
“Hear about the guy who asked a Jewish American Princess out to dinner and had sex that very night?” asked Guildenstern.
“He jerked off a half hour after he took her home.” Rosenkrantz smiled and gave Ballard a little shove against the wall. “We remembered this is where we saw you before, baby. Suckin’ around after the black bartender here. You queer for him, or what?”
“What black bartender?” asked Ballard.
They turned and looked along the bar to Charlie Bagnis.
“I’ll be damned,” said Guildenstern. “I ain’t seen Charlie behind the stick since the Big One of Aught-Six.”
He started down to greet Bagnis. Ballard said to Rosenkrantz, “Okay, you’ve had your fun, can I go now?”
“Yeah, sure, in a second.” He held out a fat-fingered hand, palm-up. “Soon’s I see a little ID.”
Shit, thought Ballard for the second time. Once they knew he was a private detective with DKA, they’d dig deeper and find Bart. Maybe he could finesse it. He took out his wallet and started to pull his driver’s license out of its plastic sleeve.
“Don’t be shy,” said Rosenkrantz. He took the wallet out of Ballard’s hand to grub around like a dog in a garbage pail.
Guildenstern returned.
“The Swede bartender we talked to the other night is just a vacation fill-in sent over by the union for his regular man. Charlie doesn’t know shit about him, doesn’t know if he was working Monday night when Petrock got it. He asked Charlie to fill in just for tonight.”
“He probably would have done the same Monday night.”