It seemed like the whiskey hadn’t smoothed out his memories of her leaving him after all, else why such a bitter song? He heard the front door open and twisted around to look across the room, for a moment white-hot hope springing up in his breast.
He sighed and set aside his guitar to pick up his bottle.
“The living room furniture this time?”
O’B almost hung his head. “That’s what the man said.”
John Little swung his feet around to the floor, sat up. “Ain’t your fault, Red. Lemme help you with this thing.”
They each got an end and wrestled the couch out through the front door. Little set down his end and straightened up to stare at his beloved Dodge Dakota longbed backed up to the front porch. He looked at O’B with half-reproachful hound-dog eyes.
“She’s a damn fine truck,” he said. “I loved that truck.”
O’B said hurriedly, “Exactly! I thought to myself, I’m gonna have this big load of furniture to haul, and where could I get anything better to haul it in than Mr. Little’s longbed Dodge Dakota?”
“It only makes sense,” said John Little sadly, and bent to pick up his end of the couch again.
Chapter Thirty-one
Must have been a hell of a fight, even if only a staged one, Dan Kearny thought. Heslip looked just as battered as Ballard, who’d apparently torn every strand of hair completely off Heslip’s head.
“Trouble is,” Bart was saying, “the cops are going to be after me — the me in that composite — pretty damned quick.”
Giselle said, “I stripped the files of your records, but you’re hot. You should be on a plane—”
“I have to be in the ’Loin tonight, just in case.”
“That’s right.” Larry understood instantly, perfectly. “Bart took the man’s money, he’s got to make the effort.”
They were crowded into the small second-floor front office at DKA, seldom used except by the bookkeeper, where they could not be interrupted by anyone coming into the downstairs offices.
Kearny said, “So what’s your next step, Ballard? Are you going to talk to this Sally?”
“I’m in intensive care, remember? I show my nose around that union hall, Bart’s hanging out there in the wind.”
“So who is going to talk to her?” said Kearny impatiently.
Somebody said, “Morales?” and everybody chuckled.
Trin Morales was a hell of a detective, but you couldn’t control him, ever. Ballard said, “Come to think of it, Trin was snuffling around Local Three the other day when I was there. He have any assignment would logically take him down there?”
“No,” said Giselle flatly. As office manager, she knew most everything assigned to any of the field agents.
“I’ll ask him when I see him,” said Kearny. Which meant he would ask Morales, keep asking until he got an answer. He added, to Ballard, “What about your girlfriend?”
“Amalia? She knocked me down the stairs last night.”
“I can’t imagine why,” said Giselle.
“Ain’t nobody really likes you much, is there, dude?” asked Heslip with a grin.
Kearny said, “Quit clowning. Can you trust her not to blow your cover to whoever thinks you’re in traction?”
“She gave me the lead to Sally in the first place.”
“What about Sally? Can we trust her?”
“How the hell should I know?” said Ballard almost testily. “I didn’t even really meet her — just turned my picket sign in to her when Amalia and I—”
“Turned your what in?” asked Giselle incredulously. “Larry Ballard was actually walking a union picket line?”
“Well, I, I was just...” He said suddenly, triumphantly, “I was questioning an informant.” He drew himself up with dignity. “Amalia. Who later gave me the lead to Sally.”
“Maybe she gave you that lead just to set you up,” said Kearny.
Heslip said, “For what it’s worth, the guys I was riding around with last night aren’t going to trust a woman in their affairs, ever.”
“It’s Larry’s call,” said Kearny.
And an easy one, thought Ballard. Any pretext to speak with Amalia was a valid course of action. Even if the unthinkable was true, and she was somehow involved in the Petrock murder, he’d still have to find that out.
He could ask her to speak with Sally. She could just say no. Life was an experiment.
“So I’ll find out one way or another,” he said. “I’ll call her, try to get her to meet me.”
Kearny stood up from the corner of the desk where he’d been sitting. “Okay, everybody, check in with Jane Goldson whenever you have anything to report. By landline — no cell phones that anybody could be tuned in on.”
“Or by fax,” said Giselle. “Jane’s the only one sees ’em.”
The intercom phone on the desk rang. Kearny picked up.
“Yeah?”
“Two homicide inspectors are here to see you, Mr. Kearny,” came Jane Goldson’s crisp, precise voice.
“Hold ’em thirty seconds, send ’em up the front stairs,” said Kearny. He hung up, pointed at Ballard and Heslip. “You two. Down the back stairs and out, pronto.”
Up in Trucker’s Best Eats at Fortuna, Charlene was checking the clock and wondering if Red would show up on time, when he slid onto the stool right in front of her.
“I see Nordstrom’s truck outside. Are he and LuElla—”
“They went back to the motel five minutes ago.” She poured him a cup of coffee and leaned across the counter so he could cop a look down her blouse and smell the perfume newly applied behind her ears. “I told LuElla I’d cover for her until the dinner rush starts about five o’clock. You know I wouldn’t be doing this if he wasn’t such a skunk to her, don’t you?”
“I know that, darlin’,” said O’B.
“What you gonna do to him, Red?”
“Take away all those truck tires he hasn’t paid for.”
Concern entered her face. “He was bragging he put the guy trying to take those tires away from him into the hospital.”
“That he did. So they sent in the first team.”
“You?” O’B looked properly modest as he slurped the last of his coffee. “How can you get ’em? If you open the cab, that damn dog of his will eat you alive.”
“So I won’t open the cab.”
There was a heavy rumbling from outside. Grunting its way up beside Nordstrom’s big rig was an even bigger tow truck with FORTUNA TOWING on the door in ornate flowery lettering.
“That won’t work!” exclaimed Charlene, who knew a thing or two about trucks. “You still gotta get into that cab and put it in neutral and get the brake off, and that damn Rottweiler will get somebody no matter what you have to neutralize him.”
O’B had to get out there to help the tow-truck driver — and to handle Nordstrom should he somehow catch them in the act.
“Then we’ll just have to avoid bothering Fido,” he said.
When Ballard entered the same Market Street coffee shop he’d taken her to for lunch four days ago, Amalia was seated at the same table, eating what looked like the same lemon meringue pie.
She looked up when Ballard slid in across from her. “The St. Mark folded this morning. They’re meeting all our demands, right across the board.” Then she got a mean look on her face. “I don’t want to hear anything about last night.”
“Look, Amalia, Beverly and I weren’t—”