Hardy followed her in. “Do you know? Did he actually go and see Cruz?”
“Uh-huh. Then he was planning on meeting him again…” She stopped and turned, her eyes wide now. “God, I think it was that night. How could I not have remembered that?”
“Monday, the night he was killed?”
She leaned back against the counter. “Well, no. I mean, it couldn’t be. He didn’t…” She was shaking, the white fabric of her blouse shimmering over her shoulders and breasts.
“He didn’t what?”
“He didn’t leave here to do that. I’m sure of that. He said he wanted to think about… about the baby, that he’d be right back.”
“Maybe he remembered his meeting with Cruz while he was out.”
She didn’t answer.
“But he’d seen him before? You know that for a fact?”
She nodded absently.
“Frannie, it’s important.”
She walked back to the table and sat again. “At least once, the week before, I think it was. He went to his house.”
There had been no point in trying to talk to Frannie about Eddie maybe blackmailing Cruz. But driving home, it began to make more and more sense. If he was starting school in the fall, what was he planning to live on? And with a baby on the way, there’d be that much more pressure. Frannie wouldn’t be able to work, at least for a few months. Extra money might come in very handy.
Maybe he only got the idea that night. He had the meeting planned anyway, and it just came to him. Then it backfired.
It was possible, if only Eddie had been the kind of guy to try that, and all indications still were that he hadn’t been.
But turning onto his street from Geary, he remembered Abe’s advice and repeated the name Alphonse Page to himself several times out loud.
He let himself into his dark house. Frannie’s earlier message was on his machine. So was a call from Jane… “Just to hear your voice.”
He went to his desk and took the 911 tape from his pocket. It was an educated male voice, made nasal either by some effort at concealment or from the recording. It said, “There is a body in the parking lot of the Cruz Publishing Company. Thank you.”
Very formal, and little else. The “Thank you” jarred slightly. Hardy listened to the clip five times, hoping to recognize something about the voice. It was not female. It was not accented.
It was early-not yet nine-thirty of a long and nonproductive day. Tomorrow he would get to see Cruz if he had to kidnap him, just to get to the bottom of his lies. He also wanted to check up on Steven, see how he was getting along. Maybe Glitsky would even collar Alphonse.
He was pretty sick of it. All he needed was Eddie’s death declared a homicide, and he thought Glitsky had enough evidence to do it now. But really, there was no new evidence directly relating to Eddie. There were just possible motives and random weirdnesses, like the phone call from the goddamn middle of the city.
Hardy picked up the telephone, dialed a number and listened for three rings. When Jane answered, he said he had to see her.
Chapter Twenty-five
ODIS DE la Fontaine was more impressed with what the papers had called rape than with the murder, but he was most impressed with the money. And Alphonse-his own older first cousin Alphonse-did he ever have money!
Odis had never seen so much money in one place before. And Alphonse hadn’t even unpacked the sports bag yet. What Odis saw was the one loose pack of hundreds that Alphonse was now carrying flat in the front pocket of his black baggy pants.
Odis checked it out again as Alphonse got up to go to the toilet. There wasn’t a sign of bulge in the pocket. Alphonse had stopped on the way to the airport and bought a pair of sandals and a Hawaiian shirt that he wore hanging out over his pants.
He took the sports bag with him to the bathroom, but Odis would have done the same thing. That was just smart.
Alphonse wasn’t worried. Why should he be? He looked different enough, Odis thought, with the new threads and the short hair. The picture in the paper had his Afro and the beginnings of that goatee he’d started a year before, then shaved off. So it wasn’t likely anybody was going to recognize him in the dark airport bar.
That morning, after his mother had gone out to work, Odis had cut Alphonse’s hair, then gone shopping for both of them. “And don’t get us no Montgomery Ward shit either,” Alphonse had said, peeling off five of the hundreds. “Get us some real clothes.”
Odis, nineteen, had gone into Macy’s up at the Skyline Mall and picked himself up a warmup jacket, a new pair of Adidas, a bunch of T-shirts. For Alphonse, he got some of the baggy pants, more T-shirts and a dress coat that cost nearly a bill. On the way out of the mall he passed a hat store and bought Bogart hats for the both of them. They hadn’t decided on Hawaii at the time.
He still had two unbroken C’s and maybe thirty more. Alphonse hadn’t even asked him about the change.
They’d left the house before Odis’s two sisters had come home from school, and definitely before Odis’s mother got back from work. She hadn’t been happy about Alphonse appearing on the run at their doorstep, but he was her sister’s only kid and she wasn’t about to turn him away. But she’d made it clear it was a one-night stopover, no more.
Taking Odis’s car, they’d shot some pool in San Bruno ’til six o’clock, during which time they decided on Hawaii to chill out until things got more mellow around here. They got some steaks at a Sizzler, couple of glasses of wine, and then they’d stopped while Alphonse bought his shirt. They had parked the car in the long-term lot.
Now Odis, thinking about white pussy, waited for Alphonse to return. He hadn’t heard nearly enough about it. Alphonse had said it was just like any other pussy. He didn’t seem that much into talking about it.
He told Odis he hadn’t raped the girl-she was a friend of his -and when she died it had just been an accident, which sounded right the way he told it. Alphonse sometimes hung out with some bad brothers, but he wasn’t ever going to kill anybody on purpose. He was too nice a guy.
He looked out at the planes taxiing out in the night, wondering if the plane he’d be on in a couple of hours was one of them.
“Another round?”
Alphonse had ordered up some drink with an umbrella in it from the bar when they’d come in. Odis turned his head and looked at the waitress-mesh stockings right up to her ass over great legs, blond hair surrounding a model’s face, tits pushed out the front of the scoop-neck blouse.
He nodded.
“What’re you having?”
Odis cleared his throat. “ ’Nother one of these. No, two of ’em.” He smiled at her. “Going to Hawaii.”
She smiled back. “That’s nice. I wish I was. What is that, a mai tai?”
Odis didn’t know, but he nodded. “Yeah. Two of ’em.” That was nice, the girl talking to him like that. He watched her walk back to the bar. Nice wiggle. A small little ass like some white girls had, but a pretty, pretty face. She looked back at him from the bar, catching him looking at her. He smiled. She smiled back.
Wonder what she meant saying she wished she was going to Hawaii too? Maybe she was coming on to him a little. The thing that was on his mind kept getting bigger, and he turned his head to look at the runways again. Hey, what if he just asked her when she came back?
There she was, looking at him again, saying something to the bartender. And now coming back, definitely showing him something.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “but I’m going to have to ask you if I can see your I.D.”
Odis just looked at her, thinking, What’s this? “Hey,” he said, grinning, “I’ve already had one, right?”
She shrugged. “The bartender doesn’t remember serving you. He doesn’t think you look twenty-one.”