“You go drive up and down Geneva,” said Harrington. “Cain’t be too many stations open all night. Tim don’t want what he ain’t paid for.”
Ballard thanked him, turned away, then stopped and turned back. “Can I ask you a question, Mr. Harrington?”
“Fire away, son. If you hit something tender I’ll holler.”
“How come Harrington? Ryan? I thought I was looking for a bunch of Micks.”
The old man slapped his knee in sudden glee. “Hell, son, I thought you’d never ask! We’re black Irish, cain’t you tell?”
It was a Richfield station three blocks north of Geneva on Old Bayshore. What the hell, it was one of those cases. At least Tim Ryan, a stocky, wide-shouldered black kid with an incongruous stub nose, was far from belligerent.
“When he said that to me, Mr. Ballard, I just... well, I just lost control, I guess. I sent in a payment yesterday, I can send another tomorrow...”
Sure as hell, Tim Ryan hadn’t hit Heslip on the head. He’d have to check further, and his assumption was subject to what Dan and Giselle thought, but the kid just wasn’t right for it. And he had a money-order stub for the payment, too...
“You’ll have to cover our charges,” Ballard said. “And for God sake keep the thing current from now on.” He got back into the Ford, asked casually through the rolled-down window, “Another agent from our company wasn’t around to talk to you on this yesterday, was he?”
“You’re the only one I’ve seen.” Ryan’s sudden grin resembled his stepfather’s even though there was no blood relationship. “Only one I want to see!”
And so to bed, after stopping by the office to write notes on the cases he had worked, so Kearny would know what was going on until he had a chance to write regular reports. To bed, to sleep, perchance to dream — he’d played Macbeth in a high school play. To dream, like hell. Dead to the world before he hit the pillow.
Eight
“Larry’s working himself out of a job fast,” said Giselle Marc. She, O’Bannon, and Kearny were in the tiny cluttered middle clerical office at DKA, where the big radio transmitter for contacting the field units was located. On the wall behind her desk was a huge map of the city.
“I read his notes,” said Kearny. He was waiting for the water to boil in the little kitchen alcove in one corner of the room. “He’ll want to check with The Freaks before totally eliminating Chambers, but we can scratch Willets. I never liked him for it anyway. And it looks like Ryan is out of it.”
“The black Irishman?” laughed Giselle.
“I fail to see anything funny in that,” said O’Bannon with great dignity.
Patrick Michael O’Bannon was forty-three, with freckles and flaming red hair and a drinker’s leathery face. He had started as a collector for a retail jewelry firm, had switched into investigations, had come with Kearny from Walter’s Auto Detectives at the founding of DKA. Right now he was sitting on the edge of the desk that held the radio, swinging one leg. A voice blared, he pushed the Transmit button on the stand-up mike.
“No, SF-8, that isn’t funny, either.” He released the button so he was not transmitting. “This new guy, Dan, this SF-8, where did you get him from? I didn’t know it was Hire the Mentally Handicapped Week around here.”
“I like the pimp for it, myself,” said Kearny, loftily ignoring O’B. They had just finished their weekly fight about O’Bannon’s expense account, and Kearny had lost — as usual.
“Tiger?” asked Giselle.
“I put out a feeler with our police informant on him and Joyce Leonard. If she is playing for pay, the Vice Squad might have a current res add on her.”
“What about the embezzler?”
“From Castro Valley?” Kearny shook his heavy graying head. “The guy’s a dead skip, Giselle — not one damned live address in the file. Bart just had the one work address to check on a reconfirm.”
“How is Bart this morning?” O’Bannon’s lean features looked drawn, as if it had been a rough night. For O’B, it usually was.
“No change,” said Giselle. “Still in a coma.”
The intercom buzzed, she picked up, said “Yeah?” and listened. She held the phone out to Kearny. “Waterreus the BB-eyed Dutchman.”
Kearny listened, spoke, listened, nodded, said “Thanks” and hung up. “Joyce Leonard was picked up for soliciting last January, her driver’s license has been revoked for drunk driving, and they’ve got a warrant out on her for overdue parking tags. Waterreus said he’ll check the location she’s been drawing the tags and call back.” To O’Bannon he said, “Try to raise Ballard, O’B.”
“KDM 366 calling SF-6. Come in, Larry.”
“He won’t be on the street yet, Dan,” objected Giselle. “It’s only a little after nine, his note said he was going home at four this morning.”
“He’ll be working. That deadline I gave him is only forty-two hours off.”
Larry Ballard was working, all right, feeling a hell of a lot better for four hours’ sleep, a shower, a shave, and breakfast in a greasy spoon on Ninth Avenue near his Lincoln Way apartment. But he was not in his car to answer O’B’s call. He was in San Francisco Van and Storage at 791 Stanyan Street, waiting for a black mover named Chicago. Chicago, he had learned, would have moved Joyce Leonard if anyone at S.F. Van and Storage had.
Ballard was also waiting for Chicago because everyone else at S.F. Van — every single person — was drunk. Every living soul, at 9:38 on a weekday morning. Leaning against the L-shaped counter and looking through the inner door to the storage warehouse, he could see them, passing the bottle around. Apparently most of them slept there at least part of the time; several cots were set up.
A blocky round-faced man who had said he was Bonnetti, office manager, weaved his way to the door. He gripped the frame with blunt calloused fingers. He regarded Ballard owlishly. “Oojusangon,” he said. He blinked deliberately and solemnly and tried again. “Oo... you. You jus’ ang... hang on. Good ol’ Chi-town’ll be in pr’y soon. ’Kay?”
“Okay.”
“’M gonna shraiten out ’morrow. ’Kay?”
“Okay.”
Ballard waited for the crash as he turned away, but Bonnetti, office manager, was made of the stuff of heroes. He didn’t fall down.
The front door opened and a black man as black as Bart Heslip, which was very black indeed, came through at an angle so he wouldn’t take out the door frame with his shoulders. Ballard raised his gaze from the second button on the man’s blue coveralls — which was the button level with his eyes — to the massive tight-clipped head. The features made the late Sonny Liston seem like just another pretty face.
“Chicago?”
“The Windy City flash himself.” Chicago’s voice had the resonance of a hi-fi woofer with the gain all the way up. He looked past Ballard to the back room. “Those bastards all drunk again?”
“Still.”
“There’s that, ain’t there?” Chicago said pensively.
“I’m surprised any of them still have their chauffeurs’ licenses.”
“Most of ’em don’t. But you want anything moved, old Chi-town will give you his personal service. Safe as houses, silent as the fog, gentle as a kitten, Chicago will—”
“I’m trying to find a white whore named Joyce Leonard who’s shacking with a black pimp named Tiger.”
“Whoo-ee!” yelped Chicago, startled. Then he started to roar with laughter. “Sheeit, mother, you shoulda been a preacher! You do call ’em as you see ’em!”