“Am I wrong?”
“Hell no, she tried to sell me a piece in the new apartment when I got her moved in. Last Wednesday, it was.” He shook his head. “White meat don’t turn me on, I got Maybelle and four cute kids to home. Wouldn’t shoot that Joyce with your artillery, man.”
“You remembered her pretty quick,” said Ballard.
Chicago laughed again. “You’re a cop or something, ain’t you? Like private or something?” He nodded in approval. “I remember ’cause ain’t every day I get offered white meat, not even off’n a turkey like her. Likewise, a little black feller was in asking the same questions, was, let’s see—”
“Day before last?” said Ballard eagerly.
“That’s it. Little feller, wouldn’t go a hundred-sixty pounds, but moved. I mean, like a dancer.”
“Bart Heslip,” said Ballard almost fiercely to himself.
“Good friend, huh?” said Chicago. “In big trouble?”
“Big as it can get without being dead.”
“Tiger, maybe? I know that cat, mean mother. They at 545 O’Farrell, apartment... hell, can’t remember. On the second floor.”
Chicago wouldn’t even take a couple of bucks for a beer. A hell of a man, Ballard thought as he switched on the radio. As soon as it quit whining he unclipped the mike and depressed the red Transmit button. “SF-6 calling KDM 366.”
“Go ahead, Larry,” said Giselle’s voice.
“I’ve got a new res add on Joyce Leonard, en route there now — 5-4-5 O’Farrell. I think they might be it, Giselle. Bart was at the moving company two days ago.”
Kearny’s voice came on. “KDM 366 to SF-6. Forget Leonard and Tiger, Ballard. Repeat, scratch Leonard and Tiger, over.”
“But they’re right for it, Dan. Over.”
“SF-2 is picking up the Cadillac right now from a parking lot in the three-hundred block of Eddy.”
SF-2 was O’Bannon. He didn’t mind O’B picking up the car even though it was his case now, but dammit, why was Kearny so sure that Tiger was not the one who had slugged Bart?
“Where did the location on the Cadillac come from, over?”
“A police informant was running down the subject’s parking tags, and found that Tiger and the subject were involved in a fight in a Tenderloin bar at ten o’clock the night before last. Over.”
“10-4,” said Ballard. He understood, all right. Arrested at ten on the night Bart had gotten it, they wouldn’t even have been out on the street by one o’clock, let alone hitting anyone on the head.
“Tiger is in jail, the subject is in the hospital. He went for her with a razor, took out one of her eyes with it. 10-4?”
“10-4,” repeated Ballard. He reclipped the mike on the dash, said aloud, “Son of a bitch, anyway.”
Leonard and Tiger had looked so damned good for it.
Charles M. Griffin.
The JRS Garage, 150 First Street, was at first glance just a square open door in the side of a building across from the East Bay Bus Terminal. But when Ballard drove across the sidewalk and under a red sign offering parking at 35 cents per ½ hr, a huge shadowy parking garage stretched ahead for half a block. What a place to bury a car you were trying to hide! Maybe that’s what Griffin had done with his.
He drove up the narrow aisle between the parked cars until he was waved down by a round-faced black man in red coveralls with JRS and JOE stitched above the respective breast pockets.
“I’m not leaving it — just want to talk with one of the bosses.”
“There’s three partners,” said Joe. He was a large-bodied man with tight-clipped, tight-curled hair and an infectious grin. Ballard found himself grinning back. “Park in that middle stall between the two pillars. Leave the keys in case I have to move it.”
The office was a concrete box set beside the cross-piece of the H-shaped aisles. Behind the open counter a sandy-haired man named EARL, who looked like an ex-Navy chief, was clearing the cash register with the single-minded ferocity of a commuter-train conductor punching tickets.
Ballard checked his assignment sheet. “Is... um... Leo Busilloni or Danny Walker or... um... Rod Elkin around?”
“Leo’s out checking lots, Danny’s up at the Bush Street garage, and Rod’s out getting a sandwich. If you want to wait, you can go right through to the office.”
Ballard went by Earl and across the small room to a slightly larger room beyond. Pasted to the front of the bottled water dispenser was a typed notice: DUE TO INCREASED TAXATION, RISING PRICES, INFLATION, AND HIGHER WAGES, THIS WATER IS NOW TWICE AS FREE AS IT USED TO BE. The inner office had windows all around to chest-level which looked out into the garage, three wooden desks, and some straight-backed chairs just inside the door.
Ballard moved a copy of San Francisco Screw off a chair to sit down. Screw’s front page had a photo of a young couple proving that the underground newspaper was aptly named. Ballard, who would rather do it than look at it, passed up the paper for the bulky Griffin file, glad of having a few extra minutes to review it.
DKA Oakland originally had gotten it as a straight collection on February 21, when the subject was delinquent 1/17 and 2/17 in the amount of $108.64 each on a 1972 T-Bird. Contract balance had been $5,542.31 at that time, and these were the fourth and fifth payments respectively. All of the earlier payments had been at least a week late, one of them seventeen days. DKA Oakland immediately had run into a stone wall, because the subject had left his residence address of 3877 Castro Valley Boulevard, Castro Valley, a full month before he had given it to the bank as his res add when buying the car.
The case had immediately been reassigned to the SF office as a Repo on Sight from the work address.
The subject was gone from his job, also.
The March 17 payment was not received, making it a deadline deal on which the client’s ninety-day recourse would expire in one month. That meant the client would have to eat the car if recovered after April 17, so all the stops had been pulled: the file went to skip-tracing, the car went on the company hot-sheet for state-wide distribution, East Bay and SF police checks were made for warrants or parking tags, the state DMV was checked for the address to which his license tabs and most recent driver’s license renewal had been sent. Credit-checking services were utilized, his insurance broker contacted, the dealer and salesman who had sold him the car, his lawyer, friends, neighbors, his only living relative (an aunt), by phone and in person.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Dead end. Blank wall. Charles M. Griffin was a dead skip.
On April 19 DKA charges were billed to date and paid by the client, and the case was put on Contingent status. On May 8, after a routine file review, the case was assigned to Heslip for a single purpose: to recheck with the ex-employers whether they had mailed out the subject’s W-2 at the end of January, whether it had been returned, and to what address it had been mailed.
That had been on Monday. On Tuesday, with no report on the case in the file, Bart had been whapped on the head. Earlier, that afternoon, he had said to Giselle casually that “the cat from the East Bay is gonna turn out to be an embezzler.” Bringing Larry Ballard to JRS Garage on Thursday.
“You wanted to see me?”
“Oh. Yes.” He stood up, stuck out his hand. “Larry Ballard with Daniel Kearny Associates.”
“Rod Elkin.” They shook.
Elkin was a tall, lanky, good-looking man with sharp features and a big nose. He had abundant black curly hair and sideburns, and a wry quizzical expression that looked habitual. He wore corduroy slacks and a wide leather belt.