“Daniel Kearny Associates...” He was frowning. “Wasn’t one of your men in here the other day?”
“Tuesday?” asked Ballard quickly.
“I didn’t talk with him. Leo did.” He flopped into the ancient swivel behind his desk and cocked a lean leg over the edge in what was obviously a favorite position.
Ballard sat down again. “You don’t know what they talked about, do you?”
Elkin frowned. “Something about Griff’s W-2?” He nodded to himself. “That’s it. Wanted to know if we sent one out. We did.”
“Did it come back?”
“Not that I ever saw. But—”
“Sure as hell did,” snapped another voice from the doorway.
A bulky bald man in a white parking-attendant’s coat came through the doorway to stare at Ballard accusingly. The phone rang. Elkin made a wry face, said “JRS, Rod,” and started listening. He waved a hand at the bulky aggressive man, said to Ballard, “Leo Busilloni, he’s the one talked with your man,” transferred the phone from his left hand, and began writing things down on the back of an envelope.
“You from that same private-eye agency as the black guy?” demanded Busilloni aggressively. He talked, moved, reacted in the quick staccatos of a man in good condition, a younger man than his bald crown suggested. He sat down at a desk stacked high with computer print-outs.
“Yes. Did you show the W-2 to our other man?”
“He got all excited. New address from what you had in the files,” said Busilloni. Ballard started to get excited, also. The bald man opened a drawer in his desk, rummaged. After about thirty seconds he said “Shit!” explosively. “Never can find a damned... it was a Concord address, I know...” He looked up. “He must have moved there last fall, after his mother died. The P.O. forwarded the W-2 to Concord from Castro Valley, then it was sent back here. First we knew he’d moved.”
“You don’t remember the street?” asked Ballard tightly.
“California Street.” Busilloni squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, opened them. “Yeah. The house number was 1830.” The bald man hustled out again, after adding that Elkin had gotten stuck with Griffin’s job. Griffin had been the man who counted the cash.
“A license to steal,” said Elkin, hanging up the phone. “You guys are after that T-Bird?” Ballard said they were, and Elkin shook his head. “Why do the middle-aged swingers, when they start swinging, always get a T-Bird? He had a VW before his ma died.”
“What about this idea that our other field agent got about Griffin cooking the books?”
“The hell of it is, I just don’t know. What does your man say about it?”
“He’s not saying anything. He went off Twin Peaks in a repossessed vehicle the night before last.”
Elkin stood up abruptly. “I want to show you something.”
They went down a short corridor to a closed solid metal door. It was unlocked. Inside was a battered swivel chair and a table made longer by an old door laid over it. There were no windows, just a ventilating fan. On the door was an adding machine, a stack of cloth bank money bags, some untidy piles of receipts, and a squat gray-metal machine with a round shiny maw on top, set at an angle like a giant phone dial. This had a metal basket with a spout. Along the bottom of the machine were five chrome drawers.
“Coin-counter,” said Elkin. “Sorts ’em into the drawers by size — halves, quarters, dimes, nickels, pennies. Also keeps a running total which you can crank off whenever you want.”
“This is where Griffin worked?”
“Yeah. All alone. Locked himself in.” He leaned against the table and folded his arms. “His job was counting the receipts. Cash. He made the pickups from the garages each morning, checked the registers against the pickups, counted the self-park coin boxes, totaled credit-card sales, made up change for each station’s daily operations, and got the money ready for the armored car to deliver to the bank.”
Ballard nodded. “So nobody knew exactly how much money you were taking in except Griffin, right?”
“Right. The month’s receipts never balance — hell, it’s a physical impossibility. If we’re within a hundred bucks of register receipts at the end of the month, we think we’re doing great. Depending on how long he was stealing — if he was — we could be twenty, thirty thousand bucks down the tubes. I only took over three months ago, after Griff took off. I’ve got it so screwed up we’re lucky to make payroll each week.”
So there it was, Ballard thought as he slid beneath the wheel of the Ford ten minutes later. Elkin had given him a lot more background, a description of sorts. Griffin’s mother had died a year before; in the fall of last year Griffin had suddenly gone on a diet, lost thirty pounds, bought new clothes, moved out of the big old house in Castro Valley, let his balding hair grow long and raised a crop of big puffy muttonchop sideburns. When he had bought the T-Bird, Elkin had asked him about all of the blossoming-out in his life.
“He said that his mother’s will was out of probate, he’d come into some money,” said Elkin. “He was our bookkeeper for five years, steadiest employee we had — then his ma died. When he took off, he called in sick two days in a row, last time on a Friday. On Monday, no call. He never showed up again.”
Griffin could be it. If twenty, thirty thousand bucks were missing, that sure as hell was a motive sufficiently heavy for murder. The hell of it was, nobody at JRS Garages was going to be able to confirm or deny shortages until an audit was made. And none would be made until the end of the fiscal year after June 30. None of which was going to help Ballard with a deadline which was now just thirty-eight hours away.
But maybe he had another way to go. Listed in the file was the phone number of Andrew W. Murson, who was supposed to be Griffin’s lawyer.
Nine
What he wanted to do was buzz over to East Bay and check out the new res add on Charles Griffin, but there still was Kenneth Hemovich and his Plymouth Roadrunner, and reports to type on the work done so far, and a condition report on the Chambers Buick, and a number of phone calls. Since the Homestead Insurance Corporation was only a few blocks the other side of Market from 150 First Street, he went there first.
Parking was always a bitch in the financial district; he finally put it in a garage off Halleck Alley and walked over. Homestead Insurance had three floors. He called from a lobby phone booth. “Do you have a Mrs. Virginia Pressler employed there?”
“Yes, sir, I’ll ring—”
“I don’t want to talk with her,” he said quickly. “Just give me Personnel.” A pause, a new feminine voice on the line. “Yes, ma’am, this is John Daniels with Bank of America. We’re verifying employment on a Mrs. Virginia Pressler.”
Pause yet again. “Mrs. Pressler has been with us since June, 1968. Commercial underwriting department—”
“I see. Now, we have found that her residence address of 191 Stillings Avenue is no longer current. Since she is applying for a rather sizable loan, we would like to confirm her new residence address for our files...”
“Just a moment, sir.”
Ballard grinned to himself. Smooth as silk, they were going to give him the address where Virginia and Hemovich were shacking. Run out there tonight, drop a rock on that Roadrunner...
Click. Another new voice. “Mrs. Pressler speaking.”
Goddamn that personnel girl! Quick, who was carrying the insurance on the car? Continental, that was it. “Ah... Mrs. Pressler, this is Mr. James Beam from Continental Casualty. We have a notation here that you are currently driving a 1970 Plymouth Roadrunner, yellow in color, California license F-A-Z 8-0-6, registered to a Kenneth Hemovich...”