“I’m... sure there must be some mistake.” Nice sexy voice for a chick of thirty-two — bright chick, stalling for time, trying to make Ballard out. “Did you say Hemovich?”
“Kenneth. We have been carrying the insurance on the vehicle, and since you are driving it—”
“You couldn’t possibly know...”
“There’s never any answer at Mr. Hemovich’s home phone, and our mail is being returned.” I hope the bastard has a phone. No listing, but of course there wouldn’t be.
“What address did you send the mail to?”
Sharp chick! Slide by that one fast. “We have to notify him of cancellation of his auto insurance, and—”
“Cancellation?”
“Working for an insurance company yourself, Mrs. Pressler, you know how costly it is to be put into Assigned Risk—”
“I see.” That one had gotten to her. “Can I try to reach Mr. Hemovich and have him call you a little later, Mr. Beam?”
“Any time between one-thirty and two-thirty, the number is 431-2163.” To psych her from going through the Continental switchboard, which would blow it, of course, he added in a snide voice, “Your switchboard gave me three wrong extensions before I got through to you.”
The phone number, 431-2163, was one of two unlisteds that DKA kept exclusively for incoming calls on cases where it was essential that the caller didn’t know whom he was calling. Virginia Pressler probably would now get together with Hemovich on her lunch hour, and have him make the call when she could be coaching from the background.
“I really want to thank you for that Stillings Avenue address.”
Giselle Marc looked up from her desk. “I thought that the husband might...” Then she belatedly caught the sarcasm in Ballard’s voice. “What was the matter with it? Nobody there?”
“It’s just lucky that I don’t look nineteen any more. Old man Pressler was waiting around with a twelve-gauge shotgun for Kenny-baby to show up.”
“And you were checking the garage?” She made a face. “Paté-de-foie Ballard. Did you stop by to gripe, or was there something?”
“Two... no, three questions.”
“Go.”
“Where are 342 phone prefix numbers located?”
“San Mateo County. Two?”
“I’m expecting a call for Beam on 2163. Will you switch it to Dan at the same time you give it to me? I’ll clue him in ahead.”
“Will do. Three?”
“Has anybody been out to the hospital to see how Bart is doing?”
“I was by last night, called this morning. No change — except that Corinne has lost about ten pounds.” She looked around almost furtively. “What does she have against Dan, Larry?”
Ballard sat on the edge of her desk. In the background, the radio was blaring something about burned-out distributor points. He shrugged. “She just hates the detective business.”
“So what else is new? So do all of the agents’ wives.”
“Yeah. But their husbands aren’t lying in a hospital with a fractured skull the way her man is.”
Giselle nodded. “Sometimes I wish...” She let it die. “Anyway, he’s still in a coma.” Her voice got suddenly vicious. “Get the bastard, Larry.”
First he had to find out who the bastard was. Griffin? Hemovich? Which reminded him to stop at Kearny’s office to brief him on the expected phone call. Then into his own cubicle for phone calls and reports. Phone first, of course, so the latest info could be incorporated into the reports.
The manager of The Freaks was a man named Tunulli, who wasn’t there, but the bartender gave Ballard the home phone. Tunulli readily confirmed that Fred Chambers had been on the stage at The Freaks in full view of a hundred people until 1:55 A.M. on Tuesday night. Cross off Chambers, definitely.
From the cross-directory, Ballard got the number of the Union gas station on Old Bayshore, caught the lessee there. Yeah, Tim Ryan worked the night shift for him five nights a week, Monday through Friday. Hell yes, he was there Tuesday night. From ten o’clock until six Wednesday morning. Swear to it in court? C’mon, buddy, you gotta be... Just a minute. Got an idea. Could he call Ballard back?
He could. Meanwhile, Ballard dialed 342-4343, the San Mateo number listed in the file for Andrew W. Murson, attorney-at-law, who was supposed to be Charles Griffin’s lawyer. Mr. Murson was just going out the door on his way to court, said the secretary. Could he... Very urgent?
“Andrew Murson here.”
“Yes, sir, I’m trying to reach one of your clients, a Mr. Charles M. Griffin, on a very important matter. Do you have any idea where—”
“None at all,” cut in Murson dryly. “I represent Mr. Griffin in a very limited capacity; I was his mother’s attorney, and after her death last year I probated her estate. Charles is principal heir under the will, which is the only connection I have with him. If this is an overdue bill, I would suggest you not bother me with—”
“Attempted murder,” said Ballard in his nastiest voice.
“Attempt... whoa! On him or by him?”
“By, if he’s involved at all.”
Murson waited a long moment, then sighed. “It’s on Castro Valley Boulevard in Castro Valley, I can’t recall the number. It’s in the book.”
The given address, of course; no good on a dead skip like Griffin. Ballard hadn’t expected anything else. But the exchange had softened Murson up for the information Ballard did want. “Ah... you said you handled the mother’s will. Is that out of probate yet?”
“In California? These things take time.”
While the lawyers leached out what they could, Ballard thought. He thanked Murson, hung up, stared blankly at his stack of report forms. Exactly, Mr. Murson. Will not yet out of probate. And where did that leave the inheritance that Griffin had claimed to JRS Garage was his source for the new car, new clothes, all the rest of it? Unless the old lady had been coffee-canning cash for him that hadn’t shown up in the estate; and Ballard doubted that.
Which might or might not mean, of course, that Griffin was the attacker. One thing was sure: if he was, as of Tuesday night (Wednesday morning, really) he had still been in San Francisco. Which gave them a hot rather than a cold trail to follow, which in turn meant he wasn’t going to remain a dead skip for much longer. But could Ballard find him before Kearny’s deadline, now only thirty-six hours away?
The phone rang.
Switch gears. And files. Virginia Pressler and Kenny Hemovich.
But it wasn’t. It was the manager of the Union gas station calling back on Tim Ryan.
“I thought I remembered my kid saying that he was down there until after two, putting new plugs and points in his car, and turning the brake drums. Tuesday night, it was. It was slow after midnight, and Tim was helping him. Hell of a mechanic, that Tim...”
Two of his original six possibles left. Kenneth Hemovich. And Charles M. Griffin. One or the other. Or neither? Dammit, had to be one of them. Or else he was right back to Wednesday morning, trying to convince Kearny that Bart actually had been attacked.
The phone again. This time it was Hemovich. Ballard heard the click of Kearny picking up just behind him. Hemovich sounded nineteen on the phone: halting, unsure, his voice tending to slide into a higher register as he talked. In the background, Virginia Pressler, coaching. What the hell did a woman with three kids, one of them eleven, want with a nineteen-year-old punk for a lover?
Vitality. Virility. Old man Pressler hadn’t looked like much of a sexual giant. Or just the kid’s youth, maybe?
“Ah... I understand from, ah, Mrs. Pressler that you claim my, ah, insurance is being canceled.”