Kearny’s deputy obviously was just waiting out his pension, which meant he was cooperative, good-natured, unhurried, efficient.
“Griffin, Charles M. Docketed to Judge Bailey Johnson’s court at nine-thirty a.m. on Tuesday, June thirteenth. Drunk driving, violation of the right-of-way.”
“You know the case personally?” asked Kearny in apparent idleness.
“He jumped bail back in February, Gerald Coogan Bail Bonds, 913 Main Street, Martinez, had to forfeit six bills bail. This clown’s been in three HBD accidents since he bought that T-Bird last October. When they finally get him in front of the judge, he’ll lose his license, period-the-end. Johnson had a daughter put in the hospital a few years ago by a drunk driver, he loves to see those babies turn up in his court.”
Ballard hadn’t been here, either. Kearny paused before getting into the Ford wagon. Three had-been-drinking accidents in five months. That California Street landlady could be right; he could be in jail, probably the county jug over in Martinez. Ballard, with the Wanda Moher lead he’d gotten from the police, but without the bail-bond lead obtained by Kearny here, would first check Wanda and any leads developed from her before hitting Martinez.
So Kearny would check on the jail and the bail bondsman first.
Martinez was an old town, almost a company town, created and sustained as a deepwater port for tankers coming up from the Bay to off-load their cargoes of crude at the Shell Oil Cracking Plant. The plant itself looked like a science-fiction city: great vertical towers and stacks, tall and lean and industrial against the round-topped hills beyond which lay Carquinez Straits. When Kearny entered town on one-way Howard Street, he could smell the dark, intense reek of oil through the open window. Not so distasteful when your job depended on it. The old story. Bucks.
The Contra Costa county jail was right across the street from the new twelve-story administration building, carefully decorated with palmetto palms, which was remarkably out of phase with the old sleepy town. The jail was the sort they had built when the town had been young: covering a whole city block, satisfyingly squat, dark, and of ugly gray stone. The windows were narrow barred slits.
Kearny went up concrete steps, through open battered metal doors painted to resemble wood, to stop at the heavily barred cage. Signs fixed to the mesh laid out visiting hours, the fact that all guns had to be checked at the desk, the fact that ex-cons could not visit until six months after their release, and that ex-felons could not visit at all.
“What can I do for you?”
He was an athletic-looking young deputy with a large soup-strainer mustache. Kearny asked if Charles M. Griffin was a guest there, receiving hospitality for his tax dollars. He was not. On the way out, Kearny passed another deputy, hard but not hard-faced, bringing in a handcuffed prisoner with red-rimmed eyes, the twitches, and the sniffles. Coming down off a high, off the white horse, off the big H, down to brutal reality: a six-by-eight cell and screaming cold turkey until he admitted habituation and was transferred to a hospital wing.
Kearny U-turned back to Main, found a metered space in front of Snooks Jewelers, walked back to 913. It was on the main drag of a business district still flavored with small-town America. A few blocks away, Main dead-ended in a large green wooded hill rising up against pale-blue California sky. Gerald Coogan Bail Bonds was a narrow stone-fronted building with dark-green vertical-slat blinds.
Behind a counter inside was a desk with three telephones and a gray-haired woman with thick ankles. The lower half of her face said Grandma; Kearny could have cut himself on what the upper half said.
“Is Mr. Coogan in?”
She made a gesture toward the partition behind the desk which hid the enclosed interview cubicles. “With a client. I’m Missus.”
“That’s fine.” Kearny laid his card on the counter, the card with investigations, thefts, embezzlements, repossessions, skip-tracing, collections blocked in the upper left-hand corner, licensed and bonded, state and city, nationwide affiliates in the upper right. He said, “We’re trying to get a line on an ex-client of yours named Charles M. Griffin.”
She made a two-word comment about Griffin and his mother that was probably more ritual than fact, then added, “Hell, we’ve had a warrant out on him since February; he burned us for six bills.”
Kearny shook his head in bogus commiseration. Bail bondsmen usually got more than adequate security; one of them getting burned was like a cat sitting twice on a hot stove burner. It just hardly ever happened. He liked it.
“How’d he get into you for the cash?”
“He knew—” she stopped abruptly, then shrugged very casually. “Favor for a friend — you know.”
“What about his lawyer? Can’t he help you?”
“Hawkley? Hell, he’s...” She stopped again. “Hell, he probably knows less about Griffin than we do.”
Which Kearny doubted. Lawyers always knew more about their clients than anyone else, and an old-line bail bondsman like Ma Coogan would know that very well. Something was a bit out of focus in the relationships here, which made him ask for Hawkley’s address. This was rewarded with another appreciable pause before she figured out there was no casual way she could refuse.
“Wayne Hawkley, 1942 Colfax Street. In Concord.”
On the way back to Concord he tried, again unsuccessfully, to raise Ballard. He was looking forward to Wayne Hawkley, who was almost surely the friend the Coogans had been doing a favor for when they had gone bail for Griffin without any collateral.
Kearny was waiting at the angle-intersection where Concord Avenue became Galindo Street, behind a truck trailer making a left-hand turn, when Ballard turned right into Mount Diablo Street off Willow Pass Road a block away. The truck blocked Kearny’s vision; when the light changed he followed its left turn into Willow Pass. He didn’t look down Mount Diablo Street when he passed that intersection, because he was checking street signs for Colfax Street, so he didn’t see Ballard’s car. If he had, they would have teamed up, might never have caught up with Charles M. Griffin, might never have laid the blocks to the murderer who had struck down Bart Heslip. It was that close.
The law offices of Wayne E. Hawkley, 1942 Colfax Street, were in a one-story cinder block building with red-brick fronting, plate-glass windows with the inevitable aluminum frames, and tan drapes drawn against the sun.
Kearny parked across the street at 2:12 P.M. Inside, a Spanish-American and a Caucasian waited patiently for attention. Neither looked prosperous, but the office looked prosperous enough to make up for it. There was an immense, bare, very expensive hardwood desk, empty, and a smaller, more functional secretary’s desk set at right angles to it behind a partition. Kearny put one of his plain cards on the secretary’s desk.
“Mr. Hawkley is busy, sir. And these other gentlemen—”
“I’ll wait.”
“If I could have some idea what it is concerning, sir...”
“I’ll wait,” said Kearny again, wondering, by the secretary’s manner, whether he should have genuflected upon entering.
The secretary was lean and dark and intense-looking, wearing a dark-brown blouse and a beige jumper that showed a lot of slender leg. There was a hint of bafflement and irritation behind her rimless glasses. “Whatever you wish, sir.”