It was twenty minutes before she paused at the head of the passageway behind the big empty desk with Kearny’s business card in her hand. “That way, sir.” The distaste in her voice was unmistakable.
She led him into a strictly functional air-conditioned office where an early-thirties type in shirt sleeves was reading a brief. He was one of the “new lawyers” so popularized by television: hirsute, goateed, wearing a loud striped shirt and a wide tie like a slice of pizza — concerned, involved, idealistic, shallow and glib.
He looked up with carefully calculated irritation. “What is it, Madeline? I told you I was too busy—”
“This is a Mr. Kearny. He insisted—”
“Yes, Dan Kearny,” said Kearny heartily. “Mr. Hawkley?”
“I’m Norbert Franks, Mr. Hawkley’s assistant. I screen—”
“Uh-uh,” said Kearny.
“Huh?”
People didn’t talk to him that way. People, Kearny had an idea, didn’t even talk to Madeline that way. “Pull up the lower jaw before you drool on that pretty tie, sonny.” He turned back to the girl, his voice thick and heavy. “Let’s quit playing around and have Hawkley out here.”
“Private eye. Big deal,” sneered Franks. “A dime a dozen...”
Kearny turned back to him. The voice trailed off under that icy gray gaze; finally his hand began fidgeting with the slice of pizza and his eyes dropped to the brief. It wasn’t his day. The girl started off with angry strides. So silently that she didn’t know he was there until she had opened the next door down the hall, Kearny fell in right behind her.
“Thanks, honey,” he said, sliding by her into the room.
She yelped in dismay. A stooped, very tall man in a three-hundred-dollar gray-blue pinstripe was just biting the end from a cigar. His battered old hardwood rolltop dated from the turn of the century, as did he. Clear blue eyes, much younger than the face, came up to meet Kearny’s gray ones through old-fashioned spectacles and the first wreath of fragrant smoke. There was no surprise in the eyes. His thin hair was black enough to be dyed but probably wasn’t.
“Mr. Kearny, sir. A pleasure, believe me.”
His hand was rough and gnarled, as if he had chopped a lot of cordwood in his day. Kearny sat down across the desk from him. “You must shove one hell of a lot of bail-bond clients their way.”
A glint appeared in the blue eyes. Kearny could almost see the mind behind them working it through. Almost. Hawkley had a thin, lined face that probably hadn’t given anything away since 1927, the year a framed certificate on the wall said he had passed the California State Bar.
“That boy Norbert has a big mouth on him, ain’t he?” The ain’t would once have been deliberate, something for the juries that had become habitual.
“And a lousy bedside manner. If he’s your son learning the business, buy him a shoestore.”
The old man chuckled, opened a lower desk drawer while waving away the secretary still standing in the doorway. “Shut it behind you, Maddy.”
She shot a look of pure hatred at Kearny, tried to slam the door peevishly behind her, only to have it yanked right out of her hand by the pneumatic closer. “Goddamn!” she said in a positively venomous voice.
Hawkley had produced from the drawer a bottle of Wild Turkey and a pair of shot glasses. Kearny said, “I’ll give her two hundred a month more than she gets here.”
“Wouldn’t be worth it to her, not with the commute. She likes a tennis lunch.” Pride entered his voice. “She’s my granddaughter.”
“Congratulations.”
“Norbert’s my sister’s boy. Plumb awful, ain’t he? Wants to be one of these new poverty lawyers, I figger he’s going to make it the hard way. Cheers.”
The Wild Turkey went down neat; bourbon like that needed no chaser, not even any comment. Hawkley sighed and capped the bottle.
“Charles M. Griffin. What do you want to know about him?”
Kearny considered for a moment. Coogan, the bail bondsman, had phoned up Hawkley that a private investigator was on the way. And Hawkley had tried to give him the run-around. Why? Something to do with Griffin? Doubtful.
“His current address.”
“Can’t help you,” said Hawkley promptly.
“He probably assaulted one of our men with intent to commit murder on Wednesday A.M.,” said Kearny. “The police read it as an accident and we haven’t tried to make them think any different. Yet.”
Hawkley was watching him thoughtfully. “Meaning?”
“I’m personally taking this wherever I have to take it.”
“You’re big?” said Hawkley abruptly.
“Big enough. Fifteen field agents out of San Francisco and Oakland covering the city, the Peninsula, East Bay and Marin. Nine branch offices from Eureka to Long Beach. Three others in the corporations fully licensed besides myself.”
He added the last deliberately; three other valid licenses meant that anyone with enough clout in Sacramento to get Kearny’s pulled still wouldn’t stop DKA from operating.
Hawkley cleared his throat; the message had gotten through. “Chuck Griffin is all you’re after?”
“No wooden horses,” Kearny assured him.
“Damn!” exclaimed the old man regretfully. “I still can’t help you, and I ain’t sure you’ll believe that. Chuck Griffin’s daddy was one of my first clients back in ’27. An improvident man, died broke in a car wreck in ’53. Or was it ’54? I felt bad when Chuck burned Coogan on that bail money, after I sort of rammed him down their throats as a client.” He laughed dryly. “Not too bad, of course.” He depressed a button on his squawk box. “Maddy, get me that Mount Diablo Street address on Griffin.”
Kearny felt a flicker of excitement; the DKA file showed no Mount Diablo Street address.
Madeline’s rather snotty tones came on. “That’s 1377, Mr. Hawkley. On a letter returned to us as unknown this address on March thirteenth this year.”
“That’s all I’ve got, Mr. Kearny. Our letter to Chuck was forwarded from the California Street address, finally came back here. I ain’t heard from Chuck since February. I sent Norbert out to Mount Diablo Street, they’d never heard of Chuck. ’Course, Norbert...”
“Yeah.” Kearny stood up. A hell of an intriguing old scoundrel, but he was a riddle Kearny didn’t have to solve. “A pleasure to do business with you, sir.”
“And with you.” Hawkley also stood. He was a good six-three; he probably didn’t weigh any more than the detective’s compact 170. “I trust my Wild Turkey wasn’t wasted.”
“I’m a pro, Hawkley. I only get curious when I’m paid to.”
“Would there were more of us in this sinful world,” sighed the old lawyer piously.
Sixteen
Excitement constricted Ballard’s chest. Parked on the crumbling, weed-covered concrete drive at 1377 Mount Diablo Street was a red car with a white convertible top and... Hell. Convertible. A dusty red Oldsmobile compact, not a T-Bird.
He turned in midblock, came back to park across the street. Beyond him was a great open scar where the houses had been razed and the earth scooped out for Bay Area Rapid Transit. In this minor moon crater were stacks of cement-reinforcing rod, coils of hose, stakes with yellow tags on them, parked trucks. The air was filled with dust, the staccato slap of diesel motors. Bulldozers and earth-movers crawled clumsily about like blind beetles seeking a way out.
The white-plaster house was small, L-shaped, one-story, with the pale-pink numbers 1-3-7-7 set in descending order down one of the four-by-four porch posts. Old, crummy, poorly kept-up. He was tense. The trail might lie here, despite the insurance agent’s belief that it was a dead address, and he might miss it.