He crossed the street under the shade of the thriving front-yard maple. Running along the left side of the property was an overgrown hedge; Ballard went down the narrow space between it and the side of the garage to cup his eyes and peer in a dusty cobwebbed window. An earth floor overflowed with meaningless debris, including an old brass bedstead, a ripped mattress, treadless car tires, three ruined tricycles.
He walked back, stood by the Olds to listen to the pop of diesels. In the front yard, knee-deep in weeds, were two big recently rained-on cardboard boxes of trash. The front porch was strewn with a miniature obstacle course of broken toys. Growing up across the front steps, when he waded over there, was a flourishing sweet-pea vine.
He rang the bell.
After a few moments a woman opened the door, giving him a momentary glimpse of a cluttered living room, a new color TV spewing afternoon bathos, a new round felt-topped table suitable for poker.
“If you’re selling someth—”
“Buying,” said Ballard.
That stopped her. She was in shorts and halter, barefoot, with her face carefully made up and brilliant toenails and fingernails. The halter revealed deep cleavage between full breasts; her legs were good, the bare belly between shorts and halter flat and hard. Her face was narrow and vixenish under gleaming brown hair.
“What are you buying?”
“Information about Griff.” No flicker in her wide brown eyes at the nickname. Hell. “Charles M. Griffin. I heard he’s staying here.”
She shook an almost regretful head. “Man, you heard wrong. I don’t know him.”
“How about your husband?”
She shifted her weight to throw out one hip in a deliberately sensuous pose. Her thigh brushed the back of Ballard’s hand. He drew the hand back quickly; she was trouble looking for a place to happen, and he didn’t want it to happen to him.
“I s’pose. If he knew him at work, like.”
“Maybe Griff is one of the poker players.”
“Poker?” She turned her head to follow his gaze to the table. “Oh. Poker.” She added quickly, “No. Never heard of a Griffin.”
Ballard gestured at the Olds compact, put a smile on his face. “When I drove up, I thought that was Griff’s car. He was driving a red and white T-Bird hardtop last time I saw him.”
She frowned, then exclaimed suddenly, “Wait a minute, that rings a bell. Red and white T-Bird hardtop. Loaded, power-everything, all the goodies — air, power windows, seats, steering, brakes. Sure. Howie Odum has been driving a car like that for a month or so. I had a ride in it last week...” She bit it off, like a child realizing it has just told a secret.
Last week! If Griffin’s car had been around then, Griffin himself must also have been close by.
“Where could I find Mr. Odum?”
Instead of answering, she said, “Griffin. Charles Griffin. That’s the name. Howie told me back in April, couple of weeks after he got the car, there might be some mail coming for that name, I should just hold it. He said he’d pick it up every now and then. But didn’t any come — unless my husband, he found it in the box and marked it unknown or something.”
From inside came the tentative, just-waking wail of a child. She looked at Ballard with a shocked, almost furtive expression. “Hey, man, you won’t be coming around here again, will you?”
“Not if I find Griffin.”
“For God’s sake, don’t say anything to my husband about Howie.” She put a hand on his forearm. “Please? He’d just kill me if he knew that Howie had been around. He... they aren’t friends any more.”
“I have to know Odum’s address,” said Ballard ruthlessly.
“Look, I don’t have it. Honest. I mean, there wasn’t anything wrong, me riding around with him in the T-Bird, we didn’t... you know.” Which probably meant they had. The kid squalled again in the background. “But I left the baby here alone and all, the other two were in school...”
“What bars does Odum hang around?”
“He doesn’t. He’s on... look, he got into trouble. With the Feds. He... you see, a couple, three years ago he got into a bind and well, he... forged some checks, including some of Bob’s. So you know, Bob and him don’t...”
“Odum’s trouble was connected with these forged checks?”
“Ah, look, I got to change the kid. I’ve leveled with you, you won’t get me in trouble with Bob, will you?”
“Of course not,” he said soothingly, “Mrs.—”
“Sharon Beag... ah, Sharon.”
He didn’t push. Names were easy to learn. Besides, he’d gotten all there was to get here. Odum would have been sentenced in Concord, if he’d been paper-hanging in local bars. He realized that she had started to shut the door, gave it one more try.
“You must have some idea where Odum’s living.”
Her eyes were made beady by peering through the narrow opening. “Maybe down around Oakland, Alameda, like that. He never really said... honest...”
The door was shut. Ballard went down the steps to flounder out across the rankly overgrown yard. He stumbled over a hidden wheelless coaster wagon and almost went down, cursing, expecting to flush a covey of quail.
In his mind, as he got into the car, two images suddenly came together. Sharon, bored mother of three who had kept her looks despite the babies, getting into the back seat of the T-Bird with Howie Odum, just-released convict. And Cheri over on California Street not a mile away, wrestling with Griffin’s kinky friend with the flashlight. Easy to see both men as the same man. Howie Odum. A writer of bad checks, which meant a con man, which meant plausible, smooth. And maybe tall and handsome. And just out of stir, perhaps sexually maladjusted because of it...
Odum, sure as hell mixed up with Griffin, driving his car.
Odum was the key.
Ballard pulled from the curb. The radio gave its usual warm-up squeergk, like water going down a drain, and then said to him in a very loud and clear Dan Kearny voice, “SF-1 calling SF-6. Come in, Ballard.”
He scrabbled at the clipped mike. That voice was much too strong and ungarbled to have come from Oakland Control on the other side of the hills.
“This is SF-6,” he said.
“I’ll meet you in that little coffee shop on Willow Pass and Mount Diablo Street in three minutes, over.”
“Don’t eat anything there,” said Ballard. “Their food is lousy.”
“10-4. SF-1 over and out.”
He struck the steering wheel happily with the heel of his hand. Dan Kearny was in the field! Kearny would have some ideas about finding Howard Odum. And through him, Charles M. Griffin. The jaws were closing. Then, as he pulled up beside Kearny’s Ford wagon in front of the coffee shop, he wondered: Now, how in hell did Kearny find out that I was on Mount Diablo Street?
“From the attorney, Hawkley,” said Kearny.
He added nothing about the odd can of worms he had opened in the Hawkley/Coogan relationship. They had been kicking around the case for forty minutes.
“Anyway, there’s nothing more to get at that address,” said Ballard. “I squeezed her dry. Since it was a Federal rap—”
“That I doubt,” said Kearny. Even more, he doubted that Ballard had squeezed Sharon dry. Larry just wasn’t that good with women. The best way was to push them fast and hard to where they started crying but before they got stubborn. It was an art. He went on, “The Feds come in only on interstate — Odum was probably just kiting checks in local bars and somebody blew the whistle. He was probably in Quentin, not Lompoc.”
“So how do we find out?” asked Ballard.