“Told him I was collectin’ from the brothers for the Black Panthers breakfast program, and damned if he didn’t shell out! Looked scared shitless.” His eyes gleamed sardonically in his black face. “He sure hates Nucci’s guts. Three servants — him, a white cook-housekeeper he says is new, a white yardman who comes in twice a week.”
“Anything interesting?”
“Mercedes in the garage, and Jeter — that’s the chauffeur — says Nucci and his wife drove the Chrysler wagon up to their weekend place by Lake Tahoe. South Shore, he says.”
Two cars, that house, summer home... A lot of bread. Ballard swung the Plymouth over to Portola, took it through the aimless clots of Sunday traffic.
“Wish I could have got the address of the summer place, but I couldn’t think of a way a Panther could have asked.”
“Machine-gunned the garage first?” Ballard pulled abruptly off into a shopping area. “I got an idea, Bart.”
They went over to the pay phone.
“Mr. Arthur Nucci, please, California Highway Patrol calling.” He listened. “I see. Can you tell me where to get in touch with him, ma’am? We have reason to believe he might have witnessed a hit-run accident on California Fifty near Echo Summit yesterday and... No, ma’am, he’s not in trouble. But he may have witnessed...”
He hung up and scribbled down the address.
“In a district called Skyland,” he told Heslip. “Apparently it’s a few miles out of South Lake Tahoe.” He did a creditable imitation of a woman’s voice. “Bill Harrah has a place out there!”
“Ole Marse Nucci do seem to do well by hisse’f, don’t he?”
“Yeah. What say we drive up to Tahoe—”
“Better cool that, man. Tomorrow morning bright and early you’ve got to go out to Padilla Trucking and be a truck driver.”
Which, of course, had resulted in Ballard’s learning that Padilla Trucking had no employee-drivers. Only yardmen who fractured old detectives’ skulls.
Nine
Chandra.
Since the old dancer was the focal point of the whole problem, whatever that problem was going to be, Kearny took her himself. Besides, he wanted to get to hell out of the office on that Monday morning.
Before leaving, he called the sales manager of Curtiss Cadillac, in an old ornate building left over from the days when Van Ness Avenue had proudly called itself Auto Row.
“Lou? Dan Kearny here. Who do you like at Candlestick on Sunday?”
“Forty-niners.”
“You’ve got ten bucks at six-to-four, okay?” Before Cassavette could respond, he asked, “What can you tell me about a Chandra, that’s C-h-a-n-d-r-a, no first name, no initial, who bought a new convertible a couple of months back?”
“Old gray-haired broad runs a dance studio?” he asked, obviously around his cigar.
“That’s the one. She make the down by cash or check?”
“Second. I’ll look.” Cassavette had recently switched to Curtiss from Crescent Lincoln-Mercury; Kearny wasn’t sure he’d made the right move. He came back. “Check. We wouldn’t give her delivery until it cleared...”
“Bad credit?”
“No credit. Rent, phone, utilities — what the hell’s that?”
“Yeah, what bank?”
Cassavette told him, adding that it was the North Beach branch at Columbus and Green. “Somebody got miseries on her now?”
“Naw. She pimpled a parked car up in Pacific Heights, insurance company is trying to deal because the car she hit was supposed to be garaged in Marin where the rates are lower.”
Ten minutes later he parked the wagon at the top of the hill in front of Mike’s Grocery. Chandra’s studio was a short half-block away, where Edith Alley cut off the odd-number, downhill side of Grant. Just beyond, Grant itself swooped down toward the Embarcadero. Kearny had once questioned a girl in a flat on Edith. He grinned at the memory. It had been one of Ballard’s first cases, and he’d wanted to paste Kearny in the mouth for making the sweet young thing cry.
Chandra’s studio was in a three-story apartment house which had been built when bays were still in but Victorian curlicues were out. The frame building had been battleship-gray in some distant past, with white trim; now it was peeling to show the wood beneath. The big front window and narrow yellow door of the studio faced directly on the sidewalk. The glass in each had been painted over on the inside. CHANDRA arced across the window in foot-high amateur lettering, with the dance in yellow script beneath. No hours were shown.
The yellow door was locked. Above it were screwed the metal numbers 1719, painted a smeary red, next to a painted-over but still visible LIPTON’S TEA. Old grocery store? Mike on the corner would probably know.
The bright-eyed, burly merchant was talking in rapid-fire Italian with an old woman dressed in black. Kearny bought an Eskimo Pie.
“What time’s the dance studio open up?”
“Chandra’s?” Mike laid a thick hairy hand on the minute counter behind which he passed his days, leaned forward as if to look down toward the studio. He gave a heavy laugh. “Whenever she feels like it. That old girl ain’t afraid of work — shell lay down alongside it any time.”
“She had the place long?”
“Six years, maybe. I used to have a grocery store in there.”
Kearny got the name and address of the building owner. Leaving, he drove by 574 Greenwich, half a block away, where Chandra lived. A single-unit dwelling, fairly rare on Telegraph Hill, built back from and well above the steeply slanting street. The gray-concrete retaining wall was flush with the sidewalk, twenty feet high on the uphill side, thirty on the downhill, crumbling in places to show rusted reinforcing rod.
Kearny stared at it through the open window and drummed thoughtful fingers on the steering wheel. Going up between hunched concrete shoulders was a set of steep narrow stairs. These ended in a narrow walk to the front door through the vast profusion of waist-high bushes and shrubs which covered the sloping yard. Foliage dripped down over the lip of the retaining wall like melted wax from a candle.
Where could the original point of contact possibly be between this — Chandra — and a heavy who would hire a beating and pressure a banker at a mere phone call? More important, who was he? Talking some facts about Chandra’s finances out of her bank might help...
Friday again. Kearny was explaining to the others why he had taken a chance and posed as a state banking commission investigator to Chandra’s bank, rather than getting information through channels.
“Sure, DKA does work for their head office, but bankers tend to drink from the same bottle. Word might have filtered back to whoever is involved at Golden Gate Trust. This way, the branch people are playing industrial spy and keeping their mouths shut.”
“It’s still a felony if you get caught,” Ballard pointed out.
“Misdemeanor in this state. Okay: Chandra has lived at 574 Greenwich since 1938. The old Italian landlord charges her a hundred a month and could be getting two-fifty, but she still has trouble making the rent. Chinese landlord of the dance studio has threatened eviction for non-payment twice in the six years she’s been there. She grosses between five and six bills a month from the studio; no other apparent sources of income.”
“And driving a new Cadillac,” said Heslip. “That’s beautiful.”
“It gets better. On July thirtieth she deposited five thousand dollars in cash in her checking account, bringing the balance to $5,027.38. Between then and August eleventh, checks totaling $1,994.12 passed through the account, written to Grant Avenue and Union Street boutiques, and a sizable one to an athletic-supply house for new exercise bars for the studio. On August eleventh she wrote a check to Curtiss Cadillac for $3,094.45 to cover down, tax and license on the Caddy. She got a good deal because it was the end of the model year.”