“Put Larry on him. Loose tail.”
“If he’s jammed up on something else, will Bart—”
“Larry. I want him to get a good look at Fazzino cold, before he knows it’s important.” He shook out cigarettes for them both. Rapport was temporarily reestablished. “You know what bothers me, Giselle? With their manpower, they haven’t put anybody on to us, you follow me? Makes our work easier, but I keep feeling it’s important...”
Eleven
Pacific just beyond Steiner in Pacific Heights is a rich street. The only sounds to break the moneyed quiet are an occasional passing auto and the discreet mutter of a gardener’s rake. City-planned but homeowner-financed trees shadow the street, lending the block an odd formality.
Larry Ballard was parked several doors down and across the street from 2416 when a child’s delighted shriek jerked his head up. He looked quickly around, momentarily disoriented. A boy just past the toddler stage was running by the Plymouth’s misted side window on stubby legs, pursued by a laughing miniskirted nurse who swept him up in her arms. In bending, the girl gave Ballard a long tempting moment of buttocks through nearly transparent pantyhose. He watched with carnal lust.
Jesus, he thought, shaking the last of the cobwebs out of his head, if Dan had come along and found him half asleep...
But five hours here, nobody in or out of the house. He leaned forward to peer at it again through the moisture-beaded windshield. It was deceptively large, set back from the street behind head-high, impeccably trimmed hedges. A black filigree iron gate was set in the side of the hedge toward the driveway.
Ballard leaned forward, his muscular body tense. A gray Jaguar sedan, long and sleek and shiny despite the failing light and the mist, was turning in. California plates 626 ZFF. A blonde behind the wheel who probably was young and pretty, but he couldn’t be sure.
With sudden decision Ballard got out to stroll down his side of the street until he could see past the hedge on the near side of the driveway. The garage door, twenty feet wide and inset under a first-floor wing of the house, was just going up. The Jag went through, the door started down. Two minutes later lights went on in the house.
Ballard was back in his car and the streetlights were burning when a second car turned in at 2416. It stopped in the driveway with enough of the rear end sticking out from behind the hedge for him to see 843 MCW. A new Ford Gran Torino.
The driver came around the back of the car to go up the walk toward the arched portico over the front entryway. The front door was decorated with a massive brass knocker, but he used a key.
He moved like a cat. Ballard couldn’t see his suit under the genuine Burberry trenchcoat he wore, but was sure it would be magnificent. No wonder that sly bastard Kearny had specified him to pull surveillance at this address! He’d seen the man before, and Kearny had suspected it. At South Park, getting out of a red Caddy convertible.
“His name is Phil Fazzino,” said Giselle, “and he holds the pink on the Gran Torino.” She was drinking Scotch, which she didn’t really like, because Pete Gilmartin had ordered it for her. “But the Jaguar—”
“Allow me to astound you.” Gilmartin spoke with something of a flourish. “The gray Jaguar sedan, California 626 ZFF, is registered to none other than Mr. Arthur Nucci, vice-president of...”
“Golden Gate Trust, through which it is financed,” finished Giselle. “So I’m not astounded after all.”
Reddish light from the fireplace danced on her face, blushing warm tones into her skin. She knew she was talking too much, like a girl on her first date, but she couldn’t help it. Huge, beautifully ornate chandeliers sparkled above them.
Shirley, the lovely cocktail waitress who was also one of the owners of Rocca’s, stopped at their table. “Another round, kids?”
“Of course,” said Gilmartin. “Then we’ll want dinner—”
“No, Pete, we...”
But Shirley had departed, tipping Giselle an approving wink behind Pete’s back. She and Giselle were old friends, Rocca’s had seemed ideal for keeping it a business rather than personal rendezvous. It wasn’t working out that way.
“Pete, I didn’t mean for dinner! I just thought...”
“I’ve got much too much to tell you over a couple of drinks.” Gilmartin flashed his engaging grin, and said in a serious voice, “Some of it’s even about Art Nucci.”
“Pete, please...”
Kearny glanced at Giselle’s face as Gilmartin talked. She was watching the banker avidly. You could always tell, Kearny thought, even without the fact that she hadn’t been home to change clothes since yesterday. Not just by the face and the eyes. Somehow the body itself had a softer, rounder, almost fuller look.
He shut it off. Gilmartin, explaining the photocopied records he had spread out on Kearny’s desk, was giving them a lot of answers.
“The first loan to Padilla Trucking was approved by Nucci for Golden Gate Trust three years ago September. For $28,000. Seven months later there was a second loan for $27,000.”
“Also to the corporation?” asked Kearny.
“That’s right.” Gilmartin’s lean face was enthusiastic as he paced the narrow space between the desk and the partially opened glass door. “But between that second loan to the corporation and Padilla’s death last August, there were four more loans, totaling $50,000. These were personal loans to Frank Padilla, secured with Fraisa stock.”
“All together, $105,000 in three years,” mused Kearny. He turned to Giselle. “Do we have any indication of what the assets of Padilla Trucking and Fraisa, Inc., really are?”
Giselle was leafing through her file. “I don’t think...”
The sliding door opened further. Larry Ballard stuck his head in. “Dan! That chick is...”
Kearny was on his feet, cutting in smoothly, “Larry, good timing. We were just wondering what sort of plant Padilla Trucking has.”
“Uh... It’s a hell of a big yard, Dan. Jammed with equipment, but how much of that they own and how much—”
“Yeah.” Kearny turned to Gilmartin. “Golden Gate call in those loans when Padilla died? The personal ones, backed with Fraisa stock?”
Gilmartin shook his head. “That’s the first thing a financial institution always does when a debtor dies, Dan, but Golden Gate merely renegotiated them with a man named Phil Fazzino. On... let’s see...” He looked up from the photocopies on the desk. “On the fifth of this month.”
Kearny nodded. He said nothing of the fact that this was the same day that the dead Padilla’s stock had been transferred to Fazzino. Instead he pumped Gilmartin’s hand warmly, up and down. “You don’t know how happy we are, Pete, to have you on our team.”
“I’ll be in touch through Giselle,” said Gilmartin with his widest grin, wide enough to give the remark a veiled double meaning. He turned to the slender blonde. “Walk me out to my car, kid.”
Ballard stared broodingly after them, then turned back to Kearny with a slight shrug, as if rejecting not particularly welcome thoughts. “The blonde’s name is Wendy Austin.”
“That was fast work.”
“I got lucky. At ten this morning I tailed her to a boutique in that big new office building on Union Street out in Cow Hollow. The one with the underground parking. Wendy’s Funky Threads, far-out men’s and women’s clothes at out-of-sight prices. I snooped through the display windows, saw her ordering around the salesgirl, so after I’d tailed her to a beauty shop I called the boutique and asked for Wendy Fazzino.”
“You mean she’s his wife?” demanded Kearny, surprised.