As he came into the front office that stared down at Golden Gate through narrow, grimy bay windows, Jane Goldson raised a pert face from her typing. “It’s you, is it? They’ve been going mad all morning trying to reach you.”
Ballard searched uneasily through his mind for whatever it was he must have screwed up. He pulled assignments from his In box with a feigned nonchalance. “I was home until after nine. If you wanted me...”
“I tried. I couldn’t get through. Calling all your birds, one after another?”
Jane was a devastating English girl, slim and vibrant, with exciting chestnut hair two-thirds of the way down her back and exciting miniskirts two-thirds of the way up her thighs. It was the bane of Ballard’s existence that she refused to mess around with anyone from DKA.
“I was skip-tracing. In fact” — he leaned forward to drop the condition report on her desk — “the Schilling Duster’s in the barn.”
“Got that, did you? That’s a good one, I’ll call Cal Cit so they can do their little bird over it.”
“Ah... you don’t know what Kearny wanted me for, do you?”
Her face sobered abruptly. “Oh, that’s terrible, you can’t have heard! Ed Dorsey was horribly beat up last night.”
Six
“Four busted ribs, ruptured spleen — these ain’t in the order of importance, Dan. Skull fracture. One finger so badly crushed they still might have to take it off. Jaw broken in three places. Bruised kidneys. Dislocated left knee. Multiple cuts, bruises and lacerations.” Benny Nicoletti had been speaking in a surprisingly high, soft voice for someone weighing over two-twenty. “And he’s sixty-two years old.”
“None of that explains why you’re here, Benny,” said the detective patiently. “A cop comes around, sure. General Works — maybe. But from the Police Intelligence Unit? No way.”
“Thing is, we got a make on Garofolo that your boy Heslip took to pieces.” He shook his head. “When somebody, even somebody like Bart, can do that to a professional—”
“Professional?” demanded Kearny sharply.
“Semi-pro. Minor enforcer, got a rap sheet back East going back to when he got out of the Army in 1947. Seven arrests, all strong-arm — assault or ADW. Brought to trial three times, never took a fall. Nol-prossed once, two dismissed for lack of evidence.”
“Clean in California?”
“Until now. Works as a checker on the loading docks for an outfit over in Walnut Creek called Padilla Trucking.” He paused. “Makes you sort of wonder what a cat like that would have against old Ed Dorsey.”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“Right now he ain’t able to talk. They’ll arraign him as soon as he can stand up, then we’ll see.”
He leaned forward and his voice suddenly hardened. “Come on, Dan, what are you guys into that gets a systematic beating assigned to one of your men?”
“Nothing, not a damn thing.” Assigned beating. That explained Benny Nicoletti of Police Intelligence showing up: the rackets was one of his jobs. But it didn’t explain the beating itself. Kearny smiled sardonically. “I thought there wasn’t any organized crime in San Francisco, Benny.”
Nicoletti, suddenly agitated, stood up and began pacing back and forth in front of Kearny’s desk. On his feet he was a startlingly big man who prowled rather than walked; he could have been a pro linebacker except for being in his mid-forties. His high-pitched voice was thick and bitter.
“Say you got a little bookie business that starts getting trade away from the old established firms, Dan. Pretty soon a guy gets off a jet from New York or Detroit and comes into your shop and sets his suitcase on the counter. He opens up the suitcase and lets you look at what’s inside, and says ‘Don’t do it no more’ and shuts up the suitcase and catches the next jet back to New York or Detroit. But there ain’t no organized crime in this city, hell no.”
“Just a bunch of gifted amateurs,” said Kearny.
Nicoletti stopped pacing. He put his knuckles on the desk to lean across it. “I hate those bastards’ guts. All of ’em.” Kearny, still seated, nodded at him across the desk. “I’ll let you know if anything turns up.”
“Yeah, I bet you will,” said Nicoletti in bitter disbelief. At the door, he paused with his hand on the latch to look back. “Another thing I hate, Kearny, is crooked cops who spend their time spotting hot cars for some private outfit rather than for the city what’s paying them a salary. I’d just love for us to fall on somebody in the department one of these days and find out he’s got a hand in your pocket.”
Kearny leaned back in his swivel chair. He very deliberately cocked his feet on top of the desk. “How long’ve I known you, Benny?” he asked. “Fifteen years?”
“About that,” admitted Nicoletti.
“I ever wave a dollar bill at you?”
“You know you ain’t. But that don’t mean—”
“How many years did your daughter work for us, summers, typing skip letters, Benny? How many cars you bought from us? Where’d your kid get the great deal on that big old Harley he rides?”
Nicoletti’s round, mild face had darkened as Kearny talked. Now two spots of pink burned on his cheeks. He slid open the door and went out through it and slid it shut behind him without any sound except that of the door sliding on the runners. He didn’t look back.
Kearny leaned forward to stub out his cigarette. He lit another. He sat quietly, frowning. He had to have room to move around in, now that the fact Police Intelligence was interested had made it sure. Benny’d get over it a lot sooner than old Ed Dorsey was going to get over having his face walked on.
He mashed Giselle’s intercom button. “Quit using Waterreus. For anything, anything at all. Got that?”
“Sure, Dan’l, but he’s the only cop on the payroll. Who’s going to turn hot cars for us off the skip list if—”
“You, O’B, Kathy, Bart and Larry for a meeting in the front clerical office at six o’clock,” said Kearny, ignoring her remark about Waterreus. “Everybody else out. Everybody.”
Whoever it was had screwed up badly in letting his errand boy get picked off by Bart Heslip. Because now DKA was going to start finding out who. And why.
Golden Gate Trust was a three-year-old independent bank. Because it was so new, and small, it had been aggressive in getting clients, and from the beginning, had specialized in automotive financing. In an age when many dealers carried their own paper, this meant more than competitive interest rates, kicking back part of the interest to the dealer so he could sell at a narrower margin, far from stringent flooring policies, and accepting a greater percentage of marginal risks on auto loans.
All of which, in turn, meant that Golden Gate Trust got burned more often than other banks, and thus needed investigation, skip-tracing and repossession services more often, too.
Auto Loans occupied a full third of the ground floor, running down the right side of the building. The rest was taken up with normal banking functions, tellers’ windows, bank officers. Kearny found Pete Gilmartin at his small glassed-in office to the rear.
He started up from behind his desk when Kearny appeared. “Jesus, Dan, what say?” They shook hands. “You guys must be in fat city down there at DKA.”
“Why do you say that, Pete?”
“I expected you to come panting up here last night by five forty-five to pick up all those new assignments—”
“You didn’t hear? Kathy didn’t call and tell you?” Kearny asked it with every indication of astonishment, although he had given Kathy strict orders not to. “I got jammed up on the radio, three guys trying to fit a set of tire chains to one of my men, so I sent Ed Dorsey...”