“... unless they were checking whether they had a case before they made their move. Which means they need somebody to back up Pivarski’s version of what went on that day between him and Kathy.”
“That would be perjury, Dan.”
“By both Pivarski and our man, yeah.” He added absently, “Or woman. And maybe Pivarski’s attorney as well. Franks.” He quit pacing. “Leave Ballard a note to find out whether the state investigator talked with Donna Payne, too. Tomorrow, stop at the Oakland office on your way in. Ask Irene Jordon if anyone was around bothering her. We want to find out if they were trying to reach anyone except Simson.”
Giselle was writing. “You aren’t coming in tomorrow?”
“After I talk with old man Hawkley. You take a cab to the Oakland office, I’ll pick you up there.” Giselle didn’t drive. “If this is a deliberate move by someone to jerk my ticket, Hawkley’s going to be in it somewhere.”
He went back to his desk, sat down and drew on a cigarette which had been smoldering on the edge of the ashtray. His eyes were watchful and alert, almost cruel in their concentration. “It could just be the State. I’ve stepped on a few toes in the Licensing Bureau over the years.”
“Tom Greenly’s toes?”
“Greenly might have corns, at that.” He stood up abruptly. “They’ve been pushing us; it’s time we pushed back. Ready to go?”
“Should I leave a note for Bart, too? He’s trying to get a line on this Verna Rounds.”
“Let’s see if he comes up with anything, first.”
The Bide-A-Wee Motel was a block down MacArthur from a gun store that had been hit enough times to bristle with the sort of security devices it would take an antitank gun to breach. The Bide-A-Wee wasn’t quite so tough to get into. All it took was money — or a scam. Heslip, parking his DKA Ford with the whippet aerial in the motel lot, was running a scam. His aloha shirt was on a hanger in the back seat; he now wore a suit and tie and carried an attaché case. He looked very straight indeed.
The man behind the counter was white and sufficiently mugged by life to be mean when he had the edge. “Room for the night, sir?” he asked in a bright I-hate-niggers voice.
Heslip swung the attaché case up on the countertop with a solid thump, took out his wallet and gave the manager just a glimpse of his private investigator’s registration card.
“I’m an investigator registered with the State of California,” he said coldly. All he had allowed the clerk to see was state of California across the top of the card, with Department of Professionals and Vocational Standards and the state seal below that. His voice had stroked the word “registered” as lightly as a snowflake hitting the ground. The clerk missed the word, as intended.
“Ah... yes, sir.”
“Complaints,” Heslip said sternly. A Buick Electra hardtop coupé had just pulled into the parking lot. “We’ve been getting complaints about this motel. We know certain members of the Oakland police force...” The manager shifted nervously from one foot to the other. A white man and a black girl in a skirt which barely covered her pudenda were coming toward the office from the Buick. “But we’re involved in the investigation now.”
The door opened, the bell jangling merrily and the odd couple entered. The man was juiced enough to be high, wide and handsome.
The girl winked at Heslip. “Hi, Charlie,” she said to the motel clerk.
“Ah... we’re filled up,” said Charlie. He was sweating.
The john’s face had gotten ugly. “Whadda ya mean, filled up? You got out a sign says ‘Vacancy.’ An’ she told me—”
Charlie reached down under the counter. He flipped a switch. The VACANCY sign outside went off.
“Quit yo’ jivin’ ” The girl reached over the counter and scooped a key off the nearly full rack. With her other hand she was expertly honking her john. “Pay the man, honey,” she said in a breathy little-girl voice. “I can’t hardly wait.”
The john’s face was excited from having his crotch massaged. “How much?”
“Twelve dollars, but you have to sign the register and—”
The john dropped a five and a ten on the counter, and pulled along by the girl avid to score and get back out on the street again, went out the door. Charlie looked up at Heslip from the $15 with a sickly grin on his face.
“I can close this dump down in twenty minutes,” said Heslip. He whirled to point at his car with its suddenly menacing CB antenna. “I go out there and get on the air and I have three carloads of state and federal investigators in here. And you’re out of business, my friend.”
“Look, mister, I don’t know what you think—”
“I said out of business. And not only that. In the custody of federal marshals. You know why?”
When Charlie didn’t answer, Heslip thrust his nose across the counter to within six inches of the other man’s face. He had gotten a beautiful break with the unregistered couple.
“You know why?”
Charlie shook his head numbly. Heslip started to wing it, making it up as he went along. He had to admit it sounded real, if he did say so himself.
“You’re going to the slam for fifteen, my friend, because a little black hooker named Verna was working a badger game with her mack in this motel.”
“Shakedowns? None of that goes on here, Officer.”
“You go up to their rooms with them?” he sneered.
“Well, no, but—”
“Then I’m telling you what went on here. She had her mack in the closet taking pictures, and she sent prints to one of the johns she was with, a construction contractor from Decatur, Illinois. When he got the pictures he died of a heart attack. His wife found them and the extortion note. She went to the fed, they came to us.”
“Jesus Christ,” breathed Charlie.
“So now you’re going to tell me every single thing you know about Verna Rounds, and the pimp who was running her, or—”
Charlie started to talk. He told Heslip things not even his accountant knew. He would have told Heslip about his childhood if Heslip had asked. Most of it was dross, but there was a crumb or two.
Ballard, down on the Peninsula south of San Francisco, wasn’t getting even a crumb. He couldn’t find Ashley Avenue, let alone number 573. The closest he came was an Ashley in East Palo Alto, but the numbers there ran, for some obscure reason, from 1700 to 2300.
Back in San Carlos he checked two gas-station maps against his own. Still no Ashley Avenue. So he went to a fire house. The bored strapping youngster behind the night desk was delighted to abandon his Penthouse for the big board map posted beside the communications desk. “Sure, here it is. Ashley Avenue. South of the San Carlos airport and just west of the Bayshore. New street within the past year.”
Ten minutes later Ballard discovered that 573 was half of a new duplex. What would a single girl like Donna Payne be doing out here in the sticks in tract housing? He wasn’t going to get a chance to ask her, because the name on the mailbox was Childers and the house was dark. Lights out at eleven-forty at night? Didn’t she even watch Johnny Carson, for Chrissake? Everybody watched Johnny Carson. Johnny Carson made three mil a year and had a great program to repossess cars during.
Ballard went next door, where lights were on. He found a woman who believed in haircurlers and cold cream and to hell with what her husband might prefer to get into bed with. Yes, a young couple named Childers had moved in next door three weeks earlier. The landlord? That was Mr. Haynes.