“Highs an lows,” said Verna. She had a habit of fixing her gaze on Mommy Harris even when speaking to Heslip. “They ain’t — aren’t — as even as other kids. Don’t get somethin’ they want, off they go. Cryin’, canyin’ on somethin’ awful.” She added, in quick defense, “Cain’t blame ’em none. Not after what they been through. They ain’t ever had nuthin’. Not ever, long as they’ve lived.”
Heslip had trouble believing this girl had ever been a whore and a junkie. She didn’t have any of the ghetto brashness other black girls of her background had. But he sensed a steel core inside that he’d sensed in her fat old mother out in Oakland, and that was the salient feature of Mommy Harris. Who smiled her abrupt brilliant smile and stood up.
“Time for chores, my goodness.” But when Verna started to rise also, she put a hand on the younger woman’s shoulder. To Heslip, she said, “I’m just a bug for a clean house, and when you have fifty little ones a clean house is hard to come by.” To Verna she said, “Take all the time you need, honey,” and shook hands with Heslip and was gone.
There was a moment of constraint between Verna and Heslip. Then he said, “You love it here, don’t you?”
“Ain’t leavin’ till they th’ow me out.” She drank the last of her coffee and shook her head. “The urge fo’ that shit, it still get so strong sometimes when I’m lyin’ alone at night. But I get up an’ go into that babies’ suite, an’ I walk up an down lookin’ at them little tots wouldn’t have no chance wasn’t fo’ Mommy bein’ there for ’em like Doctor Parton was fo’ me, an’ then I go back to sleep like a baby.” She met his eyes and sighed. “So you figure it’s somethin’ I know ’bout that Friday afternoon? Mos’ a year ago?”
“That’s the only thing that makes sense,” said Heslip. “Friday, November fifth, last year. Do you even remember it?”
She remembered it, and went through the whole thing without a word of prompting from Heslip. Her memory was so vivid because it was her first time on the switchboard and she made a mess of it. And she remembered Pivarski (“that dude Pee-somethin”) because she couldn’t pronounce his name.
“And you saw the whole transaction?” asked Heslip.
“Was standin’ in the doorway blowin’ bubbles.”
“Did Pivarski give Kathy anything? A—”
“Give her two hundred dollars.”
“Anything else? Oh... an envelope or a letter or—”
“Wasn’t anything like that, Mist’ Heslip. He paid her, she give him a receipt, he got up an lef.”
“Where was Jeff Simson all this time?”
“Out at his desk where he b’long.”
Heslip drank the final gulp of cold coffee, then sat frowning at the bright gold and white curtain beyond Verna’s head. Afternoon sun poured into the room, backlighting her face. Jesus, nothing there. Nothing at all. A totally routine collection. Did it justify jeopardizing her life by asking her to go back with him? Why didn’t he just stand up and walk out of there and go back himself and tell them he couldn’t find her?
“All of that he’p any?” she asked. “That gonna be of any use Mist’ Kearny an’ Miss Giselle an’ all, to keep their license fo’ ’em?”
Heslip didn’t answer, poised on the knife-edge of decision.
“Cause I gotta a lot of work to do, an’ if I ain’t up there, Mommy Harris, she just pitch in an’ do my share herse’f.”
Heslip stared at her. And finally said, “What do you feel you ought to do, Verna?”
Ballard had planned to be waiting outside the proper window in the Department of Employment office when it opened at eight-thirty on Monday morning, so he could find out where Madeline Westfield worked. But when he came out to get into his car at six-thirty, he had of all things a flat tire. Fixing it involved him in commuter traffic, especially once he was on Interstate 80 beyond Bay Bridge, so it was nearer nine-thirty when he thrust his head through the opening and asked his question of the woman who had left forty-seven minutes early on Friday. She answered with one of her own.
“This Madeline Westfield is a civil service employee of the State of California?” She was a flattened-down-forty, with dark hair and a bright nylon scarf knotted about her muscular neck. She asked her question as if expecting to catch him in an indiscretion.
“That’s my understanding, yes, ma’am.”
A minute of page-turning and she had it. And told him.
What? his mind shrieked. She worked where? In which section?
He lit out running for a phone, before remembering that he couldn’t phone because of the bug on the DKA phone. He checked his watch. Nine twenty-six. The hearing started at ten. If he drove like hell, he surely would be there before Pivarski had testified and departed. Wouldn’t he? Hec Tranquillini planned a minute cross-examination. Man, so inevitable, so logical, when you thought it through. It was the only place she could have worked for Greenly to have had to seek her out and subvert her.
Hawkley stepped to the Golden Gate curb from his nephew’s car at 9:31 A.M. — tall, lean, aged but not frail, skin like tough old leather. Looked exactly like the folksy cracker-barrel attorney whose image he tried to create. He and Delaney shook hands.
“A pleasure I assure you, Mr. Delaney. My nephew Norbert has been telling me wonderful things about your conduct of the State’s case in this hearing.” He turned slightly to the second man emerging from the back seat. He was big, muscular, square of body and of head. “Mr. Delaney. Mr. Pivarski.”
Christ, thought Delaney, the guy looks like a Polish joke. “Delighted, Mr. Pivarski.”
“Yeah.” The voice grated like a diesel changing gears.
Delaney turned back to Hawkley, who was just ordering Franks to put the car in the Civic Center Parking Garage and return. He said, “We’ve got a half-hour before the hearing, Mr. Hawkley. I’d very much appreciate a chance to take Mr. Pivarski through his testimony before his appearance on the stand, and to do it where the opposition won’t disturb us.” He gestured down wind-blown Golden Gate at the Larkin intersection a long half block away. “We could go up the street for a cup of coffee...”
“An excellent suggestion,” said Hawkley.
Norbert Franks pulled out into traffic, making a battered six-passenger Checker Cab wait, as the three tall men, two bulky and one thin, started down Golden Gate Avenue toward the coffee shop.
“You get a good look at him?” demanded Benny Nicoletti from the back seat of the Checker Cab.
The linen-truck driver, a much paler and thinner man than he had been a year before, nodded. He was facing backwards in the jump seat opposite Nicoletti. There were three more large and competent men in the car besides them and the driver. Nicoletti clicked on the safety of the riot gun lying across his knees as the car turned downhill on Hyde Street. “Well?”
“Yeah.” The linen-truck driver’s eyes were rimmed with fatigue and something else that was probably long-standing fear.
“That’s a positive make?”
The driver said formally, “That’s the guy I saw coming out of the motel room with the shotgun and the satchel.”
“That’s him but that can’t be him,” said Nicoletti. “Okay, maybe he’s got a twin brother,” he added drily. He raised his voice. “Mike. Drop me at Market Street, will you?”
“Hey, what about me?” yelped the witness. “You promised—”
“You’re on your way to the airport,” said Nicoletti as the cab started slowing to let him out. “You don’t need me to wave good-bye.”