He stood on the curb watching the cab drive off, then he started wandering. He had to think. It had all been too easy. The big cop began strolling along with his hands in his pockets. Hawkley wasn’t dumb. What if he’d noticed that suddenly his tap on Kearny’s phone dried up of anything useful except that Nicoletti’s witness was going to leave on Friday and wouldn’t be around on Monday for a look at Pivarski in the flesh? What would that mean?
He walked a little faster, his feet keeping pace with his brain. That would mean Hawkley wanted them to I.D. Pivarski as the killer. Did that make any sense at all? Sure, if the real killer looked a lot like him and...
Nicoletti was striding right along now, unmindful of the fall nip in the air despite the bright October sunshine. Then he slowed.
Then why pick somebody like Pivarski, who had an airtight alibi? Because Pivarski was the only one available? But Hawkley couldn’t have known the witness would identify Pivarski from his driver’s license photo. Nicoletti had slowed to an amble. Of course Hawkley had fought damned hard to keep Pivarski off the stand at the hearing. But he hadn’t fought to keep out the fact that Pivarski had been at DKA’s Oakland office at the time Fazzino had been hit, so what good did keeping Pivarski himself away from the hearing do? If he indeed had actually wanted Pivarski I.D.’d by the witness?
Nicoletti realized he was standing mid-block on Fulton Street beside the old Federal Building. Standing stock still. Probably ought to go on up to the hearing, see what happened up there.
He started walking slowly along, hands in pockets, slouching. Now, what if Hawkley really hadn’t wanted to keep Pivarski from testifying at the hearing, but had merely seemed to...
So of course Ballard got stopped by the Highway Patrol.
“May I see your operating permit, please, sir?”
Ballard extended his wallet.
“Please remove it from the plastic cover and hand it to me.”
Silent manipulations by a seething Ballard, silent perusal by the CHP officer of that sacred ikon of modem life, Identification.
“I’m sure, Mr. Ballard, that you realize this is a fifty-five-mile-an-hour zone by state law. Your vehicle was clocked by our radar as traveling in excess of seventy miles an hour...”
While Johnny Delaney got down to business. “Mr. Pivarski, I would like you to cast your mind back to the events of last November fifth.”
The square, ugly face was made uglier by concentration. “The day I went to dem collection agency bastards in—”
“Mr. Pivarski, please do not anticipate counsel’s questions.” The Hearing Officer’s face was distressed, as if he had a gas pain.
“Uh... okay, Your Honor.”
Delaney started again. “You left work early that day, did you not, Mr. Pivarski, to see your attorney?”
“Yeah, that’s right.” He pointed at the Complainant’s counsel table. “Mr. Norbert Franks. Him. Right there.”
“And he instructed you...”
Kearny sat listening while the big dumb bastard methodically and ponderously, like a fat man going to the toilet, took away from him his license to practice his profession. Sentence by sentence. He was too dumb to be lying yet he had to be lying.
“Yeah. So I took my two hundred simoleons and that letter he give me, and I went to them collection agency bastards in Oakland. Daniel Kearny Associates.”
“To whom did you speak there?”
“Some queer.”
Delaney looked at the Hearing Officer and raised his shoulders slightly. “Um... a Jeffrey L. Simson?”
“I dunno his name. He took me back to the slant broad.”
The Hearing Officer looked at the ceiling and then down at his hands. He cleared his throat. “By ‘slant broad’ I take it you mean an Oriental female, Mr. Pivarski?”
“A slant or a Buddha-head. They all look the same to me.” He looked back at Delaney. “She took my two hundred bucks and signed my letter, and I left.”
“This is the letter you have testified previously your attorney gave you to—”
“Dat’s right.”
“Would you recall the name of the Oriental lady who...”
Hec Tranquillini listened with something akin to awe. He had been able to show Simson’s testimony was tainted, but this big ape’s? The trouble was, he was too dumb. Trying to dig his fingers into a crack in that dim-witted testimony would be like trying to get a handhold on polished marble. He was almost too dumb to be true.
“No, no, it wasn’t no collection, I’m tellin’ you. It was just money for them to hold, like... uh... a guy holdin’ your dough in a bet in a bar, y’know? Till we see which way all the court stuff come out. Just to keep ’em off my back for a while.”
“Previous testimony in this court indicates that you never returned the countersigned letter to your attorney, Mr. Pivarski.” Delaney beamed solicitously at him. “Is this true?”
The hulking witness looked uncomfortable for the first time. “Yeah, well, y’see, I figgered wasn’t no use runnin’ all the way out to Concord with it, y’know, I mean, he charges by the hour, sets a timer the minute you walk through the front door...” He looked doggedly over at Franks. “So I figured to mail it to him. But... well... I’d folded it up in my shirt pocket, y’know, a’ then I went bowling an’ the next day I sent the shirt to the laundry an’...” He looked around sheepishly at the Hearing Officer. “Guess I should of hung on to it, huh?”
“Just two more questions, Mr. Pivarski,” said Delaney. “First, what time did you arrive at the Kearny offices?”
“Maybe five-thirty, around there.”
“Leave?”
“Like quarter to six, ten to six, like that.”
“Thank you, Mr. Pivarski.” He turned to Tranquillini. “Your witness, counsel.”
And thought, let’s see you discredit this baby, Hector, as Tranquillini bounced to his feet and strode to the bench.
“Your Honor, there is a point or two in this witness’s testimony upon which I would like to confer with my client. If we might have a brief recess...”
The Hearing Officer looked at his watch. “I hope we can conclude these proceedings before the noon recess, Mr. Tranquillini. So I can give you no more than ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes is fine, Your Honor.” Tranquillini beamed.
And almost took Dan Kearny’s head off in the hall, which is where they had to confer since there was no time to go elsewhere.
“Dan, what the hell am I supposed to use to open this guy up? He’s lying, he’s got to be, unless Kathy Onoda just pulled a monumental goof, in which case we’re dead. Get me some goddam ammunition!”
“For Chrissake, Hec, don’t you think we’re trying?” snapped Kearny. “You can’t get information where there isn’t any. You can’t find people when there isn’t any trail to follow.”
“What the hell about Ballard up in Sacramento? It can’t be too tough to find out where some chick is working, for Chrissake.”
Kearny looked uncomfortable. “Larry was supposed to be back down here forty-five minutes ago. Something must have—”
“What about Heslip and this file clerk? Unless we get something, you can kiss your ass goodbye as far as operating an investigation agency in this state is concerned. We can appeal, and keep appealing, but do you have any idea what that’s going to cost you?”
“The last time we heard from Heslip was—”
“Who dat takin’ my name in vain?”
And there was a fatigued, travel-worn Bart Heslip beside them, his clothes wrinkled and his face unshaven, but Bart Heslip all the same. And he was not alone.