“So by the time I’m inside, he’s there, too, his jacket’s off, and he’s actually serving up food on my tray and I’m thinking this is some strange dude, and I don’t know why but I stop there in front of him and the Lord speaks to me and tells me to ask him if he knows where an ex-con like me can get myself a job. And he just stands there lookin’ at me a minute and then says don’t let him leave without snagging him again.
“So I don’t take my eyes off him, and then he’s putting on his jacket and I get up and he actually comes over to me and asks me what I want to do and when can I start. And I tell him anything and right now. And I can see he likes that ’cause he says come on out with him and he drives me in his limo out to this house they’re rebuilding over on Fell and next thing I know I’m carrying drywall and learning how to put it up. Got pretty good at it too.”
“I bet you did.”
Rand nodded, satisfied. “So there it was. Steady work with his rehab people until I learned what I was doing and then Dominic caught me onto a regular crew, I mean real construction work. Saved my life. Here, pull over here.”
They’d come all the way up to the north end of the lagoon, near where Mickey had found Como’s body. By now, the only water left was visible as little more than a sinuous puddle that ran down the middle of the mud slick that used to be the bottom of the pond.
“Now, before we get to it, maybe I should have said this first.” Rand put a quick hand on Hunt’s arm, stopping him from getting out. “I want to keep it that my name don’t get out in front of the police on this thing. If it turns out it’s somethin’, then it’s what it is, is all. But I don’t want anybody telling the police who got you here and how’d I see it when nobody else did. Good?”
Hunt didn’t like to make promises he wasn’t sure he could keep, but he didn’t want to shut Rand down either. So he nodded ambiguously and let him continue.
“’Cause you know,” Rand went on, “they get somebody like me done time, next thing it’s how’d he know where to look? He must have been part of it. You understand what I’m sayin’?”
“I do.”
A brusque nod. “Least not till they doin’ the reward, when it’s over.”
“I hear you.”
“Okay, then.” And they both reached for the door openers.
As soon as they got out of the car, Hunt could smell rotting vegetation and gas. And he noticed that all along the opposite shore, the degraded shoreline had been fenced off, no doubt in preparation for the improvements, the new rock-and-concrete wall.
Cecil Rand came around and led him across the street, then down across the grassy lawn to the old retaining wall. They were still quite a ways from the water-hugging trees that marked the exact site where Como had been found, but Rand didn’t seem to know or care about that, and stopped perhaps fifty yards short of it, and on the street side.
“Okay, now,” Rand said as they stood looking out over the mud. The sky today was heavily overcast and the gray morning light flat and without glare. “Now, I ain’t saying this is absolutely somethin’, it’s just what it is.”
“All right,” Hunt said. “What are we looking at?”
Rand moved in closer next to Hunt and pointed slightly off to his right. “I was walking by here last night before dark and stopped right here. Seen it and started thinkin’ on the reward. Put my stogie out here to mark the spot, so I’d get it right.”
Hunt looked down and saw the carbon X on the low wall. Then his eyes came up, following where Rand was pointing.
“Just this side of the last of the water,” Rand said. “It’s still there.”
“What, though?” And then Hunt squinted. Maybe ninety feet away from where he stood, and still ten feet on this side of the puddle, the smooth flat surface of the mud yielded an instantly recognizable shape, out of place among the smattering of roots and bottles and rotting algae. It looked like two sticks crossed at perfect right angles, but Hunt knew what it was even as he said, “I see it. You mean the tire iron?”
Rand was nodding and nodding, the corners of his mouth turned up in satisfaction. “I’m seein’ that ol’ thing in the mud last night and thinkin’ I be lookin’ at what got used on Dominic.”
14
The headquarters for the Mission Street Coalition’s moving company occupied two large warehouses and an office that was little more than a shed in the light industrial neighborhood a couple of blocks off Cesar Chavez Boulevard between the 101 and 280 freeways.
Mickey, clueless, drove out to the Coalition’s residential home on Dolores, got there at about nine-thirty, then asked around and at the desk for Damien Jones. The administrative bureaucracy at the home wasn’t the most organized system Mickey had ever encountered, and it took him nearly a half hour to hunt down Damien’s likely whereabouts, and he only succeeded then because, inadvertently, he had run into the executive director of the program, Jaime Sanchez, and his wife, Lola.
Identifying himself for what he was, an associate with the Hunt Club, Mickey had explained that Mr. Jones had called the reward hotline number at the office yesterday and apparently had some information relating to the murder of Dominic Como. This seemed to surprise and slightly displease both of the Sanchezes. They couldn’t imagine what that might be or why Damien hadn’t told them first. But nevertheless Mr. Sanchez directed Mickey to the moving company’s headquarters, where he arrived at ten-twenty only to discover that Mr. Jones was out with a moving crew on a job at Forty- second Avenue, almost to the beach, and a good half hour’s drive, or more, from headquarters.
Before he started that drive, though, Mickey took a frustration break and called his sister at the office, giving her the play-by-play of his morning so far, which had produced nothing at all even in the limited realm of eliminating spurious claims to the reward money. “So now I’m off to Forty-second Avenue! Forty-second Avenue! That’s like five blocks before you leave the continent, do you realize that? The way this morning’s going I’m not even going to lay eyes on this Jones guy until noon, and that’s if he’s not on his lunch break someplace else. And all for what? So I can get to meet another Blimp Lady, except this guy’s a guy? This is dumb. Isn’t there somebody else I can check out? Did that girl ever call back? I can check out Damien Jones when he comes back home tonight, if he does. If his name’s even Jones, which now that I think about it, it probably isn’t. Well?”
“Well, what, Mick? Did you ask me a question?”
“I bet I asked you a hundred in there.”
“Try one again. One.”
“Okay. Have we gotten any new calls?”
“Yes.”
“Great. Who? Hang-up Lady?”
“Not her. Not yet. But actually, we’ve gotten three more. The bad news being that they all sound to me like Wyatt’s going to give them to you. If I had to bet.”
“Are they closer than Damien Jones? I mean physically closer? Maybe I can see one of them on the way out to see him. Or all of them.”
“I think maybe you should wait until Wyatt decides, don’t you?”
His sister’s voice of calm reason finally made an impact. Mickey let out a deep sigh into the telephone and said, “Probably.” He took another breath. “Speaking of which, you get any word from him?”
“As a matter of fact, I have. The guy he met this morning? He thinks he might have come up with the murder weapon.”