“Yes!” News of success on any front pumped Mickey right up. “What is it?”
“A tire iron they found in the lagoon. He’s called Devin and they should be over there by now.”
“That is so great,” Mickey said. “Do you think this reward thing might actually work, Sis? Would that be cool, or what?”
“Very cool, Mickey, very cool. But let’s just see what happens. See if the tire iron… I mean if they can tell. And then where it leads, if anywhere. But at least it’s something. Some real evidence. Maybe.”
“Okay,” Mickey said.
“Okay, what?”
“Okay, I’m motivated again. We’ll keep doing it this way. Meanwhile, what are you doing for lunch?”
She hesitated. “I haven’t really thought about it. I had a huge breakfast, you know, this morning.”
“I remember. But they’ve got this new theory where you can eat two, or even three, meals in one day, and it won’t kill you. In fact, it might even be good for you.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll get something,” she said.
“You’d better. There’ll be a quiz on what it was when I get back.”
Damien Jones, at long last.
Mickey got the strong impression that Damien’s boss wasn’t happy to give him time off for this interview, but Mickey had told him the half-truth that Mr. Sanchez had directed him how to find Mr. Jones, intimating that the big boss himself wanted the interview to proceed.
Now Mickey and Damien had walked a few houses down the street from the move-in job site and were sitting on concrete steps leading up to one of the other houses. Out here, the gray cloud cover was thick, but high enough that it wasn’t quite fog. In spite of that, every few minutes, the deep bass of a foghorn punctuated the early afternoon stillness.
Since Mr. Jones had called with information that seemed to have at least an oblique relevance to the investigation, Mickey found that he had to summon all of his patience as it quickly became obvious that Damien was under the influence of some kind of controlled substance. During the first few questions, trying to establish a rapport with the young workman, it wasn’t even obvious that Damien remembered the substance of his call to the Hunt Club the previous night.
So Mickey gently prodded. “You said something about the fact that the foundation was supposed to pay for your room and board, but now you were paying. And it wasn’t fair.”
“Right. Right.”
“And that Mr. Como didn’t do the same thing at his place. The Sunset Youth Project.”
“Okay.”
“Okay. And that this somehow had something to do with his murder.”
Damien sat on the step with his elbows on his knees, staring straight in front of him, to all appearances stumped. After a minute, he laughed softly to himself, hung his head, and shook it. “Seemed like I had it all worked out last night, but that wasn’t exactly it, what you just said.”
Mickey nodded, all understanding. Although he knew that if this was all he was going to get after the four hours he’d spent tracking this bozo down, he’d be sorely tempted to kill him. Still, he reined himself in and managed to sound sincere. “That’s all right,” he said.
“But that don’t mean it isn’t true.”
Mickey wasn’t clear what antecedent Damien was referring to here and, in fact, was reasonably sure that Damien couldn’t identify it himself. But all he said was, “No, I know.”
“I mean, it’s a racket, you know.”
“What is?”
“The whole, you know, the rehab thing.”
“A racket?”
“Yeah.”
“How’s that?”
“Well.” Damien looked up the street, making sure he was still out of earshot. The foghorn sounded, and he continued. “You know, they collecting money from the foundations. Big money.”
Suddenly Mickey felt a chill raise the hairs on his arms. Unbidden, the discussion he’d had with Alicia Thorpe the other day about the Sunset Youth Project’s funding from the city and from other foundations came back to him in sharp detail, particularly her disclosure that the city’s Health Services Department was the biggest single line item in the city’s budget. And now here was Mr. Jones, no relation to Mr. Einstein, referring to the same thing. Which didn’t necessarily mean anything, except for the rather salient fact that Mr. Jones, addled as he might be or might have been last night, somehow was introducing this funding issue into a discussion about Dominic Como’s murder.
And now, it seemed, Jones had found a scent. And it was Mickey’s job to keep him on it. “Right,” he said. “So the Mission Street Coalition gets money from the city. So what?”
“So what is they s’posed to use that to keep up the program. But it don’t go to no program.”
“So where’s it go, Damien?”
“Now, that I wish I knew.” He clucked in disappointment. “But, oh, yeah, this what I was sayin’. The whole thing is, they get me, ’stead of jail, into the program here, okay?”
“Right.”
“Okay, the thing is, they ain’t no program to the program. You know what I’m sayin’?”
Thinking, Patience, young Jedi, Mickey said, “Not exactly. Maybe you can tell me.”
“Okay, here’s the thing. We here for the rehab, you know. Otherwise, we maybe in jail, right? Right. So we get here, ain’t nobody doin’ that twelve-step shuffle, ain’t nobody urine testing, we just come in and say, ‘No, we ain’t doin’ no shit,’ and sign this form, and then we done. Except they make us work.”
Getting a little wound up now, Damien Jones’s expressive face went into a deep frown. “Hey! Look at me, now. Whatchu think I been doin’ all day ’cept humping these loads? And the company, the Coalition, they chargin’ the same as like Bekins, you know, the moving people. And they s’posedly payin’ us fair, but we don’t never get to see no money. See what I’m sayin’? That’s the money goes for rent and food, my money. Not no foundation money. So where’s all that foundation money go? That’s what I want to know. So bottom line is they got me workin’ for a year, payin’ all the bills here, and meanwhile I don’t do every little thing they ask, I’m out of the program and back in jail. You want to know the truth, they got theirselves a bunch a slaves workin’ here, nothin’ less, and I’m one of ’em. And that ain’t right.”
“No, it isn’t,” Mickey said. “And I’m glad you decided to tell me about all this. But you called last night originally about the reward, and I’m afraid if this doesn’t have anything to do with the murder of Dominic Como… well, you know what I’m saying, don’t you?”
For a long minute, Mickey thought he’d lost Damien for good. The faraway stare came back, the exhausted elbows-on-his-knees posture. Methodically, he bobbed his head as though listening to his own private soundtrack. Then, when at last he spoke, Mickey could barely hear him. “You know them Battalion people out there?”
Again, one of Alicia’s references, “sort of an urban Peace Corps,” and Mickey snapped back to full attention. “What about them?”
“Well, brothers I know in there, they gettin’ paid, all right, and they don’t do no real work, so I’m thinkin’ how’s that happen and how do I get some of that?”
“What do you mean, they don’t do work?”
Damien rolled his eyes, explaining the obvious. “I mean work like I’m doing. Humpin’ loads, cleanin’ up, sweepin’, kitchen work, like that.”
“So what do they do?”
“Whatever Dominic Como says.”
“Ah.” The explanation didn’t really turn any light on for Mickey, but now at least Como was overtly in the conversation. Now the trick was to keep him there. “So you’re saying what, exactly?”
“Well, first, I want to get me some of that.”
“That might be a little difficult, Damien, since Como’s dead now.”