Bleeders, page 13
part #27 of Nameless Detective Series
“Let’s see ... rooming house in Oakland.”
“Employed where?”
“Warehouseman and driver for Eastside Meat Packers in Emeryville.”
He gave me both addresses, and I wrote them down. “How about relatives in the area?” I asked then.
“No relatives in California. One aunt in Texas, but she’s in a nursing home.”
“Other contacts?”
“Not as far as I know. He keeps pretty much to himself these days, or so he claims.”
I asked, “Any of these names in his files?” and ticked off Dingo, Jay Cohalan, and Jackie Spoons. Negative on each. If there was a connection between Bright and any of them, it was buried.
“Anything else?” Duryea said.
“Well, I can use a copy of Bright’s photo.”
“That’s against the rules.”
“I know it. But technically so is giving out verbal information to somebody not in the system. Just a small extension of the favor, Ben.”
He made a blowing sound. The young Ben Duryea might have refused me; the tired, middle-aged Ben Duryea said, “I suppose if I had my printer on and I happened to hit the right buttons and you happened to be standing over here while my back was turned....”
He tapped a couple of keys and the printer began to hum and whir. It didn’t take long for a photo printout to appear. Duryea was on his feet, shrugging into his jacket, when I plucked Charlie Bright’s likeness out of the tray, glanced at it briefly, and folded it into my pocket.
“Time for me to hit the road,” he said. He straightened his tie, yawned, rotated his head the way you do when your neck is stiff, and then grimaced. “Christ, some days. I’m getting too old for this job.”
“Some jobs are like that.”
“Don’t tell me you never think about packing it in, spending more time with your family instead of with the bottom feeders. Hell, your face looks like you got into it with one or two of that type recently.”
He’d been too busy to read the papers or listen to TV news, which allowed me to ignore the second statement and respond only to the first. “Sometimes,” I said.
“I think about it a lot. But I probably won’t do it. Die on the job instead of in the saddle at home in bed ... of a massive coronary if not some jerkoff’s Saturday night special. My problem is, I never learned how to relax. Maybe guys like us can learn, though. You think?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe we can.”
I drove across the Bay Bridge to Emeryville and Eastside Meat Packers. The burly warehouse foreman I spoke to there pulled a disgusted face when I asked for Charlie Bright. “Not working today,” he said. “Called in sick again.”
“Again?”
“Getting to be a habit the past few weeks. We don’t mind giving ex-cons a break, but they got to show up regular and pull their weight. Bright’s not doing either one. I told him this morning—one more sick day and his ass is fired.”
The rooming house address Ben Duryea had given me was in a semi-industrial area close to downtown Oakland. The woman who ran the place said, “He don’t live here anymore. I kicked him out more than two weeks ago.”
“Why?”
“Didn’t pay his rent, that’s why. I don’t allow freeloaders. Pay up on time or they’re history.”
“Why didn’t you report this to his parole officer? Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?
“Told my daughter to take care of that. Mean she didn’t? Damn that girl; I can’t trust her to do nothing except run around with that no-good boyfriend of hers.”
I checked back with Eastside Meat Packers by phone, used Ben Duryea’s name to get their personnel department to look up Bright’s employee file. The address they had for him was the Oakland rooming house. Bright hadn’t bothered to inform his employers that he’d moved, either.
When I walked into the office shortly before noon, Tamara said, “You’re lucky you got me as your assistant, you know it?”
“Sure I know it. What’d you do that makes you look so smug?”
“Some PR, my man.”
“What kind of PR?”
“Media kind, best there is. Reporter and cameraman from Channel Seven showed up a while ago, wanted an interview about the two murders. You know about Cohalan getting wasted, right?”
“Fuentes called me in yesterday to ID the body. Didn’t I mention that in my phone message?”
“No, and they done surprised me with it. But I was smooth as silk. Gave ’em their interview and plenty more.”
“Tamara ... what’d you tell them?”
“Nothing you won’t like, don’t worry. What a fine detective you are, how you always putting out for our clients, how much you taught me. No bullshit, just the wide-eyed truth. Man, they ate it up.”
“Terrific.”
“Yeah,” she said, misreading my reaction. “Now I’m glad I let Horace talk me into upscaling my image. I’m gonna look like I belong on Oprah, foxy black lady PI with butter just oozin’ out my mouth. We’ll have to beat off the new clients with a stick.”
Maybe so, but it did not set well with me; I wished she hadn’t done it. The last thing I needed right now was more media attention, a rush of new clients. But I didn’t say any of this to Tamara. Why burst her bubble? She was pleased with herself, believed she’d done a good thing with the best of intentions. So young, such a child of the new fast-track millenium where image and publicity and self-promotion ruled. Intellectually she understood what had happened to me Friday night, but its emotional baggage and effects were not within her experience. And I hoped to God they never would be. No one can understand what it’s like to be a victim of mindless violence except the survivors.
I asked her, “When did they say the interview would air?”
“Tonight. Six o’clock news.”
“If I’m near a TV I’ll be sure to watch,” I lied.
“No problem if you’re not. I already called up Horace and told him to tape it.”
I eased her off the subject by saying, “Right now we’ve got work to do. Any new information for me?”
“One piece on Byers. May not mean much.”
“Give.”
“Girl didn’t graduate with her high school class in Lodi. Never did get her diploma. Made me wonder, so I accessed some public records. What do you think?”
“Pregnant?”
“Right on. Knocked up at seventeen.”
“She have the baby?”
“Six-pound, nine-ounce boy. Kevin Paul.”
“Who’s the father?”
“Grant Johnson. Year older, went to the same high school.”
“He marry her?”
“Nope. Not in California or Nevada, anyway.”
“Who ended up with the kid? Not Byers?”
“Still working on that. Might be the father, might be she gave it up for adoption.”
“What else have you got on Grant Johnson?”
“Born in Lodi like Byers, played football and basketball in high school, worked as a truck driver and plumber’s helper before and after graduation. No criminal record.”
“Family wouldn’t be Australian, by any chance?”
“Uh-uh. American WASP.”
“See if you can get a photo of him anyway, or at least a general description.”
“Will do.”
“Here’s some more work for you. Pull up whatever you can on a character named Jackie Spoons—strongarm type reputed to be involved in the crystal meth trade. He’s a Greek, real name Andropopolous or something similar. What I’m most interested in is a connection between him and Dingo or any other Australian, him and Jay Cohalan and/or Charlie Bright.”
“You think one of those dudes is Baldy?”
“Not Jackie Spoons or Bright. But they might be mixed up with him in some way.”
Tamara’s self-satisfaction had rubbed away. She seemed to be seeing me clearly for the first time since I came in; her brown eyes showed concern. “You look tired,” she said. “You okay? I mean....”
“I know what you mean. Hanging in there.”
“Truly?”
“Truly.”
“That’s my dawg,” she said, but she wasn’t smiling.
I brought a cup of coffee to my desk. Tamara had laid a message on the blotter to call Joe DeFalco at the Chronicle. When I got DeFalco on the line, I ran the bunch of names by him. The only one that rang bells was Jay Cohalan, and only because of the double homicide.
“Check your morgue files, will you, Joe? See if you can turn up any links among Jackie Spoons, Dingo, and the others.”
“Quid pro quo,” he said. “If there’s an exclusive here....”
“You’ll get it, don’t worry. Same deal we’ve always had.”
“That Sentinels business,” he said reminiscently. “Man, I should’ve had a Pulitzer nomination for my expose.”
“Your expose. Right. Joe DeFalco, fearless investigative reporter. All you did, buddy, was write up what I handed you.”
“Sure, but I wrote it so damn well.”
Joe DeFalco, egotist and bullshitter.
I had some other casework to do, but my head wasn’t into it. I plugged away sporadically while Tamara went to get us a cold lunch; gave it up and considered a call to Nick Kinsella. Counterproductive, I decided. He was not a man you could prod, especially not when he was doing you a favor.
On impulse I took the plastic chip out of my wallet and studied it again, trying to get an idea. I’d shown it to Kerry yesterday, but if it was some kind of advertising gimmick, she knew nothing about it. Thumbing through the Yellow Pages had been a waste of time. Lucky Buffalo Chip. Remember the Alamo! Signifying what, and why had Cohalan been carrying the chip?
I was still fiddling with it when Tamara came back. She plunked one of two paper sacks down in front of me, paused, and then asked, “What’s that you got there?”
Young eyes, eagle eyes. I showed her the chip.
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “The Alamo.”
“You recognize this?”
“Sure. Don’t tell me you hang out down there.”
“Down where?”
“The Alamo. Somebody gave it to you, huh?”
“Mel Bishop. Carolyn Dain found it in her husband’s pocket.”
“No shit?”
“Tamara.”
“Sorry. Doesn’t seem like that dude’s scene, either.”
“What scene? What’s the Alamo?”
“Mean you don’t know?”
“Would I be asking if I did?”
“Salsa scene. Tex-mex food and music.”
“Restaurant? Club?”
“Both. Big place down the Peninsula, tex-mex barbecue on one side, salsa club on the other.”
“Where down the Peninsula?”
“Belmont.”
Belmont was one of the towns strung like beads between San Francisco and San Jose, a good twenty-five miles south and close to Redwood City, where Tamara’s father was on the police force and she’d been born and raised.
“And they give these out to their customers?”
“Right. To anybody spends twenty-five bucks or more. Good for a dollar off in the bar or restaurant. ’Remember the Alamo!’ so you won’t forget where you got it.”
“How recently were you there?”
“Six months, about. Horace likes barbecue, I like to boogie.”
“What kind of place is it?”
“Just told you, tex-mex food and salsa music—”
“I don’t mean that. What kind of clientele?”
“Young folks, mostly. Cool crowd.”
“It have any kind of rep?”
“Rep? Oh, like a drug deli?”
“Like that.”
“Not that I’ve heard.”
“But some people who go there use drugs.”
“Some people everywhere use drugs.”
“My point is, you could score there if you had the right connections.”
“Same answer. You can score just about anywhere if you got the right connections. Think that’s why Cohalan went to the Alamo?”
“There’re tex-mex restaurants and salsa clubs here in the city,” I said. “Belmont’s a long way from his office downtown, a long way from Daly City.”
“Well, could be he didn’t like to pick up his pussy ... ’scuse me, his women too close to home. Could be that’s where he met Byers.”
“Also possible. But I still like the drug angle.” I took the chip from Tamara, returned it to my wallet. “There’s something else that makes me like it, too.”
She was smiling now, that knowing little grin of hers. Quick on the uptake, as always. “Gotcha,” she said. “Charlie Bright.”
Born in Texas, and the Alamo was a tex-mex hangout. Arrested with Byers for dealing methamphetamines, and both Byers and Cohalan were crankheads. Somebody had been supplying them. Maybe Jackie Spoons, maybe the Aussie called Dingo ... and maybe a young guy on parole who had suddenly begun missing work and changed his address without telling his PO, both indicators of drug-related recidivism.
“Yeah,” I said. “Charlie Bright.”
FIFTEEN
THE ALAMO WAS A BIG HACIENDA-STYLE place, stucco and exposed beams and tile roof, that took up most of a block just off El Camino Real. A neon roof sign spelled out the name in a garish dazzle of pink and green and yellow. All of the exterior was brightly lit. Floodlights trained on the stucco walls showed them to have been painted pink; other floods illuminated a good-sized parking lot that extended from the front around on one side.
The lot was half full when I got there at seven o’clock. I found an empty space about equidistant between the two main entrances, one neon-marked Restaurant, the other Salsa, and went in through the latter. More bright neon tubing, muraled walls, booths and tables, and a slick-looking dance floor ringing a center bar. At the far end was a dais, empty now except for half a dozen standing microphones; it was too early for live music, if they even had a band performing on Mondays. Canned Latin music blared from loudspeakers. Two large TV sets mounted on opposite walls showed a Monday Night Football game in progress. Most of the twenty or so patrons were watching the game—silent, violent action played out in pantomime to the hammering salsa beat, not my idea of an ideal combination.
I made my way to the bar, scanning faces as I went. Nearly all were young, twenties and thirties, and none was familiar. I ordered a bottle of Dos Equis, in keeping with the motif, and when the black-shirted bartender served it, I showed him the photo printout of Charlie Bright, saying that Bright was the son of an old friend, and I’d been told he was a regular here. The bartender squinted in the dim light, shook his head. “Don’t know him, man.” I asked if he knew anybody named Dingo. Another headshake and a walkaway.
There was one cocktail waitress on duty; I got the same negative response from her. For twenty minutes I stayed put at the bar, nursing the beer. People came in, people went out. No Charlie Bright. A pair of swing doors had a green-neon Restaurant sign over them; I walked over and entered the other half of the Alamo.
Crowded in there, men, women, and kids stuffing themselves in booths and at tables. A young hostess outfitted in a peasant blouse and a flaring Mexican skirt led me to a corner table. Her reaction to the photo was a shrug, a half-smile, and “Sorry, I never seen him before.” Mexico by way of Brooklyn or the Bronx.
I hadn’t eaten since lunch, so I ordered a small plate of barbecue beef brisket and managed to get most of it down. Too edgy to care much about food. Stranger surrounded by strangers in a strange land, waiting for one familiar face that didn’t appear.
Back into the club. More young people now, none of them Bright. A second waitress had come on duty; I took a table in her section. Well, she said when she’d had a look at Bright’s likeness, maybe she’d seen him once or twice, but she couldn’t be sure. “We get a lot of customers—this is a real popular place, you know?” As for Dingo: “That’s a funny name. I don’t know anybody with a funny name like that.”
I nursed another bottle of Dos Equis. The big room kept filling up, a good crowd for a Monday night. More strangers. And I began to stand out among them: I was more than twice the age of ninety percent of the clientele. Glances, open looks, a few whispered exchanges. I kept glancing at my watch, fidgeting, staring toward the entrance—making it plain that I was waiting for somebody who should have shown up long ago. But I couldn’t keep up the pretense indefinitely. And the canned music seemed louder, more strident, and strobe lights had begun flashing over the dance floor. The racket, the assault of colored lights created a surreal atmosphere, impairing my vision and giving me a headache. In that pulsing, light-and-dark crush of bodies I would have had trouble recognizing Kerry from more than a few feet away.
I gave it up, went out into the cold night and walked around until my head cleared. Then I got into the car, rolled the window partway down, and sat there feeling frustrated. After nine now. Long damn day, and nothing much to show for it. No news from Joe DeFalco that I didn’t already know, no word from Nick Kinsella, no new leads or additional data on Annette Byers’ illegitimate son. And now tonight, no Dingo and no Charlie Bright.
Hang around here how much longer? Couple of hours? Until midnight? I ought to go home, get some sleep. Sure, but I knew I wouldn’t sleep much; mostly lie wide-eyed in the dark, listening to Kerry’s breathing, listening to the clicks. Might as well stay put, wrapped in the dark cocoon of the car, for as long as I could stand it.
I called the condo to let Kerry know I would be late. We didn’t talk long. She was fine, Emily was fine, I was fine—there did not seem to be much else to say long distance.
Minutes died slowly after that. Another stakeout, another handful of lost time. Most of my life spent in situations like this, waiting, vegetating. Suspended animation. Dying by inches and clock ticks.
Better than already being dead, I thought.
Better than lying in cold storage like Carolyn Dain and her husband.
Yes, sure, but they didn’t know it. Awareness for them had ceased; time for them stood still. By the grace of God I had been granted more minutes, hours, days, months, maybe years, and here I was killing off some of that precious gift in another dark, lifeless stakeout. Didn’t I owe it to myself, to Kerry and Emily, to use what time I had left in healthier, pleasanter ways?
