Dead Skip

by Joe Gores

  DKA Oakland originally had gotten it as a straight collection on February 21, when the subject was delinquent 1/17 and 2/17 in the amount of $108.64 each on a 1972 T-Bird. Contract balance had been $5,542.31 at that time, and these were the fourth and fifth payments respectively. All of the earlier payments had been at least a week late, one of them seventeen days. DKA Oakland immediately had run into a stone wall, because the subject had left his residence address of 3877 Castro Valley Boulevard, Castro Valley, a full month before he had given it to the bank as his res add when buying the car.

  The case had immediately been reassigned to the SF office as a Repo on Sight from the work address.

  The subject was gone from his job, also.

  The March 17 payment was not received, making it a deadline deal on which the client’s ninety-day recourse would expire in one month. That meant the client would have to eat the car if recovered after April 17, so all the stops had been pulled: the file went to skip-tracing, the car went on the company hot-sheet for state-wide distribution, East Bay and SF police checks were made for warrants or parking tags, the state DMV was checked for the address to which his license tabs and most recent driver’s license renewal had been sent. Credit-checking services were utilized, his insurance broker contacted, the dealer and salesman who had sold him the car, his lawyer, friends, neighbors, his only living relative (an aunt), by phone and in person.

  Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Dead end. Blank wall. Charles M. Griffin was a dead skip.

  On April 19 DKA charges were billed to date and paid by the client, and the case was put on Contingent status. On May 8, after a routine file review, the case was assigned to Heslip for a single purpose: to recheck with the ex-employers whether they had mailed out the subject’s W-2 at the end of January, whether it had been returned, and to what address it had been mailed.

  That had been on Monday. On Tuesday, with no report on the case in the file, Bart had been whapped on the head. Earlier, that afternoon, he had said to Giselle casually that “the cat from the East Bay is gonna turn out to be an embezzler.” Bringing Larry Ballard to JRS Garage on Thursday.

  “You wanted to see me?”

  “Oh. Yes.” He stood up, stuck out his hand. “Larry Ballard with Daniel Kearny Associates.”

  “Rod Elkin.” They shook.

  Elkin was a tall, lanky, good-looking man with sharp features and a big nose. He had abundant black curly hair and sideburns, and a wry quizzical expression that looked habitual. He wore corduroy slacks and a wide leather belt.

  “Daniel Kearny Associates . . .” He was frowning. “Wasn’t one of your men in here the other day?”

  “Tuesday?” asked Ballard quickly.

  “I didn’t talk with him. Leo did.” He flopped into the ancient swivel behind his desk and cocked a lean leg over the edge in what was obviously a favorite position.

  Ballard sat down again. “You don’t know what they talked about, do you?”

  Elkin frowned. “Something about Griff’s W-2?” He nodded to himself. “That’s it. Wanted to know if we sent one out. We did.”

  “Did it come back?”

  “Not that I ever saw. But—”

  “Sure as hell did,” snapped another voice from the doorway.

  A bulky bald man in a white parking-attendant’s coat came through the doorway to stare at Ballard accusingly. The phone rang. Elkin made a wry face, said “JRS, Rod,” and started listening. He waved a hand at the bulky aggressive man, said to Ballard, “Leo Busilloni, he’s the one talked with your man,” transferred the phone from his left hand, and began writing things down on the back of an envelope.

  “You from that same private-eye agency as the black guy?” demanded Busilloni aggressively. He talked, moved, reacted in the quick staccatos of a man in good condition, a younger man than his bald crown suggested. He sat down at a desk stacked high with computer print-outs.

  “Yes. Did you show the W-2 to our other man?”

  “He got all excited. New address from what you had in the files,” said Busilloni. Ballard started to get excited, also. The bald man opened a drawer in his desk, rummaged. After about thirty seconds he said “Shit!” explosively. “Never can find a damned . . . it was a Concord address, I know . . .” He looked up. “He must have moved there last fall, after his mother died. The P.O. forwarded the W-2 to Concord from Castro Valley, then it was sent back here. First we knew he’d moved.”

  “You don’t remember the street?” asked Ballard tightly.

  “California Street.” Busilloni squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, opened them. “Yeah. The house number was 1830.” The bald man hustled out again, after adding that Elkin had gotten stuck with Griffin’s job. Griffin had been the man who counted the cash.

  “A license to steal,” said Elkin, hanging up the phone. “You guys are after that T-Bird?” Ballard said they were, and Elkin shook his head. “Why do the middle-aged swingers, when they start swinging, always get a T-Bird? He had a VW before his ma died.”

  “What about this idea that our other field agent got about Griffin cooking the books?”

  “The hell of it is, I just don’t know. What does your man say about it?”

  “He’s not saying anything. He went off Twin Peaks in a repossessed vehicle the night before last.”

  Elkin stood up abruptly. “I want to show you something.”

  They went down a short corridor to a closed solid metal door. It was unlocked. Inside was a battered swivel chair and a table made longer by an old door laid over it. There were no windows, just a ventilating fan. On the door was an adding machine, a stack of cloth bank money bags, some untidy piles of receipts, and a squat gray-metal machine with a round shiny maw on top, set at an angle like a giant phone dial. This had a metal basket with a spout. Along the bottom of the machine were five chrome drawers.

  “Coin-counter,” said Elkin. “Sorts ’em into the drawers by size—halves, quarters, dimes, nickels, pennies. Also keeps a running total which you can crank off whenever you want.”

  “This is where Griffin worked?”

  “Yeah. All alone. Locked himself in.” He leaned against the table and folded his arms. “His job was counting the receipts. Cash. He made the pickups from the garages each morning, checked the registers against the pickups, counted the self-park coin boxes, totaled credit-card sales, made up change for each station’s daily operations, and got the money ready for the armored car to deliver to the bank.”

  Ballard nodded. “So nobody knew exactly how much money you were taking in except Griffin, right?”

  “Right. The month’s receipts never balance—hell, it’s a physical impossibility. If we’re within a hundred bucks of register receipts at the end of the month, we think we’re doing great. Depending on how long he was stealing—if he was—we could be twenty, thirty thousand bucks down the tubes. I only took over three months ago, after Griff took off. I’ve got it so screwed up we’re lucky to make payroll each week.”

  So there it was, Ballard thought as he slid beneath the wheel of the Ford ten minutes later. Elkin had given him a lot more background, a description of sorts. Griffin’s mother had died a year before; in the fall of last year Griffin had suddenly gone on a diet, lost thirty pounds, bought new clothes, moved out of the big old house in Castro Valley, let his balding hair grow long and raised a crop of big puffy muttonchop sideburns. When he had bought the T-Bird, Elkin had asked him about all of the blossoming-out in his life.

  “He said that his mother’s will was out of probate, he’d come into some money,” said Elkin. “He was our bookkeeper for five years, steadiest employee we had—then his ma died. When he took off, he called in sick two days in a row, last time on a Friday. On Monday, no call. He never showed up again.”

  Griffin could be it. If twenty, thirty thousand bucks were missing, that sure as hell was a motive sufficiently heavy for murder. The hell of it was, nobody at JRS Garages was going to be able to confirm or deny shortages until an audit was made
. And none would be made until the end of the fiscal year after June 30. None of which was going to help Ballard with a deadline which was now just thirty-eight hours away.

  But maybe he had another way to go. Listed in the file was the phone number of Andrew W. Murson, who was supposed to be Griffin’s lawyer.

  NINE

  WHAT HE wanted to do was buzz over to East Bay and check out the new res add on Charles Griffin, but there still was Kenneth Hemovich and his Plymouth Roadrunner, and reports to type on the work done so far, and a condition report on the Chambers Buick, and a number of phone calls. Since the Homestead Insurance Corporation was only a few blocks the other side of Market from 150 First Street, he went there first.

  Parking was always a bitch in the financial district; he finally put it in a garage off Halleck Alley and walked over. Homestead Insurance had three floors. He called from a lobby phone booth. “Do you have a Mrs. Virginia Pressler employed there?”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll ring—”

  “I don’t want to talk with her,” he said quickly. “Just give me Personnel.” A pause, a new feminine voice on the line. “Yes, ma’am, this is John Daniels with Bank of America. We’re verifying employment on a Mrs. Virginia Pressler.”

  Pause yet again. “Mrs. Pressler has been with us since June, 1968. Commercial underwriting department—”

  “I see. Now, we have found that her residence address of 191 Stillings Avenue is no longer current. Since she is applying for a rather sizable loan, we would like to confirm her new residence address for our files . . .”

  “Just a moment, sir.”

  Ballard grinned to himself. Smooth as silk, they were going to give him the address where Virginia and Hemovich were shacking. Run out there tonight, drop a rock on that Road-runner . . .

  Click. Another new voice. “Mrs. Pressler speaking.”

  Goddamn that personnel girl! Quick, who was carrying the insurance on the car? Continental, that was it. “Ah . . . Mrs. Pressler, this is Mr. James Beam from Continental Casualty. We have a notation here that you are currently driving a 1970 Plymouth Roadrunner, yellow in color, California license F-A-Z 8-0-6, registered to a Kenneth Hemovich . . .”

  “I’m . . . sure there must be some mistake.” Nice sexy voice for a chick of thirty-two—bright chick, stalling for time, trying to make Ballard out. “Did you say Hemovich?”

  “Kenneth. We have been carrying the insurance on the vehicle, and since you are driving it—”

  “You couldn’t possibly know . . .”

  “There’s never any answer at Mr. Hemovich’s home phone, and our mail is being returned.” I hope the bastard has a phone. No listing, but of course there wouldn’t be.

  “What address did you send the mail to?”

  Sharp chick! Slide by that one fast. “We have to notify him of cancellation of his auto insurance, and—”

  ‘‘Cancellation?”

  “Working for an insurance company yourself, Mrs. Pressler, you know how costly it is to be put into Assigned Risk—”

  “I see.” That one had gotten to her. “Can I try to reach Mr. Hemovich and have him call you a little later, Mr. Beam?”

  “Any time between one-thirty and two-thirty, the number is 431-2163.” To psych her from going through the Continental switchboard, which would blow it, of course, he added in a snide voice, “Your switchboard gave me three wrong extensions before I got through to you.”

  The phone number, 431-2163, was one of two unlisteds that DKA kept exclusively for incoming calls on cases where it was essential that the caller didn’t know whom he was calling. Virginia Pressler probably would now get together with Hemovich on her lunch hour, and have him make the call when she could be coaching from the background.

  “I really want to thank you for that Stillings Avenue address.”

  Giselle Marc looked up from her desk. “I thought that the husband might . . .” Then she belatedly caught the sarcasm in Ballard’s voice. “What was the matter with it? Nobody there?”

  “It’s just lucky that I don’t look nineteen any more. Old man Pressler was waiting around with a twelve-gauge shotgun for Kenny-baby to show up.”

  “And you were checking the garage?” She made a face. “Pâté-de-foie Ballard. Did you stop by to gripe, or was there something?”

  “Two—no, three questions.”

  “Go.”

  “Where are 342 phone prefix numbers located?”

  “San Mateo County. Two?”

  “I’m expecting a call for Beam on 2163. Will you switch it to Dan at the same time you give it to me? I’ll clue him in ahead.”

  “Will do. Three?”

  “Has anybody been out to the hospital to see how Bart is doing?”

  “I was by last night, called this morning. No change—except that Corinne has lost about ten pounds.” She looked around almost furtively. “What does she have against Dan, Larry?”

  Ballard sat on the edge of her desk. In the background, the radio was blaring something about burned-out distributor points. He shrugged. “She just hates the detective business.”

  “So what else is new? So do all of the agents’ wives.”

  “Yeah. But their husbands aren’t lying in a hospital with a fractured skull the way her man is.”

  Giselle nodded. “Sometimes I wish . . .” She let it die. “Anyway, he’s still in a coma.” Her voice got suddenly vicious. “Get the bastard, Larry.”

  First he had to find out who the bastard was. Griffin? Hemovich? Which reminded him to stop at Kearny’s office to brief him on the expected phone call. Then into his own cubicle for phone calls and reports. Phone first, of course, so the latest info could be incorporated into the reports.

  The manager of The Freaks was a man named Tunulli, who wasn’t there, but the bartender gave Ballard the home phone. Tunulli readily confirmed that Fred Chambers had been on the stage at The Freaks in full view of a hundred people until 1:55 A.M. on Tuesday night. Cross off Chambers, definitely.

  From the cross-directory, Ballard got the number of the Union gas station on Old Bayshore, caught the lessee there. Yeah, Tim Ryan worked the night shift for him five nights a week, Monday through Friday. Hell yes, he was there Tuesday night. From ten o’clock until six Wednesday morning. Swear to it in court? C’mon, buddy, you gotta be . . . Just a minute. Got an idea. Could he call Ballard back?

  He could. Meanwhile, Ballard dialed 342-4343, the San Mateo number listed in the file for Andrew W. Murson, attorney-at-law, who was supposed to be Charles Griffin’s lawyer. Mr. Murson was just going out the door on his way to court, said the secretary. Could he . . . Very urgent?

  “Andrew Murson here.”

  “Yes, sir, I’m trying to reach one of your clients, a Mr. Charles M. Griffin, on a very important matter. Do you have any idea where—”

  “None at all,” cut in Murson dryly. “I represent Mr. Griffin in a very limited capacity; I was his mother’s attorney, and after her death last year I probated her estate. Charles is principal heir under the will, which is the only connection I have with him. If this is an overdue bill, I would suggest you not bother me with—”

  “Attempted murder,” said Ballard in his nastiest voice.

  “Attempt . . . whoa! On him or by him?”

  “By, if he’s involved at all.”

  Murson waited a long moment, then sighed. “It’s on Castro Valley Boulevard in Castro Valley, I can’t recall the number. It’s in the book.”

  The given address, of course; no good on a dead skip like Griffin. Ballard hadn’t expected anything else. But the exchange had softened Murson up for the information Ballard did want. “Ah . . . you said you handled the mother’s will. Is that out of probate yet?”

  “In California? These things take time.”

  While the lawyers leached out what they could, Ballard thought. He thanked Murson, hung up, stared blankly at his stack of report forms. Exactly, Mr. Murson. Will not yet out of probate. And where did that leave the inheritance that
Griffin had claimed to JRS Garage was his source for the new car, new clothes, all the rest of it? Unless the old lady had been coffee-canning cash for him that hadn’t shown up in the estate; and Ballard doubted that.

  Which might or might not mean, of course, that Griffin was the attacker. One thing was sure: if he was, as of Tuesday night (Wednesday morning, really) he had still been in San Francisco. Which gave them a hot rather than a cold trail to follow, which in turn meant he wasn’t going to remain a dead skip for much longer. But could Ballard find him before Kearny’s deadline, now only thirty-six hours away?

  The phone rang.

  Switch gears. And files. Virginia Pressler and Kenny Hemovich.

  But it wasn’t. It was the manager of the Union gas station calling back on Tim Ryan.

  “I thought I remembered my kid saying that he was down there until after two, putting new plugs and points in his car, and turning the brake drums. Tuesday night, it was. It was slow after midnight, and Tim was helping him. Hell of a mechanic, that Tim . . .”

  Two of his original six possibles left. Kenneth Hemovich. And Charles M. Griffin. One or the other. Or neither? Dammit, had to be one of them. Or else he was right back to Wednesday morning, trying to convince Kearny that Bart actually had been attacked.

  The phone again. This time it was Hemovich. Ballard heard the click of Kearny picking up just behind him. Hemovich sounded nineteen on the phone: halting, unsure, his voice tending to slide into a higher register as he talked. In the background, Virginia Pressler, coaching. What the hell did a woman with three kids, one of them eleven, want with a nineteen-year-old punk for a lover?

  Vitality. Virility. Old man Pressler hadn’t looked like much of a sexual giant. Or just the kid’s youth, maybe?

  “Ah . . . I understand from, ah, Mrs. Pressler that you claim my, ah, insurance is being canceled.”

  “That’s right.” He took a flier. “The bank tells us they can’t get in touch with you, they claim their contract is out of trust and that they are about to declare it null and void. Under the circumstances . . .”