by Joe Gores
What would he do if Bart died? Or ended up with a fifty-card deck?
He was doing it. Running down the bastard responsible.
The Concord police department and municipal court shared quarters at Willow Pass Road and Parkside Avenue. Ballard passed the Dukum Inn en route. In daylight it looked old and shrunken and dispirited, like an aging swinger getting up in the morning with his teeth still in the water glass. In front of the white-plaster court building were spaces reserved for police and sheriff’s deputies, and a few green fifteen-minute meters for people paying parking fines. Ballard U-turned to a one-hour meter across the street. Since Emily Tregum had suggested Griffin might be in jail, he had to check.
The desk sergeant was red-headed and Ballard’s age, with freckles on his nose and the backs of his hands; he should have used Scope that morning.
“I’m sorry, sir, we can’t give out arrest records here. I would suggest you try at the Contra Costa county jail over in Martinez. If this Griffin is in jail there now, they’ll tell you.”
“Do you have any records of an auto accident that involved Griffin last Christmas Eve?”
A girl wearing hair curlers and very hot hotpants came in to lean on the counter next to Ballard, unabashedly listening to them. She was twenty pounds overweight for even lukewarm hotpants.
“This was in Concord?” asked the cop.
“I think so.”
Coming back with a folder a few minutes later, the desk sergeant veered over to the far end of the counter from the overweight girl.
“Nosy little drip,” he said in a cheerfully quiet voice when Ballard joined him. “December twenty-fourth, a two-car accident with a vehicle driven by a Miss Wanda Moher.”
“You have an address on her?”
“Let’s see, a . . . 3-6-8-1 Willow Pass Road, Concord.”
“Thanks a lot, Officer.” Ballard started to turn away, then remembered to ask, “Was anyone cited in that?”
“Your friend Griffin. Drunk driving, violation-of-right-of-way. His trial was scheduled for last February eleventh; what the outcome was I don’t know.”
As Ballard went out the door, the cop already was turning to the overweight, underdressed girl, automatically reaching under the counter for a complaint form. In one of the reserved-for-police spaces was a maroon and white Mustang with the driver’s window open and the key in the ignition. Ballard repressed a shudder. She was going to make someone a dreadful wife one of these days.
The Hacienda Apartments were double-tiered around an open inner court, like a motel, California ersatz and instant stylish, individualized as canned martinis. Across Willow Pass Road, towering far beyond the intersecting patterns of TV aerials and high power lines, were the serrated smog-dimmed outlines of Mount Diablo. Ballard wondered what it had been like here when it was only rolling empty golden hills.
The mailboxes were set against the oh-so-rustic redwood slat fence which shielded the fishbowl-sized swimming pool. Wanda Moher was not listed. He found a door in the fence under a sign reading Manager, went through. Manager seemed at first to be a trio of yapping miniature poodles; then a birdlike woman in shorts with desperately skinny yet flaccid legs appeared behind them in the screened doorway. She chirped at them, cawed at Ballard.
“Wanda Moher moved out three days ago.” She craned over his head at the second tier of apartments across the court. “Eighteen-C, two over from the head of the stairs. She came in half an hour ago to get the rest of her stuff, she might still be there.”
Exteriors were pale-pink stucco with red-tiled roofs; interiors were bland as oatmeal, computer-designed so everything was built in except the tenants. Wanda was a very short, quite pretty girl who could not have weighed over ninety pounds, standing in the middle of the littered room with the dazed look of a homeowner after the fire engines have departed. Her straight nose and long straight upper lip gave her a surprisingly rabbitlike face.
“I’ve never met a real detective before,” she said, “but I love Agatha Christie . . .”
Ballard, who only read Richard Stark, said he was looking for a Mr. Charles M. Griffin. The transformation in Wanda Moher was startling. Her eyes flashed as much as a rabbit’s eyes can flash.
“I hope he’s in trouble good! Anything I can do to help you . . .”
“Start with the accident,” he suggested.
It was only 11:30 in the morning, Christmas Eve morning to be exact, and she was driving down to Oakland for some last-minute shopping. Her mother . . . Anyway, here came Griffin, completely drunk, zooming out of this parking lot beside a bar, and . . .
“That would be the Dukum Inn?” Ballard asked, on a hunch.
“Gee, it’s got a reputation with you fellows, huh?” Then her eyes got very big and she nodded wisely. “Of course! Topless!”
Her car had sustained over four hundred dollars’ worth of damage—the subject’s third such offense in less than four months. The police, she said, had told her they were determined to get him off the road this time.
“Did he lose his license at the February court date?”
“He never showed up. His lawyer got some sort of continuance for more time or something until next month. But the man who put up the money for his bond or whatever it was had to pay up. In cash.”
“Do you know who that would be?” asked Ballard.
She shrugged, momentarily outlining small, very pointed breasts under her pale pastel blouse. “Maybe my insurance agent would know. His name is Harvey E. Wyman and he’s right here in Concord.”
At 1820 Mount Diablo Boulevard, as a matter of fact. She knew because it was right next door to Moneyfast Finance, where her mother had a loan. She could be reached in future at her mother’s house at 1799 LaCalle Street, in that subdivision out beyond . . .
One-fifteen. And breakfast had been a cup of the DKA office coffee, which always tasted as if someone had brewed a dead rat in it. And of course they’d been out of Pream. They were always out of Pream. Somebody, probably Kearny, kept an empty jar there to fool you, but Ballard could never remember ever having found anything in it. Unless that was where they kept the rat between pots.
Since 1820 Mount Diablo Boulevard was less than three miles from Miss Moher’s non-stop mouth, he would check it before lunch. He doubted if the insurance agent would know very much—his name, maybe, if he was having a good day—but it was worth a stop.
It was a very bright and sunny two-person office, decorated in primary colors. Wyman’s empty desk was in the back by the wide picture window. At a much smaller desk in the center of the room a pleasant-faced middle-aged woman was talking on the phone. When she was finished, Ballard learned that Mr. Wyman was expected back within the hour. She would not feel right about going into Miss Moher’s file without Mr. Wyman’s knowledge and permission. He did understand?
Ballard understood. “I’ll grab a sandwich and be back in—oh, thirty, forty minutes.”
That would be fine. There was a coffee shop around the corner on Concord Boulevard. The cheeseburger and fries he had were so incredibly bad—even the pickle was soggy—that he was partially prepared for the coffee. But only partially. After tasting it, he really expected to find a tadpole in the bottom of his cup.
When he caught himself falling asleep over it, he went out to the car to bring in the Griffin file to review. A hole became immediately apparent. He’d forgotten to check at the Concord courthouse when he had been at the police department. He would go back there after he’d finished with Wyman, find out who the bail bondsman was who’d gotten burned, get the name of Griffin’s lawyer.
After that, to Martinez to check the county jail. Drop in at the Dukum Inn to find out about the accident in December. Maybe get the name of the garage where the T-Bird had been towed; that really ought to be in the file even though it was meaningless information.
And after that . . .
Ballard shook his head. He was starting to feel a little panicky. About twelve hours left, he was really just mak
ing motions, spinning his wheels. He didn’t have anywhere else to go.
But that did remind him to stop at his car and call KFS 499, Oakland Control, so they could call Giselle over in S.F. Yes, the San Jose field agent had been out to Midfield Road this morning. None of the neighbors had ever seen the subject around the address, but a T-Bird, red with a white hardtop, had been parked in the garage for several weeks in February and March. Nobody remembered the license, of course.
The tract home had been rented from the realty office by phone, paid for by a cashier’s check depositing six months’ rent in a lump sum. The transmitter of the check: Charles M. Griffin. The six months would be up on August 10, which meant it had been rented on February 10. A day before the court date he hadn’t shown up for, according to Wanda Moher. San Jose had done a hell of a job on short notice. But what did it add up to? What was bugging him?
Ballard got out of the car, then paused. Car. That was it. Why had Griffin quit paying for the T-Bird? He’d had plenty of cash, siphoned from JRS Garage. Why rent a house in San Jose to store the T-Bird in the garage with money he could have put into the car payments?
Harvey E. Wyman was red-faced and jovial and mid-thirties, and should have taken up jogging the year before. He was also, unlike so many small insurance agents Ballard had met, very sharp. Very sharp indeed.
“Oh, I remember that Griffin accident, all right. Much better than I would like to. Three hundred bucks damage to his car, over four hundred to Wanda’s . . .”
“Who was his insurance company?”
Wyman looked up from the Moher file the secretary had laid on his desk. “He was driving without any. Our people had to eat the loss on Wanda’s car.”
“They’re suing, of course?”
“We’ve never been able to find him to serve him.” He went back to the file. “Jumped bail in February, didn’t show in municipal court . . .”
“What address did you show on him at that time?”
“Eighteen-hundred-something California Street, here in town. But I have a later one than that—”
“Midfield Road in San Jose? We have that. We—”
“No, this is here in Concord . . .” Ballard straightened up, his heart pumping. Wyman nodded. “Here it is. You see, I have my own repair work done at the same garage that fixed up the T-Bird after that December smash. They worked on it again last month . . .”
Ballard snapped, “He was sure it was the same car?”
“Oh, sure. He showed me the work order; same license number. The address was 1377 Mount Diablo Street . . .”
Ballard was halfway across the office, throwing a hurried “Thanks” over his shoulder, when Wyman called him back. “I rushed a process server out there, but hell, the people living there had never heard of Griffin.”
“They could have been lying—”
Wyman shrugged. “I’ve used this guy for years, he’s tough to lie to. It’s a family: husband, wife, couple of kids. No connection with Griffin at all. I guess he just picked the address out of a phone book.”
Hell, it had to have some meaning, Ballard thought. Mount Diablo Street, as opposed to Boulevard, was just a block away, 1377 just a few blocks west. It was a live one, he could feel it was a live one. He left rubber in front of Harvey E. Wyman’s office.
FIFTEEN
AT 1:45 P.M., just as Ballard sank a hesitant tooth into his soggy cheeseburger in Concord, Dan Kearny parked his station wagon on Main Street in Martinez. He still hadn’t been able to raise Ballard on the radio. Field agents working addresses in a constricted area were in and out of their cars like yo-yos; eventually he would catch him. Meanwhile, he had a pretty good idea of what Ballard was doing.
Kearny’s first stop on reaching the East Bay had been, like Ballard’s, the Concord police department. The inelegant rear in the striped hotpants had long since wobbled out—to a ten-buck parking tag, a fact to warm Ballard’s heart—but the freckled desk sergeant still was available. He repeated his information to Kearny, and added, on request, an excellent verbal of Ballard.
“You should have been a cop,” Kearny dead-panned.
He went around the corner to the municipal court, which Ballard had missed. A short hall ended in wide double doors leading to the courtroom of the presiding judge. On one of them was a typed notice dated February 17, detailing acceptable dress for court appearances. Barefoot was not acceptable, nor were hotpants. Long hair and beards carried no interdictions short, it could be assumed, of nesting sparrows.
Kearny went back down the hall to a Dutch door with the top half open on a room containing four women and a great many file-jammed open-face cabinets. The ladies were huddled by the windows, gabbing.
“Where do I find out about docketings?” Kearny asked.
“Right here.”
“Griffin, Charles M.”
One of the women found the applicable clipboard and, with another, checked it. Both of them were placid as cattle, but Kearny evinced no impatience. He was in the field, working. You kept going, you kept digging, until you got there. It was as simple as that.
“No record here, sir.”
“Has anyone else been around asking about Griffin within the last three hours?”
She immediately became official. “We couldn’t give out that sort of information.” Her face could, however, and did. No.
“How about criminal docketings?”
“Why didn’t you say so?” she demanded with considerable asperity. She extended a jiggly-fleshed arm, the sort seen so often on farm wives at summer church socials in the Midwest. “Across the hall, at Traffic.”
Kearny thanked her, but she had already returned to the gossip. Across the hall was a set of double windows and a counter. Two Mexican women, one holding a very loud baby, were paying a traffic fine; they laid their dollar bills down on the counter separately, as if each were made of fine Spanish lace. A hard-faced man in khaki, with a black eye, was losing an argument about a warrant for unpaid moving violations with an equally hard-faced deputy.
Kearny’s deputy obviously was just waiting out his pension, which meant he was cooperative, good-natured, unhurried, efficient.
“Griffin, Charles M. Docketed to Judge Bailey Johnson’s court at nine-thirty A.M. on Tuesday, June thirteenth. Drunk driving, violation of the right-of-way.”
“You know the case personally?” asked Kearny in apparent idleness.
“He jumped bail back in February, Gerald Coogan Bail Bonds, 913 Main Street, Martinez, had to forfeit six bills bail. This clown’s been in three HBD accidents since he bought that T-Bird last October. When they finally get him in front of the judge, he’ll lose his license, period-the-end. Johnson had a daughter put in the hospital a few years ago by a drunk driver, he loves to see those babies turn up in his court.”
Ballard hadn’t been here, either. Kearny paused before getting into the Ford wagon. Three had-been-drinking accidents in five months. That California Street landlady could be right; he could be in jail, probably the county jug over in Martinez. Ballard, with the Wanda Moher lead he’d gotten from the police, but without the bail-bond lead obtained by Kearny here, would first check Wanda and any leads developed from her before hitting Martinez.
So Kearny would check on the jail and the bail bondsman first.
Martinez was an old town, almost a company town, created and sustained as a deepwater port for tankers coming up from the Bay to off-load their cargoes of crude at the Shell Oil Cracking Plant. The plant itself looked like a science-fiction city: great vertical towers and stacks, tall and lean and industrial against the round-topped hills beyond which lay Carquinez Straits. When Kearny entered town on one-way Howard Street, he could smell the dark, intense reek of oil through the open window. Not so distasteful when your job depended on it. The old story. Bucks.
The Contra Costa county jail was right across the street from the new twelve-story administration building, carefully decorated with palmetto palms, which was remarkably out of phase with th
e old sleepy town. The jail was the sort they had built when the town had been young: covering a whole city block, satisfyingly squat, dark, and of ugly gray stone. The windows were narrow barred slits.
Kearny went up concrete steps, through open battered metal doors painted to resemble wood, to stop at the heavily barred cage. Signs fixed to the mesh laid out visiting hours, the fact that all guns had to be checked at the desk, the fact that ex-cons could not visit until six months after their release, and that ex-felons could not visit at all.
“What can I do for you?”
He was an athletic-looking young deputy with a large soup-strainer mustache. Kearny asked if Charles M. Griffin was a guest there, receiving hospitality for his tax dollars. He was not. On the way out, Kearny passed another deputy, hard but not hard-faced, bringing in a handcuffed prisoner with red-rimmed eyes, the twitches, and the sniffles. Coming down off a high, off the white horse, off the big H, down to brutal reality: a six-by-eight cell and screaming cold turkey until he admitted habituation and was transferred to a hospital wing.
Kearny U-turned back to Main, found a metered space in front of Snooks Jewelers, walked back to 913. It was on the main drag of a business district still flavored with small-town America. A few blocks away, Main dead-ended in a large green wooded hill rising up against pale-blue California sky. Gerald Coogan Bail Bonds was a narrow stone-fronted building with dark-green vertical-slat blinds.
Behind a counter inside was a desk with three telephones and a gray-haired woman with thick ankles. The lower half of her face said Grandma; Kearny could have cut himself on what the upper half said.
“Is Mr. Coogan in?”
She made a gesture toward the partition behind the desk which hid the enclosed interview cubicles. “With a client. I’m Missus.”
“That’s fine.” Kearny laid his card on the counter, the card with investigations, thefts, embezzlements, repossessions, skip-tracing, collections blocked in the upper left-hand corner, licensed and bonded, state and city, nationwide affiliates in the upper right. He said, “We’re trying to get a line on an ex-client of yours named Charles M. Griffin.”