Dead Skip

by Joe Gores

  Between the gas station and 1902 Gavallo Road, they met only one other person, a handsome brunette in tight slacks walking a Great Dane that came level with her armpits. Ballard realized he had started to tense up again when Kearny turned to look appreciatively at the girl’s taut rump under the clinging trousers: Ballard hadn’t even thought of it.

  “What happens if he hears us starting the car and starts shooting?”

  “Giselle will pay for the flowers out of petty cash.”

  The bastard, loving it, loving every second of it. No wonder he was so testy around the office. He belonged out here, on the street.

  The three-story apartment building was set at right angles to Gavallo Road, a box with six apartments on each of the upper floors, with laundry rooms, storage lockers, and a dozen numbered parking stalls on the first. These could be reached only from a blacktop driveway which entered the property through the redwood fence and ran the length of the building and around it to the rear. To get to the street from the parking stalls, you had to drive all the way back out around the building.

  Which meant there was a chance of being trapped back there if things got hairy.

  “Right around in back,” said Kearny as they turned in at the gate through the fence, their shoes scuffing the blacktop.

  Looking as if you belonged there was the single most important factor in chattel recoveries. Ballard had seen cars repossessed with the registered owner standing in the crowd of gawkers without objecting, merely because of the confidence of the repo men. Kearny went the length of the building as if he were the owner on a tour of inspection. When they had turned down the end of the box, and turned again so they could look down the line of twelve parking stalls, he stopped.

  “A car in every one of them.”

  “And none of them the T-Bird,” said Ballard.

  A tremendous frustrated anger flushed through him. God-dammit, wouldn’t it ever end? Wouldn’t they ever catch up with Odum, ever find out where Griffin was, even pin down Bart’s attacker?

  “There’s a gap between the front of the building and the fence,” said Kearny.

  They walked past the stalls. Above their heads, Channel 2’s 10:00 P.M. newscast began blaring from an open window. Which car—if any—belonged to Odum’s girl friend? Or had Sharon Beaghler conned the great Dan Kearny, too, just as she had conned Larry Ballard earlier?

  She hadn’t. When they came to the end of the stalls and could look beyond, down the gap between the building and the fence where the garbage pails were, it was there. Gorgeous, the son of a bitch. White over red, hardtop two-door, license 666 KAH.

  Ballard’s nervousness was gone; he was cold, quick, precise, this was what it was all about. Neither man even slowed down. Kearny had given Ballard the keys; he went for the driver’s side. Kearny went down the other side, felt the hood. Knowing whether the motor was cold or warm was often the difference between a flooded engine and a clean grab.

  “Hot,” said Kearny.

  He kept going right around the car as Ballard pulled the door almost shut and twisted the ignition key after turning off the radio. Ballard backed smoothly out, at the same time reaching across to unlock the rider’s door. Kearny got in as he put it into drive and pulled away.

  “She sounds good,” Ballard said to Kearny. He was grinning.

  They went down the length of the building, around in front. A man and a woman, silhouetted by the vestibule light, were just coming from the front door as they went by. The man yelled, pointed, then was gone behind them.

  “Just in time,” said Kearny.

  He added nothing to Ballard about a good job, nor did Ballard expect him to. The good job had been in getting there in the first place. Once you spotted the car, it should be yours, short of physical attack by the subject or his friends. Even then, it usually should be yours. You weren’t hired to lose them.

  “You phone it in to the cops while I make the condition report,” said Kearny as they pulled up in the darkened gas station next to the Ford.

  Ballard found a dime in his pocket. “Antioch city police or Contra Costa county sheriff’s department?”

  “Try the sheriff. He’ll know who has jurisdiction from the address.”

  As Ballard stepped into the booth, they heard the sound of a car coming up Gavallo Road, fast. Its lights were on high and the tires shrieked as the people inside it saw the T-Bird in the gas station and stood it on its nose. It was a new yellow Toronado.

  “The Lone Ranger and Tonto,” said Kearny in a totally unexcited voice.

  The driver was a woman, with the street light back-lighting her blond hair and casting her features into darkness. The door on the rider’s side flew open as the car skidded to a stop. A dark figure hit the concrete running, charging them. Ballard’s heart seemed to stop.

  “He’s got a gun,” he heard himself say in a tight, desperately calm voice. “Dan, he’s got a gun . . .”

  TWENTY

  IT WAS a monkey wrench.

  For the first time Ballard knew why Kearny had such strictures against carrying guns on the job. If he’d had one, he would have used it before realizing that Odum was technically unarmed.

  Odum skidded to a stop ten feet away, as if disconcerted that neither of them had run. He was short, burly, very pale, with shaggy hair and glasses thick enough to bottle Cokes in. Tall? thought Ballard. Handsome? Suave? This cat?

  “Who . . .” Odum stopped and cleared his throat. His voice had come out funny. He was scared shitless. “Who in hell are you?”

  Kearny took the play away from him. “Are you Charles M. Griffin?”

  “Well, no, I . . .”

  “Then it doesn’t matter who the hell we are.”

  Ballard loved to watch him work, take the offensive, push the antagonist in the direction he wanted him to go. Right now he was turning back to the car, leaving Odum with only a broad back in a business suit to argue with.

  “I . . . what . . . why the hell did you take this car?” Odum demanded. His girl friend was still in the Toronado, still just a dark shape with the halo of back-lit blond hair.

  Kearny turned back to the ex-con. He repeated, in the same harsh tones as before, “Are you Charles M. Griffin?”

  “I already told you I wasn’t. But—”

  “Then it doesn’t matter why the hell we took this car.”

  He turned away again. Odum was emboldened enough to step toward him. Ballard came around the front of the car, fast, fists clenched, but Odum, despite the wrench, wasn’t after trouble.

  “Well, look, you guys, I . . . ah . . . paid three hundred bucks for the equity in this car. Cash. You can’t just—”

  “We already have.” Kearny turned back, leaned casually against the door with his arms folded, like a farmer talking about crops. “You may as well clear your personal crap out and give us the keys.”

  “But it’s my car,” said Odum desperately.

  “It can’t be your car.” Kearny’s voice was patient, reasonable; daddy telling junior about the birds and the bees in words he could understand. “This car belongs to California Citizens Bank and is registered to a Mr. Charles M. Griffin. You aren’t either one of ’em.”

  “But I gave the guy three hundred bucks—”

  Kearny leaned forward, arms still folded, but by the sudden tension in his voice and body, compelling response. “Griffin?”

  Odum was blinking rapidly, as if he were going to cry. “Yeah. That guy. Gloria can vouch—”

  “What Gloria says has no validity in a court of law,” Kearny said coldly. “Gloria who?”

  “Court of law?” Odum’s voice was stricken. “Uh . . . Gloria Rouse. She, uh . . . listen, court of . . .”

  “The woman in the Toronado?”

  “Uh . . . yeah.”

  “Mm-hmmm.” Kearny said it as if a dark suspicion had just been confirmed. “She resides at 1-9-0-2 Gavallo Road, Apartment Seven?”

  From the stall in which the yellow Toronado had been parked, of
course. That cool bastard must have noted the make of car in each stall just walking by, automatically, probably not even aware that his brain was doing it. Ballard couldn’t have given him the make of any of those cars. Not one.

  “Yah . . . uh, yes. Sir.”

  Sir, added belatedly. Odum, sitting in the straight-backed chair by Saul Savidge’s ancient wooden desk, getting told the facts of a parolee’s life. Did those showers really leak down on the more comfortable swivel chair, or was that just a subtle ploy of Savidge’s? Yes, sir. Then Ballard thought angrily to himself: Pity for this shithead? Who maybe had broken Bart’s skull, maybe even with the wrench now dangling forgotten and useless at the end of his arm like the tuft on a jackass’s tail?

  “You’ve been living with Gloria Rouse at this address since last Tuesday in clear violation of the conditions of your parole. What sort of explanation can you give for this?”

  “I . . .”

  His eyes were darting from one to the other, seeking a soft spot. Ballard kept silent, put on his stoniest expression. The normal expression on Kearny’s granite features was stony enough.

  “I . . . none, sir.”

  “All right.” Kearny made it sound as if he were bestowing a great favor. He turned to Ballard. “Mr. Beam, did Mr. Savidge say anything today about this Thunderbird?”

  Ballard hoped he was reading Kearny’s lead the right way. “He seemed extremely upset when I told him that the subject might be driving a car, contrary to the conditions of his parole.”

  “There you are,” said Kearny with great finality.

  Odum shuffled his feet. “Ah, look, I mean, I hadn’t gotten around to telling him yet, but, I . . . look, this week I’ll . . .”

  “The car isn’t yours anyway.”

  “But I paid three hundred—”

  “Where’d you get that from? Kite some more paper?”

  “Jesus!” he yelped. “No!”

  He said it loud enough to bring the woman out of the car; she wouldn’t have been able to hear anything that had gone before. Now she just stood beside it, silent, undecided.

  “Does she know about you and Sharon Beaghler?” asked Kearny relentlessly, just too low for her to hear.

  Odum automatically glanced back at the Toronado. Seeing her standing beside it, he made almost hysterical waving-away motions with both open hands. She hesitated, finally got back into the car. Which was, Ballard knew, what Kearny had wanted. A cardinal rule of investigating was never to make a man seem unnecessarily foolish or weak in front of his woman. Pride might stiffen otherwise dormant resistance.

  Now Kearny laid a comforting hand on the small man’s shoulder. “Mr. Odum, we think you’ve been victimized by an unscrupulous con artist.”

  “But he gave me a bill of sale and the white—”

  “You have those with you?”

  “Right here in my wallet . . .” He laid down the monkey wrench on the pavement, got out and riffled through his wallet until he came up with a much-folded rectangle of brown paper that looked like wrapping paper. He also had the white slip for the car—the registration slip which in California designates the registered as opposed to the legal owner of a vehicle.

  “See . . .” Odum’s blunt cracked fingernail traced the hand-lettered bill of sale and the slanting backhand scrawl, Charles M. Griffin.

  Kearny looked at him sharply, for a moment not play-acting for effect. “Didn’t it strike you as odd that he’d give you this sort of butcher-paper receipt and a five-thou car and the white slip for only three hundred bucks? Didn’t you suspect that maybe it was hot?”

  “He . . . ah . . .” The eyes moved uneasily behind their thick glasses. “He said a new payment book would be mailed to me from the bank. You know, after the transfer of title was recorded, like. I was just s’posed to keep up the payments, and . . . well, see, I was s’posed to send in another two hundred bucks or so, besides the three I give him. That was to pick up those February and March payments, like . . .”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “I . . . ran short . . .”

  “What did you figure he was going to do when the bank kept on chasing him for the payments?”

  The eyes moved again, nervously, from Ballard to Kearny to the car and back again. He cleared his throat. “Well, ah, see, I was getting his mail, right? And he said he was leaving the country for a year or so, soon as he got the car sold off. So I figured I just wouldn’t send those notices on to him when he, ah, you know, sent me his forwarding address . . .”

  “He hasn’t?” asked Ballard.

  “Naw, he never did. Didn’t any mail come, either.”

  “How did he get in touch with you about taking over the equity in the car?”

  “He, ah, through a newspaper ad. Just a phone number, it gave, in the Concord paper. I hadda go down to San Jose to see the car. Some tract house, I can’t remember the address—”

  “1545 Midfield Road?” asked Ballard.

  “That’s it. After we closed the deal, he, ah, asked me to pick up his mail for him. He said he didn’t trust the post office. I didn’t want it to come to my rooming house, you know, Savidge has that address, so I thought about Sharon right away. I hadn’t met Gloria then yet. Then I forgot to tell Sharon for a couple of weeks . . .”

  Which explained the returned letter which had given Kearny the Beaghler address, the returned W-2 which had led Ballard to it.

  “Can’t I . . . ah . . . keep the car until—”

  “No,” said Kearny flatly. “Of course, we’ll give you our personal receipt for both the car and the registration slip. I’m sure you can work something out later with the bank. And meanwhile, Mr. Odum, we’ll clear you on the car with Savidge.”

  “That’s right,” said Ballard, on cue. “I’ll tell him that my informant was mistaken, that it wasn’t you driving it after all.”

  Odum finally shrugged, even grinned wryly. Ballard could see, suddenly, how he had been able to hang paper around a series of East Bay bars. He had a gold tooth right in front; that tooth, with the wide grin and the glasses and the shaggy hair, gave his face a sort of witless charm that suggested he was too dumb to steal.

  “Uh . . . Mr. Savidge won’t have to know about . . .” He stopped and jerked a thumb at the Toronado and the blonde waiting inside it.

  “Our little secret, Mr. Odum,” said Kearny soothingly.

  He surrendered the keys; they helped him carry his tool kit over to the Toronado. The tools were the only possessions he had in the car. Gloria Rouse started hassling him angrily as soon as Kearny and Ballard had retreated out of earshot. Ballard called the cops to report the repo; just before he left the booth, the argument ended and the Toronado laid twin streaks of rubber taking off.

  “Seven’ll get you ten it was her three hundred bucks,” said Kearny. “In fact, he probably got the whole five bills from her and then just told her he’d sent the other two hundred to the bank.”

  Ballard agreed. To take even as small a game as Odum, Gloria Rouse would just naturally have to sweeten the pot with money. She was absolutely the ugliest woman he had ever seen, at least from the neck up. He actually found it hard to believe that somebody, sometime, hadn’t stuck her in the dog pound by mistake. Maybe somebody had. Maybe that’s where Odum had gotten her. Went in for a collie, came out with Gloria Rouse.

  Kearny was still staring pensively after the departed car. “Well, what do you think? Still like little Howie as that topless dancer’s weirdo with the flashlight? What did she call him? Tall? Dark? Handsome? This guy looks like he’s been in a closet for twenty years.”

  “Odum must have something, Dan. Sharon Beaghler—”

  Kearny shook his head impatiently. “She’ll drop her pants for anything that can get stiff. Just the fact that her old man doesn’t like Odum would be enough to turn her on to him.”

  “So we’re right back where we started? It was Griffin all along? And we don’t have lead one as to where Griffin is—except that he was supposed to
have left the country. Who don’t we have extradition treaties with any more?”

  “Not quite back where we started.” Kearny got into the T-Bird. “We’ve got this. And we’re pretty sure Odum is out of it. And we know that if Griffin left the country, he came back—at least somebody knocked Bart on the head. I’ll drive down to Concord to my wagon, throw this on the tow bar, and bring it in tomorrow morning. You’d better go home and get some sleep.”

  “Big deal,” grunted Ballard, with a terrible sense of anticlimax.

  TWENTY-ONE

  HOW COULD they have missed so badly? As he began the fifty-mile drive to San Francisco, Ballard mentally reworked the other five cases he had closed in his search for Bart’s attacker. Had he screwed up on one of those? Or had the attacker actually come from some other case entirely? Or from some incident in Bart’s life that nobody—maybe not even Bart—would know about?

  Or were the police right after all? Had Bart taken out the Jag for some unknown personal reason and gone off Twin Peaks by accident?

  No, dammit, he couldn’t accept that. There had to be something he had missed or misinterpreted in the Griffin file, something even Kearny had missed or misinterpreted, something that would lead them to . . .

  He realized that he had listened twice to his own name being called on the radio by an unfamiliar voice.

  “Uh, yeah, this is SF-6. Over.” Panic nibbled at him. Bart . . .

  “Are you Larry Ballard?”

  “10-4. Larry Ballard. Go ahead, please.”

  “This is Dunlop Jensen, NFS. Giselle Marc of KDM 366 asked me to relay a message to you from San Francisco, over.”

  NFS. News Forwarding Service. Ballard remembered Giselle talking about this guy. A house-bound cripple who lived up in the hills behind Oakland and made a living monitoring scores of local radio bands, picking up reports of fire, robberies, emergencies, relaying them to Bay Area TV stations for a per-item fee and to emergency services gratis.