No, it was gone. “If I was playing games, would I even mention the twenty thousand dollars?” She had lost Moran in the terminal after he’d gone after the big guy in the duffle coat. She had left that part of the story out in her statement to Owens, not wanting to implicate Moran in something that could land him in hot water. She hadn’t had time to follow up with Steve or Alex. They had been told to disperse if any trouble with the police arose.
So where had the money gone? The little guy either dumped it—or handed it off. Colleen recalled the roaring of a motorcycle when she chased the guy across 1st Street, by the Wagon Wheel Café. So the motorcycle was looking like a factor. She mentioned it to Owens.
“This shouldn’t have happened.” Owens tapped his pencil on a yellow lined pad. “When your client hired you to get his child back from a suspected kidnapper, you should have called SFPD immediately.”
“I wanted to, believe me. But he and his wife were—are—adamant about no police. I tried to talk them out of it, but they wouldn’t work with me if you were involved. So I decided to do what I could. I was planning to bring you in at some point.”
Owens gave a frown, but it was one that said her comment made some kind of sense. “I’ll ask you again: Who is your client?”
She shook her head. “Sorry.” She imagined the little man, staring at her with terrified eyes as the life drained out of him when she got down on the asphalt and peered under the bus. Melanie was still gone. They’d outsmarted her.
“Sorry doesn’t work,” Owens said.
“Look, I want you on board. But I need my client’s okay.”
Owens frowned, tapped his pencil on the yellow pad. “If I book you for obstruction of a criminal investigation, how will that play with your parole?”
Colleen sat back, exhaling with frustration. “I have to honor my client’s confidentiality. Give me a chance to talk to him.” Her eyes connected with Owens’. “Give me one day.”
Owens tapped his pencil. Let out a breath. Rubbed his face. “You’ve helped us in the past so okay. Talk to your client. Tell him how much trouble he could be in. And how much trouble you’re in if I don’t hear from you within twenty-four hours.” Owens looked at his watch. “Tomorrow afternoon by five p.m. at the latest.”
A trickle of relief flowed through her. She stood up, pushing her chair back with a squeak. Her knee throbbed, but she wouldn’t let it slow her down. “Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “Just do it. Tomorrow by five. Or I’ll have someone come and get you.”
Downstairs in the lobby of 850 Bryant, Colleen called her answering service. Two messages, one from Moran, one from Alex. Both said they would check back later.
Nothing from Steve.
She called Steve from a pay phone. No answer. Where had he gotten to?
She called Moran’s house and, as usual, Daphne answered, livid when Colleen wouldn’t divulge where he might be, which meant he wasn’t home yet. He lived in Santa Cruz, a ways away. She’d let Moran handle his own wife.
“Feel free not to call here anymore!” Daphne slammed the phone down. Colleen took a calming breath, called Alex in Half Moon Bay. Harold the butler told her Alex had come home, changed, and left. That’s when Colleen remembered—they were supposed to go to Antonia’s surprise birthday party that night.
“Please tell Alex I’m sorry to miss Antonia’s party, Harold,” Colleen said. “But I’ve really got my hands full right now.”
Harold said that he would. She thanked him.
On Bryant Street, outside the Hall of Justice, gray fog hung low, the late afternoon air damp. Squad cars were double-parked, and people were coming and going, none of them smiling. There was never a happy reason to come to 850.
Tomorrow. She had until tomorrow to get back to Owens. There was a lot to do. Get in touch with Steve Cook—if he was still talking to her—then Moran and Alex.
Deal with the kidnappers. Find Melanie.
First thing she did was flag a Yellow Cab and head down to the Transbay Terminal. It was a short ride, but long enough to listen to most of “Afternoon Delight” on the radio, so it felt longer. She got a receipt for the fare and went into the station. Not as busy as that morning but busy enough, with evening commute approaching.
She went to the snack bar. No Moran. It had been a long shot.
She retraced her path down to 2nd and Mission, where the little guy had been hit by the bus. She scoped out trash bins, doorways, anywhere a gray gym bag with twenty K might have gone. She got some peculiar looks when she hoisted herself up onto a small dumpster and stood on a mountain of reeking trash, kicking garbage around. No gym bag.
She climbed back down, lit a Slim to mask the stench. She smoked, ran through the events of that morning.
The bag of money must have been handed off. She again recalled the sound of a motorcycle, the one she’d heard when she chased the little guy across 1st Street.
Steve Cook’s daughter was still being held by kidnappers—if she was alive. On top of it, Steve now owed the wrong people twenty K plus interest that doubled by the week.
Hayes Confidential, she thought: when you really need to hose things up.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A hot shower dispelled the lingering dumpster perfume and brought Colleen back to life. She plowed through a cup of black coffee fortified with brown sugar as she ran a brush through her wet hair. Then she dialed Steve Cook again while she sat on the warm waterbed in her underwear. Phone cradled to her ear, she dabbed mercurochrome on her gashed knee with the applicator from the bottle. It stung mightily and the skin around the wound turned pink red. Gently she applied a fresh bandage.
No answer. Where had Steve gotten to?
She hung up, pulled on fresh Levi’s, white V-neck T-shirt, her white sneakers with the blue stripes. She called her answering service. No new messages. She was tempted to call Moran but didn’t want to incur the wrath of Daphne twice in a twenty-four-hour period. She’d wait.
She dialed Steve Cook one more time. Thankfully, he picked up.
“Am I glad to finally get hold of you,” she said.
She heard Steve sucking smoke. “So, nothing on Mel, I take it?” His tone was cool.
“The payoff was a no-go. The caller refused to let me speak to Melanie. So I said ‘no deal.’ As we agreed. I’ve just spent the day talking to SFPD.”
“So what the hell happened, Coll? Last thing I heard on the news was some bloke being chased under a bus.” She could hear him take a drag on a cigarette.
“That’s pretty much what happened.” She drew a deep breath. “He grabbed the bag. But he didn’t have it on him when he was run over. He must have handed it off. I went back and retraced my steps. Nothing.”
“Great,” he said. “Bloody great.”
“I didn’t tell SFPD any more than I had to, Steve. Your situation with Melanie is still just between you and me. But we have to bring the police in now.”
“No. I thought I made that clear.”
Colleen waited a moment. Who could blame Steve for being angry? “Steve, SFPD have given me one day to tell them who my client is.”
“Out of the bloody question.”
“Steve, they can help. They have to be involved.”
“I’m not going to be needing their help—or yours, anymore, for that matter. Send me the bill.”
“Whoa,” she said, brushing her wet hair back behind her ear. “Slow down. We need to talk.”
“Talk about what? How you put my daughter’s life in jeopardy? Went and lost twenty thousand dollars I now owe? Plus seven K vig?”
Seven K. Ouch. “Just for the record, Steve, Melanie’s life was already in jeopardy.” If Melanie was even still alive. “Do you really think you wouldn’t have gotten ripped off, yourself? Sorry, but I wasn’t just going to leave your cash in the middle of the Transbay Terminal and hope for the best. Call me cynical, but I tend not to trust kidnappers. All that would’ve gotten us was ano
ther demand for more ransom money.”
“Well, at least you were right about one thing.”
A surge of alarm hit her. “What? They called you again?”
“Yeah,” he said, taking a noisy drag off a cigarette, exhaling in a blast of despair. She could hear his frustration, anger, worry, all in that one breath.
“How much?” she asked.
“Another twenty.”
Kind of what she suspected. But it still knocked her sideways.
“And no update on Mel?” she asked.
“Nah,” he said, his voice cracking. “Same electronic voice told me to shut up and listen. Said I better not pull any more stunts. Said you were to be out of the picture.”
“How much time did they give you?”
“Till Monday.”
Four days. They probably knew he’d need time to raise the cash.
“Don’t go anywhere, Steve. I’ll be right over. I live right up the hill.” When he didn’t protest, Colleen said, “Just wait for me. Don’t go anywhere.”
There was a pause.
“Yeah, okay.”
Thank God for that.
“I’ll be right there.” She hung up, headed out, hair still wet.
Downstairs, early evening fog muffled the whir of elevated freeway traffic up Potrero Hill as she walked across Vermont Street to her Torino. She could smell the malty air of the Anchor Steam Brewery down the hill as she got in and fired up the engine, teasing the throttle to get it going. A tune-up and new set of rings was in order. Dark exhaust belched out of the twin pipes, filling the rearview mirror.
When the smoke cleared, she noticed someone sitting at the wheel of a white van a few cars behind. The windshield had two clear arcs, as if the wipers had been recently switched on, which struck her as odd, unless he had just parked. But the driver was reading a newspaper. Or pretending to read a newspaper.
Watching her?
She unlatched the handbrake, threw the car into first, spun a tight U-ey, and motored past a white Econoline van, banged up and rusty. As she drove by, she leaned over to peer across the passenger seat into the van.
The driver wore a dark watch cap and sunglasses. Sunglasses to read the newspaper. In the fog. He didn’t look her way.
At the corner she cut a hard left, gunned it for a couple of blocks, spun a left, then another, and back up to Vermont where she turned left again, driving past her apartment building.
The white van was gone.
She’d keep an eye out for it.
A few minutes later, she parked down the street from Steve’s driveway. For once, a parking place had opened up. No white van had followed her.
In Steve’s torn-down flat, tools were scattered everywhere. An air of gloom lingered.
Steve still wore his work clothes from that morning and looked like hell. He needed a shave. His bedroom eyes were ringed with exhaustion and worry. He paced around, standing here one moment, there the next.
“You don’t have any smokes, do you, Coll?” he said, hands in the back pockets of his denims.
She dug out her box of Virginia Slims. “Can your masculinity handle these?” She flipped open the box and he slid a long skinny cigarette out. She got one for herself.
“I’ve come a long way, baby,” he said grimly, snapping the filter off his cigarette, sticking the clean end in his mouth. Lighting hers first, he lit his, took a deep suck.
She went over to the sofa, pulled the plastic covering off one side, sat on blue velour. She took a puff, blew it out.
“You talk to Lynda yet?” she asked.
He took a drag, let it plume out his nostrils. “Is ‘talk’ the same as getting screamed at?”
“Guess that was to be expected.”
“Lynda is consistent, if nothing else,” he said. “Yeah, she was here. Probably when you tried to call earlier. That was you calling, yeah?” Colleen nodded. “Gave me a ration and a half of shit. I had to throw her out. But she’ll be back. She gave me an ultimatum.”
“I bet Lynda’s good at those. What was this one?”
“I could use a bloody drink,” he said. “I’m out of booze. Out of smokes. Money. Luck.”
Steve was down but still taking it in stride. But one look told anyone he was on the verge of cracking up. And he didn’t need another run-in with Lynda to run things off the rails right now. Something felt wrong there, beyond the fact that Lynda was a bitch with a capital B.
Colleen dropped her unfinished cigarette into an empty beer bottle with a sizzle. She stood up.
“Let’s go get a drink,” she said.
They drove over to The Pitt even though it was within walking distance, because she didn’t want to leave the Torino near Steve’s place.
In the bar, the lights were dimmed, which helped ease the eyes. A band was setting up. Guitar twangs and random drumbeats. A few patrons propped up the bar and more entered as the workday ended and the band tuned up.
Colleen bought drinks while Steve fed the cigarette machine with change. He got a boilermaker and she nursed a longneck Olympia. Vernon, the owner with the biker gut, watched from the end of the bar as he leafed through some paperwork.
Back at the bar, Steve tapped out a Lucky Strike and lit up. He took a deep drag, picked up the shot glass, and downed the contents. He smacked his lips, thumped the empty glass on the bar, nodding at the barman for a refill. It came quickly and he gulped that down, too. His eyes were slitted, pained. He held up the empty shot glass for the barman one more time.
Colleen put her untouched beer on the counter, leaned back against the tarnished brass rail.
“What was the ultimatum Lynda gave you, Steve?”
“I need to get rid of you for one. Two, her old man will lend me the money to pay the kidnappers off. Keep it simple. Otherwise we risk losing Mel. If I don’t play along, I can expect to be arrested for child endangerment. She’ll make sure. Her lawyer will make sure.” Steve turned to the barman, wiggled the empty shot glass. “Oi, mate, I’m gasping here.”
The barman came over, filled Steve’s shot glass with Wild Turkey. This time Steve took a measured sip, set the drink down on the ringed bar.
“Get the money from her father?” Colleen asked. Lynda had hit Steve with that before. “Why didn’t you do that the first time? Instead of the people Al Lennox hooked you up with?”
Steve tapped ash off his cigarette into an ashtray. “Because Lynda’s old man isn’t just going to just give it to me.”
“Doesn’t he have it?”
Steve shrugged as he took a sip of his shot, followed it up with half an inch of beer. “He’s a film producer, high profile, but it’s feast or famine with that lot. He’s lent me money in the past—money I’ve never been able to pay back. Back when Lynda and I were married, yeah?”
“But we’re talking about his granddaughter.”
“I’ve exceeded my credit limit. He wants something in return.”
Nice guy. “Which is?”
Steve twisted his shot glass on the bar. “Sign over the Lost Chords catalog. Songs I wrote back in the day.”
“As security? Until you pay him back?”
“No.” Steve shook his head. “They’d be his—for good. I get to pay him back as well. Plus interest.” Steve gave a wry look.
“What a pal.”
“Yeah,” Steve said. “There’s a lot of bad blood between us. That’s why I turned him down the first time and borrowed the cash from the leg breakers.”
“Do those songs still generate royalties?”
He gave a bitter laugh. “They do. Just not for me. The catalog has been tied up in litigation more than ten years now, and I can’t afford the lawyers anymore. So it’s all in limbo.”
“So you went with a shyster loan with no way of paying it back instead of your ex-father-in-law?”
Steve tapped ash. “Screw Lynda’s old man. Mel is what matters.”
Colleen realized how much those songs meant to Steve. “Who did you borrow the twent
y K from, Steve?”
Steve took a hit on his cigarette. “Some guy Al Lennox knows.”
“Yes, I know, but who?”
“Some cat named Octavien Lopes.”
A chill went up Colleen’s spine. “Al Lennox put you in contact with Octavien Lopes?”
Steve sipped. “Beggars can’t be choosers.”
Beggars might not live either. Even Colleen knew about Octavien Lopes, who headed up the M16 posse that ran the Mission. “That was a pretty drastic move, Steve.”
“Those are my songs,” Steve said. “Even though I never got a penny out of them. So yeah, I borrowed the money rather than give Lynda’s old man my catalog.”
Now Colleen understood. But if she was worried about Steve’s financial situation before, her concern just went up a notch. Maybe two. Meanwhile, Steve’s ex, who worked for a record company, was pushing him to borrow money from her father, in exchange for his songs.
If that didn’t smell just a little bit off.
The band got onstage, a ragtag funk outfit with a mix of flashy clothes, jeans to spandex, and big hair. The singer was a ninety-pound woman with the cheekbones of a model and a bright red Rod Stewart shag cut. Her lithe frame looked the part in a slinky blue cocktail dress that glittered with sequins in the colored lights. Red embroidered cowboy boots highlighted the fact that she wasn’t just any ordinary diva. Black mascara etched under her dark eyes stood out like war paint. She strutted up to the mic with a walk that generated a catcall and a whistle.
“Show us your tits!” someone yelled.
“So it’s gonna be like that,” she said in a raspy voice, unhooking the mic, shaking the cord like a tail. “This is 1978, you sexist mother. Get with the program.” The drummer did a rim shot. The sax player, a black man who looked like a football player, grinned with gleaming white teeth.
Colleen was still trying to fathom out a man who would insist his ex-son-in-law turn over his catalog before he’d lend him money to save his granddaughter.
But she got it.
And Lynda fit right in.
Tie Die Page 7