Breakdown - [Nameless Detective 19]

by By Bill Pronzini

  “Positive. I’m glad to help.”

  She directed me downhill through a warren of little streets and onto Alameda de las Pulgas. On the way I called the local cab company and let her cancel her order. Afterward she sat stiff and erect, not too close to the wired-shut door, and folded her hands tightly around her purse.

  “I can’t believe Tom’s gone,” she said. “I mean, I know he is but I just ... I can’t believe it. You understand?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “We had such a nice life until a month ago. Such a lovely life. And now . . . it’s all come apart, it’s all over. How can it happen like that, so suddenly?”

  People make it happen, I thought. People and all their shortcomings, all their big and little evils. But I was not about to get into that with Eileen Lujack. I gave her the standard: “I don’t know.”

  “So suddenly,” she said again, with a kind of awe in her voice.

  I said, “The last time you talked to your husband was when he called from San Francisco Tuesday afternoon?”

  “What?” She was still thinking about her lovely life and how it had so suddenly come apart. “Oh . . . yes.”

  “What time was that?”

  “I don’t remember exactly. About five.”

  “He said he was staying in the city because he had something to do?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he give you any idea what it was?”

  “Just business, that’s all.”

  “What did he have to say about Nick Pendarves?”

  “That man.” She shuddered. “Tom didn’t say anything about him.”

  “Nothing at all? He didn’t tell you that Pendarves was almost run down and killed on Monday night? The threats Pendarves made afterward?”

  “No. I didn’t find out about any of that until Coleman told me yesterday.”

  “Why do you think he kept quiet about it?”

  “He didn’t want to worry me, I guess. He never talked much about things like that. You know, the trouble he was in —Frank Hanauer getting killed with Tom’s car.”

  “Did he ever mention Pendarves to you?”

  “Not that I remember. His name was in the papers . . . Pendarves’s name, I mean. That’s how I knew who he was.”

  We were approaching the intersection with San Carlos Avenue. Mrs. Lujack told me to turn right on San Carlos, and as I followed instructions I asked, “Was your husband in the habit of discussing business matters with you?”

  “Hardly ever. I don’t have a very good head for business.”

  Yeah, I thought.

  “But Tom did,” she said. “Coleman too. I never thought they’d make so much money from the factory, not after the way it started out. But they did.” She laughed—a small, odd, puzzled sound. “He was right about the coyotes, I guess.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Oh, just something Tom said once.”

  “About coyotes?”

  “ ‘The coyotes are going to make us rich.’ That’s what he said. I asked him what he meant but he said it was just a joke and it wasn’t worth explaining. You don’t know what he meant, do you?”

  “No,” I said. “You’re sure he said the word ‘coyotes’?”

  “Well, it sounded like coyotes.”

  “When was that, do you remember?”

  “Oh ... at least five years ago. Before we bought the new house.”

  “The house you live in now, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve owned that property just five years?”

  “Almost five, yes.”

  “Must have set you back quite a bit.”

  “Oh, it did. Over four hundred thousand. I didn’t think we could afford it, but Tom said we could. That was when Containers, Inc., really started to do well.”

  I ruminated on that while we waited at a red light. When the light changed I asked her, “Do you know Rafael Vega, Mrs. Lujack?”

  “Who?”

  “Rafael Vega. The shop foreman at Containers, Inc.”

  “Oh. I don’t know anybody who works at the factory. Well, except Coleman, of course. I’ve only been there a couple of times. It’s really not a very nice neighborhood.”

  We were coming into downtown San Carlos now. I made another turn at her instruction, and then said carefully, “There’s a reason I’ve been asking all these questions. I think it’s possible Nick Pendarves may not be the person who murdered your husband. Did Paul Glickman mention that to you?”

  “No. No, he didn’t.” It took her a couple of seconds to get a firm grasp on the idea. “But ... I don’t understand. Tom was found in Pendarves’s garage. Who else could have done it?”

  “The same person who ran down Frank Hanauer, maybe.”

  “. . . You have some idea who that is?”

  “Not yet. But with a little more time I think I can find out.”

  “You mean you want to keep investigating?”

  “With your permission.”

  There was a little silence before she said, “I don’t know. You’ve been investigating ever since Frank was killed, you and your partner, and you haven’t found out who was responsible. Coleman doesn’t think we need you anymore. He says the police are doing everything that can be done.”

  “When did you talk to him about it?”

  “Yesterday. He came to the house.”

  “Well, he’s wrong, Mrs. Lujack. The police are convinced Pendarves is guilty of murdering your husband. And they think your husband was guilty of running down Hanauer. They’re not going to look in the same places Eberhardt and I will be looking.”

  “I don’t know,” she said again. “Now that Tom’s gone, maybe the best thing is for us to just put the whole ugly business behind us and go on with our lives.”

  Not her words, I thought. “Is that what Coleman said?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you feel that way too?”

  “I . . . I’m not sure what I feel right now.”

  “You don’t believe your husband killed Hanauer?”

  “Oh no. Of course not.”

  “And you do want to see his name cleared?”

  “Yes, but . . . you could go on investigating for months and months and it would cost us thousands of dollars and the chances are you still wouldn’t find out anything.”

  Coleman again. He seemed to be trying to manipulate her, which meant he was either a callous bastard or he had reasons for wanting Eberhardt and me out of the picture, the truth buried along with his brother.

  I said, “I’m not trying to drag things out for a bigger fee. Believe that, Mrs. Lujack. All I want is the truth, and another week or so to get at it. If Eberhardt and I don’t come up with something definite after that, we’ll quit and bill you for expenses only—no other fees. I’ll put that in writing, if you like.”

  “Well ...”

  “Will you think it over? Talk to Paul Glickman about it?”

  “Yes, all right. But I’ll have to talk to Coleman too.”

  “By all means.” And so will I, I thought. “I’ll call you tonight and you can let me know then.”

  We rounded another corner, and there was the Saxon and Jeffrey Funeral Home—white pillars, brick and glass, a circular drive in front, and a side drive with a hearse parked under a porte cochere. It looked like a cross between a neo-colonial home and a suburban savings-and-loan. I pulled into the drive and stopped in front.

  Mrs. Lujack said, “Thank you again for driving me.”

  I told her she was welcome, and got out and leaned back in to give her a hand. But she didn’t seem to want to leave the car just yet. She sat staring through the side window at the funeral home.

  “Mrs. Lujack?”

  Her head jerked, and when she looked at me her eyes were moist. “Oh,” she said. Then she said, “I don’t want to go in there and talk about Tom’s coffin, Tom’s funeral. I really don’t.” And softly she began to cry.

  She loved him, I thought then. She did love h
im.

  I realized something else, too, in that moment: Eileen Lujack may not have a high IQ, but she was neither shallow nor frivolous. Eberhardt and I had both been wrong. She wasn’t a ditz at all.

  * * * *

  Chapter 11

  It was raining again when I got back to the city—a hard rain, wind-driven into diagonal sweeps. Close to a week straight now of this kind of weather, and no immediate relief in sight. It began to get to you when it went on this long; a damp gray began to form inside you, too, like a kind of parasitic mold. Nice thought. What a gloomy old fart I was turning into. I laughed at myself, wryly, as I turned off 101 onto Bayshore Boulevard. Look on the bright side, pal. With all this rain, maybe there won’t be any more dire rumblings about drought and water rationing come summer, and the water company won’t have an excuse to raise its rates again.

  The way it looked, Thomas Lujack’s recent death hadn’t done any more to slacken activity at Containers, Inc., than had Frank Hanauer’s. The wheels of industry keep right on grinding, all right, through thick and thin; dead bosses have about as much effect as a ten-minute coffee break. I parked in the lot and hustled inside through the rain, laughing at myself again. Mr. Metaphor: Second-Rate Philosophy at Cut-Rate Prices.

  Teresa Melendez wasn’t at her usual station; this time I got to talk to a tight-lipped guy in a corduroy jacket who seemed annoyed at having to work the switchboard. Yes, Mr. Coleman Lujack was in today but he wasn’t seeing anybody. I gave my name and said my business was urgent and asked him to please request ten minutes of Mr. Lujack’s time. Reluctantly, he used the intercom; talked and listened for ten seconds, disconnected, and said in I-told-you-so tones, “Mr. Lujack is sorry, he isn’t seeing anybody today.”

  Especially not me, I thought.

  I said, “Rafael Vega. He come back to work?”

  “No. And he still hasn’t called in. Now if that’s all, I have work to do.”

  “Me too,” I said to myself on the way out. “But nobody seems to want to help me do it.”

  * * * *

  The office was locked up tight; Eberhardt still hadn’t put in an appearance. There was only one message on the answering machine, and it made me swear out loud. It was from a screwball Hollywood TV producer named Bruce Littlejohn, who had latched onto me after the publicity surrounding my abduction and escape. He was bound and determined that he was going to make a TV movie about my life; I was bound and determined he wasn’t. I’d told him so the last time we talked, not mincing words. That had been over a month ago, and I’d dared to believe that he had finally gone away. Fat chance. He was like malaria or herpes: Once you were exposed to him, you couldn’t seem to get rid of him.

  I didn’t listen to his message; as soon as I heard his voice I flipped the switch to rewind. While some old coffee reheated on the hot plate, I took care of my mail and got no answer on a call to Rafael Vega’s home number. The coffee tasted stale, and the sandwich I’d bought on the way from Containers, Inc., wasn’t much better. I was forcing down the last of each when Eberhardt showed up.

  He came in blowing and shivering and smacking his gloved hands together. “Christ, it’s cold out there. Windchill factor must be zero. Some damn weather.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Makes you want to stick a feather up your ass and fly south for the winter.”

  He stared at me for a beat and then laughed. “That’s pretty good,” he said. “You make that up or what?”

  “Heard it from Bob Hope.”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind.” It was something my old man used to say on days like this. I hadn’t thought about it in two decades or more. Why it should have popped into my mind today was a question I didn’t want to have answered, either by Eb or myself. The less I dwelt on my old man, the better.

  While Eberhardt poured himself a cup of coffee, I told him about my conversation with Eileen Lujack. He said, “ ‘The coyotes are going to make us rich.’ What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “Something to do with illegals, maybe. Seems to me I’ve heard the word before, in that context.”

  He shrugged. “You think it’s important?”

  “It might be. The money angle is, that’s for sure.”

  “Yeah. Thomas couldn’t have afforded a four-hundred-thousand-dollar piece of property five years ago, not on his annual draw and what the company was worth back then. We should have dug deeper into his background, I guess. But hell, he was our client; we weren’t trying to get anything on him.”

  “Or Coleman.”

  “Or Coleman. So what do you think? They’re mixed up in something a lot shadier than hiring undocumented aliens?”

  “That’s how it adds up. And if they are, Hanauer had to know about it too. It’s got to be the hidden motive in both murders.”

  “You really think Pendarves was framed, huh?”

  “More so all the time.”

  “But why? It just doesn’t make sense with Thomas the victim.”

  “Maybe Pendarves has some idea. And that’s another thing that keeps bothering me: Why haven’t the police found a trace of him since Tuesday night?”

  “He picked a hole somewhere and pulled it in after him.”

  “I hope that’s it.”

  “What other explanation is there?”

  “He could be dead,” I said.

  “Dead?”

  “Murdered, just like Thomas. Can you think of a better way to cement a frame against him?”

  “Christ. Killed the same night as Thomas, you mean?”

  “Before or after, and his body dumped somewhere. That could be the reason his car was found abandoned in Golden Gate Park.”

  He thought about it. “I like the other theory better.”

  “So do I ... for now. If Pendarves is alive and holed up somewhere, it figures to be right here in the city. And that probably means somebody’s hiding him.”

  “One of his pals from the Hideaway?”

  “Or one of his pals from work. Antonio Rivas, for instance.”

  “No way,” Eberhardt said. “I told you, they weren’t close.”

  “You also told me Rivas was holding something back. Maybe it involves Pendarves.”

  “Rivas as the third witness? I thought we ruled that out.”

  “We did. As a matter of fact, I’m inclined to rule out the third-witness angle entirely.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  “What I’m thinking,” I said, “is that maybe Rivas knows something more about the Lujacks and their tie-in with the illegals. And that maybe he also let that something slip to Pendarves.”

  “So you want me to have another talk with him.”

  “Wouldn’t hurt. Wouldn’t hurt for you to check into Coleman’s background and life-style either ... see if he’s been spending more money the past five years than he should have been.”

  “Now? I thought we were still on hold until Thomas’s widow makes up her mind.”

  “She’ll come through. Why waste time?”

  “Uh-huh. All right, what the hell—I want answers as much as you do.” He drained his cup as I got to my feet. “So what’re you gonna be doing while I tackle Coleman and Rivas?”

  “Finding out what happened to Rafael Vega,” I said.

  * * * *

  La Moderna market was on Howard Street, half a block off Sixteenth in the heart of the Mission. A display window full of fresh fish and hanging strands of chorizo flanked the entrance on the left; on the right under an awning were open bins of vegetables and green and red chilis. There were customers inside but the place wasn’t crowded; it was a little after three and still raining hard. The butcher shop and meat counter ran the bodega’s full length and was staffed by two men in blood-spattered aprons. One of them, using a cleaver to whack a chunk of beef into soup meat, was Paco Vega.

  Finding him hadn’t been difficult. Eberhardt had neglected to ask the Vegas’ talkative neighbor where Paco worked, but when I’d looked her up twenty minutes
ago, she’d given me the information without any prodding. While I was in Albert Alley I’d rung the doorbell at the Vega flat, on the chance that Mrs. Vega was home. There had been no answer.

  Paco was intent on his work and didn’t see me right away. The other butcher was telling a heavyset woman in black that they didn’t have any sesos today; she didn’t seem to want to believe him. I stood alone at the counter, watching Paco wield the cleaver. He did it with short, clean, professional strokes, but the strokes were harder than necessary; there was a dark, set expression on his face, and each time the blade thumped down, white muscle-knots appeared at the corners of his mouth. Paco Vega was an angry young man.