Breakdown

by Bill Pronzini

“That’s all? If it’s in the paper …”

  “Don’t read the Metro section, all right? I’ll explain when I see you.”

  “I can be over there in an hour or so—”

  “I’m not home,” I said. “And I have some things to take care of this morning. Later today would be better.”

  “Well, I’ve got an appointment at one, but it shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours. Three thirty at your place?”

  “Good. If I get hung up for any reason, I’ll call you there.”

  “You’re sure everything’s all right? I mean—”

  “I know what you mean. Don’t worry.”

  “Don’t tell me not to worry. I started worrying when I didn’t hear from you yesterday.”

  “I got home too late to call. What’s your news? Something about Cybil?”

  “If I have to wait to hear yours,” she said, “you can wait to hear mine.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Oh God, she’s calling me. … I’d better go.”

  “Don’t let her read the paper either.”

  “She hasn’t looked at a newspaper since she’s been here.

  She’s just not interested.” I could hear Cybil’s voice now, rising querulously in the background. “Three thirty,” Kerry said, and rang off.

  I called Eberhardt’s number. Still no answer, which was just as well; I didn’t really feel like talking to him yet. We’d connect later in the day. He’d see to that, if I didn’t. He read every news item in every edition of the local papers, as if he were moonlighting as a researcher for a clipping service.

  * * * *

  I drove out to Daly City first. Teresa Melendez struck me as one of the least likely possibles; might as well eliminate her first if I could.

  As usual, fog crawled over its hills and flats, put a shiny wetness on the streets: giant formless gray slug and its slime trail. I had to use my windshield wipers on the way across from 280 to Atlanta Street. Teresa’s Honda was under the carport, but I didn’t get a response when I rang the bell. I pushed it again, listened, heard nothing, and tried the door. Unlocked. Not smart, Teresa, not these days. I opened it and went in calling her name.

  Silence.

  On the floor near the couch was an empty fifth of vodka, lying on its side in a wet spot where some of it had dribbled out. An empty glass and an ashtray full of cigarette butts was on an end table. The place smelled of booze—and of stale tobacco and, faintly, of sickness.

  I moved into the rear of the house. She was in one of the bedrooms, lying face down across a rumpled king-size bed, the same housecoat she’d worn yesterday bunched up over her hips. Dead drunk in a dried patch of her own vomit. I called her name again from the doorway; she didn’t stir. I went and leaned over the bed and shook her, hard. That got me a low mumbling groan. One of her hands came up, twitching, as if she were trying to brush away a bothersome fly, and then flopped down again. She didn’t wake up. Without help she wouldn’t wake up for hours yet.

  Brew up some coffee, haul her into the shower? No. Instead I tugged the housecoat down over her hips and thighs, covered her with a tattered quilt that was lying at the foot of the bed. Then I set about searching the room and the rest of the house.

  Coleman Lujack had been shot—and I had been shot at— with a 9mm automatic; that was what I was hunting for. I didn’t find it. Nor any other type of handgun. Nor anything at all that linked Teresa Melendez to Coleman’s murder.

  Her car keys were on one of the kitchen counters. I took them out through the back door, over under the carport to the Honda. The driver’s door was open; I leaned in and looked through the glove compartment, under the seats. No gun. I unlocked the trunk and poked around in there. No gun. She could have gotten rid of it, of course, but I didn’t think so.

  Back inside the house, I put the keys where I’d found them and went to look in on Teresa again. She hadn’t moved. Let her be, I thought. She’s not the one. If Coleman had come here, she might have tried to do what she’d said she would— cut his heart out and feed it to the neighbor’s dogs. But she wasn’t the kind to go stalking a man, even one she hated as much as her former boss, and then blow him away with a 9mm cannon. She was the kind to cry and wallow in self-pity and drink herself into a puking oblivion.

  Not a killer, Teresa Melendez. Just another lost soul.

  * * * *

  South to the San Carlos hills. But it was an hour’s worth of wasted time and effort: Eileen Lujack was away somewhere again.

  * * * *

  Albert Alley was a little hive of activity this Sunday morning. The sun was out here—the Mission has the best weather in San Francisco—and so were the residents: young guys working on cars, kids playing ball, kids hanging out, well-dressed families on their way to and from church. Spanish music clashed with heavy-metal rock, each issuing loudly from an unseen radio. On one of the stoops, two men sat drinking beer out of cans and watching a pro basketball game on a portable TV.

  There was nobody in the little garden fronting the Victorian where the Vegas lived, nobody on the stoop. I went up and worked the bell for more than a minute before I got results. When the door finally opened, it was Mrs. Vega who peered out at me.

  Like Teresa Melendez, she, too, had spent Saturday night soothing her love for Rafael in an alcohol bath. Her face was puffy, her eyes bloodshot and sick with pain both physical and emotional. The smell of sour red wine blew off her like a bad wind. What was it about that son of a bitch that made his women grieve for him so intensely? Maybe he had admirable qualities underneath; maybe he was gentle and loving and kind to animals. Or maybe it was just that his women were lousy judges of men.

  At first there was no recognition in Mrs. Vega’s gaze, probably because she was seeing me through the soft focus of her hangover. I watched the knowledge break in on her as I spoke.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” I said, “but I need to talk to your son. Is he here?”

  “No.” She spat the word at me as if it were a bitter-tasting seed.

  “Can you tell me where I can find him? It’s important that I—”

  She slammed the door in my face. And locked it. And went wherever it was she went to nurture her pain.

  * * * *

  La Moderna Market was open for business, but the butcher shop part of it was closed; no fresh meat on Sundays. I spoke to both grocery checkers, one of whom referred me to a stockboy named Manuel. Manuel said maybe I should try the Cafe Guitarra on Guerrero Street. Paco hung out there sometimes, he said, because achiquita he liked waited tables.

  * * * *

  Cafe Guitarra turned out to be one of the funky products of the Mission’s New Bohemia status—a combination coffee house and music hall that featured folk, rock, punk, and flamenco guitar players. Paco wasn’t there. Three waitresses bustled around, all of them wearing white blouses and colorful peasant skirts; the second one I talked to was evidently the chiquita Paco was interested in, because her eyes got bright when I mentioned his name. He hadn’t been in so far today, she said. Had I tried La Raza?

  I said, “La Raza? You mean the graphics center?”

  “No. Centra Legal.”

  That surprised me. “Why would he be there?”

  “He works there sometimes on weekends.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Helping out. You know, volunteer stuff.”

  “How long has he been a volunteer for them?” ,

  “A long time, I think.”

  As I left the cafe I decided that I shouldn’t have been surprised. La Raza Centra Legal is a legal assistance and referral group, and is deeply committed to making sure that the IRCA amnesty program for undocumented aliens is properly administered. Rafael Vega had become a coyote who preyed on his own people; his son, who knew or suspected this, and who hated him as a result, had taken the exact opposite route and become a La Raza volunteer. No, I shouldn’t have been surprised at all.

  * * * *

  La Raza Centro Legal has its of
fices on the 2500 block of Mission Street. I spotted Paco Vega as soon as I walked in, sitting at a table with two other young Latinos; they were stuffing envelopes from stacks of some kind of document or flier. He didn’t see me until I called his name. His first reaction was anger, but it lasted only a couple of seconds; what replaced it was a kind of disgusted resignation. He got up and did a slow walk to where I stood.

  “Man,” he said, “you’re like a dose of the clap. You just don’t go away.”

  “You get around pretty good too,” I said. “I didn’t know you were an activist volunteer.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s plenty you don’t know about me. What you want, pancho? You didn’t come here to talk about La Raza.”

  “Let’s go outside.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “get it over with.”

  By Mission Street standards, the sidewalks were un-crowded today; so were the bus-stop and rest benches, which were usually the domain of drunks, homeless citizens, and little old ladies when they could squeeze out a seat. Paco and I found an empty bench and sat down.

  I said, “How’s your father?”

  “He’ll live, so they tell me. But he won’t use his right arm again.” Paco’s face betrayed no emotion of any kind. “You have anything to do with putting him in the hospital?”

  “Would it matter if I did?”

  “Not to me.”

  “You don’t care that he’s badly hurt?”

  “No.”

  “No feelings for him at all?”

  “Not in a long time, man. My mother’s hurt bad too”— Paco tapped his head—“up here. He don’t care about her, why should I care about him? Be better for everybody if he’d died out on that beach.”

  “You feel that way about Coleman Lujack too?”

  “What way?”

  “Better for everybody that he’s dead.”

  “He’s a pig. I don’t think about pigs.”

  “You help butcher them, though, don’t you?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Come on, Paco. Somebody killed him last night. Why not you?”

  He looked startled; and the startlement seemed genuine. “The hell,” he said. “How’d he get killed?”

  “You don’t know, huh? It was in this morning’s paper.”

  “You think I read the damn paper these days?”

  “If the cops haven’t been around to see you yet, they will. Any time now.”

  “Jesus Christ, you and the cops think I did it, you all been smoking angel dust. Why would I kill thatmarrano?”

  “Revenge. He’s the main reason your father’s in the hospital and in big trouble with the law.”

  “Bullshit,” Paco said. “I wouldn’t kill nobody for my old man. I wouldn’t kill a mad dog that was biting his leg.”

  “No? You own a handgun?”

  “Not me, man. Guns aren’t my thing.”

  “But you’d know where to get one if you wanted it.”

  “Sure. Lots of guns on the streets. But I told you, I didn’t kill Coleman Lujack. You want proof? What time’d he get wasted?”

  “Around six thirty.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Six thirty last night, I was at Mission Dolores with my mother. Six o’clock Mass—she was praying for my old man’s soul. Ask the padre, ask fifty other people, maybe that’ll satisfy you.”

  “I’m already satisfied,” I said. And I was. I’d started being satisfied as soon as I found out Paco worked as a volunteer for La Raza.

  He wasn’t the shooter either.

  * * * *

  Eberhardt was home when I stopped by his Noe Valley house at one thirty. In a snarly mood and none too happy to see me. He started an up-tempo harangue as soon as I walked in, and if Bobbie Jean hadn’t been there, we’d have got into a hell of a row; my mood wasn’t much better than his. But Bobbie Jean is the unflappable sort of Southerner and exerts a calming influence on Eb, and she got him settled to the point where he could speak to me without yelling and calling me “a stubborn goddamn wop” at the end of every third sentence. He didn’t stop glaring at me though. He would probably go on glaring at me for days.

  Bobbie Jean made us some coffee, and while we drank it we managed to discuss things in a more or less rational manner. When I got done telling him why I had pretty much scratched Teresa Melendez and Paco Vega off my list, he said, “All right, smart guy. If neither of them shot Coleman, then who did? Thomas’s widow?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Pendarves?”

  “Maybe, if he’s still alive.”

  “And if he isn’t?”

  “I don’t know. Somebody who’s mixed up in the coyote business, maybe some friend of Vega’s.”

  “But you don’t have any idea who it might be.”

  “No.”

  “So you’re going to drop it, right? Let the police and the feds do their jobs and haul your ass out of it, right?”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “Maybe? Chrissake, maybe?”

  “I want to talk to Antonio Rivas.”

  “What the hell for? You thinkhe shot Coleman?”

  “No.”

  “Well? He doesn’t know anything about Pendarves. I already told you that.”

  “I still want to have a talk with him.”

  “You don’t trust my judgment, is that it? You stubborn goddamn wop …” And he was off again.

  Bobbie Jean stepped in to do another calming job, but I’d had enough. It was about time for me to go meet Kerry anyway. I said as much, thanked Bobbie Jean, gave her a peck on the cheek, and then asked her glowering fiance if he minded coming to the door with me.

  “What for?”

  “Humor me, all right?”

  He went along, grumbling. “So?” he said when he’d finished yanking the door open.

  In lowered tones I asked, “Everything okay with you?”

  “Huh?”

  “You know, physically.”

  “I’m fine. Why?”

  “I worry about you, Eb. I know you spent the night with Bobbie Jean, and I know how clumsy you can be sometimes.”

  “What the hell’re you talking about?”

  “Well, I’m just wondering about your rotten disposition today,” I said. “You didn’t have one of those freak accidents last night, did you? Miss the target and ram your dingus into the mattress?”

  For the second time that day I got a door slammed in my face. This time I didn’t mind a bit.

  * * * *

  Chapter 21

  Kerry was waiting when I arrived at my flat, even though it was still fifteen minutes shy of three o’clock. A different Kerry than the last few times I’d seen her—not quite her old self, but with some of the old optimism and assurance. A good part of the strain had been eased. Whatever she’d done on Friday, it had had a profound effect on her.

  She said after she kissed me, “My appointment didn’t take as long as I expected. I’ve been here half an hour.” She gave me a long appraising look. “You look tired, my love.”

  “Not much sleep lately. I’ll be okay.”

  “I wish I could help you sleep.” Gently she rubbed my cheek with her fingertips. “I’m better than calcium lactate.”

  “You’re telling me? Right now, though, we need to talk. And before we talk, I need a beer.”

  “I helped myself to the wine,” she said. “You mind?”

  “Nope.”

  “Good. I was afraid you might go all grumpy and mother-hennish on me. You do that sometimes, you know, when you’re under stress or in a bad mood.”

  “I’m not in a bad mood today. Not anymore.”

  She kissed me again. “Go get your beer.”

  I went and got my beer. When I came back into the living room, she was sitting on the couch with her shoes off, her skirt hiked up on her thighs, and her bare feet tucked under her. She has terrific legs, long and slender, with very small and well-formed feet. Dirty old man that I am, I find her feet as erotic as th
e rest of her. Sometimes just thinking about them gives me urges. But not right now. Right now I was much more interested in what had brought about the change in her.

  I said as I sat down, “You first. Tell me about Cybil. I can use some good news. It is good, isn’t it?”

  “Well, positive. Very positive.”

  “You went to see somebody?”

  “Yes, and I wish I’d done it a lot sooner.”

  “Geriatric doctor?”

  “No. A support group,” she said.

  “What kind of support group?”

  “It’s called Children of Grieving Parents. One of B. and C.‘s clients told me about it. A couple of dozen people like me who have or had parents, usually elderly, that reacted to losing a spouse the way Cybil has. They’ve found ways to cope themselves, and ways to help the parents learn to cope.”

  “What do they advise? In the long run, I mean.”

  “Getting Cybil into a care facility.”

  “But how, with her fear of being put in a home—*?”

  “Not that kind of care facility. Not a nursing home.”

  “What other kind is there?”

  “One that’s set up as a seniors complex. There are a number in the Bay Area. They’re not hospitals or places with rooms like cells and nurses and doctors in the halls; they’re virtual condos—separate and private apartments, with recreational facilities and organized activities that are completely optional.”

  I asked, “What if the individual needs medical attention?”

  “Part of the facility is a clinic staffed by medical personnel and counselors. They’re there if needed, but only if needed. The resident—not patient, that word is never used—makes the decision. The staff periodically looks in on the residents, of course, to see if they need anything and to make sure they’re all right. But they don’t interfere except in cases of medical emergency.”

  “Sounds fine. But will Cybil agree to an arrangement like that?”

  “I think so,” Kerry said. “Not immediately, but eventually. The one thing she’s most afraid of, that almost all grieving parents are most afraid of, is the loss of self-sufficiency. That’s the first insight the people in the group gave me. She’s been in control of her own life for nearly sixty years; she can’t stand the prospect of losing that control, becoming dependent, because to her it means losing her freedom, her will, and ultimately her identity.”