by Tom Pitts
“Mexican. Why don’t we go out to one of these joints that Alvarez owns, pick up our own tab and have a look around?”
Chapter Fifteen
Tremblay pulled the Ford into a driveway. He was still breathing hard from the chase, the coke, and forty years of Marlboros. He pulled his pack, tugged one out with his teeth, and lit up. He put his head back on the headrest and blew smoke at the roof of the car. Fucking Quinn. He thought about the time they first met. How cocky he was. Quinn was a hired hand, just like him, but he acted like he was the only one on the block who knew his shit.
He’d seen Quinn around the restaurant a few times. Cocky motherfucker, always cracking jokes. Tremblay had thought he was one of Alvarez’s new guys. In this kind of business it was never good to have a new guy around. Better you know someone your whole life—longer even. He told Alvarez that Quinn was some sort of cowboy, but Alvarez didn’t want to hear it. It wasn’t until he got stuck on a job with him that Tremblay found out how much a cowboy this Quinn was.
A crooked San Francisco politician had hired Alvarez to help take out some competition. Alvarez was embroiled in becoming a legitimate member of the business community. The target had gotten in the way of the plans he and his new politician friend were making. Hiring Alvarez to do the dirty work meant hiring Tremblay and men like Quinn.
Tremblay had never been saddled with Quinn before and he was wary, even though Quinn’s reputation had been solid. They went to the address they’d been given with one purpose: to stake it out and pick an opportune time to come back and do the job. They sat waiting and smoking and shooting the shit. No way was it going to happen that night, too many cars in the driveway, the target had company.
That’s when Quinn said he had to piss and got out of the car. Tremblay warned him they could be compromised. Quinn said, “Fuck it then. Let’s go take care of business,” and walked up to the front door. Tremblay watched him ring the bell, pull his gun, and fire on the unlucky fool who’d answered the door. He sat helpless as Quinn went inside and slaughtered four people. They had to call Alvarez and tell him to send a whole team to clean up the mess. It was dangerous, foolish, and something Tremblay would never forget.
The backlash of that evening, the endless stories about the missing politician and his guests, went on for months. It almost got Tremblay put away and it kept him on the police radar forever. He hated that son of a bitch Quinn.
Tremblay picked up the phone and called Alvarez back.
When his lunk-headed bodyguard answered, he said, “Put Ricardo on,” in an exaggerated accent, rolling out the r’s in a long trill. He heard the bodyguard tell Alvarez that “the fat man” was on the line.
“Maurice? What happened? Do you have our friend beside you?”
“No,” Tremblay said. “You got that plate number, right?”
“I do.”
“Run it. Let’s see whose Benz that is. I bet my life it’s stolen and the owner hasn’t called it in hot. Why? Because the owner is dead.”
Alvarez didn’t say anything. He hated phones. Even though he changed his number a couple times a week, he always assumed someone was listening. “Careful what you say. Someone may not realize you’re joking.”
“I think it’s time we talked in person,” Tremblay said.
“In person, huh? I thought you don’t have any news for me?” Alvarez’s accent was starting to come though. That only happened when he stifled his anger.
“I can be at your place in twenty minutes. We need to talk, hombre a hombre.”
“I think the expression you’re looking for is cara a cara. Sounds less like a threat that way.”
“Twenty minutes.”
“No, Maurice. I don’t want you coming here. Why don’t we meet for lunch at my place on Geary?”
“I’m on my way. I’ll wait for you there.”
***
Teresa and Steven walked along 25th Avenue toward Geary. It was warming up now and Teresa took off her jacket. Steven was hit by the chemical musk of her humid body. It smelled good to him.
“You got any smokes left?” she said.
“Two.”
“Two? Shit, why didn’t you say anything while we were at the store? Fuck, no smokes, no money. You ain’t a cheap date, Steven.”
It was the first time he’d heard her use his name. It sounded nice to him, flirtatious, playful. He smiled back, wanting to say something funny, witty, but he came up with nothing and just smiled. He felt like an idiot; he was probably blushing.
“Sorry. I’ll get you back when I figure out how to find my friend.”
“How hard can that be? Can’t you send him a Facebook message or something?”
Steven reminded her that his parents were hippie zealots; they didn’t even own a computer. And his friend, thinking he was a big-shot drug dealer, refused to have any social media accounts. “I think, in reality, he’s just too stoned and lazy to open one up.”
“Dude, you got no idea where he lives, where he works? You can’t call him? You ain’t gonna find him, not while we’re hidin’ out at least.”
“I know. It’s my only chance to get back home, though. I don’t know anybody else here.”
“You know me,” she said.
“That’s true.”
She stopped on the sidewalk and turned to him. “And I don’t think you understand, even with that fucker chasing us down. My father is a powerful guy with long fucking tentacles. If he wants us, he’s gonna find us, and if he finds us, there’s a good chance you’ll wind up dead.”
The word hung in the air between them. Dead. It sounded unreal to Steven, like a line from a movie.
“Why me? What did I do?”
“You’re a loose end, an uncertainty. That’s what he does. That’s how he cleans up problems.”
Steven felt a deep pit in his stomach. “I don’t—I don’t understand.”
“I know you don’t, that’s what I’m trying to tell you,” she said. “Gimme one of those smokes.”
He brought out the pack and took the last two.
She pulled out her disposable lighter and lit his, then hers.
“I’ve been laying low forever now. I walked out on him. I hate that prick, but, if he wanted to find me, he could have. Now that someone else wants to find me, he’ll want to find me too. That’s how his mind works.”
Steven drew deep on the cigarette and asked, “What’s he do again? I mean, what’s his job?”
“I told you, he’s king of the assholes.” She stared at him a second, waiting for that to sink in. “We’re a block from Geary, let’s get a bus toward downtown and I’ll show you where he works.”
“Is there a way we can talk to him? Go there and explain or whatever?”
Teresa didn’t answer. She kept her head down and smoked. Her pace picked up a little. They reached Geary Boulevard right when the number 38 was pulling up, skipping the fare by once again entering through the back door as others were getting off.
“I got an idea,” she said as they walked to the back of the bus. “There’s only one guy I know that can reach out to my father, see what’s going on. I hate him, but I think it’s the only chance. At least the only one I can think of.”
“You can’t call your dad yourself?”
“No way,” she said. “C’mon, I know where to go.”
***
Carl pulled up to the address that Peters had found Googling high-end Mexican food on Geary. He pointed to the neon sign that sat dormant in the daylight. Todos Santos. They were trying to decide if they were at the right place when Peters punched Carl lightly on the arm.
“Look who it is,” Peters said.
In front of the restaurant stood the large man who’d unleashed the Dobermans on them back at Alvarez’s. He had his arms folded across his chest and was looking back and forth, up and down the street.
“Looks like he’s got sentry duty,” Carl said.
“You think Alvarez is in there?”
“Oh
, I know he’s in there,” Carl said. “You want to go in now, or sit here a minute and see who else shows up?”
The man in front of the restaurant focused now in one direction. Then he gave a nod of his head to a passing car.
“Well, well, well. Look who’s here.” Carl pointed his finger at the rented Ford Focus passing under the Todos Santos sign. “There’s the man of the hour right now.” They watched as the car pulled into a spot only a few doors up and Maurice Tremblay hefted himself out and lumbered toward the big man at the front door. He barely acknowledged the man, but it was clear he knew him. The man opened the restaurant’s front door for him and Tremblay slipped in.
“Let’s sit for a minute. Then we’ll go in and order us some of those fajitas. We’ll see what’s what.”
***
As soon as he entered, Tremblay heard Alvarez’s voice echoing from the office upstairs. He was yelling at someone. Tremblay passed through the restaurant and walked up the stairs.
“Listen, you motherfucker,” Alvarez hissed into the phone. “I want to know why you didn’t tell me you were working on this case. Yes, I found out he was being released, your boss told me about that. I want to know why a lawyer I’m fucking paying was working on this case for who knows how long and nobody tells me.” Alvarez waved Tremblay in then sat down hard in his office chair.
“Listen to this shit,” he said to Tremblay and hit speaker on the desk phone.
A small voice crackled out of the speaker. “I was instructed by the client not to inform anyone. I’m still bound by attorney-client privilege.”
“But I’m your client, you fuck. I’m paying you and your whole fucking firm. You don’t think this constitutes some conflict of interest? I’m the one that paid your fees in the first place on this case.”
“I understand that, Mr. Allen. But my fees in this particular matter were paid for entirely by Mr. Quinn.”
“Bullshit,” barked Alvarez. “How is that possible? He was locked up; he had no money on the outside.”
“He paid for my services with cash. Money that was delivered by courier.”
“By courier? What fucking courier?”
“Sir, I’m bound—”
“You better stop with that bullshit right now. I want to know how the fuck you got this motherfucker out of la penta.”
Tremblay had to keep from smiling. The involuntary slip into his native tongue meant Alvarez was losing his famous control over his temper.
“It was a pretty simple case of habeas corpus, sir. Exonerated due to newly discovered exculpatory evidence. Well, no writ of habeas corpus is simple, but this one was at least clear cut. Once the new evidence was brought forth, it was only a matter—”
Alvarez hit the speaker button and ended the call. “Fucking lawyers,” he said to Tremblay, then yelled downstairs to his bodyguard, “Manuel! Get on over to Weinstein’s office and get that little puto that worked on Quinn’s case. Bring his ass here, now.”
The man downstairs said something in Spanish.
“Yes, right now!” Alvarez called back, then to Tremblay. “That shitheel thinks he’s gonna unleash hell upon us and not pay? He’s got another thing coming.”
Alvarez had buried Quinn with a case of mistaken identity. Eight years before, one of Alvarez’s men stabbed and killed a rival in his Fillmore Street restaurant, right at the bar, in front of a whole crowd of witnesses. Alvarez was there too, just a few feet away. It should have closed him down. It should have been the straw that broke the back of his illegal empire. The authorities would examine his whole operation with a great big magnifying glass, breaking apart what he’d built piece by piece. But what was a problem for most, Alvarez turned into an opportunity. He paid off witnesses to infuse their statements and set up Quinn for the crime. The only problem? The investigating officer discovered the security tape. Alvarez always kept a camera recording over the bar’s cash register. That’s when Alvarez reached out to the San Francisco DA and made sure the tape got lost. Relying on his memory alone, the homicide detective was only able to testify the man he’d seen on the tape was similar to Quinn in height and weight. It took some doing, a lot of bribes, but in the end three good things came out of it. He had a DA in his pocket, he made a lifelong friend out of the Honorable Judge Tanaka, and—most importantly—one of his biggest headaches and greatest liabilities was put away for at least twenty years. At least that’s what he thought.
Tremblay sat quiet while Alvarez stared at his phone and breathed loudly through his nose.
Alvarez said, “Quinn had access to cash, plenty of it if he was paying Weinstein’s fees. How do you think he pulled that off?”
“I dunno,” Tremblay said. “Maybe he had some socked away. Maybe he was stacking it up with some bitch. Who knows?”
“No way, not that kind of cash. We made sure of that. There’s a difference between making life in prison comfortable money and…getting yourself out of prison money. It’s not just the lawyer; he had to pay for the evidence that got reintroduced, the whole investigation, bribes up and down the ladder.”
“When we find him, I guess we can ask him.”
Alvarez said quietly, almost to himself, “We should have hit him while he was inside. I don’t know what I was thinking. Soon as he landed, we should have taken him out.”
Tremblay said, “Why didn’t you?”
“You know why. He was doing my time. If he wasn’t inside, it was all going to come right back to me. I thought he had the ace. If he went down, he fixed it so it was all going to come out. Like a last will and testament. But as long as he was sitting there—still thinking he was going see daylight—we were all safe.”
Manuel poked his head in the open office door.
“What do you want?” snapped Alvarez. “I thought I told you to get that pinche lawyer?”
Manuel started to say something in Spanish. Alvarez glared at him. “In English, please.”
“It’s those two cops, the ones that were at the house,” Manuel said. “They’re downstairs, right now. Ordering lunch.”
Tremblay looked at Manuel, then to Alvarez. “What two cops?”
The place was empty. Wood tabletops, at least thirty by Carl’s count, all of them set and waiting for customers. It was dark, lots of wood grains and black and white photos of old Mexico punctuated with antique brass ornaments hung between them. Carl nudged Peters and pointed to a picture of Alvarez and San Francisco Mayor Ronald Woo. They stood arm in arm, mugging for the camera in the same room where Peters and Carl now stood. In the picture, the restaurant looked lively and crowded. But there were no customers now. No warm inviting smells drifting in, no clatter from the kitchen.
“Looks like lunch ain’t on the menu,” Peters said.
The bodyguard they’d seen at Alvarez’s house stood glaring at them. Then, a waiter who didn’t look like a waiter sat them at a small round table in the middle of the room. He set some menus down, asked if they wanted anything to drink, then disappeared back into the kitchen. When Carl and Peters looked up, the bodyguard had gone upstairs.
Before they could say anything to each other, there was Richard Alvarez, walking toward them with his arms spread in a great welcoming gesture. “Gentlemen, you’ve come to your senses and decided to have a decent lunch.”
“Actually,” Carl said. “We were hoping to bump into Mr. Tremblay here. You said he enjoys what you’re cookin’.”
Alvarez started in, “I thought I was clear when I told you at my home that—”
Tremblay stepped out from behind him. “That’s all right, Richard. I’ll talk to these fuckin’ flatfoots.” He walked toward the table. It was the first time Carl had seen Tremblay up close. He was overweight and looked like he hadn’t slept. His voice was full of gravel as he poked out a stubby index finger at them. “What’re you two yokels doing down here? Chasin’ your tails? I told you what I know and what I saw at the winery. Why the fuck would you come down here botherin’ my friends?”
�
�You’re not that easy to get a hold of, Mr. Tremblay.”
“I left a number with your boy here. Nobody called. Where I come from, that means we’re done.”
Carl looked at Peters, who looked confused.
Peters said, “You mean the Holiday Inn Express? We tried you there, you high-tailed it outta town first thing in the morning.”
Tremblay’s tone turned icy. “I’m sorry, was that illegal? Did you say not to leave town? Did you say you needed a further statement from me? I figured you dumbfucks could do your own police work without me helping you.”
Carl cut in. “Now there’s no call for—”
“No call for what? You two cowpokes got no idea where to look for the killer. No clues, no motive. You want a consultation from me? You can fuckin’ well pay me a consulting fee. Otherwise, you can kiss my ass.” Tremblay was practically spitting his words now, his face turning red and his eyes beginning to bulge. “Why don’t you two scamper on back to wine country and set up a speed trap, leave the homicide investigations to someone who knows what the fuck they’re doing.”
“We only wanted to ask a few more questions,” Peters said.
“Fuck your questions. You don’t think I have friends left on the force? You’re wrong. You don’t think I can jam you guys up for conducting an investigation way outta your jurisdiction? You got no permission to be here, don’t act like you’re on official business, that’s bullshit. You got no departmental backing. Homicides defer to Sonoma Sheriff’s Department. That makes you two a couple of nosey citizens fucking with my good reputation.”
Carl wondered how Tremblay could have known they were down here on their own. Was it his gut feeling, or had he called Calistoga to find out?
Peters stood up. “Your good reputation? We know—”
“Siddown shithead,” Tremblay said. “You don’t know shit. If you did you’d be chasing the fuck who really did these murders.”
“Murders?” Carl said.
Alvarez interrupted. “Gentlemen, please. Clearly tempers are rising and we don’t want to get into some kind of confrontation here. Do we, Maurice?”