Chris’s face was already red from gagging. Now it was turning purple with rage. He was still too shaky, though, to make his move. He pointed at Bishop.
“You got a big fucking mouth, little man,” he said. “You better remember I’ve got friends in this town. I’ve got people I can call.”
Bishop bared his teeth. He didn’t look at the goon. He knew the goon was watching—watching with his gleaming eyes. He knew the goon had heard that. Chris and his big talk, his drunken threats.
“Is that right?” Bishop said.
“You bet your fucking ass that’s right,” said Chris.
Bishop went into the watch-pocket of his jeans. He brought out a quarter. He flipped the quarter at Chris. It hit Chris’s chest and fell, pattering on the linoleum floor.
“Why don’t you run along and call them then,” Bishop said.
Matt said, “All right, Kennedy. Knock it off, will you. That’s enough. Let’s all have a drink here and be friends.”
But Bishop went on grinning up at Chris. He wasn’t going to stop. Not yet. He said, “Hey. I’m friends. I’m friends with anyone. Even a limp-dick, wife-beating patch of cow piss like him.”
“Oh boy,” laughed the bartender again. “That wasn’t nice.”
Chris was still shaky, but now he was too angry to care. “Come on,” he said hoarsely. “Come on! You don’t have the element of surprise now, sneaky little shit.”
“That’s right,” said Bishop quietly. “You’re all ready for me, aren’t you?”
“Well, come on, stand up then. Stand up this time like a man.”
Bishop lifted his beer and took another sip. Chris trembled, watching him. His whole body trembled with rage.
Bishop set the glass down slowly. “I’ll stand up like a man for a man,” he said.
Chris snapped up a chair and drew back to swing it at Bishop’s head. Then he was on the floor again, groaning and his face bleeding. Bishop had pivoted out of his seat and turned inside the blow, blocking it off with his arm. Then he’d sprung his elbow back into Chris’s mouth and stomped on Chris’ shin to make sure he went down. Once Chris had fallen, Bishop kicked him in the stomach too.
“That’s gotta hurt,” chuckled one of the fat hoohas, shaking his head.
“Jesus, Kennedy,” said Matt.
“Jesus, man,” said the other guy. “Come on now.”
Bishop picked up his beer. He drank it standing.
The bartender leaned on the bar. “Hey, mister?” he said in his bullfrog voice. “I figure you made your point.”
Bishop nodded. “I’m done.” He stood over Chris, holding his beer. “You got more to say to me, you know where I am,” he said down at the fallen man.
Chris didn’t answer. He was curled up, groaning, holding his stomach, spitting blood. Bishop considered him dispassionately. The piece of shit would beat his wife for this, he thought. He’d been humiliated. He would take it out on her. But there was no help for that. Not in Bishop’s mind. He’d wanted to show the guy up in front of Hirschorn’s goon, to send a message to Hirschorn that he, Bishop, was the better man. Now that was done. If Chris went home and took it out on Kathleen, that was his business, that was too bad. That was the way Bishop thought about it.
And yet…yet, all the same, he stood there another second. He thought about Kathleen and the beating she would likely get. Again, he felt that sour heat inside him. The idea of her getting hit like that pissed him off more than he would’ve admitted.
He turned his glass over and dumped the last of his beer on Chris’s face.
“You have a pleasant evening now,” he said.
As he walked out of the Clover Leaf, he stole a quick look back at the goon at the end of the bar.
The goon was hiding his smile in his bourbon. His eyes were gleaming.
Twenty-Four
“I don’t believe this shit,” Inspector Ketchum muttered.
Weiss took a deep breath. “Just wait,” he said.
They waited, the sinewy little black man bristling beside the bear-sized Weiss. They were in a coin shop in North Beach. Seymour Hinckel’s Rare Coins. It was a small store, pleasantly dark, crowded with display cases. From time to time, a collector would wander in and stoop to look into the cases at the rare coins lying on black padding. Right now though, there were no collectors, there were only Ketchum and Weiss. And Seymour Hinckel, the owner of the place, round of head and body. Bald, bespectacled, breathy, mild. Thrumming with excitement at being in on police business. They were all of them watching the street through the storefront window.
“Well?” Ketchum said. “Here I am. I’m waiting.”
Weiss nodded.
“And you’re telling me the guy who killed Wally Spender is just gonna come walking in through that door.”
“Right.”
“Even though he’s just a figment of Spender’s imagination.”
Weiss lifted his shoulders. “It’s an interface.”
“An interface,” said Ketchum. He shook his head. “I don’t believe this shit.”
“Here he comes! Here he comes!” said Seymour Hinckel in his breathy voice. He bustled uselessly behind his counter, arranging his calendar here, his receipt pad there, then rearranging them. Weiss raised his chin expectantly. Ketchum sneered, but then he always sneered. All three of them looked out through the storefront window at the man who’d murdered Wally Spender.
The killer was tall, slim-waisted, broad-shouldered, with coffee-and-cream-colored skin. He was classically handsome and arrogant about it. You could tell by the way he strutted along the sidewalk doing a heavy eyeball number on anything female coming the opposite way. He bebopped up the hill across the street, past a row of Victorian apartment houses. He reached the corner. Stepped off the sidewalk without bothering to look for traffic. As if he figured the cars would just naturally stop for someone as pretty as he was.
“Let me get around him, then give him the motion,” said Weiss.
“You fucking well better explain this to me when we’re done,” Ketchum muttered.
“Just badge him when I’m at the door.”
Ketchum was about to say something else, but stopped. He settled in with an angry sigh.
The killer had reached the shop. Weiss moved away from the inspector. He stood over a display case, hands behind his back. He pretended to peer down at some silver dollars.
The killer pushed in. A ribbon of bells attached to the door tinkled merrily. Still strutting, even in that confined space, the killer high-stepped past the display cases toward Seymour Hinckel. Seymour Hinckel held his breath. He was puffed up like a balloon. Approaching him, the killer smiled a big, white, handsome smile.
But Weiss was already at the door behind him. And now Ketchum stepped in front of him. He flashed his badge.
“Carlos Rodriguez…” he said.
That was all he had time for. The killer spun away, thinking to make a run for it. Weiss was there, towering over him. In the blink of an eye, the killer had a stiletto in his hand. Another blink, and Weiss had the stilletto and the killer was gripping his own wrist and grimacing in pain. Weiss had a flash of temper. He backhanded the guy across the face. The slap was loud in the little shop. The killer reeled back against a display case. Then Ketchum was on him. The wiry cop forced him down over the case. He yanked his arms behind his back. He worked his handcuffs onto him.
“Congratulations,” said the cop. “You’re fucked for life.”
The cuffs clicked shut. The killer was still down over the display case. Weiss watched him, unsteady in his rage. Then he took a deep breath. He closed the knife and held it in one hand. With his other hand, he tugged his earlobe distractedly. Seymour Hinckel watched too, peeking out from behind Ketchum. He was so excited he looked as if the tubby Seymour balloon might just come undone and go spitting this way and that around the shop.
“What’s this for, man?” the killer cried out—the first words he’d been able to speak.
�
��Shut the fuck up,” Ketchum explained. “The only thing I wanna hear you say is ‘ow’ when I bust you upside the head.”
“But what the fuck’s this supposed to be…?”
Ketchum busted him upside the head.
“Ow, man!”
“And watch your fucking language when you’re talking to a fucking law officer. Ya fuck.”
“But I didn’t do nothing.”
“Now that’s just bullshit. Use your head, caballero. Would I be standing here arresting your ass if you hadn’t done anything? You killed that little mousey guy in the alley, that’s what you did. You’re a stone murdering fuck.”
“No, man, no!” said the killer.
“Not ‘No, man, no,’” said Ketchum. “Yes, man, yes. You’re a stone…Say it with me now. A stone. Murdering. Fuck.”
By this time, a little telegram of fear, dispatched from Carlos Rodriguez’s brain, had arrived at his eyes and they became so wide they seemed to take up a good 50 percent of his formerly handsome face. He looked desperately from man to man for help or comfort. Weiss gazed down at him deadpan. Seymour Hinckel watched him, scarlet with the thrill. Ketchum’s perpetual sneer had become his occasional scowl. There was nothing for the killer anywhere.
Finally, in despair, Carlos cried out the truth.
“He paid me to do it! Dude was psycho, man. The guy—the little mousey guy his own self. He wanted to die. He paid me to kill him!”
Twenty-Five
The murderer was still shouting when they put him in the back of Ketchum’s road-weary Impala.
“Dude, I swear it to God! You gotta believe me, man! He paid me! He told me how to do the whole thing. Said I was supposed to pretend he raped my sister. He was psycho, I’m telling you!”
Ketchum slid behind the wheel. Turned over the ignition while Weiss settled in on the passenger side. The car’s rusted front doors creaked as the two men pulled them shut.
“All right, Weiss,” Ketchum said. “Let’s hear it. This better be good.”
He steered away from the curb. Pointed the front fender straight down the steep hill. At that angle, Weiss had to lift his head to see the Bay glittering in the near distance.
“Nobody else had a motive,” he said quietly.
“Man, what was I supposed to say?” Carlos Rodriguez shouted from the backseat. “Tell me! Psycho offered me money, man, I’m gonna turn him down? I mean, I wasn’t even doing nothing. Just sitting at the tittie bar minding my own…”
“Hey!” Ketchum shouted. The killer jumped in his seat and shut up. “We’re trying to have a conversation here.”
“I’m just saying…”
“Don’t make me stop this car, you hear me?” Ketchum turned half-around and wagged a finger at the killer. “If I have to come back there, I’ll fucking kneecap you.”
Rodriguez sagged into silence. Weiss, meanwhile, narrowed his eyes at the windshield with concern. But Ketchum faced front just in time. The Impala swerved around the old Asian lady who’d lugged her vegetable cart into the middle of the street.
“Crazy Chinese bitch,” muttered Ketchum, wrestling the car back under control. “So anyway…?”
“Right. No one else had a motive,” said Weiss. “Spender was all his mother had, she wouldn’t kill him. And no one else cared a damn about him. He wasn’t robbed, so it wasn’t about that. The only one who would get anything at all from his death was him.”
“Him,” Ketchum echoed. “Spender himself. Because he’s gonna get…what?”
“Well…He wanted his fantasy to become real, I guess.”
“Dude was psycho,” Rodriguez muttered.
“Hey!” said Ketchum, shaking a finger at the rearview mirror. And then to Weiss: “He wants his fantasy to become real even if it means he gets iced.”
“Yeah. That was the easiest part of it to make real. All he had to do was pay someone to play the avenging brother.”
“Should’ve paid someone to play the girl, would’ve been a helluva lot more fun.”
“He did. He tried. It didn’t work out.”
“Oh yeah?” said Ketchum. “His Johnson…?”
“Deserted him, yeah. This was the next best option. So it got me thinking how he’d do it,” Weiss went on. “Because the Spenders had no money to speak of, not enough to pay a killer. But I did notice when I was in Wally’s room that he had some coin-collecting books that were missing all the most valuable coins. Which I figured was just normal at first. You know, like he couldn’t afford them? But after I started thinking along this line, I thought, well, maybe he sold off the coins to get the money to hire himself a hit man.”
“A hit man. Against himself,” said Ketchum. “I swear. The shit people pull.”
“I found out what coins they were and called around to various coin shops. Then I find Hinckel. And big surprise. Spender didn’t sell the coins himself, he let the killer do it. Hey, Carlos,” he called over his shoulder into the backseat. “How did you guys work it? Spender tell you the coins would become more valuable if you held on to them?”
“Yeah,” said Rodriguez sullenly. “Psycho mother.”
“I get it, I get it,” said Ketchum. He raised his eyes to the rearview again. “He tells you to hang on to them and you’re such a dumb shit, you hang on to them for what? Forty-eight hours?”
“I wanted to make sure they were really good, man. How’m I supposed to know?” The handsome killer’s voice sank away in a string of muttered obscenities.
“So,” said Weiss, “Hinckel got ID for the sale and so on. Our boy back there gave a false address but a real cell phone number.”
“’Cause he’s stupid.”
“Right. So I had Hinckel call him up and say he’d made a mistake and underpaid for one of the coins, that he owed him another couple of thousand dollars.”
“And that’s it, in he walks,” said Ketchum with a grim smile. “How do you like that, Carlos? Only reason you got caught is ’cause you’re such a dumb shit. That oughta make you feel better when you’re pulling your twenty-five-to.”
They drove on for another while, each with thoughts of his own. The Impala reached the base of the hill, bounced through the flat intersection, took on the next hill, a nearly vertical climb. Blue sky filled the windshield and one lofty, billowing cloud.
Ketchum chuckled nastily to himself. “You know, this is good,” he said. “I like this. Mousey Guy dreams of raping Fantasy Girl then hires Asswipe here to make his dreams come true. What do you know, Carlos? Turns out you’re just a figment of your vic’s imagination. Now he’s dead, you’ll probably up and fucking disappear.” He chuckled again, a mirthless, throaty sound. “You’re an interface, man, that’s what you are.”
Weiss had turned to the cop. No change in his heavy expression. He allowed a moment to pass. Then he said, “Ketch—I need to talk to the Identity Man.”
On the instant, Ketchum’s chuckle collapsed back into a scowl. “What’re you talking about?”
“Whip Pomeroy. Soon. I need to talk to him as soon as possible.”
Ketchum glanced sidelong at his old friend, his only friend. “What’re you, kidding me?” Still, Weiss’s expression didn’t change. “The guy’s PC’d up the wazoo, man. How the hell do you figure I’m supposed to get you in there?”
The car stopped precariously at the very brink of the hilltop. A cable car shuddered across the sky in front of them, ringing its bell. Ketchum took the opportunity to face Weiss full on. Weiss was still looking at him. His expression—that heavy, world-weary look of his—still hadn’t changed.
Ketchum looked back out through the windshield. He shook his head once in disgust.
“I don’t believe this shit,” he sighed.
Twenty-Six
I had my feet up on the desk and the Chronicle spread open in front of my face when Weiss came into the Agency the next morning.
“I pay you for this?” I heard him say.
“Not that much.” I scrunched the paper shut. Dropp
ed my feet to the floor. “Anyway, I was just reading about your heroic exploits.”
“All your doing, not mine.”
“Me? What do you mean?”
“The Case of the Spanish Virgin. The killer—it was just like you said: It was an interface. He was real whether he was real or not.”
I laughed and blushed at the same time. “All right, all right. I’m never gonna hear the end of this, I can tell.”
“No, I’m serious. I’m gonna change the sign on the front door: BETTER DETECTION THROUGH MEANINGLESS PHILOSOPHY.”
“I open up, I share, I try to contribute, what do I get?”
“OUR INVESTIGATORS ARE HERE FOR YOU WHETHER THEY’RE HERE OR NOT.”
“Nothing but ridicule. Ridicule and disrespect.”
Weiss stood over me, tongue in his cheek, hands in his pockets. Quiet a few seconds. He gestured with his chin at the newspaper crumpled on my desk. “So what do you think?”
“What,” I said. “About Spender? Hell, I don’t know.”
“C’mon. You’re the deep thinker. Was it some kind of psychological shit? He felt guilty about his fantasy. Wanted to punish himself for it.”
I made a face. “Maybe. Tell you the truth, I think he probably just preferred death to reality. Most people do. They usually get there a little slower, that’s all.”
I was gratified when Weiss nodded thoughtfully at that. He began to edge away. But he said, “Oh, hey, listen: I’m giving you to Sissy on the Strawberry trial.”
At first, I didn’t understand him—or didn’t believe what he was saying. Then, excitement went buzzing through me. “You mean to…?”
“She needs background on a couple of witnesses.”
He did mean it. Investigation. He was assigning me a real investigation for a real trial. I had never done anything like it before. It was a big step up for me. “Hey, thanks. That’s great,” I said. “That’s great. Thanks. Really. Thanks a lot.”
“It’s your reward for cracking the Virgin case.”
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