by Lind, Hailey
So much for the newspaper report of the body being found by “a cleaning woman.”
“But if you knew Pascal murdered Eugene, why didn’t you say something? And why do you do business with him?”
“My mother was afraid nobody would believe me, and besides, she was an illegal immigrant. She could have been deported. When I went into the stone-importing business I knew I would run into Pascal, and I figured I could use what I knew to my advantage.”
“You mean blackmail?” I asked.
“Whatever.”
“What does this have to do with the goons in the warehouse? Or with Consuelo?”
“They sent Consuelo Pascal’s finger.”
“Eeeeewwww!” Mary said.
“Cool,” added Evangeline.
“Was this, um, recent?” I was afraid of the answer.
“It’s right over here.” She got up, crossed over to a sleek white-oak credenza, and held out a small cardboard box.
I leaned away, my nose wrinkling. “That’s okay. I believe you. Maybe later.”
Gloria, clearly made of sterner stuff, opened the box and shook her head, a bewildered expression on her face. “I don’t know what those guys are thinking.”
Consuelo started crying again, muttering in a mixture of Spanish and English.
“What guys are we talking about, Gloria? The same guys who hung me several stories above the concrete warehouse floor? Those guys?”
“Who hung you—?” Mary began, but I silenced her with a look.
“The wise guys lookin’ for the money, right?” Evangeline said.
Gloria nodded. “Pascal was holding out on the last shipment.”
“What kind of shipment?” I asked.
“I don’t know the details,” Gloria protested. “I don’t. I didn’t want to know.”
“How did you get involved with them?”
“Jose approached me a couple times over the years about importing some containers from abroad. I had always kept my nose clean and didn’t want any trouble from customs, so I said no. But then my mom got sick and had to go into a nursing home. All she had was Medicare and Social Security. You know what kind of a hellhole that pays for? I got to thinking about Pascal. He shipped in stone all the time anyway. Plus, if he got caught he’d go to prison like he deserved. And I could say I knew nothing about it, which is true.”
“So you hooked up Jose and Pascal?” I asked.
She shrugged. “What of it? Pascal had to cooperate because of what I knew about Eugene and Head and Torso. He was a junkie by then anyway.”
“Where were the drugs hidden?” I asked.
“In the shipping containers, I guess. How the fuck should I know? I made a point of not asking stupid questions, okay? I got paid to do the customs paperwork and keep my mouth shut. I wasn’t involved.”
“No, all you did was turn a blind eye to murder and drug smuggling,” I said, my sympathy for the little girl Gloria had been replaced by disgust for the woman she had become.
“I bet he hid the drugs in them garden thingies,” said Evangeline. “Pascal tol’ me he had ’em cast in Mexico, cheap, for some o’ his clients. They was always breakin’ ’n’ shit, and he hadda glue ’em back together then sold ’em to that garden place, Monkey Madness or whatever it’s called. He was rippin’ them off, too, cuz plaster falls apart in the rain.”
“What happened to Seamus McGraw?” I asked.
“Pascal hid something in McGraw’s studio,” Gloria said. “The boys went to get it back but I guess Pascal had already moved it. They would up killing McGraw, then strung him up at the art show as a warning to Pascal.”
“What about McGraw’s fingers?” I asked, appalled at the savage story Gloria recounted so calmly. And I thought I needed therapy.
“Jose’s boys put them there as a joke; none of us knew Pascal was selling the statues to the garden supply store,” Gloria said with a shake of her head. “He was supposed to break up the plaster and melt it down. Cheap bastard wanted to make a few extra bucks by selling them, which meant he didn’t destroy the evidence. I’ve seen CSI. They can pick up all sorts of traces off stuff like that. What an idiot.”
“And Derek, your employee?”
“Derek started snooping around and demanded a piece of the action. He even tried to pry the container open. I feel kind of bad about what happened to him, but you have to understand Jose and the boys are scared too. They work for someone else, somebody even worse.” She met my eyes, and I saw sadness there. “It’s not what you think, Annie. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. All I wanted was to be able to afford some nice things for my mother. Pascal owed us. Nobody was supposed to get hurt.”
“Except Pascal.”
“Like I care,” she said with a snort.
“And Seamus McGraw. And Derek.”
She shrugged.
“Why did they send Pascal’s finger to Consuelo?”
“I guess they think she knows something about the missing stash. She doesn’t, though, so I came over to help her deal with them. This has got to stop. These guys are out of control if they’re slicing off fingers and killing people.”
“Gee, Gloria, you think?” I asked sarcastically. “Wait a minute—are you saying they’re on the way over? Now?” I squeaked. None of us was packing any firepower as far as I could tell, and in light of two dead bodies, numerous severed fingers, and my adventure in the warehouse, I had an aversion to meeting up with Jose and the boys again. I stood. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“You know, I never bargained on any of this,” Gloria said, dropping the box with the bloody finger on the credenza and heading out the front door. “I’ll leave Consuelo in your capable hands. I’m outta here.”
I wondered whether to give chase, but decided against it. Gloria had already told us what she knew, and I didn’t relish trying to hold her captive while waiting for the police.
“Yep. That’s his fat little finger, all right,” Evangeline said with a shake of her head as she peered into the box. “When Pascal said he liked coke, I thought he meant soda pop. Who woulda took him for a junkie?”
I turned to Consuelo. “Where are the statues?”
“Down there.” Off the small foyer was a flight of stairs to a room on the lower level composed almost entirely of windows, the view obscured by the floor-to-ceiling curtains. The space was crammed with packing material and sculptures of various shapes and sizes in the Eugene Forrester style. Most lay on their sides or were broken in two.
“Those are the new ones,” Consuelo said.
I tried to pick up one of the intact sculptures, but it was too heavy. Evangeline came over and hoisted it onto her shoulder. “Where’d’ja want it?”
I was getting a major case of the willies in this cold white house with the bloody finger and the mysterious statues, and longed to be cradled in the bosom of the SFPD. This last was such an unusual impulse that I thought I should honor it.
“Okay, here’s the plan,” I said, improvising. I tossed Mary the truck keys, glad I’d taught her how to drive a stick shift last summer. “Mary, go get the truck and pull it into the driveway. We’ll take this statue with us before Jose and his boys can get rid of everything. We’ll take it to the police and let them deal with it.”
Mary nodded and ran up the stairs.
“Policía?” Consuelo asked.
“Don’t worry,” I assured her. “I have a very good friend in the SFPD.”
“No! No, I cannot. I cannot!” Consuelo cried, and began speaking rapidly in Spanish.
“Tol’ you she was an illegal,” Evangeline said.
“We don’t have a choice. Those guys are killers. Consuelo, is there an exit at this level? We’ll never get this statue up those stairs.”
She pulled aside the curtains, revealing a sliding glass door that opened onto the driveway.
“Evangeline, put the statue in the back of the truck when Mary gets here,” I ordered. As she carried the statue outside, I
turned to Consuelo. “Are you undocumented?” I asked in a voice as gentle as I could muster.
Consuelo nodded. “Come with us,” I said, holding her by the upper arms and speaking slowly. “We won’t take you to the police, okay? You will be safe.”
She looked blank. I racked my brain for the Spanish equivalent, and recalled the bilingual emergency instructions that were stenciled in BART cars in the event of an earthquake. “Seguro! You will be seguro.”
Now she looked confused, so I tried again. “Vámanos por seguridad—”
“Youse guys better get your heinies out here,” Evangeline interrupted. “Somebody’s comin’, and they look an awful lot like those wise guys who were lookin’ for the money.”
Chapter 18
Q: Do you have a personal hero?
A: Absolument! Han Van Megeeren, without a doubt. Facing a possible death sentence for selling a Vermeer to Nazi official Hermann Göring, Van Megeeren admitted he had forged the painting, and demonstrated his talent by producing a brilliant new forgery, The Young Christ Teaching in the Temple, while in police custody. The charges against him were commuted to forgery, and a poll showed he was one of the most popular men in the Netherlands, right behind the prime minister.
—Georges LeFleur, in an interview with Paris Match
I hustled Consuelo outside as Mary pulled the truck into the narrow driveway. Evangeline dumped the statue in the bed of the truck and climbed into the cab. I thrust my weeping undocumented alien onto Evangeline’s lap, where she was encircled by a pair of muscular arms, and hurried around to the driver’s side. A glance through the trees bordering the drive revealed a man behind the wheel of a shiny black SUV pointed uphill. Don Quixote, whom I presumed was really Jose, and his evil assistant Ape Man were pounding on the front door. Because of the way Pascal’s house was situated on the hillside, we were below them and around a slight bend. But it wouldn’t be long before they spotted us.
Panic spurring me on, I tried to squeeze behind the wheel as Mary scooted over, but there wasn’t enough room on the truck’s narrow bench seat for all those womanly hips. Mary twisted sideways, facing me, and I managed to shove my way in and lock the door. I stomped on the gas and we took off with a lurch.
I checked the rearview mirror. The driver of the black SUV was executing a many-pointed turn on the narrow, car-lined alley while Don Quixote and Ape Man ran down the street towards us, guns waving.
“Yikes!” Mary yelled and I turned my attention to driving just in time to avoid a UPS truck laboring up the hill. I heard some popping sounds I feared were gunshots and stepped on the gas. Consuelo began reciting what sounded like the Lord’s Prayer in Spanish while Mary watched out the rear window and provided a running commentary on the progress of Jose and the goons. Only Evangeline remained silent. A quick glance revealed her broad face to be unusually pale.
“They’re jumping into the SUV,” Mary warned. “Look out, they’re coming.”
We careened down Telegraph Hill and I took a right on Grant, then a left on Chestnut. The normally packed streets were quiet this holiday eve, but I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing.
“Should I go somewhere crowded?” I asked of no one in particular.
“Crowded’s good,” Mary replied.
I turned left on Mason and left again on Columbus, which put us right back in the center of North Beach. If anywhere in the City would be crowded the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, it would be North Beach.
“Okay, they’re caught in traffic,” Mary reported with relief.
“Yeah, but so are we.”
“Uh-oh,” Mary said.
“What? What?”
“They’re driving on the wrong side of the road and are no longer blocked by traffic.”
I glanced over my shoulder. Jose and his boys were two blocks behind us, which was not far enough to lose them, but not close enough for them to shoot at us. They were gaining ground, fast.
Mary’s arms didn’t fit in the meager space allotted her, so she had one arm around the back of my shoulders, and the other hugging my waist. I wasn’t wearing a seat belt, and I hoped she could hang on tight enough to prevent me from sailing through the windshield if we crashed. Then again, since she wasn’t wearing a seat belt either, I supposed we would fly through together.
“What do I do? Where should I go?” I pleaded as I swerved around a double-parked delivery truck, and sped down an alley, tires squealing. The statue rolled around and hit the side of the truck with a thud.
“Go to Lombard!” Mary cried.
I jerked the truck around a startled pedestrian in a pilgrim’s hat. “What?”
“Lombard!”
I hung a sharp right and we raced through Chinatown, at one point veering onto the sidewalk to avoid several little old ladies wearing hand-knit caps and carrying bright pink plastic grocery bags, then swinging around a truck unloading squawking chickens. Curses and shaken fists followed in our wake, and I wondered if anyone could possibly think we were joyriding.
“Why Lombard?” I yelled, as we skidded onto Chestnut. “Is a police station there?”
“That’s where everybody goes for a car chase in San Francisco!” Mary replied. “There must be a reason!”
Lombard was a normal street except for a one-block stretch dubbed the crookedest street in the world because it zigzagged to compensate for the forty-degree slope of the hill. Vermont Street at Twentieth was actually more crooked, but who was I to quibble with the tourist brochures?
“Yeah, well, they also always have a Chinese New Year parade in San Francisco chase scenes, even though that happens only once a year. We need a police station! Where’s a police station?” I demanded, my fear making me jumpy. “C’mon, you guys. You mean to tell me that none of you has ever been arrested? Why do I find that hard to believe?”
“There’s a substation near my apartment,” Mary offered. “That’s off Valencia. You think we can make it that far?”
Consuelo sniffed and offered the address of the passport office, but unless we were going to demand an emergency deportation this was not helpful. She seemed to be working her way through the Catholic prayer book, while Evangeline maintained a stoic silence.
We were now racing past the Cannery, heading toward the Marina and the Presidio. There was much less traffic around here, and I heard the popping of gunshots again. Shit! I was fresh out of ideas. I hazarded another glance in the rearview mirror and saw the black SUV only half a block behind us.
“Look out!” Mary yelled, and I swerved to avoid a brightly colored Kreamy Do-Nut delivery van, complete with a giant smiling Kreamy Do-Nut on its roof, pulling out at a stop sign. The SUV was not as quick and smashed into the van with a squealing of brakes, the smashing of glass, and the groaning of steel.
“Yes!” Mary said. “They crashed!”
We cheered and hooted. I should have been driving, not celebrating, because the truck ran over a curb, taking out a big blue mailbox. The statue slammed into the truck’s cab as we screeched to a halt.
Luckily I had slowed before the impact and after a moment of shock, I backed onto the road and looked behind us. Our pursuers leaped from their disabled vehicle and yanked the stunned driver out of his delivery van. Ape Man jumped behind the wheel, with Jose and Barrel Chest riding shotgun.
“They’re coming after us!” Mary cried. “They’ve hijacked the doughnut mobile and they’re coming after us!”
I stomped on the gas, taken aback at being pursued by a giant doughnut. Sure, I thought, the bad guys got a van full of Kreamy Do-Nuts while I was stuck with a penitent Catholic, a speechless giant, and a petty criminal who didn’t even know where the nearest police station was.
The van sped along faster than I would have thought a doughnut mobile could go. I raced through the flat residential streets of the Marina, leaning on the horn in the hope that some public-spirited citizen would call the cops. I decided Mary was onto something with the Lombard suggestion and was willing to bet my trus
ty old truck could climb hills better than the doughnut mobile.
I headed straight up Divisadero, a very steep hill. At the summit was an intersection controlled by a stop sign, but I didn’t hesitate. The hilltop flattened out and we sailed up in the air, across the intersection, and slammed to earth on the other side, jolting the truck and its contents. The statue rocketed around the bed of the truck, banging into the tailgate as we headed uphill, jumping toward the cab when we went airborne. I heard a horrible groaning noise and scanned the dashboard for a red Check Engine Because You’re About to Die light until I realized the noise was coming from Mary.
“What’s wrong?” I demanded. “Mary, what’s wrong?”
“Eye it eye ung,” she mumbled.
“What?”
“She say she bit her tongue,” Consuelo replied, momentarily interrupting a volley of Ave Marias.
“Are you okay?” I asked anxiously.
“Uh-huh,” she nodded, craning her neck to see out the back window. “Ere opping o-uhts.”
“What?”
“She say, they are dropping doughnuts.” Consuelo appeared to have found her calling as a translator for the lingually impaired.
I was too busy gripping the wheel to look for myself. Consuelo pulled a tissue from her pocket, which Mary pressed tightly against her tongue. After a moment, speech restored, Mary resumed her blow-by-blow description of the drama unfolding behind us.
“The back doors of the van are swinging open! They’re dropping Kreamy Do-Nuts everywhere! It’s a fried-dough massacre!”
I concentrated on avoiding driving into the knots of people gathering on the sidewalk to watch the chase. Surely someone would have the presence of mind to call the cops, I thought. At the moment, though, they seemed mesmerized by the carnage created as the Kreamy Do-Nut van sped along, spewing its cargo.