“Can’t a man use a washroom without some freak coming on to him?” I asked as my eyes met the guard’s in the mirror. “When he wakes you can tell him I won’t be so gentle next time.”
The guard did a double take, first at me and then at the man in the stall. As I turned around to leave, I heard a groan and the guard’s response, “You better get your faggoty ass up and out of my airport.”
I went through the security checkpoint, and when I got to my gate, I sat down between an old Chinese couple and a young Latina and her crying small boy. I pulled out the piece of paper I had taken from the man. It had my address scrawled on it in pencil. I unraveled it and found that it was a church bulletin: a Sunday church bulletin from St Peter’s Catholic Church in San Pablo.
It was a moment before I realized that was Jesus’ parish.
I felt the knuckles on my right hand begin to swell.
Chapter Six
Mickey Mahoney had two great passions in life: one was Johnnie Walker Red Label and the other was Johnnie Walker Black Label. These two loves were responsible for his permanently crimson face, threaded with a thousand exploded capillaries, and a damaged nose that looked like Mickey was in the last stages of a melanoma. Mickey’s square, thick eyeglasses were tinted a deep blue, and as dark as the lenses were, they couldn’t hide his sullen, wary eyes. Cop’s eyes. Thirty years of being a cop’s eyes. And if his eyes didn’t give him away, then the rumpled blue suit and rubber-soled shoes that said “plain clothes” did.
Returning to Portland left me feeling like a disembodied ghost haunting a life left too soon. After spending a year and a half away from your own hometown, you should have old friends, colleagues, or classmates to lunch with—and perhaps some long, lost love to meet for a quiet drink in a familiar, forgotten haunt. My address book was full of people to call, but I had nothing to say to any of them.
Except Mickey.
After renting a car at the airport, I took the freeway downtown, crossed the Willamette on the Marquam Bridge, and drove down Fourth Street by the county courthouse, where I found a parking space just a block from Hannigan’s Bar and Grill. Mickey sat at the bar as if he’d never left the seat he’d occupied when we’d first met, he as a boy, and me as a young man. Back then he’d worn a uniform and partnered with my dad. Just like today, he’d been drinking straight Scotch whiskey out of a coffee cup.
Sighting me in the mirror, he lumbered up and shook my hand in both of his.
“Jackson, my boy, you look grand! You look like a million dollars.”
“You too, Mickey.”
“Bullshit. I look like road kill left over from last Tuesday.”
I ordered coffee and let that pass.
“So how is Berserkley?”
“Like the poet said, sometimes it’s an honor just to witness the confusion. So this client you’ve referred me to—”
“We’ll get to that. First, I got an inquiry from Berkeley PD about you. Something about a 187 and the vic being a priest. No wits.” Mickey’s first language was policespeak.
“Yeah, I need to talk to you about that. The victim was a priest, and a friend of mine. And no, there were no witnesses—not that we know of—and I was the one who found the body.” I told him the whole story: the phone calls from the bar we always drank in, the money, and the guy I had sucker-punched in the Oakland airport.
“I don’t know what to think about it. Any of it,” I said when I was finished.
“I know what I think,” he said. “I think you ought to be more selective about who you drink with. Jackson, you know what I’ve always told you: the two most important people in your life are who you drink with and who you sleep with.” With that Mickey drained his cup and signaled for a refill. “So let’s see. You got a friend who’s a priest. Named Jesus. And one day he gets jammed up somehow and calls you for help. So on his way over he picks up a fatal gunshot wound and enough cash to open another branch of Bank of America. And you don’t know what to think? My only question is what did you think life was going to be like when you moved to an asshole place like Berkeley, California?”
I didn’t respond; instead I looked around Hannigan’s to see what had changed. Although a bar like Hannigan’s, situated between a courthouse and a police station, is always ushering in new generations of attorneys, police officers, politicians, and bureaucrats, its customs and character will not change. It will still open at 7 a.m., and its more affluent patrons will still order their double Stolis and Absoluts, followed by a few breath mints, to move them along their well-tailored day. The next group in the pecking order will invariably drink straight well vodka, or perhaps a Bloody Mary, as a hangover remedy and/or their version of a power breakfast. The last and most recognizable are the burnout cases. They’ll drink bourbon, gin, beer, and any combination thereof to gain the alcoholic pickup they need for their torturous ride down the ladder of success. Although Mickey appeared a burnout case, he wasn’t. He was a fatalist in the way that only an Irish-American fallen away Roman Catholic can be a fatalist.
“All right, from the beginning,” Mickey broke my reverie, “how did you become a friend and drinking buddy with a goddamn priest?”
“How does anybody become friends? Since all the shit a few years ago, my friends have been fair-weather and in short supply. Also I moved. I’ve met a few women, but the only male acquaintances I made had nothing to talk about except baseball and blowjobs, and they didn’t know much about either. So I met Jesus and we discussed everything from who is your favorite poet and painter to Bartok’s influence on Parker and Monk. He knew a lot more than me about theology and cosmology—”
“So he had a classical education, like you. For all the good the so-called classics did you.”
I let that pass. “So we’d get together once a week and I’d have someone to talk to who knew Heidegger was a philosopher and not a beer. It was great, even though he would always get so drunk that I would have to drive him home, and his parish was a ways away. It worked for him because he was new to the area, had no family, and no matter where he went, he was always a priest. When we hung out he could just be a person. Or a ‘fellow existent,’ as he called it.”
“Give me a geography lesson. Where’s this Father Jesus’ parish and where is the bar?”
“The bar is in North Oakland, a district called Rockridge. Berkeley borders Oakland on the north about half a mile or so from the bar. His parish was in San Pablo north of there by about fifteen miles, no matter what route you drive.”
“So how many bars do you go by to get to the one in Oakland?”
“Dozen or so. Hell, there’s four towns between Oakland and San Pablo. Right in his town there’s probably two or three bars that are exclusively Spanish speaking—his native tongue. But according to police, no one ever saw him at any place but Mary’s.”
“Time. Tell me about the time.” Mickey leaned forward toward me on his stool and stared over his glasses with his steely blue, bloodshot eyes. He looked at me as if I were lying, although he knew I wasn’t. Mickey just looked at everyone as if they were lying.
“He arrived in the Bay Area about a year ago. He was transferred from San Diego to the parish in San Pablo in August. I met him in early September, Labor Day in fact. I go into John and Mary’s for a beer and here’s this little guy, shitfaced. Falls off his barstool. I go over and help him up, and I realize he’s a priest. Not wearing his Roman collar, but he’s got the regulation black pants, and you know—if you’re a Catholic boy—you know a priest even if he’s in drag.”
“As if some of them ain’t. Priests. The only reason I fear eternal damnation is that I’m convinced that you can’t walk down any street in hell without bumping into a Catholic priest,” Mickey said, sipping his drink. “How do you know for sure it was Labor Day when you met him?”
“It turned out he wasn’t as drunk as he looked. Anyway, I help him up and he wants to buy me a drink and we start chatting and we become friends, like we’d always been friends.
You know how every once in a while you meet someone and it’s like they’re from the old neighborhood? That’s how it was with Jesus. So we end up shutting the place down and by then he really is shitfaced, and I tell him I’ll drive him home because it’s Labor Day and there’s extra police and roadblocks out. That’s how I place Labor Day. After that every Tuesday, almost without fail, he’d show up and we’d close the bar down. Like I say, Jesus was very well read. Brilliant, charming guy.”
“He got popped the day before yesterday. Wednesday, right?”
“Yes. And I was drinking with him the night before. He was just like he always was. Interesting. Upbeat. Like always.”
“No indication that anything was wrong? Nothing he did or said was out of the ordinary?”
“Nothing. Not a hint. Then the next day, late afternoon, I get these calls. Urgent. Desperate. Needs to see me. This is after some guy—I’ve got no fucking idea who he is—calls up looking for Jesus. Then he shows up dead in my driveway.”
“So what did he usually do on Wednesdays?”
“It was his day off. He left early, as I understand was his custom, and apparently no one at his parish saw him again.”
“So whatever happened came up on his day off. What’d he usually do on his day off?”
“Don’t know. Never saw him on Wednesdays. His housekeeper told the police that he always left very early in the morning and came back late in the evening. She said he told her he liked to visit museums and do sightseeing.”
“And no wits?”
“No. No witnesses. I should have been one but I had the music turned up too loud to hear when he pulled in. If I’d heard the car I might have stopped whoever shot him.”
“Or gotten popped yourself.”
“If I had just answered his messages on time, then—”
“Bullshit. Guilt is all bullshit. It’s not enough that priests do little else but dispense it while they’re alive, but this one has to reach out from the grave to bring you some.” Mickey took a long swallow from his drink. “We’ll get back to your little friend, but now, on to new business. When do you meet your client?”
“Not until later in the afternoon. So I hope to have some time to get a little background before I meet her. By the way, thanks for the referral, I really—”
“Forget it. But speaking of background, there’s something you should know from the get-go. It looks like in the case you’re about to take on, there is likely to be at least a misdemeanor, if not a felony afoot.”
“Why would you say that?”
“What would you say if I told you that your old prick friend, Grubb, is involved in this situation?”
“Grubb? Jefferson Davis Grubb?”
“Jefferson Davis Grubb.”
“Then,” I said putting my coffee cup down, “I’d say that there is likely to be at least a misdemeanor if not a felony afoot.”
Chapter Seven
“She has a pair of tits that would bring an oath to the lips of a Trappist monk. I tell you, Jackson, she’s the kind of woman who would make even the archbishop get his brains caught in his zipper,” Mickey said. “This Grace Lowell is a looker, and the hell of it is that she’s smart, too.”
“With your sensitivity to the opposite sex, it’s hard to fathom why you’ve been divorced three times,” I said as I waved off the bartender who was pointing to my cup and saucer.
Mickey smiled and shrugged, “Yeah, go figure.” He sipped some more Scotch from his coffee cup and said, “And what’s more, she wears specs. Whoever the guy was that said, ‘Men never make passes at girls who wear glasses,’ never saw this broad.”
“It wasn’t a guy, it was a woman,” I said. “Speaking of women, this client you want me to take on—the beautiful and smart Grace Lowell—she runs a real estate company, right? One of her salesmen disappeared. I talked to her very briefly on the phone but we really didn’t discuss anything substantive.”
“By the way,” Mickey said, “she is the widow of Sid Lichtman. You know, the car dealer?”
“Sure. He got murdered a few years ago.”
“I knew him. There is this rabbi—like a real rabbi, not a ‘rabbi’ in cop-talk or a guy who looks out for you—a Jewish guy named Roth. We have been trading favors for years. Good guy. Brings Lichtman in and I turn his very big problem into a very small problem. Lichtman is grateful as hell, promises to pay back the favor any way he can—just ask him. Well, instead of paying me back he goes out and gets murdered. The cheap prick!”
“Okay,” I said, “back to the case.”
“Her top salesman is the guy missing. Name of Jack Polozola. I ran him through NCIC, DOJ, and the works looking for something. No sheet. No record of any kind. He’s a licensed real estate agent in Oregon so he had to get his prints pulled for that. Since it was three years ago he got licensed here, anything that could come up—warrants, felony convictions, and such—would have shown up by now. Nothing. I ran him down with the real estate commission and he showed up clean there. No complaints, investigations, reprimands. Zilch.”
“So this came to you through Jonas Wiesel.”
“Yeah, her attorney is your old buddy, Wiesel the Weasel. Polozola comes up missing and Wiesel calls me. Turns out I owe him a favor. So I do the preliminary stuff and tell him that his client needs a PI. You’re the logical candidate for a lot of reasons. In fact, Wiesel asked about maybe you taking the case.”
“You might owe Jonas Wiesel a favor, but I don’t,” I said, irritation creeping into my voice. “I don’t owe him. I paid him. Essentially my entire net worth. After his fees, I had a used Jaguar that needed a tune-up, my blues collection, and my clothes. No house, no stocks or bonds, no 401K, no savings, no credit—”
“Take it easy,” Mickey said in a conciliatory tone. “You could have ended up worse. So, you know the difference between a lawyer and a whore?”
“No,” I pretended I didn’t know the punch line to Mickey’s ancient joke.
“A whore won’t fuck you when you’re dead.”
I smiled politely and asked to talk about Grubb.
“Grubb!” he scoffed. “When I asked Grace about Polozola she said she didn’t know much about his personal life, but she did know that Grubb had handled the financing of almost all his transactions from day one—for the three years Jack worked for her. She said she had become suspicious of some of the transactions he was doing but had nothing to hang her hat on. She really became concerned when with no warning, Polozola just vanishes.”
“Have you talked to Grubb?”
“If I want to be lied to by someone with a bad attitude, all I have to do is call one of my ex-wives. I don’t need Grubb.”
“You talk to your ex-wives, Mickey?”
“I never talked to them when I was married to them. Why start now? But no, I haven’t talked to Grubb, but I do know the asshole is still in town and in business somewhere on the East Side. According to Grace Lowell, the financing for all Polozola’s deals came from some place called Friendly Mortgage out on Sandy Boulevard.”
I decided to look up Grubb before I met with Grace. I stood up and offered to pay, but the bartender put everything on Mickey’s tab.
“I still need to talk to you about the priest,” I said.
“Yeah, so you think maybe it’s no coincidence that you and the priest got hooked up?”
“No, and neither does the lead detective.”
“So what’s he like?”
“The guy is actually the chief of detectives. You must know who he is. Horace Hobbs.”
“The Horace Hobbs?”
“He’s in Berkeley now, was with Philadelphia PD when he made all those headline cases.”
“There’s a lieutenant here that was on the job in Philly with Hobbs. Said he was overrated and a prick,” Mickey said, signaling the bartender.
“I don’t know yet if he’s overrated, but I am sure about the other part.”
“So what’s the prick say?”
“He bel
ieves our meeting was prearranged. That Jesus’ people, whoever they might be, picked me out as a safe house in case things ran out on him,” I said, waving the bartender away and covering my coffee cup.
“Based on what you told me, there may be something to that. I don’t like coincidences either, and if Hobbs says so, and he’s half as good as his reputation, it could well be true. If you follow the breadcrumbs back, you’ll probably find a person in common. But why bother? Why not leave it alone?”
“What if it won’t leave me alone? I told you about the guy in the airport.”
“Yeah, but he wasn’t a pro, was he? No. You couldn’t have sucker-punched a pro. No, the guy in the airport just sounds like another asshole with ‘loser’ written all over him in invisible ink. Forget about it. Make some money on this case. Get laid. Fuck a white girl for a change. Let the police handle it. It’s police business. Speaking of police business, I need to use the can.”
As Mickey walked away I heard familiar voices on the bar television. It was tuned to CNN and Horace Hobbs and Mark Fuhrman, the detective from the 0.J. Simpson murder case, were having a split screen discussion with a moderator. Apparently the case was getting national attention, although I wasn’t certain why. Perhaps because no six-year-old beauty queen had been found strangled in her basement today. Or there’d been no recent murders involving spouses of famous athletes or television stars. No pretty young white girls had gone missing on Caribbean islands. In the if it bleeds it leads journalist culture of today, if all the media could find was a well-loved, handsome young Mexican priest shot dead, well, hell, maybe they should run with it.
The reason might be Hobbs. Even if he wasn’t the celebrated detective he once was.
Hobbs deflected questions from the moderator about his celebrated past cases and said there was not yet any apparent motive or person of interest. He seemed almost deferential on TV as he asked for the public’s help. I even found his righteous indignation credible when he said, “You murder a member of the clergy on these city streets, you get caught. You go to jail. You don’t ever get out again.” He gave a phone number and mentioned a reward.
The Big Bitch Page 3