Silvestre’s voice had risen an octave when he said, “I thought he might be going to the money. I thought he might have it, or have the key to the box where it’s kept. I came here looking for the key for the money box.”
“Back up. What money, what box, and how did you find out about it?”
“My friend, Fernando; when we are not working at the carwash we do jobs for Mr. Lopez, a contractor. A little while ago our parish hall burned down and there was not enough insurance and it was hard to get enough money to get it rebuilt and over a hundred thousand was needed.”
Silvestre grimaced as he brought his manacled hands up to his bandaged nose.
“One night we are working on converting Mr. Lopez’s garage into a room for his mother-in-law and Father Jesus comes by,” he continued. “We are in the other room but we hear them talking. Father Jesus has this suitcase on the table and it is full of money, and he says to Mr. Lopez that there is a hundred thousand dollars there for to rebuild the hall. Mr. Lopez says this is too much money for a man to be walking around with and Father Jesus says ‘Who would think a Mexican priest with a junky old car would be carrying anything of value?’ ”
“Hold on. You saw this money?”
“Yes, we were doing drywall and saw through the wall. And Mr. Lopez says this is a miracle, and that he had heard that miracles had happened since Father had arrived at the parish. Father says nothing must be said about this money, or any other miracles. Then Mr. Lopez says—”
“Stop! Miracles?” shouted Hobbs. “Like the loaves and fishes? Like Lazarus?”
“I don’t know. But I swore to Father, all of us that knew about the miracles swore to Father, that we would not tell no one and now you are making me.” He started to cry. Then he said, “Father Jesus, he was a saint, and now I have betrayed him.” He began to sob and then he was weeping and mumbling, “Perdóneme, padre, Perdóneme, padre.” He placed his head in his manacled hands and began weeping.
“Oh for Chrissake, Silvestre! I liked you a lot better when you were calling me a faggot in Spanish!” Hobbs lightly slapped the back of his head, and in a voice that almost seemed to have a touch of compassion in it, said, “Get a hold of yourself, and tell me the rest of it.”
Silvestre then laid out the rest of the story. Mr. Lopez told Jesus that the original bid was low and that they needed another twenty thousand dollars. Silvestre and his friend followed the priest down to a place called Carlos’ MailBoxes4U in Richmond. Jesus was back shortly with the money. That’s how they found out where the priest kept it.
“When Father dies, Francisco and I think maybe we will borrow some so we can buy a carwash,” Silvestre continued. “So we go into his room that night and can’t find anything. I follow Mr. Holiday because we think maybe he knows where it is. Then I break into his house looking for it, the key to the box.”
“So you were going to borrow from the money and give the rest to the church?” Hobbs sneered.
“Yes.”
“Yes, of course. And I’m sure you gave plenty of thought as to terms of repayment and interest rate and so forth.”
He was wringing his hands. “I don’t know. We would pay it back.”
“I don’t give a fuck. Just tell me more about the miracles.”
“You go see Father Jesus and tell him what you need, and he prays with you the Our Father, and tells you to believe, tells you to believe that God will take care. People go and have no food and boxes of food show up on their porches. People go and say they are getting evicted, and then their landlord calls and says the rent has been paid. Stuff like that. A lot of stuff like that.”
“That’s all you got to tell me?”
“That’s all I know. Everything. I swear. I swear to … I swear to my ass.”
Hobbs was quiet and seemed to be pondering all he had just heard. He looked at Manners, who shrugged. No one spoke for almost two minutes.
“Silvestre, do you ever want to see me again?”
“No!”
“Then you weren’t here tonight. We never spoke about miracles, or money, or anything. You get to walk away from a felony and a parole violation. So walk! Don’t come within a mile of this house, or within a mile of this investigation. Don’t mention anything about this to anyone. If you do, you’ll see me again. Got it?”
“Okay.”
As Silvestre’s handcuffs were removed and he was walking toward the door, Hobbs said, “One more thing.”
A nervous Silvestre stopped.
“Silvestre,” said Hobbs, “vaya con Dios.”
An uncertain Silvestre said, “Vaya con Dios” and then ran out the front door as Hobbs laughed.
“Manners,” bellowed Hobbs, still chuckling, “get the evidence officer out of bed and get the keys from the Cortez evidence bag. If we don’t have a key for the mailbox place, then get the DA and a judge out of bed for a search warrant.”
Manners made a call on his cellphone. After he ended his call he said, “I’m getting into the evidence locker in half an hour. Anything else?”
“As a matter of fact there is: tomorrow at 9 a.m., I am briefing Dumb and Dumber,” Hobbs turned to me, “respectively, the chief and the mayor, on our progress on this case. Outside of discovering that when our victim wasn’t getting drunk with a guy called Doc Holiday, he was getting his carrot waxed by some bitch we can’t find named Muriel, and when he wasn’t doing that, he was walking around with briefcases full of cash, and when he wasn’t doing that, he was performing miracles—because, after all, he was a saint. Beyond that we are nowhere.”
He paused and fixed Manners with a glare. “So what I want to know from you, Manners, is what you think. You know that if you close a case like this it’s a career maker. And now that you have entered the rarified world of high profile, big time, major murder cases, isn’t it all that you thought it would be?” Suddenly, Hobbs sounded very tired and old as he asked again, “Tell me, Detective, isn’t it all that you thought it would be?”
While Manners seemed to ponder whether the question was rhetorical or not, Hobbs got up and walked out without another word.
Chapter Fifteen
I still had a case to work whether or not I was in jeopardy until Jesus’ killer was found, and whether or not the onus was on me to help find Muriel. I’d been hired to find Jack Polozola, and I was on my way to San Diego to interview his client, Dr. John Smith. I decided that if I had time I would find Jesus’ old parish and try to get a line on his former pastor.
If Hobbs hadn’t told me my house had been under surveillance, I might not have noticed the unmarked police car that followed me to the airport the next day, late in the morning Saturday. After I landed in San Diego I rented a car and picked up some more surveillance going south on the Harbor Freeway. But it wasn’t the police; they don’t drive late model black BMWs with tinted windows. The car followed as I took an exit before the one I had planned. I swung through back streets, ran a light, and then parked in someone’s driveway for fifteen minutes. When I was confident that the tail was gone, I drove back to the freeway and headed toward San Diego’s sad little sister to the south, National City.
I circled a Travel Inn three times, and finding myself still alone, checked in and dressed for my interview with twenty million dollars. I put on a pair of Otello linen slacks, an Armani jacket, and a pair of Santoni calfskin loafers. All my apparel from the good ol’ days was Italian, except for two German accessories: a shoulder holster and my Walther P99 pistol. Hobbs had somehow gotten me a permit to carry and convinced me I should do so, although I’m guessing he had second thoughts. When he saw me fumble with the safeties, then saw the trouble I had not only removing the clip but also sliding a bullet into the chamber, he said, “I’m not going to ask if you have ever handled a firearm, Holiday. I just want to know if you have ever seen anyone handle a firearm.”
The Walther was a gift from Mickey Mahoney. He had taken me out to a pistol range to give me some instruction. When he found that my lack of nat
ural ability was exceeded only by my inexperience, Mickey shook his head and said, “The good news, Jackson, is that the piece has four independent safeties. You will need them all.”
I drove past the graffiti-filled walls of National City until I came to my destination, the home of Dr. John Q. Smith. I checked, double-checked, and confirmed the address of a house that was a flat roof stucco with that thrown together during World War II style that looks as utilitarian as a pickaxe. It had a lean, or list, to it that made its structural integrity suspect—you might not want to open every window at the same time. Parked out front were two Ford Edsels so dirty and unattended that they looked abandoned. In the driveway sat another Ford Edsel that was in mint condition with a showroom shine. The hood was off, and on top of the engine sat a contraption that looked like a cross between a supercharger and a vacuum cleaner.
As I walked up the driveway, a man came out from behind a storage shed carrying a giant crescent wrench. He looked to be an indeterminate age, somewhere between sixty-five and eighty-five, with bags under his eyes large enough to hide silver dollars in. He was five ten or so and couldn’t have weighed more than one hundred thirty pounds. He had a ghoulish, translucent complexion that was made starker by his wild expression. As he approached me with bloodshot, blinking, bulging eyes, I recognized that stale, dirty, sweat-socks smell that were the hallmarks of long-term addiction to alcohol, drugs and pipedreams.
“Dr. Smith?” I asked.
He stared at me and lit an unfiltered Camel cigarette.
“I’m—”
“Is that your car?” he broke in as he pointed at my rented Ford Taurus.
“Yes.”
“Get it off my property! And go tell your prick bosses in Detroit that my patent isn’t for sale.”
“Pardon me, but I’m looking for—”
“I know what you’re looking for! You are looking to bury my invention just like you did with the Swede. You think you can buy me off for a few million dollars. I’m telling you what I told General Motors, and Toyota, and the other guys. Fuck off!” His eyes bugged even farther out and he began to hyperventilate. He took a long round-house swing at my head with the wrench, missed me by more than a foot, and slipped on some spilled oil. As he fell, he banged his head against the back fender of the Edsel.
He lay on the driveway and moaned. His half-opened eyes had the glazed look of a drugged zoo animal. He was mumbling incoherently, which made me wonder if he had suffered a concussion or a seizure. I picked him up in a fireman’s hold and carried him into the house. He was even lighter than he looked.
I pushed aside clutter as I opened the front door. It took some effort, as the floor was heaped with all kind of discards, trash, garbage, and stacks upon stacks of supermarket tabloids. It seemed the only order in the house were these newspapers: the Sun stacks were in a separate corner from the Globe, and the National Enquirer seemed to have its own designated section of the room. Taking him to a battered couch, I pushed aside a dirty shirt, an empty half-gallon vodka bottle, and a half-eaten cheese sandwich and laid him down. His eyes seemed to focus.
“Should I call the paramedics?” I asked.
“No. Pills. My pills—medicine cabinet. Bathroom,” he wheezed.
The medicine cabinet held only an empty aspirin bottle and a plastic pharmacy vial from a Tijuana drugstore. The prescription was in English. It was from a Dr. Lopez for amphetamine sulfate and was to be “taken as needed for narcolepsy.” As I brought the bottle of pills out, I wondered in what medical school the good doctor learned to treat underweight, anemic, senior citizens with speed.
“Get me three pills and three fingers of vodka,” he said, “and help yourself to the vodka.”
Pushing debris and litter out of the way, I made my way to the refrigerator and found it stuffed with half gallon bottles of cheap vodka and large blocks of cheese. It looked like the type of cheese that is air-lifted into third world countries. The only other grocery item was on top of the refrigerator—a huge stack of Hostess Twinkies. I carefully cleaned a glass, filled it, and brought it to him.
He lifted up his head, threw all three pills into his mouth and gulped them down with the vodka.
“I didn’t ask for your help,” he said as he lay back down.
“I know.”
“Just so you know. Well, help yourself to the vodka. I gotta wait for the pills to hit.” He lay back down, closed his eyes, and made a sound somewhere between a wheeze and a snore.
I carefully took his glass to the kitchen, cautious not to trip over empty bottles and other garbage, then went to my car to get my fingerprint kit. I was able to get two good thumbs and one good right index print. I returned to the house, and finding Dr. Smith still unconscious, I began to look around. I found his signature on some papers on a workbench and compared it to the signatures Grace Lowell had given me. They matched. But who was John Q. Smith? Just who was this real estate mogul? In one of Grace’s files was a tax return I assumed Smith had given Polozola to forward to Grubb. From that I got his social and ran a credit report and cross-referenced mortgages with a title company’s database I had online access to. The only property he owned in California was this house, which he had bought with cash three years ago. All the other properties were in Oregon, the greater Portland metro area, and the title reports jived with Grace’s files. All were two to four units purchased in the last three years—all with equity. My quick analysis said he owned about twenty million in rental property, the amount that Grubb had mentioned. If this was some type of scam, and it had all the earmarks of one, why use a sickly old man living on amphetamines, vodka, cigarettes, government cheese, and Twinkies to be your strawman?
And what was he inventing? Hanging on the wall above the workbench was a metal sign with a professional looking logo that said “Smitty.” There was stationery embossed with the logo, “a revolution in automotive engineering.” Taped on the wall next to the sign was a map of the United States with pins in several dozen major cities. It was all too haphazard for me to make sense of it.
I heard some stirring and went into the front room. He was sitting up, and it seemed that the drugs were working.
“You got a name?” he wheezed.
“Jackson. Jackson Holiday.”
“Okay. Call me Smitty.” He tried to stand up but couldn’t negotiate it. “Get me a bottle and a glass, would ya? Get yourself a glass.”
I brought a glass and a half-gallon bottle of vodka.
“Aren’t you drinking?” he asked as he poured a full water glass.
“No.”
“Don’t like the cheap stuff? Fact is the cheap stuff is exactly the same as all the fancy ass designer bullshit stuff you pay thirty bucks a liter for. An article in the Sun, or was it the Enquirer, couple months ago proved that all vodka is the same. They just add this flavoring for the rip-off stuff. Whole team of chemists did an in-depth study. That’s not just a fact. That’s a true fact.”
I was tempted to ask what the opposite of a true fact was, but it was becoming obvious to me that Smitty was one of those people who were only half alive unless they were involved in some meaningless argument.
“So did you get plenty of snooping around done while I was zonked out?”
“Snooping?”
“Snoop all you want, but I’ll tell you what you’re not going to see. You are not going to see the blueprints to ‘The Smitty.’ You’re not going to see the prototype, and you’re not going to see the patent pending papers my attorneys have filed.” He seemed to lose his train of thought for a moment. Then he said, “You know how long I been working on this thing?”
When I didn’t answer, he grew angry. “Do you know how long I’ve been working on this? Almost thirty years. First started when I was in the joint.”
“The joint?”
“Yeah, did a dime in Salem. That’s Oregon. I was down for the little bitch, but I only did ten years. Worth every minute. Small price to pay for living the dream.”
�
�The bitch? The dream?”
“Obvious you never done any time. Or any real time. I don’t know what the no-class, low-life psycho cons call it today, but back in the day there was the big bitch and the little bitch. Big bitch was life in prison, and the little bitch was twenty-five to life.” He was silent for a moment as if remembering a blessed event. “Anyway, that’s where I learned the code of the prophet.”
I was reluctant to ask what prophet he meant. Could it be Ezekiel? Muhammad? Nostradamus? Or some crackpot seer from one of his supermarket tabloids?
“I was a fish, a newbie,” he said, his eyes glistening. The amphetamines seemed to be working, “First week out in the yard and I end up pulled into a circle around this guy getting shivved. Guy stabbed him so bad and so deep that blood was spurting all over, and by the time the hacks got there the guy had bled out. Big man with tattoos from his chin to his toes is standing next to me and he says, ‘Reason that guy is dead is because he broke the code. He fucked with the guy’s dream.’ Goes on to say that the guy doing the stabbing was planning on building this boat to sail all seven seas when he got out. Problem was, this guy couldn’t build a bookshelf that would stand up. But it was still his dream.”
He stopped to light a Camel and pour another drink. “This is every bit as good as that fancy-ass Russian Stoli—whatever you call it. That’s been proved. Ain’t you gonna have a drink?”
“Maybe later. But I’m curious about the prophet.”
“Yeah. So we get to talking. I tell him I’m down for the little bitch. He says he bought the big bitch four times. He was doing four consecutive life terms, not concurrent, consecutive. Anyway, everyone called him The Prophet. He was a trustee and ran the prison library. Had read every book in it and knew every fucking thing. So I ask him, what’s this code? Now my memory isn’t so good, not good with names or dates or so forth, but I’ll never forget what The Prophet told me. He said, ‘It doesn’t matter if you’re down for the big bitch or the little bitch, or whether you got sixty seconds or sixty years to go. It doesn’t even matter if you’re on the inside or the outside; you’re down for the bitch. The big bitch. You’re down for the bitch because you were born down for the bitch; you were born to live in a rat hole until you die in a rat hole. And you live by a code: you don’t rat, you don’t punk, you don’t take favors, but you take care of your friends, and you always, but always, protect your dream and you never, but never, fuck with anyone else’s dream.’”
The Big Bitch Page 7