Smitty sat back on the couch, as if sharing this prophesy had left him emotionally exhausted. Finally I asked, “Speaking of dreams … what dream got you the … uh, little bitch?”
“The American Dream.”
“The American Dream? You started your own company? Bought your own home?”
Smitty gave a condescending laugh. “That’s not the American Dream. You married?”
“Once. Not anymore.”
“Then you know what the American Dream is. See, every guy, one time or another, has the dream. It doesn’t matter if he’s a janitor or the mayor. Now some guys think about it day and night, all the time, for years. Some guys get the urge every now and then—get it so strong they can taste it—but they let the dream pass. But the dream is still there. In the front of your mind, the back of your mind, waking you in a cold sweat in the middle of the night. The dream haunts you. Maybe you tell your friends at work, or you scheme elaborate plans that you mutter about to your buddies at the local tav. But you know what? You wimp out. You wimp out ’cause you haven’t got the balls.” He made a sound that sounded like a cross between a wheeze, a grunt, and a laugh, “But not me. I lived the American Dream. I killed my fucking wife!” For the first time since I met him he smiled and said again, “I lived the American Dream. Yes, I killed my wife, the bitch.”
Chapter Sixteen
As Smitty sat up on the couch, I realized that he hadn’t asked me why I was here. Did he still think I was from some automobile manufacturer sent to steal and bury his invention? I decided I needed to hear the rest of his story.
“Your wife. Her name was Eve?” I asked.
“How the fuck did you know that? Who are you?” He started to get up but couldn’t, so he sat back down and sipped some more vodka.
“Your right bicep,” I said, pointing at the faded tattoo heart around the name Eve.
“Oh. Yeah, she was in the nuthouse. You know what the doctors said she was? Diabolically insane.”
“ ‘Diabolically insane’? Is that a common clinical diagnosis?”
“I don’t know if it’s common or not, but the doctors said she was diabolically insane, and she was, and that’s a fact. A true fact. If I didn’t put her to sleep someone else would have. And I only have one regret.”
“A regret for living the American Dream?” I asked.
“Yeah. Thing is I don’t remember doing the deed. See, I used to drive long-haul and back in the day, and you had to take a lot of speed just to stay on schedule. You could get some good shit then, black beauties, Dexamil—don’t get me started on the good old days. So I’m coming off a run, up for five days, and come down crashing with a bottle of Wild Turkey 101. Eve starts her shit, and next thing I know, here are the police putting me in cuffs, and there she is, shot dead. Which reminds me, there was one other regret.” He sipped some vodka.
“My two kids were there—about six and eight at the time.”
“I can only imagine the trauma for them.”
“Fuck them. Both just as evil as Eve. Nasty, nose-picking, devious, incestuous little motherfuckers. No, what happened was they said they were afraid I was going to wake up and kill them, too. So they took my piece and threw it in the river. Never did see it again. Pretty as you please little Beretta twenty-five caliber Panther. Limited edition.” For a long moment Smitty seemed lost in the past. Then he jolted himself into the present and said, “By the way, who the fuck are you?”
“I’m an old friend of Jack Polozola. As I said earlier, Holiday is my name. Jackson Holiday. I need to see him and he hasn’t returned any of my calls. He told me he does business with you.”
“Does business? Shit, he’s the senior vice president of Smitty Incorporated. What do you want with him?”
“Like I said, he’s an old friend. We have a real estate deal together, and he needs to sign off for us to sell and for him to get his end. With all the rental properties you own you know what I mean.”
“What do you know about what I own?”
“Jack told me—”
“Jack should shut up about my business. Our business,” Smitty said, lighting a cigarette and rocking back and forth as if the amphetamines were fighting the alcohol for control. “We got enemies trying to kill my invention. Anyhow, it’s public knowledge that what I own from Chicago to Seattle from Houston to here are a bunch of distribution sites for the Smitty.”
“The Smitty is a new type of engine?”
“You know what an internal combustion engine is?”
“Yes,” I said, wondering if it was a trick question.
“The Smitty is the most important invention since the internal combustion engine.” He tapped a bony finger on my chest and said, “That isn’t just a fact, that is a true fact. The Smitty burns salt water for fuel. Help me up and I’ll give you a demonstration.”
I offered my arm for support, and on our way outside we picked through stacks of empty cigarette cartons, vodkas bottles, and what looked like a year’s worth of unopened mail. Once outside I asked him, “Known Jack a long time, like me? He and I go way back.”
“Just three years, four years. Something like that. Memory is kinda shot. Helped me get incorporated. Came to me one day, said he and a bunch of investors wanted to back my invention—I was living in a trailer in the desert at the time—so I said ‘Bullshit!’ Then he says, ‘We’ll buy you a house, and a place to work on your Smitty, and start setting up distribution spots. You just gotta finish the thing, and sign some papers every week or two for the sites we are buying.’ And he got me my house and gave me some cash. None of your business how much—and yeah, I been signing a lot of papers to buy up those distribution sites. A girl and Jack, or just the girl, comes by and I sign some papers—actually a lot of papers—and then get back to work. Come here.”
He handed me the key to the Edsel with the showroom shine while he held a beaker full of water and stood in front of the engine. He told me to crank it over as he poured water into the huge device on top. As I cranked over the engine it began to idle roughly, and then more roughly, until it sounded like it might explode. Every warning light on the dashboard flashed off and on like a pinball machine. The needles on the speedometer and tachometer spun forward like windmills.
“Keep it in neutral,” yelled Smitty over the din. “Look,” he said as a huge puff of steam came up from the engine housing. Then he said, “You can turn it off now.” The engine shook and rumbled for more than a minute before it finally stopped.
Smitty leaned inside the car and grinned at me with broken, yellow teeth. “You have just been running on steam created by saltwater, my friend. Sure, there are a few minor bugs to get out, but I’m close. Do you know how close I am?”
“No,” I said, but I surmised that the distance he was away from perfecting his invention could only be measured in light years. I resisted the temptation to tell him that I looked forward to reading about it in the Globe or the Star.
I thanked him for the impressive demonstration and then asked if he had another phone number or address for Polozola.
“Just the Pineapple.”
“The Pineapple?”
“Yeah, the guy that gets me my Edsels. Go inside on the distribution site bulletin board and you’ll see his card. Don’t take it. I’m probably going to need a new one of these pretty soon.”
Once inside, I picked my way through the clutter once again, found the business card, and copied down the info. The card read: “Pineapple’s Prestigious Pre-owned Classics.” The address was on Broadway in El Cajon, with a phone number telling me to “call Pete ‘the Pineapple’ Inouye for a sweet deal today.” It appeared to be the same business listed as a previous employer on Polozola’s credit report. I also found a business card of a mobile notary public, Rosa Morales. It confirmed what I had found in Grace’s company files. I double-checked her contact information. And then I found Smitty’s academic credentials: a framed doctorate degree in engineering from the Western Stanford International Univer
sity of Fresno. I had never heard of the institution, but I was certain it wasn’t a member of the Ivy League. It had all the earmarks of a fraudulent diploma mill. In fact, other than his delusions—which seemed disturbingly genuine—everything about Smitty rang of fraud. I realized once again how important Grubb’s loan files could be if only I could see them. What was the source of funds for all these transactions? But Grubb was in the wind.
I went outside to find Smitty tinkering with his revolutionary invention.
“Do you know what I’m doing here? Do you? The Smitty will not just save the environment and economy. It will bring peace to the Middle East. Those fuckers will have nothing left to sell but kitty litter. That’s a true fact. The Smitty will change the world. That’s why I’ve dedicated my life to it.” He popped another amphetamine tablet and washed it down with a glass of vodka. Then, with shaky hands, he lit a Camel cigarette.
Whatever Smitty was doing with his life, he was getting it over with in a hurry.
Chapter Seventeen
I left Smitty to his addictions, his true facts, his Code of the Prophet existential manifesto, and his planet-saving steam engine. I looked over my shoulder for the Black BMW tail. When I didn’t see it, I immediately headed east to El Cajon, which during the three o’clock, Saturday afternoon traffic was fifteen miles and about twenty-five minutes away. I found a place to over-night Smitty’s fingerprints to Mickey Mahoney in Portland, then called and left a voicemail telling him to expect them. I also gave him a brief description of who Smitty said he was, including his thirty-year-old murder conviction. Then I called Grace Lowell on her cellphone and told her to expect an email from me that afternoon or evening about my meeting with Dr. Smith. She was cool, calm, and all business, just as she had been in Portland. She didn’t ask any questions; she just thanked me.
I found the Pineapple’s car lot on Broadway easily enough. A large selection of both vintage and classic domestic and foreign cars from the fifties to the new millennium sat in the lot. Behind the cars was a double-wide mobile home serving as his office. I sent my card through to him with his receptionist along with a note that this was regarding Jack Polozola. The Pineapple reported back through his receptionist that he had no time for me, so I took another card, stapled a fifty-dollar bill on it, and sent it back. A few minutes later a short, obese Pacific Islander with dyed black hair appeared. He was wearing not only too much cologne, but cologne that I found about as pleasant as the smell of kerosene. Apparently no one had told him that leisure suits had gone out of style in the seventies, although I doubted the Kelly green one he was wearing had ever been in fashion.
He told me he had only five minutes for me, which I thought would be fine since any longer in his presence might lead to asphyxiation. His cologne was almost as offensive as his faux Hawaiian office décor with little bouncing hula dancers suitable for dashboard mounting amid plastic-looking tropical flowers. He didn’t seem to care much why I was looking for Polozola, and accepted my vague lie that it was an insurance issue. He told me that Jack had come to work for him about five years ago. After two years, he left abruptly one day. The dates basically corroborated the Internet people search and the credit report. He had only seen Jack twice since then and that was to facilitate the sale of three cars to a man who the Pineapple described as “an insane old fuck who wouldn’t buy anything but cherry Edsels.” All he knew about Jack was that he was in Portland, Oregon, selling real estate and had been for some time.
“I’ve met Dr. Smith, the Edsel aficionado,” I said, “but outside of him can you think of anyone Polozola might have kept in touch with?”
“When your favorite indoor sport is fucking the girlfriends and wives of your friends, co-workers, and even your boss, you don’t usually end up building lasting relationships,” the Pineapple said, disgust in the set of his mouth. “Outside of the insane old fuck, I don’t know anyone who would have any reason to keep in touch.”
I showed him a picture advertisement from the Portland Oregonian newspaper congratulating Jack on being the number one sales person at Grace Lowell’s real estate firm, and the Pineapple confirmed it was indeed Jack. Then he said our five minutes were up.
I asked one last question, “Do you know why Jack left so abruptly?”
He waved my business card with the fifty attached. “Got another one of these? And I don’t mean your business card.”
“I have to account to my client for all expenses,” I responded.
“Tell you what, you put a fifty on the desk, and if what I tell you isn’t worth it, then you take it back. Isn’t that more than fair?”
I put a fifty on the desk. The Pineapple told me that one day a very good looking woman came in and asked for Jack Polozola, saying she’d been referred by a friend. So Jack comes over and they talk for a few minutes, and he decides to go for an early lunch with her. He comes back two hours later and says he quits.
“That all?”
“Hardly. The ad you showed me with Jack in it—the broad in the ad was the woman -that came that day. No mistake. Maybe I’m old school, but you hardly ever see a woman that sexy and beautiful who is wearing glasses. One other thing about her: Jack was big with the ladies, but she wasn’t his type. By that I mean she was classy, real classy.”
I left the fifty on his desk, wondering why Grace Lowell had lied to me about where she had met Polozola.
I drove back to San Diego and followed my Internet directions to St Martin’s Parish. I found it in the barrio. Of all the Catholic rectories I’d seen over the years, this was the first with security bars on the windows and graffiti on the front steps.
The sweet looking, thirtyish Latina who answered the door introduced herself as the housekeeper and said her name was Marisol. I introduced myself as a private detective working with the Berkeley police looking into the death of Father Jesus Cortez, and showed her my ID.
“Did you know Father Cortez?” I asked.
“Yes, I have worked here for over two years.”
“So you were housekeeper when Father Macdonald was here? I need to find a way to contact him.”
“I don’t know where he is,” she said quickly. “He left the church.”
“I want you to see something,” I said. I had come prepared and showed her an article from the Oakland Tribune about Jesus’ death that mentioned my name and how he had been murdered in my driveway. “He was my friend. He was in some kind of trouble and came to me, but he was killed before I could help him. I need to find Father Macdonald to see what he might know.”
She took the article, read it slowly, and then politely asked to see my identification again. When she was finished looking, she said, “Father Jesus used to say he was just a simple priest, but do you know he was not?” She asked as her eyes began to water.
“I know about the miracles,” I said.
“We cannot talk about that,” she said quietly as she put a finger to her lips. “But I can tell you something about who murdered Father Jesus.”
“You can?”
“I can tell you that the murderer is evil. As evil as Satan himself to kill a man like Father Jesus.”
Then she went inside and came back holding a piece of scrap paper with a post office box address for Ken MacDonald in Cardiff-by-the-Sea.
“This is all I know on how to find him. Cardiff-by-the-Sea is up the coast a ways.”
“Thank you very much. I appreciate your help.”
“It is a blessing to help a good man.”
“How do you know I’m a good man?”
“Because you had a saint for a friend, a saint who knew you would help him if you could,” she said, a single tear rolling down her right cheek. “Father Jesus, he changed my life.”
My shoulder holster had begun to chafe my skin, and as I felt the unwelcome and unnatural weight of the Walther, I looked down the street to see that the black BMW had found me again. I began to perspire.
I smiled and said, “Marisol, Father Jesus, he changed my li
fe, too.”
Chapter Eighteen
If you’ve ever had the full weight of the United States government examining every piece of your correspondence, both personal and professional, then you understand why they call email evidence mail. You think twice about using a cellphone, or even a landline. You are forever careful about what you put in writing.
I needed to contact my client, but I was anxious. Or was I paranoid? The first thing I’d found after taking on this case was that the nefarious Jefferson Davis Grubb was involved. The next thing I’d discovered was that a principal in the case, Dr. John Smith, was not only not a doctor, but an alcohol and drug-addled schizophrenic being manipulated by a party or parties unknown, into what appeared to be bank fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. I then determined that my client lied to me about where she had met the subject she hired me to find. Not only had she not met him by chance at a party in Portland, Oregon, but she had apparently sought him out at a car dealership in El Cajon, California. I found myself in the middle of a scam, uncovering the same type of crimes for which I had been indicted. Was I being set up? Should I walk away? Or was it too late for that? All I was certain of was that I needed stay alert and play it safe.
I called Grace Lowell on her cell. “Can we talk?” I asked.
“Good time,” she said.
“From what I have found, I’m reluctant to say too much either on the phone or by email. I can bring you up to speed when I see you in Portland in a few days.”
The Big Bitch Page 8