by Noreen Ayres
“So what’s the latest on the Dwyer case?” I asked. “Did you take photos to the Mexican guy at El Cochino’s—Emilio—what’s his last name? Sandoval?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Well, why not, Gary? I thought you were hot after those two you thought maybe did it.”
“I forgot.”
“Shit, Gary.”
“Hey, listen, you want to hire me some help? I got one hour sleep last night. There’s more of them than there is of us.”
“I don’t think so, Gary.”
“My ears are ringing. My stomach hurts. I’m an old man. I should retire.”
“No way,” I said.
“Hey, the crooks are stealing Christmas.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“We had fourteen B-and-E’s last night, can you believe that, and one murder. Two creeps grabbed a girl at a motel and handcuffed her to the balcony outside, went inside the room, and screwed a twenty-five in her boyfriend’s ear. We get called in for a canvass since we’re in the area anyway. And that was the first two hours. You want to hear the rest?”
“Ah, you love it, you old horse,” I told him.
“I guess I could have somebody run a six-pack out there.” He was referring to a set of mug shots. “But I think it’s a serious waste of time.”
“So’s sitting on Harbor Boulevard watching whores go by, but you guys do that.”
“Look,” he said, “I’m supposed to talk to the Dwyer kid’s father today. I want to talk to him a little more about the kid’s friends, like that, though I don’t think we got a problem there. Looks like the boy led a clean life. I’ll bring a pack by the taco stand, then, okay? How’s that suit you?” I said great. He said, “You know the case’s pretty much been turned over to the homicide dicks, don’t you?” Yes, I knew. The detectives, their progress, he didn’t know. Harry Felton—who’s that, I say; the bald detective, he says, the one with the arms, you ever see his arms?—Felton’s knee-deep in an officer shooting happened over the weekend. The other one, Ted Reddeker, don’t do nothin’ but pick his nose.
I laughed at that, said, “That’s not fair. People kill, pardon the pun, to work Homicide. He must do something, be good at something.”
Gary said, “Where you at, anyway?” He heard my phone cut out, go staticky. When I told him, he hit the roof. I let him get it off his chest while I was admiring the look of San Pedro. The sky was overcast, and the smell of the ocean drifted in through my car window. This was an area with an old-neighborhood look, of small stucco and clapboard houses and women pushing strollers along cracked sidewalks.
“You have absolutely no business out there, Smokey. None. Now, I mean that.”
“I can take care of myself. Don’t worry.”
“First off, that’s not your job, and second off, my chief hears about it and tells ol’ Joe, you’ll be supervising recess at Madison Elementary.”
“Let me worry about old Joe. He’s not my boss anyway. What I hoped to find out from you, the reason I called you in the first place, is where Roland Dugdale works. You can do that for me? You remember the name of the company?”
“I am the investigator on this case, not you, damn it. What’s got into you?”
“Come on, Gare. You remember—I was a sworn once. I can do this. What would it hurt? Maybe I can help. It’ll take half an hour out of my day and not encroach at all on your busy day. We could be a step ahead.”
“You could screw things up.”
“I’m not going to screw things up. I be cool, man.”
I could hear his brain churn, whether to continue chewing, or give me the information.
“Hannifin, I think. Hannifin Diving.”
“That’s on my list.”
“What list? Now, listen, that’s rough trade out there.”
“I’m only going to go ask general questions of somebody probably hasn’t seen a pile driver in thirty years, somebody in the office, okay? I’m going to ask if they know what the tools are we found at the crime scene. Remember the brass thing and the wrench?”
“God! You removed the evidence?”
“No, no, no, no. Gary, you’ve got to have a little trust. I’ve got sketches is all.”
“I better come down.”
“Gary, you don’t need to come down. I said I didn’t take the stuff out, I’m not going to take the stuff out. Just the sketches. You come down, everybody gets paranoid. I told the guy on the phone my grandfather left these tools in a chest. And he bought that.”
“I think maybe Felton already made some calls. Had to. He would’ve talked to Hannifin by now. It’s probably all in the report. I just haven’t had a chance . . .”
“Gary? Take a Valium and call me in the morning, okay?”
“Christ,” he said, and I could hear him softening. He said, “You got hair, I’ll give you that.”
“Got to learn to improvise, Svoboda. See, that’s an advantage, I’m not in uniform.”
“If I tried that I’d never get away with it.”
“Your problem is you got too much of an honest streak in you, that’s what. They’d read your little cherubic face. Better watch out, you’ll make captain one of these days.”
He grumbled, but I knew he liked the suggestion. “When the cows come to roost.”
“Gary—ten-four, all right?”
I figured somebody must have checked on Roland Gene’s alibi; otherwise, they wouldn’t have let Roland and his brother Phillip walk out of detention Friday night. But if they hadn’t, if someone slipped up, got busy on the weekend; if Reddeker really was a fuckup or friend Gary himself wasn’t leaning on this as much as he could. . . . Then again, they couldn’t really press the Dugdales too hard unless they arrested them on suspicion, and, like it or not, I guess they didn’t have enough to do that.
I called Gary back.
“Gare,” I said. “It’s Smokey.”
“In trouble already?”
“You’re holding out on me. You’ve got other suspects, don’t you?”
Silence for a moment on the other end. Poor honest dear. As mad as he was about the Dugdales, I could not picture him giving in so easily. He had to have other suspects.
“You get back, we’ll have a drink, okay?” he said.
Okay. That was enough. When I hung up, I thought, I could call Harry Felton myself. But then there’d be two people pissed off at me and more chance of that getting back to my boss as well. Also, it was two o’clock. My appointment was for two-thirty. I had to find the place yet.
I squeezed out behind a slow-moving truck with lapping branches hanging off both sides and sticking through the slats at back. Not being able to read the street sign with the truck ahead of me, I missed my first turn. Then, doing a U, I saw a green pickup approaching at a high rate of speed. It startled me. I remembered Emilio, the boy at El Cochino, talking about a big focking green pickup. My first reaction was to do another quick U, chase that sucker down. But this one was a new model, and I figured, boy, I’m getting jumpy.
Passing dozens of holding tanks, I drove onto one of the land spits that separates the channels. Railroad tracks ran the length of the spit. I drove slowly, fifteen miles an hour, looking up at the huge white tanks looming all around me. Through spaces between buildings I could see the gray-green water in the channel, and, on the other side of the channel, a few buildings associated with the Federal Correctional Institution at Terminal Island.
Straight ahead, perched on top of a building, was a small tank resembling the Tin Man, arms and all, looking as if he’d query all who passed. Individual red railroad cars nosed into warehouse doors like huge battery packs plugged into mammoth outlets. Men on the platforms waved arms and lifted things, barely taking notice of a small white car creeping by.
Mr. Davis was a little man. He wore brown pants and a green-and-blue-plaid shirt buttoned to the neck and anchored with a bolo tie, the fastener a miniature diving helmet in dead-dipped brass to give it a “been around” l
ook. Facing outward like a pig snout was a green glass representing the diver’s sighthole. It looked eerily like a tiny camera, or a window into parts of Mr. Davis I didn’t want to see. But Mr. Davis was nice as he could be, and he shook my hand with strength and liking. It made me feel not so good, to be here under pretenses. I never wanted to be a private investigator—wouldn’t like the lying you just have to do.
“Well, you can come right in here, little lady,” he said, ushering me up the long wooden ramp from the driveway into the cavernous shop storage area, which was located in a corner of a warehouse. “This used to be Davis-Hannifin till I sold out a year ago. This here”—he was indicating a small vehicle of some sort, futuristic-looking, a clear bright blue, lying on its side—“is a motorized hull cleaner. It’s got brushes on the bottom. A man rides it like a motorcycle right over the hull, scours off all the garbage. Ever seen one of them before?”
“No, sir,” I said, “I sure haven’t.” Gear of one sort or another was hanging everywhere in the dark interior, or stacked neatly or not so neatly on metal shelves and on the floor. Cliff swallows had built jugs of mud along the crossbeams overhead. Orange rubber diving suits, headless, the arms and legs stiffed out and fat, with tears and mottled peels in them, hung on hooks drilled into the beams. Ready-wear for giants, not ordinary men.
Mr. Davis said, “We’ll go into the office,” and I followed him into a room that looked like a replica of a ship’s quarters—or a San Diego bar trying to look like one. The small room was low and crossed with exposed beams, creosote glistening in stripes where the wood had cracked. Two dried blowfish dangled from fishline at either side of the room, one with a low-watt lightbulb in its belly. A green banker’s lamp and a computer sat on the desk, behind which was draped a heavy-duty fish seine carrying colorful shells and one lone starfish. The whole thing cozy. Just give me a whiskey. I was chilly. I almost asked for one.
Mr. Davis stood in front of a chair with a leather-strap bottom. I figured this was where the divers sat; they couldn’t hurt it too much. He motioned me to a chair whose seat was once red velvet, the center now bearing a woven straw cushion. “So you have some tools you want me to identify?” he said.
I looked at his lined, tanned face, his widow’s peak over the deep forehead wrinkles, the eyes a calm dark brown, and thought, This is a man who’s done his work, who’s built a business and is happy with it. Who’s sold it for enough that he can come down here on his leisure time and walk in like he’d never been away; whose ex-partner would still let him.
“Well, all I’ve got is sketches. My father would have a hissy if I took them out of the house. He wants to write to some magazine columnist and see if he can tell us what they are, but I figured, gee, you’re right here, and you were kind enough to—”
He gave a quick wave of his hand to stop me. I pulled the folded piece of grid paper Trudy had given me from my pocket and leaned out toward him. “This,” I said, pointing to the collet. A smile crossed his face.
Sweet salt air blew in. The blowfish near the door slowly floated and turned, its mouth open now in front of me, its hollow eyes taking it all in.
“That’s a torch collet,” Mr. Davis said, leaning close enough for his shirtsleeve to touch my arm.
Just then a young blond man in a yellow tie appeared in the doorway. He glanced over at me, then squinted at the amber-on-black computer screen that was twisted halfway in his direction. Mr. Davis looked up. He said, “Come on in, Ross.”
“No, I just wondered . . . did the Barranca job come in?” He talked in a soft drawl and seemed pleasant.
“Not yet,” Mr. Davis said. “Ask Harry when he gets back, though. He’s gone to the post office.”
“I’ve got a bunch of calling to do yet, but I hired two more divers and one driver.”
“Good goin’,” Mr. Davis said, and the young man moved off. “We have trouble sometimes, rounding up men when we need ’em,” he said to me. Then, his attention returning to the sketch, “That there’s a torch collet, and that’s a T-wrench.”
“Is there some special use for this T-wrench?” I asked.
“We tighten wing nuts on the brails with it.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“C’mere,” he said, and got up. He led me back out into the shop. We went over near a wall and he showed me a diver’s helmet, looking like a crouched octopus behind some cardboard boxes. He touched the toe of his shoe to the convex ring at the bottom of the headpiece. “This here’s the brail. You fit the helmet on the suit, you tighten the nuts to the rubber so it don’t leak.”
“I see,” I said. “This is a special wrench, then?”
“Well, no, I wouldn’t say that. You could pick one up at the hardware store.” My heart sank. No special nature to it, no special significance. “What about this other thing?” I said, tapping the grid paper. “Is—”
“Now that’s peculiar to the trade.” He walked around the boxes, and I followed him. At some chest-high bins that had small hardware pieces in them, he rummaged till he brought up a thing just like the one I found in the grass outside Dwyer’s, only it was shinier.
“That’s it,” I said.
He held the collet up close to me and pointed to the white lumpy metal in the center that looked like the corrosion you get on your car battery cables. “See this? This happens when it arcs out.”
“I’m sorry. You’ll have to help me a little more here. Arcs out?”
“Your granddad has this?” He meant the white stuff.
“I . . . I think so, yes.”
“This is a collet for an underwater cutting torch.” He was jostling it in his palm now. “Diver sticks a tender in here in the center and heats it to the temp of brimstone. Then he fixes a bridge or cuts a ship apart. Sometimes in so doing it arcs and fuses the tender.” He was poking his long finger into the center to demonstrate, so I could figure out what a tender was. “Melds the tender to the collet. So now he’s got to get a new one. A diver carries around six, seven of these things in his pockets. We can’t keep them in stock hardly.”
The Dugdales had to be there at the Kwik Stop. How many divers loaded down with collets could there be in Orange County? I couldn’t wait to tell Svoboda; yah, yah, look what I found.
I asked other questions, as if I had a general interest in diving. I asked if divers were unionized, and if they were paid well, getting a yes and a yes. I asked where the divers mostly came from—the navy?—and Mr. Davis said no, most all from the oil industry out of the South: Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas. And yes, I asked if he knew Roland Dugdale. If Roland worked there.
Mr. Davis turned full-face to me and narrowed his eyes. The light from the shop’s open doorway caught the snout of his bolo-tie diving helmet, turning the green glass blank. Mr. Davis said, “Now, you should’ve told me, honey, who you really are.”
CHAPTER
14
I saw Joe Sanders in the grocery store in Newport Beach, which is a long way from Tustin. I’d just arrived at Farmer’s Market in Fashion Island, a spoke-wheeled complex of expensive stores, the whole “island” rimmed by towering white office buildings.
Outside, Christmas music piped from palm trees strung with tiny white lights. A gigantic, decorated spruce, cut for the occasion, dominated the plaza. I was coming down the escalator, intending to get something quick to eat in the food park, and there he was, in one of the grocery aisles off to the side, choosing milk.
If I went over and said hello I’d wind up telling him I’d been to San Pedro, and I wasn’t ready yet. When I reached the bottom of the escalator, I wheeled around the far side and went back up. I ate at Wienerschnitzel on Jamboree, wondering about Joe. Something was going on, that he’d be this far from Tustin. Then again, maybe he had relatives here.
The next time I saw Joe, he was stabbing fat. All day Wednesday he’d been in meetings, and I was busy. That morning I’d phoned Detective Felton. The bald one with, as Gary said, the arms. I told him who I was and that I
did something a bit out of my work scope but hoped he wouldn’t mind. He listened politely. I remembered his demeanor while questioning Phillip Dugdale in the interrogation room: listening for a long time, then quietly asking him questions as if he needed that long time to dream them up. Asking Phillip about painting, and did he win the Lotto. And then saying, You’re pissing on my leg, Phillip. An ace.
Talking to Felton, I was hesitating and repeating myself. At the end I got control. “The important thing here is that Roland Dugdale’s a diver and a piece of diver’s gear was found at a murder scene.”
He said, “All such information comes to me. First.” He seemed provoked, but not irate. He asked me a few questions about how I knew to go to that particular place, Hannifin, and how I got there. Dry; no emotion, as if taking notes.
What I didn’t tell him was that I practically got escorted out of town, Mr. Davis following me in his brown Lincoln all the way back to the main road, though I thought at the time maybe he was just on an errand. Mr. Davis lost it with me but not too much, just turning grim-faced and shutting down and telling me, “You know the way out.” When I’d gotten back in my car and looked up through the windshield, I saw him standing there framed in the large black square of the warehouse door, though he was down at the bottom of the ramp on the asphalt, his blue plaid elbows arrowed out, his hands jammed solid on his hips. I’d put my sunglasses on because of the white glare from the sun trying to break through the overcast, and maybe because the shades feel like a mask. And then the next time I looked in my rearview mirror, about to make a turn, I saw Mr. Davis in his brown Lincoln.
So I didn’t tell Detective Felton that, and I didn’t tell him I knew that Detective Reddeker, the one in the pink shirt, had called Hannifin Diving Service regarding Roland Dugdale’s employment record, that Reddeker had made Mr. Davis’s ex-partner look up Roland’s time sheets and then call Reddeker back. Roland had worked the day of the murder. He even accrued premium pay for overtime. I didn’t tell Felton because Reddeker would or had, and because I wanted to keep the heat on in a case that could quickly get doused with hundreds of other homicides we have in a year.