by Jim Nisbet
Kramer cleared a windrow of cut-sheets and invoices away from a computer monitor on his desk and began to mouse around. “Receivables…. Stepnowski…. Balance due…. Wait a minute.” He peered at the screen. “There was a synthesizer.” Sal swiveled his chair. “You see a keyboard lying around Stepnowski’s place? Specifically,” he turned back to the computer screen, “a Kurtzweil FX-11? Fifty-five keys? Black?”
“Nope,” I said.
“Nope,” Lavinia affirmed.
“He bought it a month later.” Sal swiveled to squint at the computer again. “Sonofabitch. The guy’s dead, and the account’s still open.”
“Somebody should tell him,” I suggested.
Sal swept the clutch of audio cables off the phone and touched a preset. A woman came on the speaker almost immediately. “Beat me, Bwana, order me about.”
“Invoice number 2381-16,” Sal said. “It’s a synth. I’m moving it up in the cue.”
“I’m on it like brown on rice.” The woman rang off and Sal went back to mousing. “She’s a vegetarian so she gets to talk like that,” he told the computer screen. “The Peavey 1430 Sound Reinforcement System is now … paid in full and … right here we write off … the recovery fee. Save. Okay. Now print, you bastard.”
Tractor-fed invoices began to inch up out of a box on the floor into a printer, which stippled noisily.
“Curly,” Kramer spun his chair, “How the fuck did you get mixed up with Ivy Pruitt?”
“I’ve known Ivy for years, Sal. Same as you.”
“But you’re a working musician.”
“So? If I only hung out with working musicians I’d be as lonely as Nixon after Watergate.”
Sal shook his head. “Ivy Pruitt’s nothing but trouble, Curly. Not only that, you should stick to what you know how to do, which is playing the same ten songs three sets a night five nights a week, and leave Ivy Pruitt to do what he knows how to do, which ain’t playing no music.”
“I’m up to eleven tunes, Sal,” I pointed out, but I could feel my cheeks coloring at the slant the conversation had taken. I didn’t understand it, but neither did I think Sal Kramer had any right to give me this kind of advice. On the third hand, I had no doubt that I was in over my head with Lavinia, let alone Ivy Pruitt, but I had no intention of giving up that information to Kramer. Worse, Sal was right. It was a bad idea to be associating with Ivy Pruitt. Everybody in the business knew he was a junky, and if word got around that I was hanging out with him, club owners might suddenly discover that there is an amazing number of people out there willing not only to play ten or even eleven songs over and over again but to sing them too, all night long, for no money at all.
But I wasn’t about to give Kramer the satisfaction of knowing that I agreed with him about the last twenty-four hours, most of which I’d spent spending money I’d taken off a dead man, getting shot at on a back street in Oakland, not to mention buying, transporting and consuming heroin and cocaine, not to mention playing no music whatsoever; all because of Ivy Pruitt.
“Hey,” I protested lamely, “we all got our troubles. Ivy Pruitt, for example, is a disabled veteran.”
Sal ‘The King’ Kramer closed his eyes and shook his head. “The taxes I pay,” he muttered, “and that fucking guy gets a check every month?”
“Plus,” I added, “he’s a friend of mine.”
“And mine,” Lavinia put in.
“You a musician?” Kramer asked her.
“No,” Lavinia said. “But I love music and the people who make it.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” muttered Kramer.
“Hey,” I said, “She’s catching on.”
The phone rang. Instead of taking it on the speaker, Kramer picked up the receiver. “Yeah?” He listened, looked at each of us, then said, “No. They just left.”
Lavinia and I exchanged glances.
“How the fuck should I know?” Sal barked. “No, I don’t know the answer to that, either.” He sighed loudly. “Look, Garcia, Folsom Street is the only way out of my parking lot and it’s one way going east. You want I should catch them for you, too? Get a move on. They can’t be far. I was going to call you,” he said, exasperated. “They just went out the door, for chrissakes. You’re welcome.” He slammed down the phone. “Fuckin’ cops.”
“Cops?”
“You two kill that guy?” Sal said to the wall in front of him. “Stepnowski?”
I said, “Sure we did. Blew him away for a bad debt. Iced him. Anything for you, Sal. He had it coming.”
Sal spun the chair to face us. “Anything for the money, you mean. Did Ivy at least split the commission with you, I hope?”
Lavinia said, “He didn’t have much choice.”
Sal was looking at me. “What’s she talking about?”
“Ivy was locked up at the Hall of Justice all day yesterday,” I told him. “We tracked down Stepnowski and got the money back on his behalf. Ivy handed off the job for half the take specifically so he could get himself bailed out.”
“Ivy was in jail again?” Sal assumed a pained look. “How in the hell…? This ain’t your racket, Curly.”
“You’re telling me.”
Sal looked at Lavinia’s breasts again, but addressed me: “This is what’s in it for you?”
Lavinia shrugged ostentatiously. “It was the only way to come up with enough dough to spring Ivy.”
“What was he in for?”
“Paraphernalia,” I said.
“Chickenshit,” Sal snorted.
“That was the Oakland beef,” I specified. “The DA didn’t want to pursue it. That sprung me and it should have sprung Ivy, but they trucked him over to San Francisco for some prior he’d run out on. Driving on an expired license, something simple like that.”
“Expired license,” Sal repeated acidly. “You a special friend of Ivy’s?”
Lavinia stood straight and smoothed the front of her jacket over her breasts. “You might say that.”
“So why didn’t you just bail him out? Loan him the money?”
“Why didn’t you?” Lavinia countered.
Sal shrugged. “I’m a businessperson.”
“Same here,” Lavinia said.
“You’d never see it again,” I suggested.
“He knew better than to call me,” Sal said. He looked curiously at Lavinia. “So he called you.”
“Not for a loan, though.” She nodded. “He made me a proposition. It looked like easy money. I went straight to the address you gave Ivy, but Stepnowski had moved. I tried to get the landlord to tell me where Stepnowski was. No soap. The landlord all but told me that if I’d come inside and fuck him, he’d tell me where Stepnowski was. Right. And I was hatched out of an egg last week.”
“Really?” I said. “He didn’t try to get me to do that.”
“Maybe the guy’s got standards,” said Sal.
“Maybe a girl does, too,” Lavinia countered sharply. “Anyway, Ivy’s next idea was to get Curly to run the brother-from-out-of-town routine. We had to redistribute the action but, hey, without Curly there was no action. Ivy knew Curly looked weird enough to pass for a musician and an enforcer, too, if he kept his mouth shut. And he knew Curly could use the money.”
“Pass?” I said.
“What an operator,” Sal said, “a fuckin’ polymath.” He waggled a flattened hand. “Tentacles in two worlds.”
“Any fool can see the sensitive soul beneath this tattoo,” I suggested.
“A youthful disfigurement,” Sal declared acidly. “Like a war wound.”
“You’re speaking from experience?”
“Fuck no.” He jerked the thumb of his cigar hand to indicate his own chest for a change. “I dodged the draft for my country. It was the sixties. You shoulda been there. But,” he cleared his throat and spit into the trash can, “you weren’t.”
“Please note, Sal,” Lavinia interrupted, “that Curly got the job done? He conned Stepnowski’s new address out of the landlord; we drove
over there; we found Stepnowski dead.” Before I could stop her, she went on, “The money practically fell out of the guy’s pocket, but Curly took care of that, too. Personally, I wouldn’t have touched it.”
This elicited a long look from me: I didn’t believe her.
“Give credit where credit’s due,” she persisted, “You ever go through a dead man’s pockets?”
“Not lately,” Sal said.
Him, I believed.
“Stepnowski had plenty of money on him. We took our bite—your bite, too—left the rest, and got out of there. End of story.”
“Left the rest?” Kramer appraised her with a look.
“There was another twelve hundred on the guy,” I said.
Sal looked back and forth between us. “Really?” he beamed. “That’s true?”
“That’s it,” I said. “That’s the truth.”
“What about it, Sister?”
“It’s the truth.”
“That’s it, then,” Sal said loudly. “Let’s get this over with.”
I looked around. “Who you talking to?”
With an air of distraction Sal picked up a pencil, inserted the eraser into one ear, and stared at nothing. I looked at Lavinia. She looked at me. We both looked at Sal. Stirring the pencil, Sal looked at Lavinia’s breasts. The office door opened behind us. With a little fresh air came the sound of someone belaboring a ride cymbal.
“Who was that on the phone?” I asked as I turned around. A guy in a trench coat was closing the door. He wore a tie, knotted but loose. He had wavy, jet black hair and smooth, closely shaven cheeks. He was in his late thirties or early forties, almost as tall as I am and half again as heavy. He had tired eyes that didn’t look like they were falling by the World of Sound to score a pair of xylophone mallets.
“Lieutenant Garcia,” the man said by way of answering my question. “Homicide.”
Chapter Twelve
THE KING,” I FACED SAL, “MY ASS.”
“Guy sticks up the store,” Sal grumbled half-heartedly, “it takes them all fuckin day to get here.”
“Murder isn’t a cash register, Kramer,” Garcia replied. He jerked a thumb at the door behind him. “Beat it.”
Sal looked a little startled. This was his office, after all. But Garcia stepped aside and Sal lost no time in getting out. A uniformed cop posted in the hall closed the door. Garcia turned around and held up a pistol, its barrel impaled on a pencil.
“Yikes,” said Lavinia, “so you’re the guy who smashed my back window and stole my roscoe out of the glove compartment?”
I cringed.
Garcia said quietly, “This isn’t high school, Miss Hahn.”
“That’s true,” Lavinia nodded. “Do you have a warrant?”
“Lavinia….”
Garcia forestalled me with a smile. “I do have a warrant,” he addressed her, “if you’d like to play that way.” He patted his breast pocket. “But if you so choose, you’re going to lose. Perhaps you’ll hear me out first?”
“Perhaps she will,” I insisted.
Lavinia had so much trouble with authority that she was perfectly capable of flying in the face of Garcia’s winning hand, even if she went to jail for it. Jails, in fact, are full of such people. Much as a scientist would watch a frog’s leg to which he’s attached an electrode, Garcia watched Lavinia. I watched her, too. My fate was a little too wired into her decision for comfort.
But some stroke of reasonableness stayed her contrariety. “So,” she finally said, “talk.”
Garcia talked. “Through a miracle of technology we’ve established that a second pistol fired three rounds at the scene of the Stepnowski murder.” Garcia let the pistol turn around the shaft of the pencil like a slow noisemaker, whose ominous appearance made up entirely for its silence. “But that gun didn’t fire the shot that killed him.” When the handle came around, we could see that the clip had been removed. Garcia looked past it at Lavinia. “Same caliber, different gun.”
“On cop shows on my television before I pawned it,” I interrupted, “ballistics tests took weeks.”
“It’s probably been several years since you pawned it,” Garcia said, with only mild condescension.
I nodded. “Ten, fifteen, twenty.”
“Other than the march of progress,” he said, with no condescension whatsoever, “you haven’t missed a thing.”
“What’s so hot about this murder case?” Lavinia asked. Despite her reasonable decision of just a moment before, her voice had reclaimed its accustomed note of antagonism. “Don’t you have important dead people to investigate?”
“Oh yes,” Garcia replied mildly. “But there are reasons to fast track this particular case.”
“What reasons?”
The gun began to turn again. “By the additional miracles of computerized record-keeping and gun control legislation, we have also established that the registered owner of a Lexus parked in the lot next to this very building has no gun permit. In fact, even if this handgun is registered, its serial numbers have been filed.”
Lavinia pursed her lips.
“So the pistol will remain in our custody until such time as it meets its ultimate fate as one of the many guests of honor at the annual Police Athletic League fundraiser, barbecue, and ordnance meltdown.”
It seemed to me that, while Garcia was letting Lavinia slide on at least two gun charges, he almost had to be aware of how she earned her living. “I sense a drift, here.”
“It took almost two hours to follow up on the tip that sent us to the De Haro warehouse,” Garcia said. “But a homeless guy who regularly sleeps on the roof of a building across the street from 112 De Haro gave us a first-rate description of you two, along with the license plate number of a Lexus registered to one Lavinia Hahn.” He shifted his eyes to me. “He mentioned a guitar case, too. We found one in the trunk of your Lexus.” He shot a cuff and checked his watch. “By now it’s at the lab. Which reminds me.” He opened the door. “Lavoix.”
Officer Lavoix turned around. Even with most of her raven hair tucked up under her service cap, she proved to be one of the prettiest cops I’d ever seen. “Lieutenant?” she said.
“You got a Number 3?”
Officer Lavoix produced a briefcase out of which she retrieved a large padded envelope, into which Garcia dropped the pistol, followed by its clip. From a spiral pocket notebook he recited a case number, which Officer Lavoix copied onto the flap. “Run this down to Pickering,” Garcia told her. “Suggest that he check it against the De Haro rounds. Come back and get me.”
“Yessir.” The door closed again.
“If it hadn’t been for that homeless guy, whose name is Jake Carter, you two would be in a world of trouble.”
Lavinia had a little more to hide than a mere unregistered gun; but I, for one, intended to play this frolic straight up the middle, because I had nothing to hide. I needed a murder rap or an accessory rap or any rap at all, let alone more face-time with cops and junkies, like Beethoven needed earplugs.
“I appreciate the consideration, Lieutenant,” I said politely. “So, given this homeless guy, what’s your understanding of the shooting on De Haro Street?”
Garcia didn’t exactly beam at this ass-kissing, but Lavinia, for once, kept her mouth shut. “Carter had just settled in to read a little Shakespeare by headlamp when he heard three shots. He didn’t check it out right away and, in any case, Jake wouldn’t want to stick his head up before he’d turned off his headlamp. Besides which he’s street-wary. Other people’s troubles are not necessarily his, and gunshots in the city aren’t exactly uncommon.”
“Sad to relate,” Lavinia commented pointedly.
“Yeah, well.” Garcia thinned his lips a little. “Jake took the trouble to put down his book, turn out his headlamp, get out of his sleeping bag, and take a careful peek over the parapet wall.”
“And he saw–?”
“The street was deserted. The Lexus was there already, but it didn’t
attract his attention at first. He was just about to give up when the outside light at 112 blinked on and off.”
Lavinia could not restrain herself from commenting: “Son of a bitch.”
Garcia smiled without amusement.
I hurried it along. “So Jake settled in to wait.”
Garcia nodded. “Jake was just about to give up again when a woman came out of the metal door at 112 followed by a tall, bald, skinny guy.” Garcia paused before he added, “Jake described the woman as ‘skanky’.”
Lavinia gasped, then burst out with, “This insolent fuck, this dregs of society thinks just because he’s looking up from the gutter he’s got perspective?”
“What’s the matter, Lavinia? You’ve been dressing skanky for years. It finally worked.”
“Fuck you, you shitbird guitarist.”
Garcia said tiredly, “They argued….”
Lavinia rounded on him. “About what?”
Garcia shrugged. “At that distance, Jake couldn’t make it out. But after a little consultation the guy re-entered the building. The woman scuttled—”
“Scuttled?” Lavinia shrieked.
“We have it on tape,” Garcia pointed out mildly.
Lavinia hissed like a cat.
“—Scuttled along the loading dock and down the stairs at the corner, where she got into a recent-model Lexus parked westbound on Alameda Street, and took off. No more than a couple of minutes later, just as Jake was thinking it was time to go back to Richard III, the Lexus reappeared eastbound on 15th, made the corner onto De Haro, and stopped in front of the warehouse—northbound on the wrong side of the street—long enough for the bald guy to join her. Now the bald guy is carrying a guitar case. Interestingly, Carter observed that this case seemed too light to have an instrument in it. The bald guy hefted it wrong. He was careless with it. Carter’s words.”
“Your Shakespeare scholar is pretty sharp,” I remarked.
“Nosy bastard,” Lavinia grumbled.
“We left the guitar behind,” I explained politely, “in case things got rough.”
“How rough is murder?”