San Francisco Slaughter

by Jack Badelaire

  Blake stood up from his chair and walked over to the dry bar. He leaned down and opened one of the cabinet doors, taking out two thick manila envelopes. He walked over and dropped one each in Lynch’s and Richard’s laps. Lynch opened the envelope and peered inside; there were five bundles of twenty dollar bills. Each paper bill strap declared the bundle contained two thousand dollars.

  “That’s half your pay now,” Steiger told them. “You get the rest when we get the prototype.”

  “And if we can’t recover it?” Richard asked. “What if it’s destroyed? Or in the hands of the Soviets? We’re only two men, and there’s a limit to how far we can chase this rabbit.”

  “Bring me proof that it’s destroyed, and you’ll get your full fee. Three quarters if you can prove it’s out of your reach,” Steiger replied.

  “How do we handle expenses?” Lynch asked.

  Blake reached into his sports coat and pulled out a thick bank envelope. He tossed it into Lynch’s hands. “There’s another two grand. If you need more than that, and you have a good reason, we’ll work with you.”

  Lynch and Richard looked at each other, and Lynch gave him a small nod. Richard turned to Steiger. “All right, we’re in.”

  Steiger turned and walked to his desk. He returned with a thick manila file folder and set on the coffee table. “That has Roth’s employment record, along with the banking information and his phone records. There’s also a house key taped to the inside of the folder.”

  “He gave you a copy of his house key?” Lynch asked.

  “We made a call to the construction company responsible for building his house. They were able to facilitate us with a key that’ll match his locks after some money changed hands,” Blake replied.

  “I’m guessing that’s how you acquired his bank and phone records?” Richard asked with a knowing smile.

  “It’s good to have friends, Mr. Colt,” Blake replied. “And friends do each other favors, from time to time.”

  With that, Lynch and Richard stood up, and they shook hands with Steiger and Blake. “We’ll be in touch shortly,” Lynch said.

  Steiger nodded. “You’ve come highly recommended, Sergeant Lynch. I was told you’re not a man to be deterred if, or rather when, things get ugly.”

  “Don’t worry about ugly, Mr. Steiger,” Lynch replied. “I’ve seen ugly, and I put a bullet in its face.”

  SIX

  Lynch and Richard walked out of the building together. Lynch noted how Richard’s head moved on a smooth swivel, scanning and assessing the parking lot as he passed through the building’s double doors.

  “Where are you parked?” Lynch asked.

  “Over yonder,” Richard answered. He pointed across the lot, and Lynch spotted an immaculate-looking blue 1968 Shelby Mustang GT among several nondescript sedans.

  “Something tells me you’re not driving that grey Pinto,” Lynch replied.

  Richard smiled. “Nah, I prefer a ride with a few more horses under the hood.”

  “You didn’t drive all the way from Texas, did you?” Lynch asked.

  Richard shook his head. “I did some work down in L.A. a few weeks ago. I stuck around for a little R&R, was still there when this contract came my way. What about you? Where’s your car?”

  Lynch nodded towards his Jeep. “The red CJ-5 over there. Bought it real cheap off of the parents of a guy I knew in ‘Nam.”

  Richard looked at Lynch for a moment. “He didn’t make it back?”

  Lynch shook his head. “He made it back, all right. In a sealed coffin.”

  “On that cheery note,” Richard said, “we’ve got to do our homework. What now?”

  “Where are you staying?” Lynch asked.

  “The Fairmont.”

  “Nice place?”

  Richard chuckled. “You could say that. What about you?”

  “Motel 6.”

  “Not anymore you’re not,” Richard poked a finger at the bulge in Lynch’s coat pocket made by their spending money. “You’re going to get a room at the Fairmont, we’ll order in some room service, and we’ll get down to business.”

  Lynch’s eyes narrowed. “Hold on a minute, goddamn it. I don’t know you and I don’t work for you. We’re partners in this, but five minutes after we take the job you’re already trying to drive the bus.”

  Richard stared at him and said nothing for a long moment. Finally, he smirked and gave Lynch a small nod. “Alright, you make a good point. I ain’t in charge of you no more’n you’re in charge of me. We’re partners, straight up the middle. But that motel of yours is a dungheap, and we’ve got a fair bit of scratch between the two of us now. There’s no accounting for where this contract is going to take us, and I’ve been doing this sort of work for a while now, so believe me when I tell you, it’s best to enjoy the finer things in life when you get the chance, okay?”

  Lynch scratched his chin. “Fair enough. Follow me on over to the motel, I’ll drop off the key and check out, then I’ll follow you.”

  An hour later, the two men were entering the lobby of the Fairmont Hotel in downtown San Francisco. The luxury hotel was a far cry from the musty, weather-beaten economy motel Lynch had checked into last night. He carried his bags and they approached the concierge desk, Richard taking point.

  “Good morning,” Richard said to the young woman behind the counter. “I’d like to see if there’s a room adjacent to my own for this gentleman with me.”

  The woman looked past Richard and smiled when she saw Lynch. “Certainly sir, let me check.”

  Lynch tuned them out as he glanced around the hotel lobby. The building’s architecture was turn-of-the-century opulence, and from the look of the people walking in and out of the lobby, the clientele were the sort who, like Richard, weren’t going to settle for an economy motel room. Men in business suits or high-end vacation wear walked with women in designer dresses carrying purses that cost as much as his car.

  Finally, Richard nudged Lynch with his elbow. “They’re going to move me so we can have adjoining rooms. Work with you?” he asked.

  Lynch nodded, catching the woman behind the counter giving the two of them a sly, considering look, a discreet smirk touching her lips. As they rode the elevator up to recover Richard’s items from his room, Lynch glanced over at his partner.

  “The receptionist thinks we’re queer,” he said.

  Richard chuckled. “This is San Francisco, amigo. Two men checking into adjoining hotel rooms? She might as well flip a coin.”

  Lynch glanced at the elevator’s floor indicator. “I’m not, just so you know.”

  Richard rolled his eyes. “The dang Army. Y’all are just unbelievable. Most homoerotic occupation there is. Worked for the Greeks and Romans, didn’t it? Probably a damn sight safer’n some hootch harlot workin’ for the Viet Cong, ready to give you commie crabs.”

  Lynch opened his mouth to fire off a reply, but the elevator chimed and the doors opened on their floor. Richard moved to his room, opening the door with his hand near the butt of his pistol, ready to draw. Lynch got a glance at the weapon, a nickel-plated Colt automatic, cocked and locked. At least he’s not carrying a six-shooter, Lynch thought.

  Within minutes they were out of Richard’s old room and two floors up, unpacking in their rooms with the adjoining door open. Lynch had kept it light, only bringing along a duffel bag and a small rucksack. Richard had brought a briefcase of alligator hide and a large matching suitcase. Lynch didn’t bother to unpack much, simply putting his toilet kit in the bathroom and pulling a change of clothes out of his duffel. He changed out of his suit and hung it in the closet before slipping on a pair of jeans, a black t-shirt, and a green long-sleeved shirt, which he left unbuttoned and untucked. San Francisco was cool, even in the summer, and there was a constant breeze that made the mild beachfront San Diego weather seem downright tropical in comparison.

  When he finished changing, Lynch walked through the adjoining door and found Richard had also changed out of hi
s suit, now wearing a pair of dark khaki slacks and a dark blue shirt. Richard was just slipping his belt through the loops of his pistol holster as Lynch came in, and he nodded towards Richard’s pistol.

  “Nice looking .45 you’ve got,” Lynch said.

  Richard finished buckling the belt, drew his pistol, then ejected and pocketed the magazine. He took it off safe, then snapped the slide, his left hand snatching the ejected cartridge out of the air with the speed of a striking cobra. He flipped the pistol around and offered it to Lynch butt-first.

  “Colt Gold Cup, chambered for .38 Super,” Richard said.

  Lynch nodded, admiring the pistol’s workmanship. It was a finely-tuned weapon, with adjustable target sights and custom-made wooden grips.

  “.38 Super...that’s the high-velocity round the G-Men used back in the ‘30s, going after all the bank robbers? Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd?” he asked.

  Richard nodded. “Hits a heck of a lot harder than a nine-millimeter, and it takes a nine-round magazine. Good for shooting through a car door, with a nice, flat trajectory at long ranges.”

  Lynch double-checked that the chamber was clear, then snapped the slide closed and gently squeezed the trigger. It broke light and clean as a glass rod. He nodded in appreciation, then handed the gun back to Richard.

  “Very slick, I just hope you’re good with it,” he said.

  Richard smirked. “I showed you mine, amigo. Let’s see yours.”

  Lynch went back into his room, and emerged a moment later with what looked like another toiletries kit. He unzipped the kit and pulled out a Colt of his own, but unlike Richard’s sleek, chrome-plated pistol, Lynch’s was a battered-looking U.S. Army-issued M1911A1 .45 automatic. He dropped the mag and racked the empty chamber, then handed it to Richard, who gingerly took the old war-relic like he’d just picked it out of a garbage heap.

  “Well, it certainly looks broken-in,” he mused.

  Lynch crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Watch what you say about that pistol, Richard. I carried it in-country for two years, and killed eleven men with it.”

  Richard’s eyebrows rose. “Eleven, you say? Not bad.” The tone of his voice, however, made it seem like Richard wasn’t all that impressed. He turned the pistol over in his hands, noticing all the little dings and scratches in the finish.

  “Yeah, it was my backup gun,” Lynch said, an edge in his voice. “For when I’d run my rifle dry, and didn’t have time to reload.”

  Richard looked up at that. “Must’ve gotten pretty hairy, now and then?”

  “Yeah, you could say that.”

  “This gun, can it be traced back to you? If you ever have to ditch it?” Richard asked.

  Lynch shook his head. “It was reported as destroyed in action back in ‘65, and I got ahold of it in ‘70. As far as the government is concerned, it’s rusting in the bottom of some overgrown shellhole back in Vietnam.”

  Richard nodded and handed the pistol back to Lynch, his demeanor a little more deferential. “Well, it’s seen better days, but if it shoots straight and feeds smooth every time, that’s all that matters.”

  Their show-and-tell complete, the two men ordered up hamburgers, fries, and beers for lunch, and began the process of combing through Steiger’s files on Samuel Roth. Twenty-nine years old, Roth had graduated top of his class from Stanford, majoring in electrical engineering. He displayed a genius for electronics all through his studies, and continued his graduate work in the field, receiving his Ph.D. at the age of twenty-seven. He was immediately scooped up by Steiger, who apparently maintained good relations with his alma mater through healthy alumni donations, and used his contacts as talent scouts for his company. In the last two years, Roth had contributed to three patents and quickly became one of Steiger’s top performers.

  Four months ago, Roth was made the lead on a project to develop a new kind of guidance system for military ordnance. But around that same time, cracks began to appear in his performance. Roth took more sick days in the last four months than he’d taken in the rest of his time at SEC, making up for the lost time with twelve and sixteen hour days. In fact, it looked like on three different occasions, Roth had stayed all night in his lab, working on the project. His latest employee evaluation, filed a month ago, gave him strong marks in overall performance, but noted that Roth appeared to be driving himself too hard, that he looked to be doing himself more harm than good.

  Reviewing his banking records, it was obvious that soon after being employed by SEC, Roth began to have money problems. He was making large cash withdrawals of varying amounts on irregular dates. Some of the withdrawals even fell on a Friday and the following Monday, evidence that Roth had taken out cash, lost it all, then had to withdraw more to cover a debt as soon as the bank opened on Monday. The rise and fall of Roth’s bank balance became more dramatic as time went on; in the last year, he’d gone into the week before pay day with less than twenty dollars in his balance on five times. The last activity on his account had been the day he’d called in sick; Roth had withdrawn all but ten dollars from both his checking and savings accounts.

  Lynch looked up from reading through the last bank transactions. “This isn’t just a man paying off a big debt. He’s digging all the money out of the mattress and finding a dark hole someplace where he can crawl in and hide.”

  Richard nodded. “But the question is, who is he hiding from? Steiger? Sure, he doesn’t want his boss to find him, and he can’t be sure Steiger won’t go to the cops, or hire a P.I., but I’m also guessing he’s hiding from whoever he owes money to, as well.”

  “But why not just hand over the chip?” Lynch asked.

  “Because these goombahs, they’re a bunch of knuckle-draggers. You show the smartest of these dummies a microprocessor, they’re just going to hit it with a rock and scratch themselves. The only way Roth can pay off his debt with that prototype is if they’re convinced it’s worth the cash, which means they’ve got to make some phone calls, talk to a few experts who don’t mind answerin’ questions without asking questions themselves. That’s going to take some time, and if Roth is smart, and he’s protecting himself, this back-and-forth negotiating is going to be slow as cold molasses.”

  Lynch nodded. “Okay, so Roth is holed up someplace. A hotel, maybe with a friend or relative. Maybe he’s on the move. He’s got cash, he’s got a car, he’s got a contact number. He’s calling them every day or so, trying to find a way to hand the prototype over without winding up dead in a ditch. And these leg-breakers, they’ve got to be combing the whole state, trying to get their hands on Roth first, so they don’t have to fork over a dime, because if the prototype is as valuable as Steiger says it is, it’s probably worth its weight in diamonds.”

  “All right, but if we’re going to pull this off, we need an edge. We need a shortcut to get us ahead of both of the horses in this race,” Lynch said.

  “So what’s our next move?”

  Richard dug through the file folder until he pulled out a mimeographed copy of the blueprints for Roth’s home. “How do you feel about a little breaking and entering?”

  Lynch laughed. “Sneaking into someplace where I don’t belong and taking a look around? Fuckin’ A, it’s been too long already.”

  SEVEN

  Richard drove the black Gran Torino past Roth’s house at a sedate pace, like a man looking for an address he’s never visited. It was almost one in the morning, and he and Lynch were preparing to make their reconnoiter of Roth’s Palo Alto home. The Ford was a gift from Blake, dropped off at the hotel that evening after Lynch and Richard agreed their cars were too conspicuous for the outing they had in mind. They didn’t ask Blake where the car came from, and he didn’t offer up the information. The car was conspicuously clean, and the registration information was missing from the glove compartment.

  Roth’s house was in the middle of a widely-dispersed residential area along the edge of a low, rolling hillside. Here the houses were at least fifty yards apart from on
e another, with plenty of trees, shrubbery, and fences giving the properties some privacy. It was a stylish, modern-looking single story home with a nice lawn and a six-foot high wooden fence on three sides of the property. According to the plans Steiger provided, there was an in-ground pool behind the house, with a patio between the pool and the home. Roth’s neighbors were about seventy yards away on either side, and on the street behind him, the house was close to the road, putting almost a hundred yards between the two buildings. It was about the most ideal layout they could expect, given the residential nature of the neighborhood.

  Cruising past, they could see Roth’s house was dark, with no car in the driveway. There were a couple of uncollected newspapers strewn across his walkway. All evidence pointed to the place being uninhabited.

  “No way to park around back,” Lynch observed.

  “Yeah, and if we park on the street, we’ll stick out like a sore thumb,” Richard added.

  They drove past two more streets before Richard pointed ahead of them. “There we go. It’s Friday, so it was inevitable.”

  On the next block, there were half a dozen cars parked on both sides of the street, and as they approached, they saw the lights on in one of the houses. It appeared that someone was hosting a late-night party. Killing the headlights, Richard drove up and parked behind one of the cars along the side of the road.

  “It’s almost one. By the time these party animals finally go home, no one’s going to be alert enough to wonder who owns this car. We should be good,” Richard said.

  They took a moment to prepare. Lynch had a small penlight in the pocket of his denim jacket, as well as a pair of thin leather gloves, Roth’s house keys, and a folding Buck knife he stuck in his back pocket. He took his .45 from its case and loaded it, tucking it into the back of his waistband cocked and locked, while spare magazines went into his pockets.

  Richard wore a dark leather jacket, and he’d traded his cowboy boots for a pair of black shoes. He slipped off his jacket for a moment and took something out of his briefcase; a shoulder holster containing a small blued-steel automatic fitted with a suppressor. He pulled the pistol out, chambered a round, and de-cocked the hammer.