Cocaine and Blue Eyes

by Fred Zackel

  "I hope you're right," I said. "Dying for a fish company is stupid."

  "You're very glib." He wasn't being hostile.

  "Just being honest, I hope."

  He wheezed his contempt. "That's my grandfather up there," he said. "He was the man who founded the fish company. He was a good businessman, too. He ran it for forty years." He glanced at me. "He came to San Francisco during the Gold Rush. He was twenty years old then."

  I looked behind and above me. The founder's portrait mocked any other "founder's" portraits I've ever seen. Orestes Anatole the First was a real fisherman. He wore a fedora perched rakishly over a mop of curly hair. A wool overcoat. A stubby cigar in his mouth. He grinned as if he had just sung ten verses of a dirty sea chanty.

  "A lot of ships were stranded in the Bay those days," his grandson told me. "Sturdy ships that sailed around the Horn. Their crews had deserted for the Gold Country. My grandfather and his partner bought one and started fishing."

  I looked over. "What happened to his partner?"

  "One day he disappeared." The old man sucked his gums. "They say he was shanghaied from a Barbary Coast saloon."

  "That was convenient."

  The old man went on without me. "He never lost a boat. He never lost a man. He made deals with the Chinese. He helped them sail the Bay and fish for shrimp. He bought land and held it in trust for them. He fought the oyster pirates with knives and guns. He bought land in Sonoma for vineyards when land cost ten dollars an acre. And when the Blight hit the French fields, he sold them cuttings and bought more land." He paused for air, a vital commodity at his age. "He foresaw the sardines and bought purse-seiners for the Bay. He forced us to convert to gasoline, and later to diesel. He was even the first to open a restaurant at Fisherman's Wharf, but he lost money there. He was a decade too soon."

  "He sounds like quite a man."

  "He died in the bathtub," Orestes told me. "Mother and I hauled him out. He looked like a beached whale. A rather ignominious end for a fisherman, don't you think?"

  I shrugged. "It happens sometimes."

  He wasn't listening. "His death was the first freedom I ever had." He was talking to himself again. He noticed me. "I tried to instill that in my family."

  "By setting up trust funds?"

  He came close to a secret smile. "If I didn't, they'd have shot me for their inheritance already." It would take a nitro pill to make him crack a smile.

  "What makes you think they've changed their minds?" I ticked off some points. "Those shares are held in trust until you release them. You kept a full third of the voting stock, just so they would never gang up on you. They can't sell their shares until they're forty, and they can't live off the interest because it gets added to the pot. And since you can stop their money, interfere with their personal affairs, they can't tell you to your face how much they hate you. It sounds to me like it leans your way."

  "I thought that was reasonable," he admitted. But the truth gave him an itch. He tightened. "They're still my family. I had hoped they'd be more self-reliant, but those funds are the only way they can survive." He sounded like he believed it.

  "They have to work or they get nothing."

  "The fish company isn't important by itself. But it does serve one useful function. It keeps the family together. Maybe if they could work together, they might stop hating each other."

  "Catherine doesn't work." I reminded him.

  "She never could." He was still honest.

  "She has her own money. She doesn't need yours. And yet you give it to her. You even gave her a house."

  His guts rumbled. His eyes went glassy. "She got that house because she'd be a public drunk otherwise." He looked like old age was poisoning him. "You don't know how much money she needs to keep her drunk."

  "Booze is her alimony."

  "I suppose it is." He shook his head. "Too bad about her husband. He had a good head on his shoulders. Too bad the chemistry soured for them."

  "Dani doesn't work, either."

  "She's a damn good woman. Better than anybody else in the family. She deserves every dime she's ever been given."

  "How did she manage all that?"

  "You know what she did? She ran away from home, to get away from those vultures. When she needed money, she changed her name and went to work for a fish company."

  "Did she call you last night?"

  "How did you know that?"

  I winked. "I'm an investigator, remember?"

  "She's been the only one in the family willing to leave me alone." He looked around and noticed me. "She was supposed to be here now. She said she was coming up here today."

  "Why isn't she here?"

  "She could've had car trouble." He thought he understood. "She's a big girl. She can take care of herself."

  I hoped so. "What about Jack? He says he's bored stiff."

  The old man sobered. "I tried to give him the sea. He didn't want it. All he cares about is that Porsche of his. It's his woman." He snorted his distaste.

  "Has he changed a lot since Vietnam?"

  He looked down. "I didn't want him to go. He didn't call me to say goodbye." He tried ignoring the past. "He's been worrying me ever since he came back. He's killing time, waiting for something to happen. Something's missing from his life."

  "Waiting for his ship to come in?"

  He thought it over. "Are there many like him?"

  I shrugged. "It seems like it." Anybody, not only vets, withers without a purpose. I guess there's no adventure left in the world. Without that, without something to challenge people, they become robots and they age before their time. "What did you think of Joey Crawford?"

  "Dani's boyfriend. I liked him. Oh, not for what he was. For what he was for Dani." The old man wiped his nose for the simple-minded of the world. "He was good for her. He kept her mind from wandering back here. That was the only thing he was good at."

  "I heard you hated him. I heard you almost went up the wall when she brought him home, that you almost cut her off, just like you cut off Lilian."

  "I never cut Lily off." He was vehement. "She wanted no part of my money. She said there was a smell to it." He looked up at his grandfather's portrait. "She's willing to share her husband's and that comes from me. She's another one who can't work. Riki waits on her hand and foot. God, does that boy dote on her."

  "I hear he's a devil with the ladies."

  "You heard wrong," his grandfather said.

  "His wife says he's a wanderer."

  "She'd go berserk if he did."

  "Why does he stay with her then?"

  "He's a Catholic," he told me. "He doesn't love her. He's a kept man, kept by his own sense of duty. If he could, he'd leave her in the lurch." But he was holding back something. "My grandson is a coward."

  "Riki? A coward?"

  His eyes tried to pierce. "They call him Chicken of the Sea behind his back. That's why we put him in an office. Only place he can keep his legs going in the same direction."

  "They're first cousins. She told me so."

  He broke his barrier. "She shamed him into marriage. Now she makes him feel guilty for not giving her his heart and soul." He banged the arm on the wheel-chair. "My granddaughter can marry my grandson, but I'm the loathsome pervert."

  "Why tell me all this?"

  He remembered. "I want to hire you."

  "Aw, c'mon, cut the clowning."

  "How much do you cost?"

  "More than you'll ever have."

  "I'm in the fifty-percent tax bracket."

  "Okay. You can buy me. But why?"

  He leaned forward. "Last month I received a phone call from a man who wants to buy the fish company. He wants to make another cannery out of it, another Ghiradelli Square." Leaning forward was too much for him. He leaned back. "You know what they do. They partition everything off into restaurants, art galleries, clothing stores, taverns. He wants to call it the Fish Factory."

  It was a new story in the city. New and eve
r-present. A company is sold and its employees who made good money go on the unemployment roles. They rot there until they settle for less or move on. A developer renovates the building into a maze of tourist traps. He's an absentee landlord, and his renters hire the unemployed for minimum wage.

  "Are you going to sell?" I asked.

  "I have no reason to sell. I care about my employees. I pay them good wages. What's going to happen to them? Can you see them selling toys to the tourists?"

  It seemed simple. "Don't sell it then."

  "It's not that simple," he said. "That man is from Las Vegas."

  I almost smiled. "That doesn't make him a bad guy."

  "Where did he get the idea I wanted to sell?"

  "I don't know." I raised my hand. "I swear to God."

  He gave me a filthy look. "There have been rumors my company's having financial troubles." His guts rumbled again.

  "Rumors are made to be ignored."

  "Not when they start up here."

  "The gambling grapevine?" I thought it over. "You think somebody's pressuring you into selling."

  "Do you know anybody who could be doing it?"

  "Why don't you look into it? "

  "I already started." He tapped the file on me.

  "Understand this. I'm not hassling you or your company."

  "Maybe. But until I die, I am the majority stockholder. I am the final decision. I must know what's going on." His anxiety hit his liver. He looked like an old man holding a hot wire. "We're supposed to be fish wholesalers. Now we're buying fish from other fleets."

  "I heard that's because of the weather."

  "Oh, it is." He rubbed his stomach. "But when I heard you were prowling around, I could see how fragile my company really is."

  "Is that why you recalled the fleet?"

  "Yes, and they're staying in until I find out what's going on." He tapped the file cover. "I told these people to speed up, too."

  "You should be able to find out," I said. I picked up the file. The seal was red wax, a silly flourish, something a useless old broad might do. My old bosses used it on their wealthiest clients. It dawned on me. "You hired Pac-Con to investigate me?"

  "They're about the best, I hear."

  I was pissed. "This is my work record." I wanted to choke the old fucker.

  He flinched. "Would you like to burn it?"

  "Yes, I would." I threw the dossier into the fireplace. I watched the gold flames. They didn't burn high enough for me.

  "I'd like to make it up to you."

  "You don't have enough years left for penance."

  "I'll double whatever they're paying you."

  "Look. Let's forget this, okay? I'll just leave."

  He gave me a check. "A retainer. I'll pay you triple wages." He was getting excited again.

  At least the check wasn't written in crayon. Then I looked at the amount and gave a low whistle. With this much bread I could buy a sloop and sail south for a couple of years.

  He had started to drool. "I'll pay you to do nothing."

  "Why should you do that?"

  He almost didn't know where to start. "Your presence feeds those rumors. They must stop. You're interfering with my business. I don't want you around any more, and I want you to stay away from my family."

  I said goodbye to Mexico. "Keep it, old man."

  He set his back to me, like an old woman in a huff, and started punching buttons on a nearby tabletop.

  I stood up. "Does Tan Ng know what you've been up to?"

  He glared at me. "He'd never use it as leverage."

  "Why's that? What leverage do you have on him?"

  "So you can blackmail him?"

  "I don't blackmail people."

  "You can't blackmail the impotent," he said.

  He didn't laugh and I should have.

  The nurse appeared. I left the room by the door she held open. Dani wouldn't let me sail away to Mexico. And no old mole in a wheelchair in a glass house is going to tell me what to do.

  Then I was in the lobby again. The same lobby where I had started from. I had been led around the whole house and had ended up one room from where I had started. The old man had euchered me. I turned around, but he was watching the snow again. The nurse closed the door behind me.

  My cab was still outside. The engine was idling, but the cabbie had disappeared. I got behind the wheel, turned up the heater and lit a cigarette. The cab radio was working down the top 100 songs of the year. The deejay said there'd be an Instant Replay tomorrow.

  After a while the cabbie came back from the tules. He looked at me, shrugged, went around to the passenger side. After he fastened his seatbelt, he asked me where to.

  "Back to the airport."

  The cab churned through the snow.

  He lit another joint. "This is the way I always heard it should be."

  Chapter 25

  I caught the Gambler's Special back to SF International. There weren't many players on the plane. Only the losers fly home Saturday night on a New Year's weekend.

  I found Doug's car and dead-headed home. Sure, I'd considered a motel for the duration. Lim Song's goon platoon might be considering some form of revenge, but not on a Saturday night. Besides, I'm not hiding out. Some motel maid might shortsheet me.

  The freeway was crawling with crazies. Amateurs with love or money on their minds. Every night of this weekend was their night, drinkers and drivers both, and they were going to have the time of their lives tonight. I hoped they'd have a real good time. I wasn't going to come between them.

  My apartment isn't much. Motel-thin walls and electric wall heaters and furniture returned from rental. I like living alone, but I don't like living like this, so I spend a lot of time at the window, looking out.

  I called the residence club. They said she was out. Any message? I said there was none. I thought of one after I hung up.

  I thought about Ruth. I thought about warm nights in Mexico, some warm beaches I wanted to show her. Mexico seemed like a million miles away.

  I killed the lights and went to the window. The streetlights had a frosty halo, and the parked cars beneath were dewy and glistening.

  One car below my window had a finish as dry as the street below its muffler. The driver was alone, slouched against an open window, smoking a cigarette. The engine grumbled like a tiger's stomach, and the exhaust coughed out patches like fog. The ass was jacked higher than the grill. Block letters on the rear window spelled out Camaro.

  I heard a small faint noise, like a door sliding open in another room. Someone had opened the elevator door. It could have been for the other apartment on my floor. It was leased to three student nurses from Presbyterian Hospital. They came and went like small animals in the night. Sometimes they were even getting off duty.

  I keep a starter pistol in my apartment for night noises. I made sure it was loaded with blanks. I wouldn't want to end those noises, but I might want to scare them off. My own gun was fully loaded, anyway, not with dummy cartridges.

  I went and stood alongside my door. Someone was breathing heavily in the hallway. It might have been whisperings. In San Francisco it might be harmless, some weirdo with a kinky problem. I checked the peephole. There were shadows in the hallway. Not enough light to see whose, but there were at least three of them.

  A credit card came out between the frame and door. It slipped about, found the lock, began fumbling with it. I grabbed the card and yanked it through to my side. Then I fired the starter pistol at the carpeting.

  No more heavy breathing. The staircase door opened. There were no more shadows in the hallway.

  I went to the window, slid back the drapes. The wheelman was cued on the lobby. He kept revving the gas, like his life depended upon it.

  Three young men in Levi jackets rushed from the lobby. They were young and frantic. What one said sounded desperate in Cantonese. They hopped into their Camaro, and the car roared off.

  I looked at the plastic. Lim Song was embossed ac
ross the bottom. He was awfully careless with his Master Charge. I could be a thief. I thought about looking him up, returning it. Better I should burn it. I could always claim I saved his life.

  My floor began pounding. My landlady lived directly below me. She had her broom out again. She was pounding on the ceiling again. Another quiet night shot to hell.

  Chapter 26

  I passed a cable car climbing halfway to the stars. The tracks rattled like cold teeth and the gripman drank whiskey from a paper bag. The city had long since given up its heat to the night and ocean air.

  It was windy on Nob Hill. A daisy chain of yellow cabs were outside the big hotels. Their drivers stayed inside their cabs, not outside talking among themselves. For some reason, the winds blow coldest on the most expensive real estate in town.

  I passed the building before I saw it. It was hunched against the winds like an old man at a bus stop. It was stone, like the Hill itself, a symbol of eternity for the poor people of San Francisco. A mailbox watched-dogged the front while two stone lions covered the flanks. The building could have been a neighborhood branch of the public library. All it needed was a bicycle rack.

  The doorman doubled as a security guard. He was reading a tenant's magazine, but he had a pump action shotgun beside him. He called ahead, then said the elevator was being sent down for me. While we waited, a Doberman came from nowhere to sniff my fingers. Money takes its own time, of course. It seemed forever before the elevator doors closed on the drooling hound.

  The elevator opened at the penthouse.

  I thought I was in a mountain glade. There were ferns, generations of ferns, more ferns than a redwood forest. Tall and full and overflowing. Every inch of the spacious room had something cool and green. This was a garden of delights for a midnight date.

  I saw hardwood floors and tan furniture and realized this was the living room. There was indirect lighting and central heating. I looked for the F.T.D. decal that telegraphed bouquets.

  Tan Ng baby-stepped in, sleepy-eyed. He wore a bathrobe, pajamas underneath. His robe was Chinese red and Chinese gold, while his pajamas were blue-and-white checked. Both were too big for him, something the Incredible Shrinking Man was leaving behind. With his cadaverous features, he looked like a corpse gift-wrapped with Christmas paper.