by Fred Zackel
"That's more than fair enough." I settled back for a long sea cruise.
Ruth Gideon popped up from the galleyway, assumed the Police Stance with a Police Special in both hands. The weapon was aimed at Jack's head. "All right, freeze!"
Jack exploded. "Who the hell are you?"
"I said, freeze!"
Alex stepped forward, thought better of it, then backed off. He wasn't about to assert himself. He was armed with a test tube. But he did suck his gums more.
Jack hadn't lowered my gun. He asked me who she was.
"She's a private investigator," I said. "Your grandfather hired her to look over the books."
"So what's she doing here?"
"Ask her." The shark rifle was leaning against the bulkhead. I leaned towards it.
"Hold it," Jack said. His hand was damn steady.
I stopped in mid-breath. I saw knuckles and steel and a black hole. The black hole was the barrel. You could stick a pencil in it.
"I said, freeze, dammit!"
"How'd you get here?" Jack asked.
"I followed him." She swayed with the boat.
I looked up. "What took you so long?"
Her chin quivered. "I came when the time was right."
"She was seasick," Jack guessed.
"What do you know?" She had a brave front. "I told you to put down that gun. Put it down. Slowly."
"Go fuck yourself," Jack said.
I was heartsick, but not over the man who held my gun on me. Jack Anatole was a veteran, and coolness under fire was his trade. He had a rock-steady hand. Ruth was the ringer, a ding-dong on her first solo. She had a green face. All guns are spooky, but amateur night in Tijuana was stupid. Somehow I had to get the guns down.
I asked Ruth to back down.
"He doesn't scare me," she said.
"He knows how to use that," I said.
She raised her gun. "Well, I know how to use this."
"Please don't be a hero." I tried being calm. "It never works."
"Because he's a man?" She almost spat the words.
I could've killed her for that crack. I tried being reasonable. "He can shoot me so fast, you wouldn't know what hit you, and you would be his second shot."
She mulled it over, then looked at him. "You got the Bronze Star, didn't you?" Maybe she was trying to be reasonable.
He didn't think he had heard her right. "So did a lot of other guys."
"But you came back," she said.
"Yeah. I came back. So what?"
"Did you give it back?" she asked. "Throw it on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, like those other Vietnam vets did?"
He knew he hadn't heard her right.
"Did you give it back?" She was defiant as hell.
I told her to shut up. Jack was a short-fused man. He had a volcano for a temper. I didn't want him exploding near me, especially with my own gun.
"I didn't think you did." She was a smug little bitch. "I had you pegged right from the start. You'll never give up your Bronze Star."
"Shut up." His mouth was a thin line. Another Anatole trademark. He tried to be reasonable. "Listen to your partner."
She scoffed at that. "He couldn't keep his own job." She realized where she was. She pushed out her chest. "I told you to put down that gun."
"He isn't your partner?" Jack said.
"He was only after Dani," she snapped.
He was amused by that. "Was that all?" He peered down the gunsight at me. "If you had found her, you wouldn't be here right now."
I stared up the sight. "I never wanted this," I admitted. A bullet from my gun travels faster than the speed of sound. When it hits flesh, the bullet's shock wave can break ribs. At least I'd never hear my gun go off.
Ruth had no brains. "Oh, he found her."
I wanted her mouth zippered shut. I said a prayer to Our Lady of the Farallones.
"He did?" Jack was puzzled. "Where is she then?" He looked at me. When I had no answer, he looked back at Ruth. His gun almost moved up and away from my face. "Where is she?"
"She's back at the fish company," she told him.
"Alex!" My gun inched left. "Did you see her?"
Alex, confused, shook his head.
I tried to melt my body. I wanted to crawl on my back like a sawbuck. I managed to get a couple of inches lower than the barrel. Now it would only blow off the top of my head. I tried shifting to the right.
"What was she doing there?" Jack asked Ruth.
"Don't play games," she snapped. "You're the one who killed her."
I closed my eyes and threw myself away.
A bullet struck the wood above me.
I went deaf. I thought I was dead. Being dead startled the hell out of me. I opened my eyes.
Ruth flinched at the noise.
A bullet punctured Jack's chest.
He lurched backwards, crashed through the deckhouse door. My gun went clattering up the deck. He crashed against the railing, and went down hard and fast. He never heard the gun go off.
My ears came back. The echoes of gunfire flashed back from the rocks like ghosts come back to haunt. The seabirds went screaming into the air lanes. The seals and the sea lions roared with fright. They rushed hysterically towards the surf.
I burned off the sailor knots on the propane stove. Then I used a handkerchief and lifted my gun. I almost wiped the blood from the steel. But then I was the only one who could still think and function. I had a lot to do.
I went over to Alex. He shook his mouth several times. He had thrown up on himself. He didn't flinch when I frisked him. I found nothing on him.
Ruth still stood like a policewoman. She had wet her pants. I took the gun from her, careful not to smear the prints. I frisked her as gently as I could. She trembled and flinched from my fingers. Like so many others, she had just learned that murder comes easily. Just pull a trigger and a carcass starts to cool.
Jack was down for good. The bullet had hit him square in the chest. His pupils were gone, and only the whites of his eyes were behind his wide eyelids. He had said it took no brains to be a hero. Which was how he had become a hero. Which was how he had died. I frisked the body and found the keys to the chart locker.
I went inside and unlocked the cabinet. Ruth followed me. She saw the bloodied gun. It meant nothing to her. It wasn't reality, and it made no sense. She was a caveman with a flashlight. She went and locked herself in the head. I locked the guns and the cocaine in the cabinet.
I found the radio-telephone. I let it warm up, then played with the buttons and the microphone. We were adrift thirty miles off-shore. I couldn't handle the ship, and Alex wasn't dependable help. One glance at the charts convinced me I needed a pilot to re-enter the Golden Gateway.
The marine operator connected me with the Coast Guard. I identified myself and asked for their assistance and gave them my location. "How soon can you get here?"
"A cutter has already been dispatched."
I blessed them. And Our Lady of the Farallones.
"Was that gunfire we heard?"
"Damn straight." I started to explain.
The Coast Guard interrupted me. "We advise you that injuring, shooting, maiming or poaching wildlife in this sanctuary is punishable by..."
I switched off the son of a bitch.
I found Ruth's purse in one of the cabins. I dumped it and started pawing through it. Cosmetics, birth control pills, her photostat from the Bureau of Consumer Affairs. A staff ID from Pac-Con that said she'd been with the LA branch for six months. A box of hollow-point shells. And a manila envelope marked evidence.
I paged through her evidence. The leasing bill for both of Riki Anatole's cars. A canceled check for floral arrangements for a neighbor's graduation. A restaurant receipt from a Third Street deli for three hundred bucks worth of grilled ham-and-cheese sandwiches for the Oakland As play-offs last year. A few scribbled notes from petty cash.
Her screwy evidence was legal proof that she was guilty of Breaking and Entering
. That's all it was. The expense sheets might be sloppy management, but they were mostly legal or easily explainable deductions.
There was another envelope underneath. Inside were some photo-copies of some promissory notes Ruth had question-marked. Each note was for fifty grand, a year's loan to the fish company. They were dated thirty days apart, and the newest due date was next month. Each bore the same Chinese ideogram for a signature. The lender's name was typed below each ideogram. Tan Ng was the lender for all ten notes.
I went back on deck. The birds still shrieked above us. Jack's body was crumpled against the scuppers. He looked like he was remembering an old lover. The blood had stopped oozing out, most had drained into the sea, and what was left was already turning black from the salt air. My shoes made sucking sounds in the blood.
Alex was at the bow. He looked at me. "Mexico," he said. Not a statement or a question. Not a declaration of purpose or intent, not even a plea. Just the one word he could still say.
I told him we were heading back to port. Murder precluded Mexico. There was no way to sail there. And then I saw the Coast Guard cutter bearing down on us.
The Coast Guard came alongside and aboard. The officers were shaken by the carnage, while the crew was glassy-eyed over the cocaine. Alex was taken into custody. Ruth went aboard the cutter refusing medical attention. Jack's body went into a CG floater bag, then into the trawler's refrigerated hold.
I decided to stay onboard the trawler. An ensign gave me a receipt for the guns and the cocaine. A male steno took my statement. Finally there was nothing more left unsaid.
I went below and found a bottle of tequila in a locker. I swiped a lemon and a salt shaker from the galley and snuck aft to a cabin. I started drinking, thinking of Mexico. But there was no Mexico. No tequila sunrise. Just as there was no Santa Claus, no Easter Bunny. I was tired, or maybe it was the salt air, or maybe the tequila, but it didn't take long. Soon I was dead drunk, fast asleep.
Chapter 31
The Law was waiting in San Francisco. Uniformed officers came aboard and took custody of the guns and the cocaine. Jack's body was shipped to the morgue. Alex was read his Miranda rights and then led away to a four-wheeled cage. Ruthann disappeared in a black and white. No one seemed interested in me.
A late model blue sedan was parked at the head of the pier. Its engine had a lazy idle, like a government job. It had blackwall tires and a whip antenna. There were few dents or creases. Two men sat inside, each slouched against a door. They could have been twins. Their long hair was styled alike, and their beards were trimmed alike. They both wore open-throated shirts whose collars hung over their sportcoats.
I hiked over. "You're Howard, right?"
"I'm Curtin." He opened the rear door. "Captain wants you."
We started off towards the Hall of Justice. Though there was little traffic in the city, the detectives drove slower than a brace of hookers. Dispassionate and robot-like, their eyes kept scanning the sidewalks ahead, looking for whatever came next. Their eyes said they knew no buddies on these streets.
Halfway through the Stockton Street tunnel, the police dispatch began paging us. To me, it was all cop talk, laced with garbled words and winter static, but the detectives were cipher experts. They made a left turn onto Post Street, took Post to Kearny, then speeded north back the way we had come.
I asked what was happening.
"One-eighty-seven at the Orpheus on Broadway."
I leaned back and closed my eyes. 187 was police code for homicide, and the Orpheus Hotel was a last-chance flop located above the flashiest topless joint on the strip. I doubted I'd get any sleep tonight.
The streets of the Financial District were still littered with calendar sheets, left-overs from last year's going-away party. Once, when the city treasury was flush, the street sweepers spent New Year's Day cleaning up the calendars. But the unions started demanding double-time, and now the streets stay filthy until the next regular work shift.
Broadway was just beginning to darken with sundown, and the neon was already glowing above the jazz clubs and encounter parlors. We found a yellow zone and parked. There were a couple black and whites there, an unmarked car like ours, a meat wagon triple-parked with its emergency flashers on, even a television crew from a local TV station. A small crowd of early-rising night crawlers stood by, criticizing the show.
Captain Banagan had arrived ahead of us. He left his squad car and came curbside. "Hello, boys." He looked back at me. "We need that talk tonight."
"As bad as that?"
"The Chief says you're interfering with police work," he told me. He looked grim. "You've doubled our monthly homicide figures in a single weekend."
"The Feds'll love it," I said. "Now the city can apply for another grant." I ticked off the items. "More cop cars, more computers, maybe another toxicologist..."
"He's going after your license, Michael."
"Fuck my license. You think I wanted any of this shit to happen? You know what really happened out there?" I remembered what happened. I put my hands in my pockets. "I got lucky."
"You got lucky," he agreed. "What are you going to do now?"
"I don't know."
"Neither do I," he said.
No neon sign advertised the Orpheus Hotel. There was just a hand-painted one that fronted a bus stop. For five bucks, two people could stay all night. For thirty, they could stay all week.
We found an inspector with a beat cop.
"How's it going, Charlie?"
"Captain. Good to see you."
They shook hands and made introductions all around.
"Whatcha got for me?" Captain Banagan asked.
"I just got here myself," Charlie said.
"Let's go upstairs and check it out."
The hotel had stairs but no elevator. The carpeting was worn from dragging feet and shuffling shoes. Only the lonely lived here and not for long. They left town or found a plot in potter's field.
The police had taken over the second floor, and flashes from the police Polaroids lit our way. The hallway was a haven for burn-outs from the Haight or North Beach. Winos too far gone to rehabilitate and pensioners who had given up. Drifters building up courage for the long walk from town. Junkie hookers and part-time pimpsters. Lady wrestlers and bearded ladies.
The captain looked them over. "Well, get their statements anyway."
A fat transvestite, his wig off and his make-up on, jumped in front of us. "You'll find the killer, won't you?"
The captain walked around him. "Maybe."
"You're a real comfort," the TV said. "That's what you are."
Banagan looked back. "Yes, ma'am, a real comfort, that's what we are." His voice was as dry as the August hills.
At the end of the hallway, the medics were having the devil's own time getting their stretcher through the narrow doorway. They grunted and heaved. Finally, tilting it sideways, they made their escape. They rolled the stretcher towards us, followed by a lady reporter hoping for a scoop. A Chinese cameraman tagged behind like a three-legged puppy.
The captain stopped them.
"Open it up."
The medics loosened straps on the morgue bag. Snooping for an exclusive, the lady reporter edged her microphone forward. The cameraman began filming.
"No kidding," Banagan said over the corpse. "Hey, Michael, you've seen this clown before, haven't you?"
I leaned forward. "Yeah, I've seen him before."
Tan Ng's wrinkled face stared up at us. He had the pained look of a vulture who's just discovered poison among the offal. Somebody had cut his throat, not quite from ear to ear, but deep enough to gash his neck to the bones. There was blood even in his ears.
"You know this man?" the lady reporter said.
"Since I was beat cop here back in the Forties," Banagan told her. "He was a big man in Chinatown. Consiglieri for the Chinese Mafia. He could spring them faster than I could book them."
She was interested. "Then it's a Chinatown gangland slayin
g?"
Banagan went grim. "He was a chicken hawk." As if that could explain it all to her.
She asked him just what a chicken hawk was.
"A homosexual who preys on teenage boys. This old guy was a master at it. He could find a teenager in a convent. But I didn't think he could still get it up."
She was startled. "This old man?"
Banagan shrugged. "Maybe those Chinese herbs work."
"Well, he is a Chinese," she said.
"Fruit comes in all colors," he dead-panned.
She chose to ignore that. "Was he ever arrested?"
"For sodomy?" He sighed. "Never could get anyone to testify."
"The youngsters were threatened with reprisals?"
"It was never just sex, never just a one-night stand for this guy, or for the others like him. No, they take a real interest in their chickens. Sort of a Big Brother relationship, I guess."
She smirked. "Like a Little League coach?"
"Yeah, like a Little League coach." We walked on, and Banagan leaned over. "Too bad she can't say that on the Instant Eyewitness News," he whispered.
"She's gonna try," I said.
"You think so?" Banagan was amused.
Inside the hot little room, the Polaroid boys were packing their equipment, while the fingerprint team worked on the window ledges.
"Any prints, Dennis?"
The lab man didn't look up. "Millions."
"Millions, he says."
"And they're probably a match," Dennis went on, "with every wino, every junkie, every hooker who's ever passed through town."
"Keep collecting them," the Captain told him. "We can always start a scrapbook."
"Captain?" Charlie came up. "I talked with the bartender downstairs. A young Chinese male was here last night just after midnight. He bought a couple of drinks once in a while. The old man came in just before last call. He sat by the young male, they started talking, and both left about twenty minutes later."
"What about descriptions?"
"The bartender said the young male was Chinese." Charlie looked up from his notebook. "He said they all look alike."
"Anything else?" Banagan asked.
"So far that's it. Charlie spotted a waiting beat cop. "What have you got?"